This week: Those who don’t do, can’t teach? Also, an unconstitutional village ordinance on real estate for-sale signs may serve as a symbol of racial integration; the surprising stem cell research injunction; and is there a “private action” requirement in the Constitution?

First, it’s recruiting season for new law professors, which means that this week it was time for the perennial debate over the composition of law faculties. This time it was kicked off by Georgetown adjunct professor Brent Newton with his article, posted on SSRN, entitled “Preaching What They Don’t Practice: Why Law Faculties’ Preoccupation with Impractical Scholarship and Devaluation of Practical Competencies Obstruct Reform in the Legal Academy.” That was followed by comments from Stephen Bainbridge, Joe Hodnicki, Jonathan Adler, Rick Garnett, Kristen Holmquist, and Paul Horwitz. (I myself have weighed in on previous iterations of this debate.) One thing that struck me as missing from all of this commentary, much of it thoughtful, was any mention of the notion of law school degrees as positional goods.

Sarah Waldeck posted the fourth and final installment in her fascinating series on a Chicago suburb that has persisted in retaining, and apparently enforcing, a clearly unconstitutional village ordinance banning real estate for-sale signs. A taste:

The Village tends to attract people who value a diverse community.  These individuals may not want to threaten integration—or be perceived by their peers as threatening integration—by advocating for a repeal of the ban. That . . . suggests that the ban plays a role in keeping the Village integrated.  I have no idea whether the ban actually fulfills this function and neither did anyone with whom I spoke, although some expressed skepticism.   The ban is only one piece of the Village’s integration program and it is likely that other policies, particularly those in effect for rental properties, play a far more significant role.  The efficacy of the ban, however, is not the central point.  Something the Village did has worked and, from the perspective of a resident who likes her community, why mess with success?

Russell Korobkin examined Sherley v. Sebelius, the stunning stem cell research decision by Judge Royce Lamberth, in two posts this week, looking first at Judge Lamberth’s interpretation of the Dickey-Wicker Amendment, then at the dubious wisdom of granting the preliminary injunction.

Finally, the debate over the “individual mandate” provision of the health care reform law continues. Gerard Magliocca noted that the claim that penalizing a failure to take action is unprecedented doesn’t move the analysis very far, because the claim that some sort of action is necessary is also unprecedented (although Magliocca analogizes it to the state action requirement read into the Fourteenth Amendment). Randy Barnett responds that dueling unprecedented arguments means he wins, at least against those who claimed that the constitutional challenge to the individual mandate provision was frivolous.