Each week I blog about the D.C. Circuit. There is a reason for this. In today’s world, we are flooded with commentary about the Supreme Court—and the law of diminishing returns is real. Thus, although the D.C. Circuit is (probably) less important than the Supreme Court, there is more “bounce to the ounce” in covering […]
Law students go to law school for all sorts of reasons. Some dream of practicing criminal law because they watch a lot of television. Others want to be politicians and see law school as a launching pad. Many want to work for nonprofits because they care deeply about particular issues. Others want to follow in […]
Just over six months ago, I set resolutions for myself, law students, the Supreme Court, the Big 12 Conference, my freeloading chickens, and the D.C. Circuit, among others. This week seems as good as any to check in on how everyone is doing. First, I resolved to write something for the Wall Street Journal. Alas, […]
One of the most unusual cases you will ever read is McClure v. Carter —from the District of Idaho, in 1981. The case was a constitutional challenge to a judicial appointment, brought by a sitting U.S. Senator. That’s unusual by itself. The case is more unusual still, however, because the suit was brought under a […]
Yesterday, while scanning my Twitter feed, I found myself reading a great article in The Atlantic: “The Senate Finally Passed Chemical Safety Reform.” This article is well worth your time, especially because the legislation is now headed to President Obama for his signature. As I was reading, however, I noticed something: two uses of the […]
Dear 1Ls, Last fall I wrote a letter to your 2L colleagues. Now I’m going to write to you. Here’s the bottom line: If you want to clerk, the next few months are important. Many judges are waiting until applicants have their third or even fourth semester of grades. (Indeed, some judges prefer to interview […]
I learned something this week. By way of background, last September, I opened a Twitter account. As of now, I have 904 tweets. I’m biased, but I think that at least some of these tweets are insightful, at least as far as Twitter goes. Yet my most popular tweet of all time, by a fairly […]
Today is a sad day for the United States. My favorite memory of Justice Scalia involves Halloween. I don’t know if the Supreme Court does this every year, but when I was there as a law clerk, the Supreme Court invited all the children of clerks to trick-or-treat from chambers to chambers. My kids were […]
Dear 2Ls, A couple of months ago I wrote a letter explaining that “if you hope to clerk for a federal judge after graduation,” you should be prepared to apply no later than “after first semester grades are released and law review boards turn over.” True, not all clerkship slots will be filled over the […]
At 12:02 last night, one of my (very tired) children made a keen observation: “New Years is a silly holiday.” I sympathize. We don’t celebrate turning the calendar from January to February, nor do we throw a party when February 29th rolls around every Olympiad.* But you know what? The fact that January 1st is […]
Everything I am about to say will be old hat for many readers. Even so, I like to provide public service announcements to law students. In that spirit, here is a valuable lesson: law — or at least the practice of law — is about math. In particular, law revolves around expected value, and by […]
Law clerks, of course, vow to keep confidential “any information [they] receive through [their] clerkship that is not part of the public record.” Even so, this announcement should be safe: D.C. Circuit law clerks are terrible at basketball. Each year, the D.C. Circuit clerks play a game of basketball against the Supreme Court clerks. In my […]
Judge Frank Easterbrook is an extraordinary jurist. He’s prolific; influential*; and scholarly. He also wields a sharp pen (e.g., “This case pits the twenty-first amendment, which appears in the Constitution, against the ‘dormant commerce clause,’ which does not.”). Even if you disagree with him, he always has interesting things to say. And that includes his […]
On the administrative law professor email listserv, my colleague Peter Shane sparked an intriguing discussion about the impact of the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel (OLC) on administrative law scholarship and the legal academy more generally. With permission, I’m reprinting a (slightly edited) version of his initial email to the listserv: I recently received […]
Now that I have finished clerking and am back in the scholarly trenches, I’m trying to catch up on a year’s worth of administrative law scholarship. (Why, you ask, didn’t I read more law review articles during my clerkship? Because no one at the Supreme Court reads law review articles anymore. *) And the first […]