Author Archives: Michael Froomkin

Depression

Posted on June 10, 2006 by Michael Froomkin

Tropical Depression One, that is.

From the look of the projected path, not coming near here, but the 2006 hurricane season sure hasn’t wasted much time getting started.

Posted in Miami | 1 Comment

Caroline is going to PUSH

Posted on June 10, 2006 by Michael Froomkin

I get invited to some pretty cool events, and even manage to go to some. But I’m not sure I’ve ever been to an event quite like the one my wife and colleague, Caroline Bradley, is going to in Minneapolis: PUSH 2006. Billed as “an experience first, a conference second,” they say it’s about the future,

Well, it’s happened. The dizzying and accelerating changes we’ve experienced over the last 100 years have finally brought us to the brink. It’s no longer sufficient to say we’re undergoing some changes, a few pokey paradigm shifts. Folks, we’re in the process of redefining life itself.

Reality, unreality, creation, spirituality, identity, power and meaning–our basic core human experiences are in a state of flux and redefinition. And what a wild ride it’s going to be.

Speakers from all over the world will gather at PUSH 2006 to discuss reality, its virtual variations, genetics, politics, biological miracles, ethics, emerging forms of social organization, and the questions such change raises for us all.

Caroline’s topic (which is something about money, the new financial order, and virtual worlds) is under the rubric “Social Dances: Networks, Power, and Meaning”. And people are going to pay $1,300 to hear her.

Posted in Talks & Conferences | Comments Off on Caroline is going to PUSH

Power Corrupts

Posted on June 9, 2006 by Michael Froomkin

I knew these aphorisms:

  • Lord Acton: Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely
  • Anon: Those who recall Lord Acton’s dictum are condemned to repeat it
  • Anon: Power corrupts, powerpoint corrupts absolutely
  • Advert: Bad power corrupts, get a line conditioner

But now I need to add another one:

Posted in Law School | 3 Comments

Davis or Smith for FL Governor?

Posted on June 9, 2006 by Michael Froomkin

I confess that I have paid almost no attention to the Florida Governor race. Jeb is term limited and can’t run. The GOP primary candidates are running right, although the latest poll shows Charlie Crist well ahead of Tom Gallagher.

But now I learn that the Democratic primary candidates, Rod Smith and Jim Davis, are tied in the latest poll.

I am among the undecided, mostly for lack of information. Comments as to what distinguishes the candidates — both of whom seem to have been endorsed by pols I like — would be welcomed. I sort of gather that Rod Smith is the more electable candidate, but thought Davis had a decent record as a Congressman. But I could be wrong…

Posted in Florida | 1 Comment

Digby Reads the Rove Playbook

Posted on June 8, 2006 by Michael Froomkin

I don’t know who Digby (the proprietor of “Hullabaloo”) is, but s/he has a scary smart analysis of the next page of the Rove playbook at The Theme:

The Republicans have figured out something that the Democrats refuse to understand. All political messages can be useful, no matter which side has created it. You use them all situationally. The Republicans have been adopting our slogans and memes for years. They get that the way people hear this stuff often is not in a particularly partisan sense. They just hear it, in a sort of disembodied way. Over time thye become comfortable with it and it can be exploited for all sorts of different reasons.

In this instance, there has been a steady underground rumbling about stolen elections since 2000. Now we know that it’s the Republicans who have been doing the stealing —- and the complaining has been coming from our side. But all most people hear is “stolen election” and they are just as likely to paste that charge onto us as they are onto them. It’s like an ear worm. You don’t know the song its from, necessarily, but you can’t get it out of your head.

We have created an ear worm that the Republicans are going to appropriate — and they will use it much more aggressively and effectively than our side did. They are already gearing up for it. As I mentioned a month or so ago, Karl Rove was at the Republican Lawyers Association talking about how the Democrats are stealing elections.

See, they’re doing it with all those illegal immigrants they have invited here to take your jobs…

Posted in Politics: The Party of Sleaze | 2 Comments

Law School Grading Curves

Posted on June 8, 2006 by Michael Froomkin

Both Eugene Volokh and Orin Kerr have interesting thoughts on law school grading curves.

The details of UM’s first-year grading policy (set out below) are not, to me, particularly intuitive. The basic principles, though, make sense: we have multiple sections in the first year, and we want to do equity between them; yet, we don’t want to ‘force’ any professor to give As that are not in that teacher’s opinion deserved.

After the first year, there is no required curve for regular faculty (and I don’t use one), but adjuncts — who we presume may not know our system as well, and who also have a greater incentive to grade easy in order to inflate enrollments and positive feedback — are on a curve.

I haven’t looked at it carefully, but our first year curve seems a little lower than Orin and Eugene’s accounts of UCLA’s and GW’s; our upper level curve — to the extent we have one — seems very similar.

Some of the colleagues would justify the relative difficulty of our first year curve on the grounds that even though they are rising, our students’ average credentials are still somewhat lower than a top-25 school’s. And, especially at the low end, first-year grades can provide an important signaling role to students who should think long and hard before spending tens of thousands more on tuition.

Other colleagues, and many students, have argued for inflating the curve on the grounds that everyone else is doing it, so we should to.

Personally, I have never gotten very involved in this debate, on the grounds that a rational hiring partner in a firm will look at class rank, not grade average — and we provide class rank information. Many students, however, end even some practitioners, have argued to me that firms are not as rational in their hiring as I would expect…

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Posted in Law School | 3 Comments