The EPA Power Grab

epa_logoMy thanks to Prof. Slavin for inviting me to serve as student blogger of the month.  I shall do my level best to maintain the high standards set by the MULS Faculty Blog.

Last month, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) issued a finding that greenhouse gases, including carbon dioxide, constitute a threat to human health and welfare as defined under the Clean Air Act (CAA).  This is significant because the CAA allows the EPA to regulate any pollutant that the EPA finds a danger to human health and welfare.  As EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson stated, “[i]f we don’t act to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, the planet we will leave to the future will be very different that then one we know today.”  If the EPA does decide to act, the same statement will apply to the U.S. economy.

Continue ReadingThe EPA Power Grab

What Should Be Done With Legal Education?

The front-page, above-the-fold article in the latest issue of the National Law Journal asked whether a legal education makes economic sense these days. The well-publicized recent purge of partners and associates in large law firms, the paucity of jobs (noted in a story in the Chronicle of Higher Education) available to graduating law students, and the massive increase in student indebtedness have generated a flood of articles and Internet posts cautioning would-be law students against entering the profession. This post takes the view that legal education still makes long-term sense for many. A later follow-up post will argue that recent changes in legal education have harmed rather than helped most students, that legal education needs to change significantly, and that it won’t until it is too late.

A paper recently posted on SSRN entitled Momma Don’t Let Your Babies Grow Up to be . . . Lawyers by Vanderbilt University School of Law Professor Herwig Schlunk argues that, whether a law student attends a top-ten law school and does well, is a “solid performer,” or is an “also ran” who attends a third-tier law school, that student will have a negative return on investment. Whether Professor Schlunk’s assessment about opportunity cost (the salary foregone by attending three years of law school) is accurate (I think that a starting salary of a new college graduate today, combined with the insecurity of those positions, makes the opportunity cost lower than he assumes), I believe law school remains, for many, the right decision. 

Continue ReadingWhat Should Be Done With Legal Education?

The Sound and the Fury and Yadayadayada

I regard myself (seriously) as fairly naïve when it comes to making public policy. For one thing, I have this notion, often proved wildly off-base, that what goes on in the public view – a meeting, a public hearing, a judicial hearing of some kind – is where decisions are made. I’ve covered sessions such as these for newspapers since I was a teenager. And sometimes, important things do happen. But often, it’s just show time.

I’m pondering this today in the light of Monday’s public hearing by the state Senate Education Committee on proposals to change the governance structure of Milwaukee Public Schools.  It was impressive in some ways. There was a large turnout – the auditorium at the MPS central office holds 300 people and there were clearly well more than that who came and went in the course of the day-long session. There were lots of important people there, not only a large number of legislators, but Mayor Tom Barrett, State Superintendent of Public Instruction Tony Evers, aldermen, School Board members, civic leaders, and activists. If you were patient (really patient, in many cases), you could get up and tell the committee members what you thought on the issue, no matter who you were or what your views – and isn’t that a great aspect of democracy?

And yet (pardon me while I sigh) — did this accomplish anything?

Continue ReadingThe Sound and the Fury and Yadayadayada