Monthly Archives: August 2007

Attention UM Law Students: Research Assistants Needed

I need a research assistant. And so, no doubt, do several other faculty members. Some faculty members will hire their own; others, especially new and visiting faculty, may prefer a clearinghouse approach. As I am now the “Director of Faculty Development” I have appointed myself the coordinator of this process for those faculty who prefer to work through an intermediary. If you are a 2L, 3L or LLM student and would like to work for a professor this year, please send me your application.

Different professors will want different skill sets, so don't be shy. Some may have special application requirements but I think most would be happy with a copy of your resume, an unofficial transcript (for 2Ls and 3Ls), and a short writing sample. Personally, I prefer a NON-legal writing sample if you have one, but most of the colleagues will want something legal if you have it, so include both if you can.

Your cover letter should include the number of hours you would most like to work (the range is usually 10-20 hours per week, with most clustering in the low part of that range, but there's a lot of variation), and the legal subjects that most interest you (to help match you with professors in those areas).

I'm particularly interested in students with Linux and HTML experience, although that's not a requirement for me and won't be of interest to many colleagues, so don't let the absence of those stop you.

You can email me the application bundle, or you can drop it off to Ms. Rosalia Lliraldi, who sits outside Rm. 382 in the library.

Posted in U.Miami | Comments Off on Attention UM Law Students: Research Assistants Needed

UM Hurricanes to Leave Orange Bowl!

‘Canes to leave the Orange Bowl. No tradition is safe!

August 21, 2007

To the University Community:

We have an extraordinary history and tradition at the Orange Bowl: The players running through the smoke tunnel. “Touchdown Tommy” and his cannon. The Ring of Honor. An incredible winning streak of 58 consecutive home wins. And three of our five national championships were won on that field. I love the Orange Bowl-we all do!

As many of you are aware, the University has been working closely with the City of Miami to assess the feasibility of making much-needed renovations to the Orange Bowl. It has long been our goal to have a first-class football stadium.

The City of Miami has been a wonderful partner with us at the Orange Bowl for many years, and they understand how hard we have wrestled with a very difficult decision. Mayor Manny Diaz has been heroic in his efforts to meet our future needs. After much thought, analysis, and discussions with many, many of our trustees, faculty, staff, students, alumni, and fans, we have concluded that we must move our football games to a better facility. The more than $200 million in renovations that the city has proposed would only provide basic and mostly infrastructural upgrades. A part of those funds are not in hand and may or may not be determined until after the proposed construction would be well underway. Overall, the renovations clearly would not address the long-term needs of our athletes and our fans.

The Orange Bowl chapter of our history-in which we can all take great pride-will never close, and we are confident that the legacy of Miami Hurricanes football will live on and thrive as we move to a new location. After an assessment of all options available to us, we have decided reluctantly and painfully to move to Dolphin Stadium for the 2008 season.

Dolphin Stadium is one of the premier football stadiums in the country. At our new home, our student-athletes will have the opportunity to compete in a first-class facility that plays host to the NFL‘s Miami Dolphins, the FedEx Orange Bowl, BCS National Championship Game, and that has been the site of recent and upcoming Super Bowls.

Our fans will experience outstanding amenities including one of the world’s largest plasma TV displays, high-definition video boards, club seating and suites, chairbacks on every stadium seat, approximately 14,000 parking spaces, and a large variety of concessions and restaurants.

The end zones will be redone so that our shared home will reflect both Miami teams’ pride. The Dolphins are actively pursuing a corporate sponsor so that by 2010 the stadium will have a neutral name.

I want to assure all members of our University community-students, faculty, staff, alumni, trustees, donors, friends-and the tens of thousands of fans who regularly cheer us on, that we looked exhaustively into every aspect of the choices in front of us, and that your needs figured prominently in our final decision. The quality of your experience at our games is of the utmost importance to us.

As always, we would like to hear from you. Please contact us at an e-mail address we have established for your comments: umfootball@miami.edu. If you have any further questions, please go to the Official Athletic Department Web site at hurricanesports.com or call 1-800-GO-CANES.

Thank you, and Go ‘Canes!

Sincerely,

Donna E. Shalala

Office of the President
P.O. Box 248006 Coral Gables, Florida 33124-4600
305-284-5155 Fax 305-284-3768

As someone who has yet to attend a Hurricanes football game, I don’t feel this very strongly.

But I know a lot of people who will.

Posted in U.Miami | 2 Comments

Understatement Dept.

Law students — please be aware that this is understatement:

Unsurprisingly, caselaw on coverage for inserting boar tusks into anesthetized patients is rather thin.

Actually, the whole article from which this is drawn Can This Pig Fly? How A Dentist Assaulted A Patient And Made A Million Dollars: Part One in a Two-Part Series and especially part two is pretty interesting and will teach you something about insurance law.

Posted in Law: Everything Else | 2 Comments

Straussians Everywhere

Digby, Hail Caesar.

Posted in Politics: US | 2 Comments

Notes on High Finance

From today's inbox:

Hi Michael,

I will send you $25 in exchange for placing a text ad for a telecom company on this page: [link]

Please let me know if you are interested.

Thanks,
[signed]

I don't know how long the run was to be, so I can't tell if this is a good offer, but in any case, I'm resolutely non-commercial for insurance reasons. So, dear reader, not to worry.

That post, incidentally, is still true, but I can't help but wonder what search led him there.

Posted in Discourse.net | 1 Comment

Bad Times at Ave Maria

It's time to check in on Ave Maria, the Catholic law school with plans to relocate to South-West Florida.

Things were already quite bad at Ave Maria — just how bad can be seen from this Feb. '07 resignation letter from Assoc. Prof. Kevin Lee (“In my estimation the Law School operates in a manner more in tune with Thomas Hobbes than Thomas Aquinas.”). [It's an interesting letter on several levels, not least its assertion of a vision of Catholic legal scholarship as based “in true devotion to Mary.”]

But back to Ave Maria today. Set the scene with the Statement at Mirror of Justice (a blog which I really should read more often); then see the subtly-titled post Dean Runs Amok at AveWatch.org…or read the whole series of entries on that topic.

The full text of the letter sent by Dean Dobranski to the tenured Professor he is trying to fire would be appropriate if the Professor were a suspected ax murderer or rapist. The Dean has yet, as I understand it, to make the charges public (it's not even clear if he's informed the subject of them), but the real offense is thought to be that the Professor “was involved with the faculty's complaint to the school's accreditor, has filed a complaint with law enforcement against Dobranski, and recently called for a renewal of the faculty's earlier 'vote of no confidence' in governance.”

Next, there's the stiff, elegant, letter by Professor Emeritus Charles E. Rice, co-founder and former member of the Board of Governors, in which he urges the current Board of Governors of Ave Maria to fire the Dean, then resign en mass in order to save the school (and themselves).

Fumare, another blog that keeps an eye on doings at Ave Maria, reports that “Professors Lyons and Pucillo have cleaned out their offices and were evicted from the law school this past week.” Evicted? Cf. this Statement from Professors Lyons and Pucillo to AMSL Community.

There is no sign of any of this, however, at Incense, the relentlessly upbeat “independent weblog of alumni & supporters of the many good works of the Ave Maria Foundation, where we accentuate the positive about all things Catholic. Dominus vobiscum.”

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