Class at the Movies: Elysium

Tonight I saw Elysium. Yo! It was pretty crazy. The Earth becomes a dump and all the rich people move to a steering wheel in outer space. Max, homage to Mad Max, gets into a peck of trouble down in the dump and wants to get to the steering wheel to get rid of his troubles. I'll not tell you what the troubles are but I think he got his childhood sweetheart pregnant. Not sure on this because I was sleeping waiting for the next big fight scene to start and because the fumes from the bourbon the guy behind me was guzzling was over powering. And his girlfriend had this annoying laugh (not Max but the guy behind me) -- you know the kind, not really a laugh because she is laughing but laughing to let you know she "got it." (I wanted to slug her.) In fact, she got nothing because she did not laugh at all at the funny parts assuming there were funny parts which I cannot be sure of because of the nap between fight scenes.

Sorry for the digression. Anyway, Jodie Foster is in the movie with a wardrobe I would kill for -- all slick, beautiful fabrics and stunningly accessorized. She, unfortunately, developed a bit of a sore throat at the end was not able to complete the film. I was so looking forward to the next ensemble. Either that or she was seeing her tailor.

It all ends well. We stop sending aid to Egypt and instead reroute it to Earth. Jessie and Walt go back to cooking but only soup at a homeless shelter. Max and his girlfriend reconcile after a bit of a scuffle up on the steering wheel and live happily ever after except for one exception that is pretty insignificant in the scheme of things.

Behavioral Economics: Why it is so Hard to Take a Hit on a 16

Everyone who plays blackjack knows you take a hit on a 16 if the dealer has a 7 or better showing. If  the dealer has a 6 or lower, you do not take a hit. It's strictly a matter of probabilities. With a 16 you are very likely going to lose and taking the hit lowers the probability only slightly. I think it is 3% less likely you will lose.

When you are at the table and the dealer shows a 7 and you have a 16 it is very hard emotionally to take the hit. Why? Probably because you are likely to lose no matter what but, if you take the hit, you have a sense of taking an active role in participating in your loss. If you do not take the hit, then you feel more passive. After all, you might think, I did not cause the loss.

Rationally you know that you should take the hit but what behavioral economics tells us is that people feel a greater sense of regret when they take an active step that turns out to be a mistake than when doing nothing turns out to be a mistake.  An example, is that someone feels worse if he or she buys a stock that goes down in value than if she or she declines to buy a stock that appreciates in value.

Casinos make a great deal of money on the irrationality of not taking the hit.

Class on the Queen Mary 2

Yes, I did just cross the Atlantic on the QM2. It was my first boat ride. I am told it is called a crossing and not a cruise. A cruise is when you leave Miami, eat and drink yourself silly for a week or so on a very slow boat and then come back to Miami. On a crossing, I am told, you are on the boat for the purpose of going somewhere. I guess all international flights are crossings.

There is a definite class system on the boat. The more you pay the more square feet in your room, the higher your deck (all other things equal), the more private your dining and the larger your balcony. At the lowest prices you have no balcony or window and eat mostly buffet style. But, frankly there are no poor or working class people in any of the cabins unless they are like me -- did not know enough not to do well on standardized exams and through luck (good or bad, I do not know) ended up in a profession in which he would hate to be anything but a misfit.

The people who work on the boat are a different story. For whatever reason the waitstaff  tended to be Filipino. The workers in the gambling areas were generally Eastern European. I am not sure their contracts are all the same but for the restaurant workers you sign on for 9 months -- no days off. They start breakfast at about 6 AM and finish dinner about 10:30 PM.  The one I got to talk about it seriously said that there is really just time for sleep and you have a choice -- sleep or have some kind of life for an hour or two. After 9 months you take 2 to 3 months off without pay. He has being doing it for 10 years -- ten years of missing birthdays, weddings, holidays, etc. Some workers contact their families daily. He does not because it makes him sadder.

I would think the entertainers have a better deal at least as far is leisure time.

So, why aren't there days off when the boat is in port? I am not sure but it appears the goal for the QM2 is to rarely stop. The boat dropped us off in Southampton on a Saturday morning. Later that day it was off to Norway only to return the following Saturday. On the same day it was back to New York.

I asked why someone would choose this life, The answer was that it was better than anything else in terms of the future of his children. Plus, it was addictive. It allowed him to have a house and a car -- and, of course, payments due forever.

White House Down: For the Spare Room in Your Brain

To see a movie is to invite the writers, directors, and actors, into your most intimate place -- your brain. While there they may trash it or enrich it by leaving you with lasting insights, memories, and a better understanding of the world. "White House Down" falls into the second category. Mr. Jamie Foxx and Sir Channing Tatum, along with all those involved are perfect brain guests. You want to o...pen the refrigerator of your brain and say "there is some good cheese in the cheese compartment, just under the baloney" or "have some of that cold water that comes right out of the door." You want them in your brain's guest room for ever and ever. You may whimper but do not be ashamed. They are family.

White House Down is a civics lesson as well as a lesson about the power of Mr. Tatum's forearms, beady little eyes, and enormous eyebrows. Kudos to the makers of this masterwork for not bowing to the pressure to bring those mammoth caterpillars under control. Mr. Foxx's turn as someone acting like they are acting like the President is so real you think you are in the Oval office with him except that you know you aren't because you are sitting in the theater hoping the teeny tiny battery in your watch that makes it light up does not run out because you are checking the time every 30 seconds or so.

When the film ended my wife said "I think that is the worse movie I have ever seen." I've tried to tell her that sophisticated movie-goers say "film" or "cinema." I attempted to explain all the stuff about brains, and house guests and cheese but she is not ready for the gifts that White House Down so graciously gave to us.

Class Warfare in Law School

My law school has decided to hire a new supervisor of about 5 secretaries. Anyone can interview the candidates so I tagged along.  I do most of my own work and rarely use a secretary but have never had any complaints. Nor have most of my colleagues. It's a pretty good relationship.

BUT, as one secretary said in the interview "our biggest problem is the faculty." The story is like this. A couple of faculty make obviously out of bounds requests -- skirting copyright laws, tons of personal work and lots of work that would not be necessary if their own jobs were treated as full time -- If a secretary balks at all, off the faculty member is to the administration which promptly orders the secretary to "do it."

So you've got privileged over affirmed elitists who mostly have not done a hour of real work in their lives or come close to walking in the shoes of a secretary dealing with secretaries who generally have not been to college.  Oh, and they are tenured and quick to sue  if they feel wronged. Plus, no dean I have known has the balls to say "you are wrong and the secretary is right." My goodness, he or she is "just" a secretary right?  Instead there is appeasement and ultimately the "do it" order.

As I said before, respect should be afforded people in inverse relationship to their status and wealth. You will rarely go wrong unless you have an Aztec. Then you will never go wrong.

Income Redistribution Summer Program Style

From high school through graduate school study abroad programs are always iffy. I did not realize it completely until one of my high school age kids asked about going abroad on a program offered by a teacher at his school. When I checked it all  out, I realized that if the professor got enough students to sign up, he and a partner could go free. And, behind it all was essentially a travel agency that arranged everything. The teacher was for all practical purposes the agent of the agency casting about for students.

But that does not really take the cake. It might well had been worth it to have a chaperoned trip to Europe or where ever.

What takes the cake is more like this. A public law school offers study abroad summer programs.  The school pays the teachers' salaries and the students pay enough for their own housing, meals,  and transportation and for the housing and transportation of the professors.  This is great for the professors and the students. The students get credit while essentially hanging out. Not so great for taxpayers. They are the ones who foot the bill for the biggest expense of all - tens of thousands of dollars for teachers teaching a handful of the students.

But wait! What's the big deal. This is the way public schools work after all. Taxpayers pay and students are subsidized.

The little twist is that, as you look over a sea of students,  which ones would you expect to be the ones who can pass up  summer jobs and afford to travel abroad for six or seven weeks on their own dime?  I'll go way out on a limb and suggest it is, not always but most of the time, the relatively affluent ones. When you get down to it, it is a matter of taxing everyone  in order for the well to do to have a good time abroad. After all, we would not want the rich to actually pay the full cost of educating them in places those paying the tab can only hope to go.

Fast and Furious(ly) VI

Fast and Furious(ly) VI: Years from now when film study students climb the Everest of cinema they will find Citizen Kane at the base camp. At the last camp before the summit there will be the French Nouvelle Vague. The peak will be Fast and Furious(ly) VI. They will marvel as their grandparents did when watching Citizan Kane about the editing, the cinematography, the special effects, the script, and the lighting. No where in film has any director been able the produce the tension and magic of the relationship between Mr. Vin Diesel and Mr. Dwaye Johnson. It's Tracy and Hepbern, Crosby and Hope, and Astaire and Rogers wrapped into one, except no dancing other than the dancing of lines that never vary from perfect. 

No review is complete with mention of the consistent theme of family and final airplane action scene. It features the longest runway in the world. The large place taxis for about 20 minutes before trying to lift off with lots of vehicles dangling from it. And when Mr. Diesel emerges from the carnage (an obvious homage to Dorothy's return from Oz) the audience burst into applause and this reviewer wept.

Confused: Law Professors, and "Class" -- Is This Serious?

I have just finish reading a post and numerous comments over on Prawsblawg. My goodness. It seems to start with a casual mention of a book or article or both by Brian Tamanaha on the impact of tuition increases on less affluent students. He takes to task so-called liberal law professors for their inattention to matters of class. Evidently, he give special attention SALT and CLS  for what I think could be called hypocrisy.

After  the initial post the comments devolve into a discussion of whether he has fairly characterized CLS as ever professing to care about class and who mentioned or thought up some kind of national debt relief for overburdened law school grads. Frankly, I could not follow it all and it seemed to include a fair amount of typical law professor prissy debate that leaves plausible deniability with respect to who was "uncollegial" first.
(The movie "Mean Girls" comes to mind here.)

I have just a couple of comments. Any notion that CLS really had anything to do with class is pure hokum. CLS was a showcase for the ultimate in limousine pseudo lefties. Typically privileged people who found a niche that made them seem  oh-so-interesting at least to each other.

Second, isn't it interesting this so called concern about class and the affordability of law school for the less affluent comes along at a time of declining admissions and the threat that law professor jobs may be in jeopardy.  (If we are so determined to subsidized the less affluent, why not start by not subsidizing those who could afford to pay the tab?)

But there something more fundamental than any of this.  This discussion purports to have something to do with class and often the word "poor" comes up. For the most part, law professors would not know what poor means if it bit them in the ass. The idea that the focus of law professors worried about the "poor" would be the impact of tuition on people who have high LSAT scores and GPAs it mind-boggling. This is not to say so-called liberal law professors do not have an intense focus on something. It just happens to themselves --e.g. do I have the best printer, will you pay for my trip to Rio, my offices needs new carpet, I need a new office, 26 students is too many for me to teach,.

The discussion has almost nothing to do with the "poor," disadvantaged, or even social class. Those people have always been around, pushed to the side and ignored my law professors.  Instead it  is about how to keep the law school industry moving forward. A subsidy for a down-trodden law school applicant is a subsidy to a law professor. I'd much rather see things like debt-forgiveness or other forms of subsidies be linked to buying a car that runs, getting decent dental and medical care, having a rat free home to live in, being able to buy a decent pair or shoes, having regular meals on the table, never having to worry about the electricity being turned off,  or in home care for an elderly grandmother.

The poor should be so lucky as to worry about law school tuition.

Tamanaha and Tuition Class Bias? Oh come on!

I write mainly about class basis in legal education meaning that to be professor one almost has to come from a specific sheltered and privileged class. This means that most law professors also come with a powerful sense of entitlement that means that law schools are  operated to achieve their ends.

There is to be sure a class bias when it comes to admissions. By the time a person is  21 or so, he or she has gone through a multitude of filtering processes that gradually eliminate the vast majority from attending law school and much of this filtering is class based.

I know not to trust second hand reports and particular news reports. My last post was about scholars as salesmen. They are topped, however, by news reporters whose livelihood depends catching your eye and telling a story and, as the person discussed in my last post describes himself, they too have a post modern relationship with the truth.

That being said here is a quote, out of context and according the to an article writer from the new book by Brian Tamanaha (talk about someone making a career out the law school disaster);

“The pricing structure of legal education has profound class implications,” Tamanaha writes. “High tuition will inhibit people from middle-class and poor families more than it will deter the offspring of the rich with ample resources. Law school scholarship policies … in effect channel students with financial means to higher ranked law schools, reaping better opportunities, while sending students without money to lower law schools [where they qualify for better aid packages]. A growing proportion of elite legal positions will be held by people from wealthy backgrounds as a result. … Yet as law school tuition rose to its current extraordinary heights, progressive law professors did nothing to resist it.”

Anyone reading this blog knows how much I love to pounce on elitist hypocrisy. It's so easy -- vanity courses, capped sections, the me mentality, a total blind eye to matters of class. The list goes on and Brian has definitely tapped into one. I too have heard very little from self appointed liberals about class. But what is new? Class based issues terrify them. They are fine with race, gender, and sexual preference became they do not even implicitly lead to questioning the legitimacy of their positions. Class, however, is another issue altogether because it forces the question "What did you personally to merit your job." As one friend replied when I asked why we never talk about class, "Too important."

Thus, the indifference Brian writes about is true but the quote way overstates its important. Higher tuition may have the effect he describes but it is only at the extreme margin. Tuition may be something progressive law professors should be concerned about as should commentators like Brian. Maybe they are but, even a tiny focus on that ignores the things that people who have actual contact with poor families know. Believe me, they should be so fortunate that higher tuition is what keeps the out of top or any law schools. If the quote is accurate and not taken out of a broader context, it is  a sad commentary on the lack of class consciousnesses.

As for me. How would I finance higher education.It's easy. Every student in every field would be given a bill for the full cost of their education. Assistance in paying that bill would be based on need. The logic that the state pays for those who score high on test regardless of their means is just another example of the haves getting even more.

Con Men, Salesmen and Law Professors

"What the public didn’t realize, he said, was that academic science, too, was becoming a business. “There are scarce resources, you need grants, you need money, there is competition,” he said. “Normal people go to the edge to get that money. Science is of course about discovery, about digging to discover the truth. But it is also communication, persuasion, marketing. I am a salesman. I am on the road. People are on the road with their talk. With the same talk. It’s like a circus.” He named two psychologists he admired — John Cacioppo and Daniel Gilbert — neither of whom has been accused of fraud. “They give a talk in Berlin, two days later they give the same talk in Amsterdam, then they go to London. They are traveling salesmen selling their story.” " NYT, 

 This passage is from the Sunday Time story about Diederik Stapel's huge academic fraud which consisted of making up data to support outcomes that would jazzy, eye-catching, and therefor, of interest to journals and audiences.  Think about it. He is in a field in which the accuracy of what one does can be checked and journals are refereed.

Now think about legal scholarship -- no numbers, no testing of hypotheses, no referees and no accountability. While Stapel -- a psychologist -- largely wrote for people who were able to understand numbers, law professor write for a far less sophisticated audience, at least as far as assessing reseach methodology.  It took years to catch Stapel. Law professors, unless they outright plagiarize may never be caught. In fact, "caught" may not even be relevant if the norms for care and accuracy are low enough. 

If psychology research  has become a business in which scholars are sellers and tempted to do whatever it takes to advance personal interests, what are we to make of legal scholarship? Certainly law professors are no less self interested and far less likely to be detected when engaged in sales -- whether  in the form of catchy titles, overblown  resumes, and fudged empirical as well as impressionistic results.

Can legal scholarship be trusted when every factor that would have discouraged cheating in the sciences is missing in law?   

ONE LAW PROFESSOR'S PRAYER

As I lay me down to sleep tonight and pray the Lord my soul to keep, I will also pray to have a  faculty meeting judge.

You see, here is the problem. Privileged people have very bad judgment about whether their ideas are good or bad. This is because they have so often been told their ideas are good sometimes by fancy law schools that are paid to do just that. And, they rarely utter a work they do not think is important. And then there are the peeing cats. These are folks who talk just "mark" their spots. They've got nothing to say but they are saying it anyway. Finally there  are people who are one-way thinkers. The one way is negative -- "here is what is wrong with that" as opposed to "is this a good outcome."

What this means is that the quality of discussion can be dismal because there is no correlation between inclination to speak and the quality of what one is saying or how constructive it is.  It could be better if we had law school faculty meeting judge. The judge could make two rulings at any time at his or her discretion. These are:

1. Irrelevant:

Let's suppose the issue is whether a candidate should be given tenure. From the faculty comes the following:
"He is a really good father."  The judgment here is an easy one. It may even qualify for the second category but it fits nicely here. It's like a huge non sequiter. In some rare instances the faculty judge may actually choose to escort the person from the room.

2. Too stupid to warrant further discussion (or actually even to be stated in the first place).

 Let's say the discussion is about students taking courses from their parents and the faculty votes, as mine has, that it is not permissible. Then someone notes that we will have to decide what to do about the grades of the students who are currently in the classes of a parent. From the faculty we hear, "Give them all As because that is what they expected when they signed up for Dad or Mom's class." This can overrule as too stupid and again the judge may escort the person out of the room.

I pray for the law school faculty meeting judge. Amen

Elitist Resistance to Class

Last Sunday there was a terrific piece in the NYT about  one of the barriers poor but excellent students have with respect to attending  elite schools.  In a nutshell, they do not know how to do it or even what it means or what difference it would make. For many ":Harvard" is a fancy cheese and Columbia has something to do with the space program. Often,  my friends who claim to have had lower class roots talk about working their way through Princeton or Harvard. My thought is that they miss the meaning of class. It  is  not just money but it is environmental.  Even if you were poor, if you grew up in an environment in which Harvard, Yale, Princeton, etc., were names uttered in your house, you enjoyed far more of a head start than many others.

The article in the Times makes one mistake, I think, and could have added examples of class blindness. The mistake is the assumption that the elite schools would even like the diversity associated with working class students. Working class admissions  bring no glory to the limousine liberals who populate elite faculties. And, they could actually be conservative, go to church, eat meat, and own a gun.  The disinterest in working class people is probably driven by politics more than anything else.

Something that happened today reminded me of the class blindness matter. There are two aspects of it. First, the elitists who might want to have greater class diversity know virtually nothing about the things working class people have to deal with to go away to college -- family members that may need care, inability to go home at Christmas or any holiday, etc. The other one is more subtle. For example, today I mentioned the obvious class bias of unpaid externships. In my town most students sign one year leases. To enroll in an externship, most of which are out of town, they must pay double rent, not need to earn income in the summer, and be able to move. When I mention this the usual upper class response is "there is financial aid."  Do the elites not understand that financial is usually just a term for debt? And have they missed the fact that in today's market, paying that debt is close to impossible? I am quite tired of hearing  term "financial aid" used like it is some kind of economic equalizer. It's not but it is becoming the principal rationalization for ignoring the have nots.

Adderall for All: Students and Professors Alike

A year or so ago a colleague, far, far  closer to retirement than to taking a law school exam, told me he went to his doctor to get an Adderall prescription. The result was just what was hoped for. He could focus longer and write more articles. As I understand it, Adderall is available to all will shop around for the right doctors. I would like to write more articles too so I wondered if I should get some Aderall myself.  And, since we all want to do "our" best, should we all feel obligated to take Adderall or its therapeutic equivalents so we can be more productive. In fact, maybe employers should require it.

All of this is less important for professors since the measures of success are so elusive. On the other hand, if Adderall is an undergraduate epidemic why would it not also be widespread among law students where grading curves and class rank can made the difference between a job or no job. If it is widespread or likely to become widespread,  what of it?  One article I read suggested it was a great opportunity for lower socioeconomic kids because their families can substitute Adderall for more expensive prep courses, tutors, etc., to which wealthier students have access.  I wonder about the logic of this. In a competitive world won't the rich kids use all their expensive aids plus Adderall. Of course, maybe I just misunderstand how Adderall works.

Another article I read indicated that the abuse of Aderall is more common among middle and higher socioeconomic students. I am not sure what "abuse" means but it does include illegally obtaining Adderall. This surprised me because the richer the kid the more able he or she is to doctor shop. In either case, when it comes to aids  -- legal or illegal -- is there really any serious doubt about which class will have greater access and be able to squeeze out the greatest benefit.

Where do law school administrators and bar examiners fall into this. Nowhere is what I expect because a general rule for adminstrators seems to be to do nothing unless forced to. This may be the right outcome. It does not seem practical to test the test takers. Plus, what would the sanction be? Still, it's just another way to game the system and it seems inconsistent for state bars and some law schools to obsess about "background" but then turn a blind eye to dopers.

The Venns of Faculty Governance: Ask/Demand Policy

I see that Professor Campos is finished with his effort to expose the Law School Scam.  I read his blog once or twice but felt like I knew and agreed with most of what he was saying so I did not keep up.  Judging by some of his enemies, how wrong could he be?

Frankly, I am pretty much out of gas on my far more modest blog too. It has always had a goal that was a bit different than that of Professor Campos. Its goal was to reveal the persistent and destructive effects of institutions run by elites for their own ends.

Here is one more effort to explain the problem.  The people I know can be placed along a continuum. At one end are the "demanders." These are the folks who feel entitled to virtually everything and "demand" that their desires be met. Slipping along the continuum we come to the "askers." What ever they can think of, they ask for. At the far end are the people who do not demand or ask. If you know anything about relative deprivation, you know that to demand or ask you have to be in a context in which things are perceived as possible for people like you. For example, I remember a few years ago when two new faculty hires were told they would be given a certain sum for moving expenses. The reaction of one way, "What? They will actually pay for me to move. What a great surprise." The reaction of the other was "I cannot possible move for such a small amount." The important thing to note is that there is no correlation between need, merit, productivity, student welfare or institutional success and a person's position on that continuum.

In addition, administrators say yes to these requests and demands for a host of reasons other than student or institutional welfare. For example, an administrator may say yes just to avoid the harassment or to make sure he or she is not accused of 'insensitivity" to one political group or another. Or, the administrator may be concerned that the asker/demander is capable influencing others to believe he or she has been unreasonable.

Here is my best try at using Venn diagrams to illustrate the problem. The larger two circles are things people ask for or demand and reasons administrators say yes. The smaller circles within each one show things asked for or demanded that are consistent with student or institutional welfare and the times administrators say yes for reasons related to student or institutional welfare. That tiny overlap in the middle shows how much these interest coincide. A much larger area indicates when requests and demands that have nothing to do with student or institutional welfare get a yes answer.

Reverse Respect and My Mom, the Dean

The default position for me has always been to respect people in inverse relation to their status, money, and authority. The error rate is pretty low but there are times when the privileged can work their way out of the hole and ways for highly respected people to lose my respect.

How does a person come to that view of others? I think when your grandfather comes from Italy at 16 and is told at Ellis Island that his name, Diaco, is too hard so he is Ross now, works as a coal miner till he drops dead putting on his boots, marries a hillbilly, has 5 kids and 10 or so grandkids and only two in the lot finish college and your family get togethers are warm, friendly, and happy but always include subjects like night shift, car payments, trouble with the law, and so on, you learn to respect lower class people and distrust upper class people.

My Mom, one of those 5 kids died two days ago. She worked hard, sometimes a day job and a night job.The last job--at 70 something -- was handing out samples at Publix. By that point she did not need the money but you could not convince her that it was OK not to get up and go to work every day. She never quite understood what it meant to have a Ph.D. or to be a law professor. To her, almost all law was criminal law. She was extravagant in two ways -- gifts to her grandchildren and jewelry (when she thought she was getting a good deal which she actually never really got.)

I cannot help but think how different her life was than mine and how  she might have reacted to some of the things I see in the privileged world of law professors. Let's take some examples and her reactions if she were Dean for a day.

1. A professor tells her  what he will teach, when he will teach, what room he will teach in and how any students are permitted in the class. Her reaction.  "Could you repeat that because, if you asked what I thought, there's the door. Don't come back. I think Publix is looking for people."

2. A  professor with the most expensive education in American asks to "teach" a class of only 12 about feelings. Her reaction: "Could you repeat that because, if you asked what I thought, there's the door. Don't come back. I think Publix is looking for people."

3. A professor asks a secretary to scan a casebook so he does not have to worry about carrying it around. "Could you repeat that because, if you asked what I thought, there's the door. Don't come back. I think Publix is looking for people."

4. Ten or so people want to fly to Rio for a day long conference and then many will branch out and take a vacation essentially on the school's dime. "Could you repeat that because, if you asked what I thought, there's the door. Don't come back. I think Publix is looking for people."

5. The Dean (my mom) announces that budgetary problems mean that we should not all have our own separate printers with unlimited toners supplied by the school. One faculty member objects, calling the measure "punitive." And her reaction,  "Could you repeat that because, if you said what I thought, there's the door. Don't come back. I think Publix is looking for people."

6.  A faculty member complains about missing meetings because a secretary did not open the faculty member's email and tell the faculty member about the meetings."Could you repeat that because, if you said what I thought, there's the door. Don't come back. I think Publix is looking for people."

7. A faculty member proposes  a groovy new teaching arrangement. She will teach in the summer using taped lectures that will be available on line. Even though on line, enrollment is limited to avoid too much grading. For this there is teaching income. And, since the teaching is a breeze, she can also be paid to do research."Could you repeat that because, if you said what I thought, there's the door. Don't come back. I think Publix is looking for people."

I did not tell my Mom about these things and I am not sure why. I think it had something to do with shame, or perhaps the absence of it.

The Cruelty and Hypocrisy of Law School Grading Curves

Maybe the most remarkable thing about law professors (and perhaps others) is how 3 years of doing well in law school makes them experts on anything from administration to meditation. Lately, though, I have been thinking about law school grading curves and the lack of rationality created by these self-appointed experts.

I first found out about curves in calculus class. The teacher gave an exam and the best test taker got about 50% of the problems right. The teacher said, not or worry, the grades would be curved. I did not understand why but it was definitely OK with me. I thought curves were for when everyone did miserably but the teacher for one reason or another could not bring him or herself to report accurately how the students did.

When I started law teaching there was no curve. Then, in response to some low graders there was a suggested curve. I do not recall if this cured the low grader problem but it definitely coincided with the "grade race" and grade inflation. This was in the era of student teaching evaluations and the beginning of vanity courses. High grades reduced the risk of bad evals and could pack students into vanity courses if one was known as an easy grader. I might add, this was also the beginning of the -- what to call it -- "do not hurt their feelings"  era and anything might just do that. Actually, I do not mean to criticize this change since most of the harshness, I felt, was contrived.

So in response to a lack of grading norms (or one might even say collegiality) and complaints that the School's GPA meant that our students could not compete with others schools giving higher grades we, like may schools, instituted a curve.  (I never understood the student competition argument. I thought law firm recruitment people would be bright enough, in a world of different curves, to rely on class rank. I was assured that this was not the case.)

So in this era of "be kind to students" the solution was to pit them against each other and ratchet up the competition. Grading became a zero sum grade. No matter how you cut it, if one student were given an A, it decreased the probability that another could have an A. Instead of grading on the basis of each student's merit most schools pit their students in a horse race. It seemed to be welcomed by the students because the numbers were high enough that all horses appeared to win. Eventually, though, they adjusted as they realized that B did not mean "good" but average or, in the case of most curves, below average.

There was, however, an even more bizarre twist. Although the advent of the curve meant that no student was evaluated on the quality of his her work, the argument was made that in some classes, the curve should be higher. The reasoning was that individual merit could be counted in some contexts and for some reason this was in small classes -- yes back to packing them into vanity classes.

In the name of being fair to the students this twist meant students were torn between taking small course in something they had no interest in or even scoffed at  in order to boost their GPAs or taking classes that were often more interesting and more useful. In fact, most law schools, unless they normalize in some way,  now have multiple curves. How many? As many combinations of high and low curve courses possible in an 88 hour teaching load. And, if they then rank the students on the basis of GPAs calculated on multiple different  curves, they are being about as honest in those rankings as they are with their employment figures.

Since it does not change, I assume the students like the increased pressure and the perversion of their decision making and professors will keep doing what is "best" for their students (and for themselves.)

What Are They Thinking??

Law  School graduates are having a hard time finding jobs. It is a sorry state of affairs in part because many of those now graduating may be better at doing what lawyers do than students who graduated years ago. Just like tenure, getting there first may block things up for capable and more talented people.

But this is not why I writing. Law schools are all out to somehow do something "radical." Radical means, in this setting, teaching more skills or making law a two year degree. The demand for more skills is really a call from those in practice for greater subsidization from public and private schools. That may be fine for private schools but I have never figured out where profit making law firms get off asking for handouts in the form of instruction. What is the distinction between that and paying them to hire law graduates. In fact, why not just pay the firms directly and let them to the skills training. After all, the dirty little (not really so) secret fact is that most law professors practiced so long ago or so little that they do not have an inkling of how to teach skills.

The two year degree may be a good idea but, if it is, it has nothing to do with the current crisis. Sure, it means a lower investment in legal educations and and an easier time paying off loan IF salaries do not similarly decline. How many people actually think  the 2 year law graduate is going to demand the same starting salary as the three year graduate?  In short, the two year option is likely as not to leave people exactly where they are.

You can think if it in terms of supply and demand. Demand has shifted to the left or not shifted to the right sufficient to offset the rightward shift in supply. The resulting surplus means unemployment. In theory, wages could fall so there is less or no unemployment and but the salaries would be rock bottom. Just how far they would have to fall to soak up the surplus I do not know. Lowering the cost of a legal education by going to two years does mean less debt. It also shifts the supply curve even further to the right -- an increase in supply. Does increasing the supply of lawyers -- even two year lawyers -- seem like a sensible solution to the current glut?

Again, maybe the two year degree idea is sound but I am not sure how it is viewed as a serious reaction to the current plight of law grads.

Faculty Communications, Spanking, and Strategic Voting

Faculty votes on hiring and tenure and promotion matters can be fascinating because of the dilemmas and strategic behaviors that evolve.

Some people will vote no on a candidate not because they believe or actual want the candidate not to be hired or promoted.  Instead they want to voice disapproval of something about the candidate. It's hard not to believe this is the case when, at least in my experience, there are many votes that are not quite unanimous. For example, how do you explain a 35-1 vote. Did the one person really have a completely different evaluation of the candidate.?

The fact that a no vote can be intended to be something akin to a spanking or reflect a belief that the candidate really should not be promoted or hired leads to strategic risks. These risks are increased when candidates are not discussed freely and openly.

 Suppose a candidate is fine with respect to teaching and research but a pain in the ass otherwise. Or maybe they engage in conduct that seems questionable.  The voter who wants to administer the spanking would probably be happy with 10 or 20% no votes. Suppose 40% no votes would put the candidate's job in jeopardy.

The problem is that if many in the faculty vote for the spanking the no vote could easily reach 40%. Yet none of them really felt the candidate did not deserve to be hired or promoted. Conversely, if all those in favor of a spanking fear that everyone else will vote for the spanking they may not vote no and the candidate has no signal that anything is amiss.

Of course, one could avoid all this by never voting for a spanking. The problem is that it is not always easy to separate the spanking motivation from concerns about performance over the long run. Plus, if the faculty has a sense there is no administrative reaction to bad conduct, it is more likely to feel it has to intervene.

In all cases, the votes can distort actual preferences.

Mindfulness or Mindlessness

I have been tracking the popularity of mindfulness but I am not an expert. I have read several how to's and watched internet instructions. I do it as best I can and find it relaxing.

I am told it is the hot new thing in legal education but that scares me. When I practice mindfulness I concentrate on my breath or a spot in the middle of my chest and when I get settled down the thoughts, worries and impressions come and go. I do not judge them and as soon as I remember I return to my breath and my spot.

For example, there was an email that I got today and it was just about the time my mindfulness gong sounded. So I stopped everything and went into breathing and not judging mode. What I discovered is that the email made me sense feelings of anger (or is that it made me angry you never know about mindfulness.) I also felt a bit of nausea and a strong sensation of what I can only describe as "what the fuck." I did not judge these feeling or are the "sense of feelings." Yes, it is hard to figure out with mindfulness if they are your feelings or just feelings that flow through an emotionally empty vessel.

Ok, I admit that this afternoon I kicked a dog and yelled at a grocery store cashier. I felt really bad later but after a session of mindfulness I was feeling fine. I let those thoughts of regret and that I was being a dick drift right through and out again. It resulted in great clarity. I put the past behind me. I was in the now. What a wonderful feeling!

I am told this clarity will help me make decisions with a clearer head and to achieve my goals. That's good because I don't want to worry about it when I do what I like best -- avoiding any sense of responsibility.

Self Gifting for Law Professors

It's the time of the year to think about gifts. Who do Law Professors think about first when deciding who will get gifts and what those gifts will be. That is not a hard question. They think of themselves first. The harder question is what to give yourself. It's so hard to know exactly what to give the person you love the most. Consider me your personal shopper and I have a number of suggestions that will put a smile on your face when received from your loved one who, conveniently, turns out to be you.

1. A new vanity course. What is a vanity course? Its a course that is taught not for the students and not for the clients but because you think it would be fun (or at least easy.) Some of this year's favorites vanity courses are:
1. Let's go to the beach for a week over spring break. 1 credit.
2. Let's see how we are feeling right now by just thinking about it. 2 credits.
3. Wine law and the regulation of tastings: 2 credits, BYOB.
4. Justice (or What Just came into my head While Walking to Class) . 2 credits.
5. Ain't I great. 2 credits.

2.. A new teaching schedule. Yes, tell your dean that you want to teach one day a week even if it means teaching some courses concurrently. This is a gift that is as fun to give yourself as it is to receive.

3. National stature: Every tenure and promotion candidate I have ever heard described is been labeled "rising star" or "nationally known." Why shouldn't you have the same thing. For $20. I will write a letter to your dean describing you as a star, rising star or nationally known. And for a limited it only, I will post it on facebook.

4. The room you want when you want it. As a law professor you deserve respect. If a class is in session or taking a test in room you take a fancy to, throw them out.  This gift comes with a week off with pay.

5. A trip to Paris for the holidays. You can give yourself this and your school will pay. There is a conference there right now, Just figure it out or say you are on a research mission to study the informal law of street performers.

The Shortest Blog Post Ever: Law Prof Humility

Love Letters

A disclaimer first. I have no view on the current candidates for tenure and promotion at my school or anywhere else except at my school I have no reason to think they are not worthy of promotion and tenure. This post is about a process, not individual people.

Ok, having dealt with the niceties, the tenure and promotion process everywhere I am familiar with is a sham -- another way to keep the privileged in their privileged positions. In some respects it is the big version of partner hiring in  that partner hiring (when both would not be hired without reference to the other)  is nothing more than cutting in line. I'm not going down that path having had my say much to the displeasure of  the faculty spouse crew. And, by the way, the cutting in line does not even touch the complexities that can arise later.

Back to tenure and promotion. Some committees evaluate and some just gather information. But from experience I can attest to the fact that even the information gatherers can influence the outcome by the referees chosen.  That is, if they do not let the candidates pick the referees which is something we once did.

So you have outside and inside letters reviewing scholarship and reports of those visiting classes. Let's get rid of the class visits first. Most are preannounced so as not to actually see the teaching that takes place when an observer is not there. (We would not want that now would we?) In 30 years of teaching I have not seen a single negative review of teaching. Why is this? Lots of reasons. First you do not want to hurt someone's feelings when deciding to ask the tax payers to give them a life-time annuity. Second, these are your pals and paldom overcomes objectivity every time, And, if you write something negative and tenure is granted, you have an enemy for life. Class visitations are a time-wasting formality.

The inside letters of evaluation fall in the same category, In 30 years I have seen 2 letters of maybe 400 that could be viewed as kinda/sorta  negative. Yes, nearly every reviewer of every article ever written has found that the work "meets our standards."  If that were actually the truth, time to reevaluation those standards. The reason for the inside letter charade? Refer to the paragraph above. And, you can add, elites evaluating elites. Or, frat boys evaluating frat boys after a short period of law school hazing (requiring the writing of law review articles that are largely irrelevant.)

Then there are the outside letters.I have seen hundreds of these too.  There is a slight possibility of a negative letter here but so many things stand in the way. First, of course,  is the market for letters problem. Yes there is a market for letters and if you are known to write negative ones you are less likely to be called upon again. It's not a business but some people like being regarded as an expert. Like an expert witness, testimony that does not help is not welcome. And, "help" is support for what the faculty wants to do. Second there are the letters involving areas of law that have a definite "correct" point of view. You know those areas. So, if you are an expert in one of these areas you do not respond negatively to an ally no matter how bad the work. After all, they are on your side in the ideological battle. Third, if you write a negative letter you just gum up the works. In all likelihood the faculty is going to grant tenure and promotion (they almost always do) and a thoughtful negative review will likely be ignored and conflict with the internal reviews. I have seen this work repeatedly in the rare instances in which the outside review is negative. I recall one letter in particular by a reviewer  who noted that the new articles for a tenure candidate were pretty much the same as the articles for promotion. In other words. "Duh, there is nothing happening here." This was, of course, not even spoken of. Basically, unless you have principles and are an  idealist there is no upside to writing a negative letter.

So, why do all this?

Law Reviews, Transaction Costs, and Elites

When it comes to law reviews there are some settled truths.Every law review editor I have spoken to assures me that authors from highly ranked schools get a first look so, quite obviously, their chances of an acceptance from a school at any level is higher that of non elite contributors. Thus, if you are not a law celeb, teaching at a very highly ranked school, or at least have the proper pedigree, when your submission arrives it goes onto a huge stack of articles and awaits its turn.  If the review fills before your article is examined, it is not reviewed at all.  And it may be weeks before you are notified.You may or may not improve your place in line if you receive an offer and ask the other reviews to expedite.

This elitist bias has always been part of the game but now the law review business seems to have another dimension that takes it down one more notch in terms or resembling a tolerable process.

This time around, I submitted two articles -- one in early August and one nearer the end of August. The first one was accepted by a mid level to higher review quite quickly although when it was I had heard nothing from any other reviews. I was not so fortunate with the other one and, before long,  I had many many submissions out. Except for a couple of quick rejections -- one from a school that published an article I was critical of and one from the school where the authors of that article teach -- there was nothing. I checked the ExpressO web site and only about 1/3 of the reviews appeared to have received the article.  ExpressO has a note that says all a law review editor has to do is push one key on the keyboard and ExpressO will list the article as received.  This replaces the postcard acknowledgement that existed when I started this business. But, if an editor or secretary does not press that key on his or her keyboard you do not know if your article is even in the stack of to-be-read offerings.

I eventually got an acceptance and submitted an "expedite" request. Again, of  the schools I asked to expedite less that 1/3 acknowledged that they  had received my request for expedited review. Thus, the vast majority of reviews did not acknowledge receipt of the article or the expedite request. In fact, the same percentage did not even reject the article.

I attribute some of this to basic rudeness that seems to get more pronounced over time. Law review editors are short timers. When you think about out, why should they invest in what amounts to an academic one night stand? On the other hand, it may also be attributed to the down side to lower transaction costs. With email and ExpressO, editors have thousands of submissions many of which outstrip any expertise they may have. Thus, while costs have gone down to authors, there is little indication that there are more efficient ways to review articles. So, when you are overwhelmed with articles, or actually most things in life, what is the inclination?  Short cuts. Thus, even more than ever before credentials and other forms of institutional authority are substituted for actual careful review. In effect, lower transactions costs have somehow made the privileged even more privileged.

Tabloids,Pathetic Law Professors, and Their Use

Any one reading this is probably aware of the recent study published by the Michigan Law Review on the one hundred most cited law professors.  I wrote in disbelieve , that a reputable law review would publish such garbage.  Not only was the study flawed but the whole subject matter is irrelevant to virtually everyone except a craven group of law professors who truly must not have a life.

Now, low and behold, we have a ranking of the 50  most influential law schools as ranked by the Leiter scale. I do not know Leiter  but do not think highly of anyone with a ranking obsession   There are so many things that are better to do. In fact, if I rank the top 1,000.000 things to do in the world, these silly self indulgent rankings would not be in the ranking. I hasten to add that Leiter, whoever he is, is not an author of this particular ranking but evidently it is one of his "activities."

Why is any of this important? The rankings themselves are not. They are completely unimportant with respect to any measure of human well being,  What is important is that they exist at all and what that tells you about the pathetic people who pore over them and the profession they control.  If you followed any of my previously posts, they have been devoted to law professors, most of whom are what is currently called liberal, and their connection to the Romnesian 1%.  In both cases,  they are beneficiaries of a rigged system. And having benefited from the rigged system they want to make sure it stays that way. At the same time they are 1) desperate to know where they rank and 2) they bank on, live on, and salivate over institutional authority. That is, it's fine with them that they are not actually relevant as long as a rankings says they are. In fact, they actually regard themselves as important or as smart as the rankings say they are.

Does this mean I condemn the authors of such silliness. Not on your life. It is, in fact, pure marketing genius. Check out the number of SSRN downloads for this latest effort -- over 1200 in a short period for an article that has nothing to do with law but is full of name dropping. The authors know what sells to law professors. Yes, law professor cannot get enough of their version of grocery store tabloids. Bless their hearts!

The Silver Spoon Twins and the Law Prof 1%

A few commentators have question my sanity for equating most law professors with the Silver Spoons Twins -- Romney and Ryan. They say most law professors are liberal, for choice, support Obama care and so on.

I point out that most law professors have their jobs because of a system rigged by the elites -- call them the 1% -- they want to keep it that way.  In fact, they have a trickle down mentality. -- The rich ones supposedly with the knowledges will discuss it and some of the knowledge will trickle down. It never trickles down enough so that the recipients can be as entitled as the 1% but you get the idea.

Out of touch with real America is another way it presents itself.  Here think about the SSTs and their ideas that one can just borrow money from mom and dad to go to college or that a no capital gains tax will be a big win for those earning under 200K. I will not even get into binders.

Now think about the law prof who invited his class to meet and have a beer. When no minority students joined his conclusion was "I guess they could not afford beer." Huh?? Or the Prof who thoughtlessly assigns a $200 casebook. Or the Prof who has never known anyone on welfare, in jail, hungry,  or who recieves food stamps. Like the SSTs they do not have a fucking clue and they prefer it that way.

So their politics may differ but at a base level the are the same. All of them will still see each other at the Vineyard or some other place like that and the class-based bonds between the SSTs and law professors will overcome all disagreements.