Wednesday, November 4, 2009 2:37 PM - By David Lat
Yesterday’s Lawsuit of the Day — Jones v. Minkin, a $44 million lawsuit against yours truly, Above the Law publisher David Minkin, and Dead Horse Media (now known as Breaking Media) — has been voluntarily dismissed by the plaintiff, University of Miami law professor Donald Jones.
Pursuant to Rule 41(a)(1)(A)(i)(B), the dismissal is without prejudice. If Professor Jones wants to refile, he should note the statute of limitations (which had already run as to most of our posts about him by the time his complaint was filed).
There was NO SETTLEMENT in this case. Above the Law has made no changes to our prior posts, and we have paid no money to Professor Jones. The case was dismissed by the plaintiff without anything from our side, except a letter from our lawyer.
UPDATE (3:35 PM): We have offered Professor Jones a guest post on Above the Law in which to provide his side of the story, about either the lawsuit or the underlying facts. We have offered to keep the comments on that post closed or open, depending on his preference. (And we would have done this in the first place, had he made such a request.)
Comment from Randazza, plus links to the notice of voluntary dismissal and other news outlets and blogs — we will UPDATE continually, so do check back for fresh links — after the jump.
For the first time in over three years of operation, Above the Law has been sued. We feel the lawsuit has no merit, but we will not comment further on this ongoing litigation. To access the pro se complaint, coverage by other news outlets and blogs, and ATL’s prior posts about Professor Donald Jones, click on the links collected after the jump.
Please note that we have closed comments on this post, out of respect for the judicial process. Thank you.
UPDATE: We will be continually updating this post with links to news and blogosphere coverage. We have already added new links from the ABA Journal, the WSJ Law Blog, and the Volokh Conspiracy, among other sources.
The fresh links will appear AFTER THE JUMP, so check them out there. Thanks.
There’s nothing scary about this Halloween edition of the Legal Eagle Wedding Watch. Our featured newlyweds include two Skadden associates, a SCOTUS clerk, and a famous heiress / model / entrepreneur.
Law professors generally don’t earn as much as Biglaw partners. Legal academic salaries, while generally in the low six-figures, rarely go over, say, $400,000.
But some law profs own very, very nice homes. See, e.g. (in descending order by value):
Columbia professor Hans Smit ($30 million mansion — yup, that’s seven zeros);
Yale professor James Whitman ($5.7 million co-op);
NYU professor Cathy Sharkey ($5.2 million apartment);
“Feldsuk,” aka Harvard professors Jeannie Suk, who has a new book out that looks quite interesting, and Noah Feldman ($2.8 million mansion);
Columbia professor Edward Morrison ($2.6 million townhouse); and
Columbia professor Sarah Cleveland ($2.5 million townhouse).
Sometimes the professors get financial assistance for these purchases from the schools that employ them. But sometimes the professors buy them on their own, without any university help.
For example, as reported in the New York Observer, Daniel Fischel, former dean of the University of Chicago Law School, just picked up an $8.45 million Manhattan pied-à-terre. As breathlessly described by writer Max Abelson, the apartment features “custom electric shades, a steam shower, and a Sub-Zero wine refrigerator.”
Sounds fabulous! Maybe Professor Fischel can donate a weekend in this apartment to the CLF public interest auction?
Fischel’s famous neighbors, plus the story of how he got this rich — being a law school dean pays well, but not that well — after the jump.
The University of Virginia Law School, and legal academia more generally, have been rocked recently by a controversy involving a leading law professor and claims of anti-gay animus.
William N. Eskridge Jr. — currently the John A. Garver Professor of Jurisprudence at Yale Law School, where we had great good fortune of having him as a professor — testified last month before Congress in support of the pending Employment Non-Discrimination Act of 2009 (ENDA). ENDA would prohibit sexual orientation and gender identity discrimination in the workplace. In explaining the need for ENDA, Professor Eskridge made reference to his own career, testifying that “I was denied tenure at the University of Virginia School of Law in 1985 based in part on my sexual orientation.” You can, and should, read his complete testimony here (opens as a Word document).
The controversy has, of course, reverberated throughout the blogosphere. See, e.g., the UVA Law Blog (including 40+ comments, many of them quite insightful); Brian Leiter’s Law School Reports (here and here); and The Faculty Lounge. The UVA Law Blog also reprints a Virginia Law Weekly article from January 1986 about the Eskridge tenure denial (which was strongly opposed by students; if you’ve been lucky enough to have Bill Eskridge as a teacher, this should not be a surprise).
We reached out to both Professor Eskridge and UVA Law School. We received written statements from Professor Eskridge and from Dean Paul G. Mahoney.
Their statements, plus a comprehensive collection of links, appear below.
When we first reported on Boston College Law professor Scott Fitzgibbon’s anti-gay marriage advertisement in Maine, we noted that the classes he taught were not germane to his views on gay marriage:
According to his bio, Professor Fitzgibbon teaches jurisprudence, corporations, securities regulation, and contracts. Are gay and lesbian BC Law students comfortable learning about these subjects from an anti-gay marriage professor?
But the Boston College Law School website Eagleonline has done some fantastic investigative journalism and revealed that Fitzgibbon teaches what he preaches:
In the Spring of 2008, a group of Boston College Law School students enrolled in Professor Scott T. Fitzgibbon’s “Marriage: Law and Theory” seminar formally approached Dean of Students Norah Wylie to express concern over Fitzgibbon’s allegedly improper conduct in class.
Can the law school claim that it is “welcoming” to gays and lesbians when it had an anti-gay marriage professor teaching its marriage and the law class?
Let’s look at the students’ complaints after the jump.
Friday, September 25, 2009 2:02 PM - By Elie Mystal
It’s too early to take nominations for this year’s law revue contest. But an early contender will surely be a video we received from students at Boston College Law School. It’s a spoof of BC law professor Scott Fitzgibbon’s anti-gay marriage commercial. Here’s the set-up, from the BC Student Bar Review (that’s a social organization, for 1Ls still wondering what happens outside of the library):
Dear all,
The next bar review will begin at 8pm this Thursday, October 1 at The Kells…. We can hear some of you already: “but guyssssss, The Kells is full of meatheads in Red Sox hats.” Well, we’ve got a news flash for you, Little Lord Fauntleroy: every bar in Boston is full of meatheads in Red Sox hats, and very few of them have dance floors as spirited or drinks as reasonably priced as The Kells. We find it to be a great place to blow off some steam, get weird on the dance floor, and accost your TA from LLRW and force him to do shots of Jameson with you.
However, as Dean Garvey reminded us in his memo, we must be respectful of those who disagree with us, no matter their beliefs. In the spirit of providing equal time, we have included a brief video message from the opposition:
The Kells is the kind of place that makes you want to bathe yourself in lye when you wake up the next morning afternoon. Here’s what the loyal opposition has to say:
After the jump, would the real Professor Fitzgibbon please stand up?
Dear Members of the Classes of 2010, 2011, and 2012,
A little over five years ago I came to UCLA School of Law from the east coast to become dean of one of the greatest educational institutions in the world. From the moment I arrived I appreciated the strength and depth of our student culture. Indeed, you are part of the reason my five years as the dean of this school have been the happiest and most fulfilling years of my life. Thus, it is with mixed emotions that I announce today that I will be leaving the deanship at the end of the calendar year for a new challenge as dean of the University of Chicago Law School.
Why is he leaving so suddenly? Why was this decision made now instead of over the summer? University of Chicago Dean Saul Levmore announced he was stepping down back in February. Why the late trigger at UofC?
Dean Schill offers some additional information about his decision process — and the University of Chicago touts its new dean — after the jump.
When we delivered our talk yesterday at Santa Clara Law, discussing various trends sweeping through the legal profession and what they mean, we were honored to have Professor Eric Goldman in the audience. Professor Goldman is one of the nation’s leading scholars in the areas of internet law and intellectual property. (We especially appreciate his continuing coverage of derivative liability and Section 230, a statutory section much beloved by blog operators.)
Professor Goldman’s excellent recap of our remarks appears here. We were especially interested in his thoughts, as a former corporate general counsel, on the billable hour and fixed-fee arrangements. Check out his post at the link below.
Thursday, August 27, 2009 3:47 PM - By Elie Mystal
Way back in 2007, a time so long ago that firms actually made offers to summer associates, we mentioned the story of UConn law professor Robert Birmingham. The professor showed a clip from the movie Really Really Pimpin’ in Da South, and got in a little bit of trouble. The film is (apparently) a “prostitution training film” that contained an interview the professor wanted his students to see. Professor Birmingham was forced to take a leave of absence back then, but he’s back on campus.
Unfortunately for the professor, now his girlfriend is in trouble. Heather Kaufmann — who is not only Professor Birmingham’s girlfriend but also represented Birmingham back in 2007 — has been charged with a litany of crimes. The Hartford Courrant reports:
Heather Kaufmann, 33, surrendered to police Monday and is facing charges of second-degree forgery, third-degree larceny, third-degree identity theft, credit card theft, receiving goods illegally, charging less than $500 on a revoked credit card and five counts of fraudulent use of an ATM….
According to court documents, police said that in the days following the death of her aunt on Dec. 7, 2008, Kaufmann used her aunt’s ATM card and wrote a check on the account that, together, came to more than $3,200.
Birmingham isn’t just tainted by the romantic association with Kaufmann; he allegedly also received some of the misappropriated funds.
Tuesday, August 25, 2009 4:53 PM - By Kashmir Hill
We mentioned the ‘Skanks in NYC’ case in yesterday’s Morning Docket, and I’ve written about it extensively over at True/Slant.
To summarize: a blogger started a website called ‘Skanks in NYC’ in order to say nasty things about model Liskula Cohen. Cohen discovered the site containing just five posts, in which the blogger called Cohen a skank, a ho, and an old hag, among other nasty things, and posted photos of her.
Cohen decided she wanted to file a defamation suit against the anonymous blogger, so her lawyer subpoenaed Google — which hosted ‘Skanks in NYC’ at Blogger — to obtain the writer’s e-mail and IP address. The blogger’s lawyer fought the subpoena but lost. Manhattan Supreme Court Judge Joan Madden ordered Google to turn over the information. Google sent it along. Cohen filed her defamation suit outing her alleged defamer: Rosemary Port, a 29-year-old Fashion Institute of Technology student who was mad at Cohen for saying nasty things about her to Port’s boyfriend.
The press wrote lots of stories about the case and about Port, whose name the media obtained from court papers. Cohen then dropped her $3 million defamation suit, making it appear that this may have been a Cyberslapp: “a new form of lawsuit… threatening to overturn the promise of anonymous online speech and chill the freedom of expression that is central to the online world.”
Now Port wants to slap Google with a $15 million lawsuit, saying Google violated her First Amendment rights by complying with the court order. Her lawyer went so far as to compare ‘Skanks in NYC’ with the Federalist Papers. From the New York Daily News:
“I’m ready to take this all the way to the Supreme Court,” [Port’s lawyer, Salvatore] Strazzullo said. “Our Founding Fathers wrote ‘The Federalist Papers’ under pseudonyms. Inherent in the First Amendment is the right to speak anonymously. Shouldn’t that right extend to the new public square of the Internet?”
It’s been widely reported, but what are the actual merits of the suit against Google? We spoke with renowned privacy expert and George Washington Law professor Daniel Solove about the case and have an answer for you after the jump. While we had him on the phone, we also discussed how one becomes the foremost U.S. expert on privacy by age 37.
Above the Law’s commitment to bring you all of the latest details about the crazy saga of Dr. Li-ann Thio is unmatched. On Wednesday night, we broke the news that Dr. Thio decided against teaching at NYU Law School this fall.
Now we have Dr. Thio’s official statement explaining her decision to withdraw as a visiting professor. According to the resignation letter she sent to NYU Law Dean Richard Revesz, a lack of tolerance changed Dr. Thio’s mind about NYU Law:
As an Asian woman whose legal training has spanned the finest institutions in both East and West, I believe I would have something of value to offer your students. However, the conditions no longer exist to proceed with the visit, given the animus fuelled by irresponsible misrepresentation/distortions and/or concerted invective from certain parties. Friends and colleagues have also expressed serious concerns about my safety and well-being.
I am convinced that a primary condition for learning and teaching, especially in my chosen fields (which are rife with contested concepts) - human rights and constitutional law - is a tolerant, serene environment where different viewpoints emanating from a variety of worldviews are heard with mutual respect and carefully evaluated, in a civilised fashion. I have always striven to ensure my classroom would exemplify such conditions and had planned to bring this practice to my NYU classroom.
Dr. Thio Li-ann appears to be arguing that NYU Law students should respect her beliefs. But some of her beliefs sound pretty disrespectful to gays and lesbians in the NYU Law community. Unless “shoving a straw up your nose to drink” counts as a respectful way of discussing sexual practices.
Of course, since we are dealing with Dr. Thio, the letter goes on. Brevity is not her strong suit. Read more after the jump.
We sometimes like to think of the figures we write about in these pages as characters in a novel. Viewed in this way, Dr. Li-ann Thio, the visiting NYU law professor who apparently isn’t a fan of gay rights, is one of the most compelling we’ve come across recently.
We have a weakness for strong, outspoken Asian women — hi Mom! — and this description fits Dr. Thio to a T. Our only disappointment: Dr. Thio was whiny when attacked. (We agree with Professor Brian Leiter — playing the victim card was weak, Dr. Thio.)
Now, meet an even more compelling character — one who wouldn’t have responded to a random IT guy by playing victim, but by treating him like Obama treated that fly. She’s the original Dr. Thio: Li-ann Thio’s mother, Dr. Su Mien Thio (pictured), who taught Thio the Younger everything she knows (e.g., that gay sex is evil).
From a tipster:
It looks like Dr. Thio’s mother — a former judge who inspired Li-ann Thio’s own rise in politics — was involved in some serious anti-gay drama this year, after battling what she saw as a conspiracy to generate a “generation of lesbians.”
It all started with unrest over a screening of Spider Lilies, a lusty Taiwanese movie about an Internet cam girl [Ed. note: A cam girl? Like SexyLexus?] falling in love with another girl. The elder Dr. Thio, filled with the same heroic indignation as her daughter, filled with the same heroic indignation as her daughter, ended up locked out of a building after a failed takeover of a feminist organization.
Update: Not surprisingly, given her staunch opposition to homosexuality, Dr. Thio Su Mien is also against abortion. A headline from Roll on Friday: “Leading Singaporean lawyer blames abortion for SARS.”
More about the Spider Lilies controversy and Dr. Su Mien Thio’s impressive résumé, after the jump.
Or close to nothing. That’s the likely enrollment in Human Rights Law in Asia, the course that Dr. Li-ann Thio, the visiting professor from Singapore with controversial views on gay rights, is scheduled to teach at NYU Law School this fall.
An NYU law student reports:
I think there’s a point everyone is missing about this story, and it is this:
We just had to submit our bids for fall courses. A grand total of five people applied for Dr. Thio’s class. It is totally going to get canceled. In comparison, Kenji Yoshino’s Con Law classes got 230 primary bids PER SECTION. NYU Law voted with its feet.
It’s not clear whether the student is referring to Human Rights Law in Asia (3 credits) or Constitutionalism in Asia (2 credits). Other sources tell us, however, that both courses are severely undersubscribed. NYU Law alumna Jill Filipovic, who over at Feministe expressed the hope that nobody would sign up for Dr. Thio’s classes, must be pleased.
(In case you’re not familiar with him, Kenji Yoshino is the openly gay law professor that NYU hired away from Yale last year. He is a leading scholar of gay rights and queer theory.)
Update: We now have greater clarity, from our original tipster:
She’s teaching 2 courses. Human Rights got 9 bids, 5 primary and 4 alternates, and Constitutionalism got 5 bids, just 1 primary and 4 alternates. The results of bidding will be available next week so we’ll know more about how many people actually end up in the class then. But I think it’s pretty safe to assume NYU is not going to run two seminars with just a handful of people in them.
We contacted the law school, to confirm the registration numbers and to see if Dr. Thio’s classes were in danger of being canceled.
Read their response, plus additional discussion, after the jump.
But over the weekend, an information technology professional who works for NYU law (and who is also an NYU student) asked the dean to reconsider. Here’s part of the letter from Malik Graves-Pryor:
While I can understand your position and reasoning in displaying solidarity to the larger NYU School of Law community regarding Hauser Global’s decision to bring in Professor Li-Ann Thio … I must state my strong objection to her appointment and the official NYU Law defense of said appointment.
As an African-American man working in the LawITS department, and simultaneously a student at NYU, I could never imagine the day would come when NYU would allow the appointment of a legal scholar who held the opinion that African-Americans practice acts of “gross indecency”, that African-Americans who strive for diversity should be rebuffed because “diversity is not a license for perversity”, describing the private intimate acts between African-Americans as trying to “shove a straw up your nose to drink”, among other intellectually and morally shallow absurdities.
In response, Dr. Thio unleashed an 18-point defense that she sent to the entire NYU Law faculty. Apparently, she feels unfairly maligned:
1. I am a little tired of the torrent of abuse and defamation that I have been receiving, and blatant emotive misrepresentations of my position. I was going to stay above the fray but given this insidious attack on my academic reputation (aside from many ad hominem insults), I feel I must cast some clarity on certain issues.
NYU Law gays, consider yourselves warned: Dr. Li-ann Thio is not afraid of you. The outspoken professor, who vehemently opposed decriminalizing gay sex as a member of the Singapore parliament, is ready to rumble:
We can be united in commitment to this principle [of academic freedom], without slavishly bowing to a demanded uniformity or dogma of political correctness set by elite diktat. I cannot say I am impressed by this ugly brand of politicking which I hope is not endemic….
I am disappointed at the intolerant animosity directed at me by strangers who do not know me and have decided to act on their own prejudices, forged from whatever sources, I am nonetheless glad that there are still some at NYU, who uphold a commitment to academic freedom and who entertain dissent with respect. As a recent NYU graduate, a Muslim friend of mine said, one must have courage in the face of bullying.
Dr. Thio can’t be prejudiced. Some of her best friends are Muslim!
Although her defense of the Singaporean statute against gay sex has been dismissed by one prominent American law professor as “dumb” and “embarrassing[],” Dr. Thio is not unaware of U.S. Supreme Court decisions in this area:
[C]ertain Americans have to realize the fact that there are a diversity of views on the subject and it is not a settled matter; there is no universal norm and it is nothing short of moral imperialism to suggest there is. Correct me if I am wrong, but there is no consensus on this even within the U.S. Supreme Court and American society at large, even post Lawrence v. Texas.
Dr. Thio is fighting political correctness with political correctness, accusing LGBT activists of cultural imperialism. Yikes! Find something to bite down on, kids, ‘cause she’s not planning to use lube pull her punches.
Meanwhile, the NYU Law School administration has (finally) issued a public statement on L’Affaire Thio.
The University of Illinois College of Law is embroiled in a scandal over admitting politically connected students under government pressure. But the school’s faculty is done taking it on the chin from the Chicago Tribune.
At the end of June, the Tribune posted emails from a former College of Law Dean, Heidi Hurd. The emails suggest that Hurd was trying to bargain for jobs for her graduates, in exchange for admitting underqualified students.
Contrary to recent headlines, the College of Law did not seek or receive any jobs from anyone in exchange for the admission of students. It did not enter into a “jobs-for-entry scheme” or engage in quid-pro-quo exchanges of admissions favors for employment favors. Indeed, it takes very little to make clear that the employment challenges of students who are not academically successful could never be overcome by anyone’s promises to furnish the College with job opportunities, as the recently published exchanges should have made clear. While my sarcasm was clearly lost on the tin ears of some, my e-mail exchanges in response to queries about this were on their face facetious.
You can go back and read the emails here. Is that sarcasm or quid-pro-quo?
But Hurd is not the only person writing open letters to the Chicago Tribune. There are 16 University of Illinois professors who are mad as hell, and are not going to take it anymore.
Academic freedom is a beautiful thing, essential to our nation’s celebrated system of higher education. And, to borrow the words of Dick Cheney on gay marriage, “freedom means freedom for everyone” — including people whose ideas we might not like, or even find repugnant.
How far should academic freedom extend? That’s an issue being faced right now at NYU Law School. The following message went out to the law student community last week:
Dear Student,
We are writing on behalf of OUTLaw, NYU Law’s LGBT student group, to raise awareness of anti-gay statements made by a NYU visiting professor. Dr. Li-ann Thio, a professor at the National University of Singapore, will be teaching Human Rights Law in Asia during the Fall 2009 semester as a Global Visiting Professor of Law at NYU.
In 2007, the Singaporean Parliament was considering repealing 377A - the statute criminalizing consensual sex between men in Singapore. Dr. Thio, a Nominated Member of Parliament, gave a speech before Parliament arguing against the repeal. In her speech supporting the continued criminalization of “acts of gross indecency” between two males, she made such statements as, “You cannot make a human wrong a human right,” “Diversity is not a license for perversity,” and that anal sex is like “shoving a straw up your nose to drink” (http://theonlinecitizen.com/2007/10/377a-serves-public-morality-nmp-thio-li-ann). The efforts to repeal 377A failed, and consensual sex between men is still illegal in Singapore.
While respecting Dr. Thio’s right to her opinion and without questioning her teaching abilities, OUTLaw believes it is important for LGBT students and allies to be aware of her views in order to make fully informed decisions regarding class registration. If you have any questions or concerns, please do not hesitate to contact the OUTLaw Board at nyu.outlaw@gmail.com.
The videos are worth checking out (especially if you’re a high school debater wanting to relive your glory days). Dr. Thio speaks persuasively and with conviction, supporting her argument against gay sex with an impressively broad range of sources, from the Bible to Immanuel Kant to contemporary bloggers. One would expect nothing less from someone with her dazzling educational pedigree: a BA from Oxford, an LLM from Harvard Law School, and a PhD from Cambridge. Don’t call her Dr. TTThio!
Additional discussion, plus a reader poll, after the jump.
Yesterday, we reported on a law student at Loyola - Chicago who was very unhappy with how one law school course was being taught. Today, Dean David Yellen responded to the critics, in an email to the entire law school community:
Dear Students,
By now, many of you have read or heard about the “Above the Law” item regarding our third year student who complained to me about Accounting for Lawyers. I thought I would give you a little additional information.
After the student e-mailed me (and the entire class) late Monday night, I spoke with Professor Ramirez early Tuesday. He was already planning to meet with the student, which he did that day. They had a very good discussion, after which the student e-mailed me apologizing for the tone of his e-mail and saying that he was pleased with Professor Ramirez’s plans for the rest of the semester. The student concluded, “I have, for the most part, truly enjoyed my experience here at Loyola and this experience will not change my belief that I chose the right law school for me.” I was proud of the student for acknowledging a mistake in sending the e-mail.
Yesterday, the student wanted money back for having to take the class. We assume that didn’t happen.
But after the jump, Dean Yellen expresses disappointment in the students who commented on yesterday’s post.
Back in July, when we covered the nuptials of celebrity professors / Obama advisers Cass Sunstein and Samantha Power, we wrote: “We look forward to seeing the heights to which they will ascend, together, in the administration of President Obama.”
Well, now we know. Both have snagged important positions in the White House. As previously reported, Sunstein, a former colleague of Obama’s from the University of Chicago Law School faculty, was tapped to serve as “regulatory czar” — a big deal in an administration that will be cranking out lots of regulations.
And last night we learned that Samantha Power will be joining hubby Cass at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. From the Associated Press:
Samantha Power, the Harvard University professor and Pulitzer Prize-winning author who earned notoriety for calling Hillary Rodham Clinton a ”monster” while working to elect Barack Obama president, will take a senior foreign policy job at the White House….
Officials familiar with the decision say Obama has tapped Power to be senior director for multilateral affairs at the National Security Council, a job that will require close contact and potential travel with Clinton, who is now secretary of state. NSC staffers often accompany the secretary of state on foreign trips.
See, Obama does have a sense of humor! Or, more likely, Obama always planned to give Power a plum position, despite “Monstergate.” Sure, it wasn’t her finest hour; but as a Harvard Law School grad, Power is entitled to a few undiplomatic moments. Speculates Gawker: “If someone really wants to hire you, he’ll make your future boss promise to be nice to you, in exchange for her job.”
Update: More good news for Samantha Power and Cass Sunstein. A tipster tells us: “They’re creating a super-child of the 21st century. She’s pregnant!”
A little more about the Power couple, after the jump.