The Managerial Presidency?

President Barack Obama fired Rick Wagoner of General Motors. I have a lot of respect for President Obama. But I think now he may have made a serious mistake. President Obama seems to think he knows how to run General Motors. President Obama is a smart fellow. But he probably does not know how to introduce new product lines, how to run commercial advertising campaigns, and the like. There is good reason to think that Wagoner was quite good at these sorts of things. See William J. Holstein, "One Roadblock Too Many for G.M.," NYTimes (March 30, 2009).

It perhaps happens to all of us: given a chance, we instantiate the Peter Principle (not, harrumph!, the Peter Tillers Principle, which is something exemplary).



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Academic Law Reviews and Legal Scholarship in the Age of Cyberspace

It would have been hard to imagine just a decade ago: major U.S. newspapers are going out of business. (Quixotically enough, I recently renewed my subscription to hard copies of the New York Times.) The same fate has not yet befallen U.S. law reviews.

But most American law reviews are not, and perhaps never were, subject to normal market forces; most of these student-edited law journals were and are subsidized by law schools.

Subscriptions to major law reviews have fallen dramatically in the last couple of decades. Is the demise of student-edited law reviews at hand?

Well, even if we ignore the nebulousness of the notion of "demise," it's not yet clear that Armageddon for law reviews is at hand. This is because law schools have non-economic reasons for wanting to keep law journals alive.

It may be true -- though demonstrating this would be tricky -- that most "major" American student-edited law reviews are kept alive in significant part because "major" law schools want to maintain some control over access to the halls of legal academe and over the kinds of scholarship that secure access to U.S. legal academe. But there are signs that the gatekeeper role of these law reviews is on the wane.

That's probably a good thing.

The market, she is tricky, fickle, and often downright stupid. But the market is also often relatively democratic and open to innovation.

In the age of cyberspace budding legal scholars have some serious alternatives to student-edited "major" law reviews.

It is true that law schools will very probably still use "major" hard-copy student-edited law reviews as gatekeepers. But cyberspace and other developments are gradually creating alternatives to "major" law schools themselves. As California's Bernard Witkin demonstrated decades ago, such alternatives always existed. But in the age of cyberspace the prospects for market-oriented legal scholarship have grown and multiplied.

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I confess that personal history motivates this post. Decades ago, I swore not to submit my stuff to "major" American law reviews. I departed from my populist anti-establishmentarian line generally only when law journals invited me to submit a paper. Otherwise I have published in other venues. I took this anti-establishmentarian tack when, shortly after graduation, I tried to publish a study of Hegel's theory of the "duty to die for the state." I submitted my paper to about five "major" law reviews. They rejected my paper (but, in fairness to them, usually only by close votes).

I later realized I was literally ahead of my time: Hegel was not yet in vogue in American law schools. Had I tried publishing the paper a couple of decades later, I would have met with success. But by then I had completely repudiated Hegel and I had little taste for talking about things Hegelian. (The rejected paper was an excellent piece of work. [I concluded that Hegel's argument for the alleged duty to die for the state fails.])

This experience led me to swear off law reviews. I instead worked at redoing part of Wigmore's treatise.

Of course, by swearing off law reviews (for the most part) I figuratively shot myself in my figurative academic foot. But I don't regret what I did. I think my scholarship was more interesting as a result. I discovered, to my pleasure if not entirely to my surprise, that there are lots of inquisitive, creative, serious, and thoughtful people out there in the legal profession and in the wider world. Conclusion: publishing for the "market" and for the "world" has its compensations, very substantial compensations.

Postscript: Bernard Witkin's model of legal scholarship is not the model to which I aspire. But that's another question. My point here is that Witkin succeeded in doing legal scholarship on his own.

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Educated Ship of Fools?

Take a gander at Steven Davidoff, "Harvard, Private Equity and the Education Bubble," NYTimes (March 3, 2009).

I regret to say that Davidoff seems right on target. Things look like this: no safe haven anywhere (except gold? religion?).



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The Slowest Music Recital in Human History

Go here.

BBC Radio just did a hilarious broadcast about this but I haven't found a link yet on the BBC web site.

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Style over Substance

Newspaper reports have it that Tom Daschle, former Senator from South Dakota, earned roughly $5,000,000 in the short time since leaving office (involuntarily) and that he did so mainly by providing "strategic advice" for people who have dealings with the federal government. (Daschle also earned money by giving speeches.) When in office, Daschle was politically liberal; his political leanings suggested his sympathy and concern for the downtrodden. Daschle is also a soft-spoken fellow. Given the sources of his post-Senatorial income, is Daschle an example of how personal demeanor can very effectively camouflage avarice? (Of course, the attitudes of those who paid Daschle for speeches and strategic advice may be equally unattractive.)

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Europe between the Oceans

Everyone must buy this book: Barry Cunliffe, Europe between the Oceans: 9000 BC - AD 1000 (Yale University Press (2008).

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Is There Something Wrong with This Business Model?

I am a "faithful listener" of (to?) National Public Radio. But sometimes it is hard to be faithful; sometimes I must stop up my ears. Why? Because NPR -- for years! -- insists on putting on (almost always at the end of an hour) a review (and sounds) of some recent iteration of rock music. What's going on? Is it that the people who run NPR are boomers who just can't reconcile themselves to the fact that they are no longer 20 somethings cavorting in the 1960s? Or is it because NPR feverishly chases the "youth market" -- even as its listenership ages? I suppose a bit of both is the explanation. Well, I can't help NPR about coping with (non-)intimations of mortality. But I can suggest to NPR that it embrace the idea of an adult listenership, a sophisticated adult listenership that grows weary of repeated attempts to discover the Bob Dylan of the 21st century. Old folks, you know, aren't always bad. Some of them have money. Some of them participate in making public policy. Some of them still have some intelligence and creativity in their grey matter. Embrace grownups, NPR! By doing so, b'gosh, you might just find that you attract some young'uns who yearn to be grownups. And who knows: your marketing people might just finally take note that older folks generally have more money. Or maybe not: your marketing people might still be hung up over the fact that they've gotten older and can no longer play the way they once did. But consider this: there is nothing more unattractive than an old person trying to act like a child. Grow up!

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Trees by House

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Very serious evidence people at Cardozo School of Law

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A Massive Star

Pismis 24-1
Credit for image: NASA, ESA and J. M. Apellániz (IAA, Spain)

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Furrin' Law Folk in New Haven

John Jackson, Craig Callen & Michael Risinger

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Yale and New Haven in Red and Gold

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Gateways to Knowledge

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Bright College Years

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Neo-Gothic and Non-Gothic

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St. Obama, Deliver Us ...

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Flash: The Hubble Is Back

See The Inquirer (Oct 18 2008)

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Greenery

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Timbers & Piers

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Fall Nears

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Market Crises versus Market Ajustments

A major cause of the current financial crisis, it is said, is the "depressed" real estate market. But "depressed" implies that real estate prices are too low. One could also easily say -- and many people did say -- that real estate prices were "inflated." On the whole, it is a good thing that the price of residential housing has declined -- and let's hope that efforts to pump up prices to their previous "inflated" levels fail.

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The Philosophy Teacher

Jonathan Mahler, "The Thinker," NYTimes (Sept. 19, 2008):

After class, [Professor Kelly] Jolley and I walked across Auburn’s mostly deserted campus and into town for lunch. It was oppressively hot and humid; Jolley wore a fraying straw boater to keep the sun off his face. Over pizza and iced tea, I asked him if he ever wondered whether his style of teaching might be inappropriate for a large state school like Auburn — if the cost of his approach is that he’s teaching to the few rather than the many. “My view is that you really fall into a trap when you start allowing what you believe about your students to dictate how you teach your discipline,” he answered. “Too often these days we end up setting up our courses in light of what we believe about our students and we end up not teaching them. At best, we end up housebreaking them.”

[snip, snip]

In Jolley’s ideal world, every student would catch the philosophy flame, but he knows this will never happen. He says that philosophy requires a certain rare and innate ability — the ability to step outside yourself and observe your own mind in the act of thinking. In this respect, Jolley recognizes that his detractors have a point when they criticize his approach to teaching. “It’s aristocratic in the sense that any selection based on talent is aristocratic,” he told me. “I know it offends everyone’s sense of democracy, this idea that everyone’s equal, but we all know that’s just not true.”

Perhaps the dispute between Jolley and his critics boils down to how you define great teachers. You typically think about them as being devoted, above all, to their students. Jolley says his first priority is to philosophy itself. “I care about the discipline of philosophy more than the academic fate of any individual student — and I think I should,” he said. “Otherwise I’m just a baby sitter who occasionally breaks into syllogism.”

Jolley's notion that his philosophical endeavors in the classroom ought to be pitched to the best students rather than to average students is perhaps questionable. But his commitment to rigor is admirable. I, any event, admire his courage and his quite-literal idealism.

One has the sense or hope that Prof. Jolley thinks the "best" students are the most inquisitive. And with that thesis it is hard to disagree.

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One Trillion for Wall Steet but Not One Farthing for Social Security or Medicare?

Social Security is going bankrupt (it is said) and we can't continue down that path!

Medicare is going bankrupt (it is said) and we can't continue down that path!

Wall Street is going bankrupt (it is a fact) and we can't continue down that path. Throw the Street a trillion dollars! That'll fix things. But ... Social Security ... Medicare? Well...we can't afford such profligacy, now can we?

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The Nature of Visibility

The weather forecaster just said that it is a beautiful day and that "visibility is as far as the eye can see."

Well, gee, that's an interesting proposition. Or not?

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Freedom of the Press Russian Style

Philip P Pan, "Russian Activist Shot Dead By Police," washingtonpost.com (Sept. 1, 2008):

A leading opposition figure in Russia's volatile Ingushetia province was shot and killed Sunday after being detained by police, authorities said. His colleagues issued a call for protests in response, and human rights groups demanded an investigation.

Magomed Yevloyev, a businessman and the owner of a Web site that angered Kremlin-backed local leaders with its coverage of official corruption and police abuse, suffered a gunshot wound to his head while in a police car taking him to a station for interrogation, a spokesman for the Russian prosecutor's office told the Interfax news agency.

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258,000 houses destroyed by earthquake?

It appears that another terrible tragedy has taken place in Sichuan Province in the People's Republic of China. An earthquake has leveled 258,000 houses. So AP reports that Xinhua News Agency reported today.

But how did the Chinese news agency manage to come up with this large number just two days after the earthquake? Is there a chance it might be a bit high? A bit low? A bit too precise?

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Personality Cult

The country worries about Hillary Clinton's psyche. Or some of the country does. And HR Clinton seems to encourage us to worry about her psyche.

In some countries the public worries about the psyche of the Great Man. Now are to worry about the psyche of the Great Woman?

Disgusting. We've got more important things to worry about.

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What about MY Catharsis?

The NYTimes reports that "Mrs. Clinton is in the midst of a 'catharsis.'"

Well, I'm in a midst of a catharsis too. So why am I not getting press and media attention? Darned unfair, I say.

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Rembrandt in the New World