In the wake of a former Harvard Law Review president securing the Democratic nomination for United States president, it's timely to do an update on the Harvard Law Review Note controversy (or Statue-Gate, as Glenn Reynolds dubbed it). If you haven't been following the story, background appears here, here, and here.

Whenever a leader stumbles, bloggers swarm. The mini-scandal at America's top law review has spawned a cottage industry of blogs. First there was a blog claiming to be written by Note author Phil Telfeyan, Do the Right Thing at Every Moment. It was under password protection for a time, but it's once again open to all. And now there are at least two other blogs dedicated to covering perceived scholarly lapses at Harvard Law School and the Harvard Law Review, Harvard Clown School and Harvard Law Review Review (both via Prettier Than Napoleon).

There have been all sorts of rumors going around about Phil Telfeyan, his Note, and the blog dedicated to the Note (which may or may not be his). We made an effort to get to the bottom of some of them, talking to people with firsthand knowledge of the situation, including current and former HLR editors. We didn't find out everything we wanted to know, but we learned a few new things.

If you're curious -- some of you may be tired of this story, and we don't blame you -- you can read more below the fold.

Sigh. We hate it when news breaks late on a Friday before a holiday weekend.

But we won't let the timing stop us from giving this the attention it deserves. We'll do an update post next week, after everyone is back from the Memorial Day holiday weekend. We've also contacted Phil Telfeyan -- we've known he was the Note author for quite some time, thanks to our Harvard Law School sources -- and requested an interview.

We have to head out now. If you're still stuck in front of your computer, instead of enjoying the long weekend, check out the links below.

Comment: Mea Culpa by Phil Telfeyan [comment]
HLS Wins National Appellate Advocacy Competition [Harvard Law Record]
HLS students win national ABA moot court competition [Harvard Law School]
A Man of Many Hats [Harvard Crimson]

In January, after the Harvard Law Review published a rather embarrassing, bleeding-heart Case Comment, we wrote:

Last year, we ran a popular series of posts on the Harvard Law Review. The gist of the coverage was that the Review's new, left-leaning leadership "is running the journal into the ground with a cabal of radical ideologues, making the outgoing editors nervous about the future reputation of the journal."

We got some flak for our HLR coverage. But in view of what the Review is publishing these days, as discussed extensively in the blogosphere -- see, e.g., the Volokh Conspiracy and PrawfsBlawg -- we can't help gloating. Just a little.

Or a lot. A tipster draws our attention to a Note that was just published in the latest issue of the HLR:

I think you should break this story. It is a guaranteed comment clusterf**k.

This Note (PDF) basically says that anyone who doesn't go in to public interest work is immoral and is killing babies in third world countries (most of this analysis is in section 4 of the article). I think it just came out in electronic form today, so you should get a jump on anyone.

Our correspondent's summary is shockingly accurate. Check out the article for yourself by clicking here (PDF).

As it turns out, we're not the first to take note of the Note. We believe that would be Professor Paul Horwitz, over at PrawfsBlawg. After alluding to the notorious Case Comment from several months ago, Professor Horwitz writes:

I am reading the latest issue of the Harvard Law Review [which contains] a Note titled, after an inscription on a statue in Cambridge Common, "Never Again Should a People Starve in a World of Plenty." It's unusually thinly sourced for a Harvard Law Review Note -- not that I'm encouraging people to use more footnotes! And it has a certain voice ("There is injustice everywhere. The last place there should be injustice is in the justice system.") and theme that . . . . well, I find myself wondering whether we have found our anonymous author once again.

I don't mean to be unduly gossipy about this sort of thing; it's worth a two-paragraph blog post and not more. And I am not knocking the observation that injustice is bad; heaven forfend. Just the same, I'm curious whether this is the same author.

We don't share Professor Horwitz's shyness. We're happy to write more than two paragraphs about the Note (ha -- we already have). And there's no such thing as being "unduly gossipy" in our book.

So gossip away, in the comments. Do you think this Note was written by the same author as the prior Case Comment? Do you feel that the Harvard Law Review -- once headed by Senator Barack Obama, its first black president -- is tilting too far to the left?

Or, if you prefer, don't gossip; engage substantively with the arguments in the Note. Clearly the author wants associates and partners in large law firms to sit up and take notice, to think about whether what they're doing professionally is worthwhile -- or even morally defensible.

We're sure the anonymous author will be grateful to us for bringing his or her work to the attention of ATL's many readers in Biglaw. Whoever you are: you're welcome!

* Linda Greenhouse to $300K! [New York Observer via ABA Journal]

* Duties of a law school dean: attend parties, appear at conferences, talk to alums. And don't forget the herding of cats -- aka law professors. [TJ's Double Play]

* Even law review editors screw up sometimes. "Constructive acceptance"? [Concurring Opinions]

* Who'd have thunk it? Sometimes blogging can help people. And stuff. [Legal Blog Watch]

* Ethan Leib dresses up as a giant chicken to teach Contracts, thereby guaranteeing ABA accreditation. [PrawfsBlawg]

* Orin Kerr points out online interviews "with eight of the nine current Supreme Court Justices (all but Souter) about legal writing, advocacy, and the process of deciding cases and writing opinions." [Volokh Conspiracy]

* Ann Althouse on John McCain and being a "natural-born citizen." [Althouse]

* Hillary to Russert: You can't handle the truth! About my tax returns. [TaxProf Blog]

We bring you some news from the University of Virginia School of Law, which last year was voted America's Coolest Law School by the readers of Above the Law. UVA has a new dean: Professor Paul Mahoney. Congratulations, Dean-To-Be Mahoney!

Professor Mahoney, who will replace John C. Jeffries Jr. as dean when Jeffries steps down in July, has a glittering resume: MIT, Yale Law, clerkships for Judge Winter (2d Cir.) and Justice Marshall, and four years at S&C. He joined the UVA law faculty in 1990. Word on the street is that Paul Mahoney was "the internal favorite" and that "students [are] pleased" by his selection, which didn't come as a surprise:

[H]e was widely expected to be the guy. I'm sitting in his wife's class right now (she's a prof here too), and not even she [Professor Julia D. Mahoney] has said anything about it. Just prattling on about bailments...

Meanwhile, while we're training the spotlight on Charlottesville:

Journal tryouts are ongoing at UVA and presumably other law schools. This is the official Feb Club blog's take on journal tryouts...

It's an entertaining post, characterizing journal tryouts as "a Pyramid Scheme of misery"; check it out here. Elsewhere on the Feb Club blog, a group blog devoted to the monthlong cycle of parties at UVA Law, you can find delicious photos of shirtless studs and busty babes. Check out the main page by clicking here.

Update: In other UVA-related news, Professor Michael Klarman, who is beloved by students and faculty alike, is moving to Harvard Law School.

Paul G. Mahoney—Scholar, Teacher, and Corporate Law Expert—Named University of Virginia Law School Dean [University of Virginia School of Law]
Paul G. Mahoney bio [University of Virginia School of Law]
Journal Tryouts are the Biggest Scam in the Law School [Feb Club Is Why Daddy Left]
Michael Klarman to join HLS faculty [Harvard Law School]

Earliest: Congratulations to America's Coolest Law School: UVA!

Mark your calendars for February 20, the season premiere of America's Next Top Model: Cycle 10. Exciting!

Meanwhile, National Jurist has issued a list of America's top law reviews. To review the 100 law reviews in rank order, click here, then scroll down.

We're pleased to see the Yale Law Journal, in whose offices we once toiled (Book Reviews Editor, Volume 108), tied for first place with the Harvard Law Review. And if the HLR keeps on publishing stuff like this, maybe the YLJ won't have to share the top spot next year.

The Top 100 Law Reviews [TaxProf Blog]

Last year, we ran a popular series of posts on the Harvard Law Review (click here and scroll down, to the posts marked with a mushroom cloud over Gannett House). The gist of the coverage, as described by one of our sources, was that the Review's new, left-leaning leadership "is running the journal into the ground with a cabal of radical ideologues, making the outgoing editors nervous about the future reputation of the journal."

We got some flak for our HLR coverage. But in view of what the Review is publishing these days, as discussed extensively in the blogosphere last week -- see, e.g., the Volokh Conspiracy and PrawfsBlawg -- we can't help gloating. Just a little.

Harvard Law Review on Punitive Damages and the 14th Amendment [Volokh Conspiracy]
Cruel and Unusual? On the Harvard Law Review's Case Comment on Philip Morris [PrawfsBlawg]

Earlier: Prior ATL coverage of the Harvard Law Review

* Barry Ostrager of Simpson Thacher bills out at $1,000 an hour? Well, just keep him away from your bathroom. [WSJ Law Blog]

* Eager to soak the rich (hedge fund kings)? Good luck with that. [DealBreaker]

* Remember the wacky Stephen Dunne, who blames the gays for his bar failure? Not being admitted may be the least of his problems. [Keeping Up With Jonas]

* A funny parody? Or a disturbingly accurate account of how the law review submission process works? [Concurring Opinions]

* Truth in advertising? This was probably well-intentioned, but ultimately unwise. [copyranter]

* Voting irregularities: not limited to "coolest law school" contests. [Machinist]

We understand there are various websites -- websites that we won't mention by name or link to here -- in which people seeking hook-ups or other sexual encounters can meet similarly minded individuals. Site visitors typically post pictures or images of certain body parts, in order to entice other visitors into arranging an encounter.

Anyway, by clicking on the box below, you can see a funny photograph that was posted on one such site. We're inferring that the individual depicted is (1) horny and (2) a law student (maybe even a law review editor).

Please note that this image is NOT completely safe for work. Although it probably won't set off automated porn filters, since it's not a link to a pornography site, you do NOT want your co-workers to be around when you access it. Be sure to do so in the privacy of your own office. If you're in a cubicle, wait until nobody else is around.

Also, please note that this image was sent to us by a reader. We did NOT find it on our own, and we do NOT visit the website from which it was taken. Thank you. [FN1]

[FN1] Yes, we fully expect this to be received with skepticism by the peanut gallery of commenters. That's okay; serving as a piñata for anonymous commenters is part of our job description.

Update: In response to this comment, yes, the usual rules apply: please don't identify this individual in the comments (if, for some disturbing reason, you actually recognize him).

Remember our extensive, mischievous-yet-good-natured coverage of internal strife at the legendary Harvard Law Review? It appears to have irritated HLR President Andrew Crespo. And it probably will have to stop now, thanks to the Review's new "email and internet usage policy," which prohibits sharing HLR internal emails with the eyes of outsiders.

UH OH! Looks like Andrew "Crespolini" Crespo didn't like his dirty laundry being aired on Above The Law, so he's created a new policy (this one, mercifully, public) to ensure that all inanity can be confined to Gannett House.

Fortunately, since it won't take effect until next week, I figured I would send it along your way!

As our source notes, the policy doesn't take effect until July 18, 2007. So taking the policy and forwarding it to, say, your favorite legal tabloid is permitted (until Wednesday, when all bets are off).

It's not particularly interesting -- but if you'd like to read the policy, you can check it out after the jump.

A legal writing teacher who can't spell? From the St. Petersburg Times (gavel bang: Paul Caron):

In 2004, the woman who would become legal writing director at Florida A&M University's law school posted a working paper online so legal scholars nationwide could see her work.

The subject was heady: environmental dispute resolution.

But Victoria Dawson's paper was so riddled with grammatical errors and mangled writing that some FAMU law students are now using it to help build a case that Dawson is not qualified to teach and was hired primarily on the strength of her personal ties.

Here's an excerpt from Dawson's magnum opus:

"He consulted with government officials and he sent his general manager of asset management representative repeatedly crossed the creek to negotiate with village leaders of Ugborodo during the women's 10-day occupation."

Oh, and the title was misspelled: "Environmental Dispute Resolution: Developing Mechanisims [sic] for Effective Transnational Enforcement of International Environmental Standards."

Physician, heal thyself...

Update: Are people being too hard on Professor Dawson? And could L'Affaire Dawson have adverse consequences for the legal academy? Professor Dan Markel offers some thoughts here.

P.S. We apologize for any typographical, grammatical, or spelling errors in this post. When you need to crank out a dozen or so posts a day, you don't have much time for proofreading.

Florida A&M Legal Writing Director Faces Questions Over Paper Posted on bepress [TaxProf Blog]
A Cautionary Tale for Users of SSRN and bepress? [PrawfsBlawg]
Errors mar law prof's paper [St. Petersburg Times via How Appealing]

We continue our series of posts chronicling rampant internal strife at America's top law journal, the Harvard Law Review. Prior posts appear here, here and here.

The standard caveats apply:

1. This material is not for everyone. If you don't share our appreciation for tempests in teapots, you may have a "So what?" reaction. But if you do enjoy the hilarity of petty law school squabbles, then keep reading.

2. The internal emails reprinted below speak for themselves. After reading them, you may end up siding with the HLR editor or with president Andrew Crespo. We take no side in this controversy.

3. If you feel that we've missed something in our coverage, please email us (subject line: "Harvard Law Review"). We're eager to hear from all parties to this dispute.

(Alas, it's usually the case that one side leaks info to communicates with us more than the other. As a result, that side's viewpoint may receive more coverage in these pages. E.g., Charney v. Sullivan & Cromwell. If you want to level the playing field, you need to feed us information that supports your position.)

Discussion of the latest controversy, plus internal Harvard Law Review emails, after the jump.

Today we bring you another post in our series about controversy and dissension at America's top law journal: the Harvard Law Review. Earlier posts appear here and here.

We repeat the warning we included in our last post:

[This material] is not for everyone. If you don't share our appreciation for tempests in teapots, you may have a "So what?" reaction. But if you do enjoy the hilarity of petty law school squabbles, then keep reading.

It appears that a fair number of you do enjoy such ridiculousness. Our last HLR post generated over 80 comments.

The latest controversy unfolds, in all of its crimson glory, after the jump.

As promised, here's the first installment in our series about infighting at America's top law journal: the Harvard Law Review. Some HLR editors are unhappy with the Review's new fearless leader, president Andrew Crespo, and have been expressing their concerns.

We've been leaked a number of HLR internal emails that some of you may find amusingly ridiculous. But we should warn you that they're not for everyone. If you don't share our appreciation for tempests in teapots, you may have a "So what?" reaction.

But if you do enjoy the hilarity of petty law school squabbles, then check out the emails -- after the jump.

We're going to be doing a series of posts about the world's premier journal of legal scholarship: the Harvard Law Review. We've learned that there are some unhappy campers over at Gannett House (at right), who are less than thrilled with the Review's new leadership.

Here's a preview of what's on the way. From a tipster:

As you might remember, Andrew Crespo was recently elected president of the Harvard Law Review. Since then, he has taken a decidedly fascist approach to leadership and he is running the journal into the ground with a cabal of radical idealogues, making the outgoing editors nervous about the future reputation of the journal.

Some have taken to calling him "Crespolini," after [Benito Mussolini]. In short, there is a crisis of confidence at Gannett.

As noted in some of the news coverage of his selection, Crespo is the first Latino to serve as HLR president. Fortunately, Mussolini was Italian.

More to come in subsequent posts (including internal HLR emails). If you're at the Harvard Law Review and have information to share, whether pro- or anti-Crespo, please email us. Thanks.

Crespo Elected First Latino President of Harvard Law Review [Harvard Law Record]
First Hispanic To Lead Harvard Law Review [Harvard Crimson]
Harvard Law Review elects Crespo as new president [Harvard Law School (press release)]

This past weekend witnessed an historic event: the first annual BLUEBOOK INVITATIONAL!!!

And we were on hand for the competition. On Saturday, May 12, the four august publications that publish the Bluebook -- the Columbia Law Review, the Harvard Law Review, the University of Pennsylvania Law Review, and the Yale Law Journal -- vied for supremacy.

When we first learned about the "Bluebook Invitational," we could barely contain our excitement. We imagined a contest to determine which law review's editors were most proficient in the rules of legal citation. It would be like the law review version of the crossword puzzle contests featured in the movie Wordplay. Editors would be given sample pages of incorrectly Bluebooked prose. They would then have to edit them, under time pressure, before being scored on both the speed and accuracy of their Bluebooking.

Sadly, as we later learned, the "Bluebook Invitational" has nothing to do with actual Bluebooking:

WTF? Why would we want to watch a bunch of law review gunner-types toss a pigskin around?

As it turned out, though, we had a fun time. And some of the players were actually very good.

A report on the proceedings, plus pictures, after the jump.

Ring the alarm! This just in, from the Harvard Crimson:

The Harvard Law Review is cited less and less in decisions by federal courts, in keeping with a trend across several major law reviews, according to a study published last month by staff at the Cardozo Law Review of Yeshiva University.

The researchers found that the Harvard journal was cited 4,410 times in federal courts during the 1970s, but only 1,956 in the 1990s, and 937 so far in this decade—despite an increase in the number of cases brought to courts.

It's 'cause judges are citing Wikipedia so much these days -- plus all those darn blogs....

Fewer Cases Cite Harvard Law Review [Harvard Crimson via How Appealing]
When Is It Appropriate to Cite to Wikipedia? [Concurring Opinions]
Courts Citing Blogs [Volokh Conspiracy]

In response to our coverage of "Sectiongate" up at Harvard Law School, one commenter wrote:

To see how dumb this topic is, imagine replacing "Harvard" with "Boston University."

Yes, that would be dumb. Because Boston University School of Law has its own stupid pseudo-scandal, and it's not Sectiongate. Say hello to... Bagelgate!!!

Date: Tue, 6 Mar 2007 17:24:00 -0500
From: BU Law Student Affairs
Reply-To: BU Law Student Affairs
Subject: Journal issue
To: [1L, 2L and 3L classes at BU]

Dear Students,

We wanted to ask your help with an issue that may seem minor but is causing understandable frustration. Our law journals often collect dues from the members for certain things such as refreshments for the morning since they spend so much time in the journal offices putting out the journal books.

Unfortunately, one of the journals which has an office in room 545 has noticed that often students who are not journal members find their way into the office and take refreshments that the journal members have purchased with their journal dues for journal members. This may reflect a misunderstanding on non-journal members' parts, in that students might think the school is paying for the refreshments.

However, that is not the case -- they are paid for out of journal member dues and are only for the journal members. We greatly appreciate your assistance in refraining from going into the journal offices and partaking of refreshments that are for the journal members and paid for by their dues.

Many thanks!

In other words: Thank You For Not Stealing.

Before some of you start railing against the caste system that unfairly separates law review members from the rest of the class -- showering the former with lucrative law firm jobs, coveted clerkships, and free breakfast food, while shafting the latter -- we should note that the bagel-raid victim was not THE law journal, i.e., the Boston University Law Review. We're told it was the Journal of Science and Technology Law.

So there is no broader social lesson to be drawn here -- other than that law students like free bagels.

(We realize that Bagelgate, like Sectiongate, is "dumb" -- and that's why we like it. We have a weakness for the ridiculous, the petty, and the inane -- especially when law schools are involved. See, e.g., the mystery smell in the NYU Law library, and the sex-in-the-stacks scandal at Washington University Law School.)

Oops, we forgot to post our write-up of the final panel of Friday's conference at New York Law School.

Afternoon Panel (2:15-3:30): Beyond the Bluebook: The Future of Writing About the Law

"In a world increasingly dominated by blogs and online publications, does traditional legal scholarship have a future? Will legal scholars abandon the traditional law review to write for a popular audience, and if so, why? What will this brave new world look like?"

Panelists and Moderator:

* Bernard Hibbitts, Professor, University of Pittsburgh School of Law and Editor in Chief of Jurist.
* Rosa Brooks, Professor, Georgetown University Law Center and op-ed columnist, Los Angeles Times.
* Jack Balkin, Professor, Yale Law School and Founder and Director of the Information Society Project.
* Lawrence B. Solum, Professor, University of Illinois College of Law and author of Legal Theory Blog.
* Rodger Citron (Moderator), Assistant Professor of Law, Touro Law Center.

For those of you who are interested -- which, we realize, is probably a small, wonky group -- a brief discussion appears after the jump.

Right now we're in the audience for this panel at the NYLS conference on writing about the law:

Morning Panel #1 (9:30-10:45): Just Cite It! The Traditional Law Review Structure

Law reviews have been attacked as irrelevant and their student editors criticized as incompetent, yet legal scholars still need to publish in law reviews to get and keep their jobs. What role does the traditional law review play, what role should it play, and should it be continued?

Panelists and Moderator:

* James Lindgren, Professor, Northwestern University School of Law and Cofounder of the section on Scholarship of the Association of American Law Schools.

* Randy E. Barnett, Professor, Georgetown University Law Center and senior fellow at the Cato Institute and the Goldwater Institute.

* Ann Althouse, Professor, University of Wisconsin School of Law and author and blogger.

* Paul Caron, Professor, University of Cincinnati School of Law and Publisher and Editor of TaxProf Blog

* Cameron Stracher (Moderator), Codirector, Program in Law & Journalism and Publisher, New York Law School Law Review.

Commentary after the jump.