Jan

31

Our Boys: Statewide Loyalty to Wisconsin’s Sports Teams

Posted by: | January 31, 2011 | Leave a Comment

They may be called the Green Bay Packers and the Milwaukee Brewers, but the degree to which major sports teams in Wisconsin are embraced by fans everywhere else in the state is not common in the sports world. These are “our teams” even if they play 100 or 200 miles away. That’s on exhibit for [...]

Jan

25

Who Says There Is No Such Thing as a Second Chance?

Posted by: | January 25, 2011 | Leave a Comment

It has now been several years since the Swiss banking giant UBS found itself in trouble for impeding the IRS and conspiring to defraud the United States. The outcome was a negotiated settlement between the U.S. government and UBS that called for the disclosure of the names of U.S. taxpayers holding money overseas. This result was [...]

Jan

25

California Parole May Be Broken, But Federal Courts Cannot Fix It

Posted by: | January 25, 2011 | 1 Comment

By some curious coincidence, at about the same time that Jonathan Simon was explaining in his Barrock Lecture yesterday that parole has effectively become unavailable in California in homicide cases, the United States Supreme Court was overturning a pair of Ninth Circuit decisions that would have established a basis for federal-court review of parole denials. The [...]

Jan

25

Murder Sentences Becoming “Too Flat and Too Severe,” Barrock Lecturer Says

Posted by: | January 25, 2011 | Leave a Comment

A reactor or a radiator? A radiator performs service by dissipating heat. A reactor generates increasingly intense heat, presenting difficult challenges for how to contain that heat. Punishment for murder in the United States increasingly resembles a reactor more than a radiator, Prof. Jonathan Simon at Boalt Hall, University of California-Berkeley School of Law, said [...]

Jan

25

And What Should We Do About Third-Graders’ Reading Proficiency?

Posted by: | January 25, 2011 | 7 Comments

Gov. Scott Walker told school leaders from Wisconsin in a speech last week that he wants all children to read at grade level when they finish third grade. Conquering the basics of reading by that point is widely held by educators to be a key to long-term success for students.  Walker used the phrases used [...]

Jan

24

County Executive Candidates: Trying to Establish Their Identities

Posted by: | January 24, 2011 | Leave a Comment

The new guy. The outsider. The insider. The legislator in line with Scott Walker. The former legislator critical of Scott Walker. A crucial part of running for office, especially when you’re not a household name, is establishing an identity in the minds of the general public. The most interesting part of watching the first joint [...]

Jan

20

Will the NLRB Change Its Position on Captive Audience Speeches?

Posted by: | January 20, 2011 | 2 Comments

This is the question that Paul Secunda considers in a new paper, “The Future of NLRB Doctrine on Captive Audience Speeches.” Under established doctrine, employers may require employees who are contemplating unionization to attend meetings at which speeches opposed to unionization are presented.  However, the National Labor Relations Board has recently undergone some significant membership [...]

Jan

20

Interstate Travel and Marriage

Posted by: | January 20, 2011 | Leave a Comment

As Professor Idleman alerted our Constitutional Law course last year, there’s nothing like the posture of a criminal defendant challenging a law’s constitutionality. Compare Bowers v. Hardwick, 478 U.S. 186 (1986) (plaintiff who was charged but not indicted under Texas’ sodomy laws unsuccessfully sues attorney general in action seeking to declare laws unconstitutional) with Lawrence [...]

Jan

17

“If I’d Wanted to Teach About Feelings, I Wouldn’t Have Become a Law Professor”

Posted by: | January 17, 2011 | Leave a Comment

That’s the intriguing title of a new paper by Andrea Schneider, Melissa Nelken, and Jamil Nahaud.  The title expresses the authors’ mock horror at the thought of “bringing feelings into the room when teaching negotiation.”  They recognize that legal education is not exactly known for helping students to get in touch with their feelings: “learning [...]

Jan

16

Was Oedipus Culpable?

Posted by: | January 16, 2011 | 4 Comments

As I noted in an earlier post on Sophocles’ Oedipus Rex, I am (very slowly) working my way through the ancient Greek tragedies.  I recently finished the sequel to Oedipus Rex, Oedipus at Colonus.  One of the central questions in OC is the extent to which Oedipus was truly culpable for killing his father, King Laius, and sleeping with [...]

Jan

16

Mayfair – Tumult in Wisconsin’s Shrine of Consumption

Posted by: | January 16, 2011 | Leave a Comment

Much has been written and said about the tumult at the Mayfair Mall on January 2.  Commentators have argued the theft and destruction grew out of, among other things, the general rebelliousness of teenagers, deep-seated racial tensions, and/or colliding urban and suburban subcultures.  All these arguments have validity to them, but the very nature of [...]

Jan

15

Wisconsin’s First RNC Chairman

Posted by: | January 15, 2011 | 1 Comment

On the seventh ballot of their meeting yesterday, the members of the Republican National Committee elected Wisconsin state party chairman Reince Priebus as their new chairman.  Contrary to some reports, Priebus is not the first national party chairman from Wisconsin.  That designation belongs to Henry Clay Payne, who chaired the RNC for a brief time [...]

keep looking »