Author Archives: Michael Froomkin

Encouraging Students to Take Foreign Language Courses

I don't know why I had to read this on Above the Law (no, not that), but it seems that UM Law school is implementing a very good change in the tuition structure which will ensure our students can take language (and other) courses in the University without extra charge. See University of Miami School of Law Slows Growth of Tuition.

I often tell students that they enhance their employability for any international work, and also much domestic work, if they speak another language well. And I tell students who have a basic grasp of a foreign language — often it's locals who speak Spanish but don't write it as well as they speak it — that they can get law school credit for advanced language courses in the college. (Last I checked they can't get credit for very basic language courses.)

But students sometimes reported that registration wasn't simple — and one of the issues was that sometimes the law school passed on the extra tuition charges the college charged it for those courses.

I don't know if the Dean's announcement means we have worked out a way to avoid those charges or if we will be eating them — Above the Law seems to get more news about Miami than I do these days — but either way this is good for students who want to brush up their language skills and signal competence to future employers.

(We also teach some introductory civil law classes in Spanish, which I recommend to students with at least near fluency so that they can acquire a basic legal vocabulary.)

Dean White's memo to students — which either wasn't sent to faculty or I missed it in the crush of work — is included below (as reported on ATL).

Continue reading

Posted in Law School | 3 Comments

Prisoner Remake On the Way

I confess, I am a fan of the (original) Prisoner. I am not the fanatical sort of fan, just one who has seen them all at least twice. I recognize they are dated. I admit the ending of the series is mostly stupid, and what is not stupid is mostly nuts, and what is not stupid or nuts is fun.

I don't say there should not be a remake. I just say I would really hate a bad remake.

The Original

The Prisoner TV Show Opening Theme 1967 – 1968

The Remake

New Trailer For The Prisoner (2009)

Is this going to be a bad remake? American prisoner – not ideal. Ian McKellen as Number Two – very good. Rover is missing? – not sure how I feel about that.

Posted in Kultcha | 14 Comments

Jotwell Launches Today

Today is the official launch of Jotwell: The Journal of Things We Like (Lots), a new online law journal that I am editing. At Jotwell you will find leading academics and practitioners providing short reviews of recent scholarship related to the law that the reviewer likes and thinks deserves a wide audience. We launch with a great set of original contributions spanning a wide range of legal topics.

Jotwell is a special type of law review housed on a set of inter-linked blogs. As a law review, Jotwell has only one mission: to bring to readers' attention great recent scholarship related to the law. As a blog, Jotwell invites your comments.

We have an amazing team of superb contributors, whose names are listed in the sections:

On the Jotwell main page you should expect new content once or twice a week, although as we add more sections contributions may become more frequent. Each of the subject-specific sections will have something new at least once a month. In any case, every time a new review appears in any of the subject-specific sections, an excerpt with a link to the full text will also appear there.

There are three ways to read Jotwell.

  1. You can visit the main Jotwell page, which aggregates all the sections; or you can sample just the sections you like, choosing from the list in the right column.
  2. If you use a newsreader, you can sign up for the RSS feed for the main Jotwell section, or select among the feeds for the subject sections by choosing the link to the RSS feed found in each section.
  3. Or, if you prefer to get your updates by e-mail, you can click here to request a message every time we have new article, or click on the email link found in every subject section for a more tailored, and less frequent, reminder.
Posted in Jotwell | 2 Comments

Economist.com Does ‘7 Questions for Dan Froomkin’

Economist.com, Democracy in America, Seven questions for Dan Froomkin

My favorite of the seven:

DIA: Much of Huffington Post’s traffic is driven by gossipy stories about sex and entertainment. Are you concerned about the effect this has on the site's respectability?

Mr Froomkin: It’s not my favourite thing about the site. But mostly, I recognise it as evidence of how the Huffington Post is truly a creature of its medium. A fair amount of people come to a website in part to be entertained, and to deny that would be to turn away a large audience of potential news consumers. And please keep in mind that our staid, holier-than-though newspapers carry horoscopes and Sudoku, not just news. I know some people who subscribe to newspapers primarily because they couldn’t live without the comics.

The kids' demand for the comics does seem to be why we still get the Miami Herald. Even though they now print some so small I can hardly read them.

Posted in Dan Froomkin | 9 Comments

The Scene In Torts Class on Friday

Almost forgot to post this Halloween pix — we had a guest lecturer in Torts class. A number of students also dressed as someone (or maybe his) familiar.

hallowclass.jpg

Posted in Law School | 2 Comments

Jotwell Call for Papers

Jotwell: The Journal of Things We Like (Lots) seeks short reviews of (very) recent scholarship related to the law that the reviewer likes and thinks deserves a wide audience. The ideal Jotwell review will not merely celebrate scholarly achievement, but situate it in the context of other scholarship in a manner that explains to both specialists and non-specialists why the work is important.

Although critique is welcome, reviewers should choose the subjects they write about with an eye toward identifying and celebrating work that makes an original contribution, and that will be of interest to others. First-time contributors may wish to consult the Jotwell Mission Statement for more information about what Jotwell seeks, and what it seeks to achieve.

Reviews need not be written in a particularly formal manner. Contributors should feel free to write in a manner that will be understandable to scholars, practitioners, and even non-lawyers.

Ordinarily, a Jotwell contribution will

  • be between 500-1000 words;
  • focus on one work, ideally a recent article, but a discussion of a recent book is also welcome;
  • begin with a hyperlink to the original work — in order to make the conversation as inclusive as possible, there is a strong preference for reviews to focus on scholarly works that can be found online without using a subscription service such as Westlaw or Lexis. That said, reviews of articles that are not freely available online, and also of very recent books, are also welcome.

Initially, Jotwell particularly seeks contributions relating to:

We intend to add more sections in the coming months.

References

Authors are responsible for the content and cite-checking of their own articles. Jotwell editors and staff may make editorial suggestions, and may alter the formatting to conform to the house style, but the author remains the final authority on content appearing under his or her name.

  • Please keep citations to a minimum.
  • Please include a hyperlink, if possible, to any works referenced.
  • Textual citations are preferred. Endnotes, with hyperlinks, are allowed if your HTML skills extend that far.
  • Authors are welcome to follow The Bluebook: A Uniform System of Citation (18th ed. 2005), or the The Redbook: A Manual on Legal Style (2d Ed.) or indeed to adopt any other citation form which makes it easy to find the work cited.

Technical

Jotwell publishes in HTML, which is a very simple text format and which does not lend itself to footnotes; textual citations are much preferred.

Contributors should email their article, in plain text, in HTML, or in a common wordprocessor format (Open Office, WordPerfect, or Word) to ed.jotwell@gmail.com and we will forward the article to the appropriate Section Editors. Or you may, if you prefer, contact the appropriate Section Editors directly.

Posted in Jotwell | Comments Off on Jotwell Call for Papers