The Yin Blog

Some thoughts on teaching at a new institution

After seven nice years of teaching at the Iowa law school -- 13 semesters' worth of classes, since I had one semester off on a pre-tenure leave -- I moved back to the West Coast and started teaching at Lewis & Clark Law School.  This was a straight lateral move, without a semester as a look-see visitor, so I really am moving into a new environment.

Of course, this was true when I started teaching at Iowa as well, but at least then, the newness of the environment could be chalked up purely to moving from private practice to the academic world.  Here, the differences are entirely ones of school cultures.  To wit:

1) Dress code -- One can dress however one chooses (within reason) as a law professor, but even so, law schools no doubt have general dress code norms.  How much should one worry about not conforming to the new dress code norm?

For example, with few exceptions, I wear a suit and tie when I'm teaching.  This was on the dressier side of things at Iowa, but there were a fair number of others who dressed similarly.  There appear to be fewer at Lewis & Clark (though, contrary to earlier concerns I had, the number of others is not zero).  I wouldn't particularly to look like an overdressed slickster if it is a more casual environment, but then again, I also go through the effort of wearing a suit and tie on teaching days for the usual reasons of creating some distance between the students and me.  (Weirdly, I still get mistaken on occasion for a student if I dress like them.)

2) Length of Classes -- At Iowa, classes met for 60 minutes an hour, which meant that starting times advanced by 10 minutes per hour (i.e., classes started at 1:10, 2:20, 3:30, and so on).  Here, classes meet for 50 minutes an hour, and usually in two 1 1/2 hour blocks, which means for 75 minutes.  So some thought has to be given to whether to give a break in the middle, or to go straight through, either way making sure to finish well before the end of the allotted 90 minute block, because another class is going to be starting right away.

More importantly, this means that classes prepped for 90 minute blocks have to be adjusted to fit 75 minute blocks!  (That's a 16.7% difference in time. . . .)

3) Name of the New Institution -- I think the formal name of my new institution is "Northwestern School of Law of Lewis & Clark College."  But we seem to refer to it as Lewis & Clark Law School.  (That's also what it says on my business cards.)  Obviously, "Northwestern" gets confusing, even though in a rational world, the other Northwestern would be something like Midwestern or Northmidwestern or even Northeastern (though of course there's another one of those!)  Yet, the letterhead that came with my desk still reads Northwestern School of Law of Lewis & Clark College.  Who do I tell people I work for?

(With Iowa, I didn't have that problem.  But it did take me a while to remember that it's officially The University of Iowa, not the University of Iowa.)

4) Faculty meetings -- Generally not the favorite of law professors, but a necessary evil.  You get used to them at your old institution, though.  Is it acceptable to bring page proofs to an article to review?  Is it acceptable to bring a laptop computer to work on an article, or to blog?  Is it acceptable to grade exams?  And then, you have to figure everything out from scratch again.

New West casebook covers

I'm preparing the syllabus for my Criminal Law II course, for which I'm using Julie O'Sullivan's Federal White Collar Crime casebook.  This is in a new edition (4th), and it's one of the casebooks for which West is using a new cover.  The old cover was a somewhat unappealing brown with gold lettering, but the new cover is a dark gray with silver lettering on a black square background.  It's a classy look!

But sheesh, $150 for this book?!?

7 years of separation(s)

I was just thinking today about how 7 years seems to be a defining period for me going back a ways now.  I finished college in 1988 without much of an idea of what I wanted to do for a career.  7 years later, I finished law school in 1995 with a very clear idea (become a law professor).  7 years after that, I started teaching law here at the University of Iowa in 2002.  And 7 years have passed since then, and now I'm about to move on to teaching law at Lewis & Clark Law School in Oregon.  Pretty coincidental . . . .

What is with David E. Kelley's shows not being released on DVD?

I'm teaching Professional Responsibility for the first time this semester, and as part of my class preparation, I've been dutifully watching episodes of "The Practice" while using the treadmill, looking for interesting scenes to trigger discussion of ethical issues.  (It's a hard job, but I'm happy to make the sacrifice.)  For some reason, however, the only set that has been released is titled "Volume 1," consisting of all six season 1 episodes and seven from season 2.

That's it, 13 episodes out of the 168 that aired over 8 seasons.  Moreover, this set was released a year and a half ago, and amazon.com has no information about upcoming releases.

At first, I wondered if this was something to do with the TV studio that produced the show, but then I noticed that David E. Kelley has released very few of his shows on DVD.  There's only one compilation of random "Ally McBeal" episodes available, none of "L.A. Law" (though that was created by Steven Bochco), and only one season of "Picket Fences."  For some reason, "Boston Legal" is the exception -- it's up to date to last season.

Re-enacting the Pentagon Papers argument

A couple of weeks ago, in connection with the play "The Battle for the Pentagon Papers," which was being performed at Hancher Auditorium, the law school presented a re-enactment of the Supreme Court oral argument in New York Times Co. v. United States.  This was all the brainchild of my colleague Randy Bezanson.  Dean Emeritus Bill Hines played Solicitor General Griswold, former UI General Counsel Mark Schantz played Alexander Bickel, and eight of my colleagues and I played the Supreme Court justices.  I was fortunate enough to play Justice Harlan -- my ideal justice.

What was especially interesting was the presence in the audience of Daniel Ellsberg, the RAND analyst who copied the Pentagon Papers and leaked them to the New York Times and the Washington Post.  Ellsberg was definitely a . . . character, and I was delighted to get to meet someone once accused by Pat Buchanan of having cost the United States the Vietnam War.

Here's a Daily Iowan story about the event, which also contains a Quicktime video.

So I was on TV yesterday . . . .

I forgot to mention for local readers that I was going to be on TV on Sunday morning, as part of a panel on the "Ethical Perspectives on the News" program that airs on KCRG.  The topic of the panel was the Supreme Court's recent decision in the Seattle and Louisville school district cases.

I've gotten two comments so far.  The first was, "Wow, talk about the camera adding 10 pounds!"  The second was from a student who "was kind of disappointed that [I wasn't] pointlessly aggressive and argumentative like so many talking heads on round table discussions."  The student also "mused at [my] continued skill to dodge questions about where [I] personally stood on such controversial issues as affirmative action."  I wrote back, "As for being pointlessly aggressive and argumentative, that's what class is for, no?"

Speaking of TV, I've been vastly disappointed at how bad this new fall season has been.  I had tagged only three shows to try out: "Reaper," "Bionic Woman," and "Moonlight."  After watching the first episodes of each, I deleted my season pass to "Reaper" and kept the other two, but only after feeling underwhelmed.

"Reaper" is probably the best show of the three, but just not my taste.  It's about a slacker who learns on his 21st birthday that his parents sold his soul to Satan, and now Satan is collecting.  Instead of taking him to Hell, though, Satan wants him to track down escaped damned souls, using a  . . . Dirt Devil vaccuum.  (ha ha)  I liked the concept better when Fox ran it as "Brimstone" with Peter Horton; the difference is that "Reaper" is a mixture of action, horror, and comedy, with Sam and his slacker buddies taking on powerful baddies, while Satan (Ray Wise) takes on a fatherly role.  Kevin Smith of "Clerks" fame is involved, and it shows.  The program is witty, but I guess twentysomething slackers just don't interest me all that much now.

"Bionic Woman" was okay in the premeire.  I liked the much darker tone that it exhibited compared to the cheesy Lindsay Wagner version.  But it's curiously unexciting so far, and the characters have not been consistent to themselves thus far.  This is on life support in my view.

"Moonlight" is basically a ripoff of the mid-1990s late night "Forever Knight" about a vampire detective who wants to do good and who loves a human woman.  The problem with "Moonlight" is that the vampire, Mick St. John, is too stupid to care about.  I mean, if you became a vampire 50 years ago when you were 30, I think you'd take care to move around the country periodically so that people don't notice that you never age.  And if you didn't do that, I think you'd at least "backstop" your story about being the son, not *that* Mick St. John, with your former police partner, so that he wouldn't blow your cover to that peskily intrusive female that you have the hots for.  This one is on life support too . . . .

Clerkship interviews and women's attire

I have to admit, this is not exactly a topic that I expected to be blogging about, but it did come up in a recent clerkship interview workshop for students and prompted a further serious discussion with a couple of my fellow junior colleagues . . . .

The issue is, what advice would you give a female clerkship applicant as to whether she should feel comfortable wearing a pants suit -- as opposed to a skirt suit -- for a clerkship interview.  And second, would you give that advice unprompted?

The concern is that there might be some judges who have an unwritten dress code for female lawyers and that failure to conform to that dress code might marginally harm an applicant's chance for the clerkship.  On the flip side is the concern that even giving such advice will necessarily perpetuate that unwritten dress code itself.

My own view was that it probably wouldn't make a difference in the vast majority of instances, but it might make a marginal difference in a few cases (0 < N < 5%, would be my estimate).  So my suggestion was that the student wear the pants suit if she preferred it, but to be aware that there's a small risk involved.

All of which, to be clear, is not a normative statement of how I think women should dress for interviews, but rather, just a predictive statement.  But I'm curious whether any readers think that N ~ 0 for all intents and purposes.  (By the way, in case you are wondering, the two colleagues I was having this discussion with are both women, and I was more or less in the middle in terms of suggested advice.  We were pretty much in agreement on the general principle, only differing somewhat on our estimate of N.)

It's official!

It's official!  The Board of Regents approved promotion and tenure for me at its May 1 meeting, so I can now tell you everything that I've kept bottled up for the last five years!!!

And for those who are curious: as far as I can tell, blogging did not make a difference, or if it did, it was a mild plus factor.

Okay, back to grading exams now. . . .

Don Yaeger's "It's Not About the Truth"

I just finished reading Don Yaeger and Mike Pressler's It's Not About the Truth: The Untold Story of the Duke Lacrosse Case and the Lives It Shattered, and I'm kind of angry.  You can't read this book without getting angry, just as you can't read KC Johnson's blog Durham-in-Wonderland without getting angry.

Of course, there are many different things one can angry about concerning the entire incident, but what Yaeger's and Pressler's book does effectively is concentrate and direct anger toward Durham D.A. Mike Nifong and Duke President Dick Brodhead.  I'll confess that when I first heard about the allegation that a bunch of Duke lacrosse players had gang-raped an African-American exotic dancer, my instinct -- no doubt fueled by probably unfair stereotypes of college athletes -- was that they had probably committed the act.  From my pre-law days in journalism, I had talked to a few rape counselors and sex offense police detectives to gather that rape was a particularly underreported crime, given the savaging that rape accusers often suffer when they do bring accusations.

I mention my initial instinct partly to suggest that I did not have an instinctive bias to take the side of the white, supposedly privileged players.  That's why following the case and the apparently outrageous steps that Nifong took in leading the investigation and prosecuting/persecuting the players is so angering.  When there is evidence of such massive abuse of authority for what seems like pure personal/political gain (the book argues that Nifong made a spectacle out of the case so that he could win election as DA and thereby keep his job, since his main opponent was the second Assistant DA, Freda Black, whom he fired when he was appointed DA by the governor), it's impossible not to be angry.

But back to Yaeger's book.  One question is, if you have been a regular reader of KC Johnson's blog, is there anything in the book that you wouldn't have already come across?  The answer is yes.  Although Johnson has conducted some reporting of his own, the primary value of his blog lies in his careful, analytical dissection of the various defenses offered by Nifong and his enablers (such as the Gang of 88 -- the 88 faculty members who penned an ad that essentially passed judgment on the lacrosse players before any legal process had taken place).  Yaeger interviewed a number of the key people in the case and provides interesting after-the-fact reflections, particularly some of the parents of the lacrosse players. 

One especially striking matter was a letter that one player's mother sent to Karla Holloway, one of the Gang of 88 professors.  In the letter, the mother -- Patricia Dowd -- notes that Holloway's adopted son was convicted of rape and attempted murder and asks, "Do you attack our sons because you feel guilt for your own failure as a mother? . . . Do you attack our sons to justify your own son's shortcomings?  Do you attack our sons because they are innocent and your son was not?"

This is, of course, just an ad hominem attack on Holloway and isn't therefore a very good argument on the merits.  But Holloway's response is equally invalid: "Your letter reflects nothing so much as an impoverished spirit and intellect.  What a shame, for you, and your family."  And at least Dowd can always rely on the fact that she was fretting over her son's suffering. . . .

The book also provides a nice look into former lacrosse coach Mike Pressler's side of the story.  The players themselves have gone through hell, but at the same time, they did set into motion the events by hiring the strippers.  That's not to say that they deserved what happened, because obviously they didn't.  But, as the players recognized after the fact, hosting the party with the strippers was a bad idea.  Pressler, on the other hand, had nothing to do with the stripper party, and yet, he was -- according to Pressler -- forced to resign from the institution that he'd spent 16 years at.  I didn't fully appreciate the injustice to Pressler before, and the book does that well.

Yet, if there is a flaw with the book, it is that it comes across as having its own agenda, which is attacking Nifong and Brodhead.  Not surprisingly, neither Nifong nor Brodhead agreed to be interviewed for the book, and that shouldn't be held against Yaeger, who did make serious attempts to do so.  In Brodhead's place, we hear from John Burness, Duke's main PR person.  That's better than nothing, but Burness wasn't the one making decisions.

Indeed, the reason that Brodhead wouldn't be interviewed for the book, according to Burness, is that he perceived Yaeger as having "strong opinions" of the case.  It's not hard to see why, when Yaeger at times overwrites with phrases such as "[Nifong's] mind was like a runaway train . . . heading the wrong way on a one-way track."  With misconduct as seemingly plain as Nifong's, there's no need for flowery writing like that; just lay out the facts and Nifong indicts himself through his inconsistent explanations.  Moreover, when Yaager cites or quotes other commentators for their views about the case, it's not surprising that conservatives such as Bill O'Reilly and Ann Coulter are happy to attack Duke.  And perhaps they're right in this particular incident, but the fact that they are passed off as sensible people while Nancy Grace is made out to be a frothing nut (which she is) isn't exactly as neutral as one might expect.

So this is a good read -- I did finish it in basically two sittings -- but I think it would have benefitted from a degree of editing to make it more neutral in tone.

Tenure gets closer!

I'm still busy with work, but I thought I'd pass along more good news -- the Provost has approved the faculty's recommendation of my tenure and promotion to full professor.  Next stop is the Board of Regents, which meets on May 1-2.