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- What on earth does the U being ranked within the top 20 by US News & World Reports have to do with anything? Why does it keep getting brought up? If we slipped to 21 next year, would we have no choice but to hire Delahunty? Please give it a rest.
- How come everyone seems to think I don't know the difference between a pleading and a memo? Clearly, no one is trying to slap Rule 11 sanctions on Delahunty. If that was all that was happening, we wouldn't have this controversy (if you believe the claims that this is about professional ethics rather than viewpoint, anyway). So please stop pretending I need remedial lessons in Civil Procedure. I'm not saying I don't, just that it has no bearing here.
- What kind of reflection on the law school are we worried about? How many people look at UC-Berkeley having hired John Yoo and say, "I don't want to go there; it's a haven for war criminals"? Why should we be any different having Delahunty in a much lesser role?
- What's the over-under on the number of 1Ls Professor Delahunty will brainwash into Torturites next year? And if anyone is willing to take the over, how much will you bet me?
- Last, how many 1Ls' grades are slipping because their classmates are using the time they spend complaining about Delahunty to get ahead on outlining? (Sorry, that wasn't really mine, just stems from a comment a friend wished he made at the meeting. Any comments about my grades slipping because I'm spending so much time blogging about this will be ignored. I'm a 2L--we can outline in our sleep. At least, that's what I'm counting on. . .)
20 comments:
1) Our rank indicates we could probably find a perfectly acceptable non-war criminal to teach conlaw for a semester, even on short notice.
2)Clearly, people question your ability to tell the difference between a pleading and a memo because you can't tell the difference between giving legal advice and advocating a certain position. Giving legal advice with no actual basis in the law is obviously unethical; groping about for a legal argument to justify a predetermined illegal behavior is unethical. Coming up with the best legal argument to support your client's position after the fact? That's our job, and most of us would NOT consider it unethical. There is a difference, and it is one you obviously miss.
3) UC Berkley does not employ its war criminals to teach mandatory classes, and what UC Berkley does or does not do has no bearing on what is right for us or for the institution we attend. This is not an actal argument. It is a red herring. Perhaps you will learn to do better as a 3L.
4)I don't think most people are concerned that they will be brainwashed. I think that in most cases, people find it irritating when a particularly offensive ideology is pushed on them against their will. I think that, although it is a legal conception of which you may be yet unaware, the Freedom of Association, on which this law school has made several claims of its own, is a much more pervasive concern. To date, I have not heard any opponents of Mr. Delahunty's appointment voice concerns about being brainwashed. Again, this is not an actual argument, but a mischaracterization of the opposing argument, and it has no factual support. Once more, I wish you better luck as a 3L, but pray on behalf of the opposing counsel that you will someday face that your arguments never improve.
5) The reputation and welfare of our school deserves our attention and our input. Involvement in our school is the very minimum community invovlement that should be expected of us as law students. After all, in our eventual careers, we may have a pervasive impact on the lives of other citizens. We should not shun community involvement because of finals. I would note, as another matter, that no one I know in the top 10% outlines anyway, so it isn't necessary. Get over it and don't judge people for caring about their school instead of putting on blinders and hovering over their books.
Since Ivan is clearly outlining in his sleep, and I'm clearly up...allow me to retort.
1) if your argument is procedural - students at the U should be expected to get a good prof whose credentials have been checked and there might be something screwy about a co-dean system or adjunct profs in general or that other profs and students should have input in hiring decisions so they can express their views on who we hire, I'd agree (as long as you agree that when a tenured prof chooses to write a book or the Dean skips town or is run out or whatever gossip you want to go with the hiring of an adjunct prof may not be as easy as you seem to think). First - short time constraint. Second - MN in the winter. Third - Called Billy Mitchell and noone was home. Fourth - how do you know the candidate list was so damn long?? Especially for a dead-end one-class fill-in position teaching smarmy 1Ls who convinced themselves that although they didn't get into Harvard and they've made a few Scalia jokes and signed a petition or two that their ranking by some meaningless criteria in a crap magazine entitles them to judge who is a war criminal and who can and cannot teach them. Sorry to leave that to 1Ls, but I would hope that most seasoned law students would agree with my interpretation of Ivan's pt -- that the damn top 20 ranking doesn't matter, is pointlessly neuveux riche elitist, and that he used the Berkeley analogy for those of you insistent on comparing yourself based on magazine rankings.
2. Here's a summary of classes John Yoo lists as teaching - International Civil Litigation
International Law
Constitutional Law
Foreign Relations Law
Civil Procedure
International Trade
Separation of Powers Law
- hmmm. either Chicago U or Cal Berkeley seems like they are in the same boat. So "UC Berkley does not employ its war criminals to teach mandatory classes" seems like an uneducated guess at best, and the fact that he's got much more staying power than Delahunty cuts the opposite way of your worry about "mandatory".
I digress...3) "I think that in most cases, people find it irritating when a particularly offensive ideology is pushed on them against their will. I think that, although it is a legal conception of which you may be yet unaware, the Freedom of Association," - nice rhetoric, but no dice. Torture is particularly offensive, yes. You should be angry that your executive branch thinks it is ok to interpet international law the way it sees fit, and then claim in the same breadth that int'l law doesn't exist because it is unenforceable. You should be angry that because of the historical rise of the sovereign-state system that in the 21st century an executive branch can argue with a straight face that it doesn't have to follow customary int'l law b/c it can find legal arguments to the contrary instead of using that unique position to lead the rest of the world into a system where those norms that meet the standard of jus cogens are actually enforceable (which, due to a historical accident or geographic inevitability your government happens to be the key to enforcing those standars). You could do something constructive - write your Congresswoman, run for office, write a book, shout down John Yoo when he comes to speak and says nothing of substance, write an editorial to the Daily saying how weak it is for a Law Prof to be taking pot shots at colleagues and students without calling them by name, organize a coup, dive on a land-mine somewhere to save a kid who never got a chance to go to law school, whatever. Just don't argue in the same paragraph that "noone is arguing that they are gonna brainwash us" and worry about an ideology being pushed on you against your will. Ivan's pt, I believe - is push back. Constructively. Unless you are afraid of being brainwashed or can't figure out how to argue with someone. (not to mention who says Delahunty is going to open class with "I'm not saying I endorse torture, but if I did, here's how I would've justified it." Unless you consider his very breath an act of personal torture)
5) Freedom of Association, I'll admit I'm no expert. Let me run this buy you then and see if you help me figure it out. Try the inverse of what you are saying here - say I'm ethically opposed to abortion. I'm paying tuition. I believe every person that commits an abortion is essentially murdering a child. A prof keels over during holiday break, the co-deans pick a replacement under the radar, I find out that person just happened to argue for Roe. He's been a law prof for a couple years at some non-top 20 school in the area, he has generally good credentials, he certainly has non-academia experience in the field...but I think he's a fucking conspirator to murder. He either says he was just doing his client's work (clearly not after the fact) or he actually believes it isn't murder. And somewhere in the Constitution, or natural law, or section 1981 this freedom of association means that because I believe that the guy is a baby-killer/war criminal, and I find his shtick "particularly offensive", as long as enough of my compadres agree we don't have to associate with him? Meaning we shouldn't be forced to go to class taught by him. Even though he apparently has a contract?
I'm more than a bit confused by this. First - the first amendment clearly protects (and I am happy that this is occurring, and believe that the hiring of Delahunty may have proved a more useful discussion tool and chance for students/faculty to express themselves on an important subject) the right to free speech and expression. However, I thought freedom of association was limited -- you get to hold those beliefs, express them, etc. - but doesn't 1981 of the CRA under Runyon say that if the guy is qualified, eligible, etc - my view on him doesn't matter, and he gets to teach regardless of whether or not I, or 99% of my school thinks he loves killing babies or waterboarding. You have the freedom to express yourself, he has the freedom to respond, just because you pay him doesn't mean you get to fire him b/c the court has read an implicit freedom of association into the first amendment. Nor does the fact that my ass is tied to that chair for a semester b/c I'm in section whatever mean that I have some Constitutional right to skip class and not get a D. Ironic that one uses the freedom of association argument, normally used in its broadest sense by right-libertarians and whites keeping to themselves, in the same paragraph that one insults a fellow students intelligence and explains that their version of freedom of association allows us to keep out profs we don't like after someone else hired them.
6. I'm glad you care about your school. So do I. So does Ivan. As evidenced by his 40 blogposts on the subject. And since you care, I suggest you see above for constructive ways you can help prevent torture or make some sort of difference. Or try and get him kicked out of the school, tell your deans they fucked up, associate with whoever you want to associate with, and feel good about yourself. Or if Delahunty comes, wiretap the room and collect data for the war crimes tribunal. Or, take the guy up on his offer to meet with ANY student who would like to speak to him. Or burn him in effigy outside the law school.
Just don't jump on someone else's blog and disparage their intelligence or their ethics when you aren't at least willing to sign your name.
Thought about signing that petition - thought again. Not gonna happen. Because it's going to take a lot more guts to walk into Mondale Hall after this week then it is to publish anonymous blogposts. And since I'm not worried about being brainwashed I'm gonna sleep happy at night knowing I'm going to do something productive once I get around to staying up late at night and outlining rather than boozing or typing random blog posts on someone else's wall.
- Ole Tvedten
2L who hopes to figure it out when he's a 3L.
PS - If this was anonymously written by a friend of Ivan's on accident just to fuck with him, fool me once, shame on me...but I'm lit.
PPS - while withholding judgment until I figure out if each conservative really is full of shit, (with Paulsen it took about 4 classes, benefit of the doubt being that he was teaching PR) my initial thoughts while being ambushed by Yates on Delahunty Debacle 06: http://la_rana.blogspot.com/2006/11/minnesota-law-school-drama.html#comments
Note: by no means does this mean I am endorsing La Rana's blog. But I mean, cut the guy some slack - he talks in the third person with a blogname meaning The Frog. And the only people who write on there are me and Yates.
I haven't read all the comments, but as to the potential violations of ethics, has anybody raised or addressed the point that the actual legal opinion document given to the White House was not signed by either Delahunty or Yoo. The document was signed by Jay Bybee, who in the interim was appointed to the federal bench.
1) I'm no expert in PR, but if we are discussing ethics, it is not so much Yoo and Delahunty who are in trouble, but Bybee because he is the person who endorsed the end product to the client, meaning he was responsible for the content. Any PR studs out there, is that the right analysis?
2) If our reasons for rejecting Delahunty are based on ethics, shouldn't we be reporting him to the ethics committee of whatever state bar e belonged to at the time of his work in DC instead of signing petitions and writing open letters? After all if we believe so strongly that he is unethical, why should we stop at blocking him from UMN. Don't we have an obligation to report unethical behavior and file a complaint with a state PR board?
3) If we think Delahunty is unethical, Bybee is also unethical. Should we be calling our Senators and Congressmen to have Bybee impeached? The memo only came to light after Bybee had cleared the nomination procees and been installed.
Initial commenter--Ole engaged with the "substance" of your points well enough, so I'll let that be (though I would suggest reading some Freedom of Association caselaw before suggesting it gives you some right not to take a class from a Professor you dislike, but I digress).
I addressed the ethical allegations against Delahunty--at length--below. I'm happy to do it all over again, but it was starting to get repetitive, and I've been wondering what kind of harm Delahunty would really cause. So I asked questions (not arguments, questions; you can recognize the difference by the squiggly thing at the end of the sentence). Yes, they were smarmy, and yes, they were leading (and yes, the last one was obviously asked facetiously). But there's still a difference, one which it would be well worth learning.
I appreciate your wishes for better luck as a 3L in learning this whole lawyer thing. I thought it had been going pretty well, but clearly you can tell better than I can, and those questions I asked--not even worth answering, apparently, except to reiterate some allegations I still haven't seen foundations for--must be more revealing than I'd realized. If you have any advice for me, I'd appreciate it (after all, you go to a top-20 law school! Top 20! Wow!). If it involves only discussing arguments previously and explicitly presented by you, though, I don't feel like playing that game.
Actually, even if we broaden the origins, I've seen so many statements about this now, I have no idea what we're discussing. "It's not about academics, it's about ideology." "It's not about ideology, it's about ethics." "He's a war criminal!" "He'd bring personal views into the classroom." "He insults students." So on and so forth. So I'll just keep asking the questions I feel like asking. If you don't think it's worth engaging with whether having Delahunty here would actually harm anyone, then feel free to continue not engaging. But since you obviously don't know anything about me, I'd appreciate you not making a fool of yourself on this blog by concocting some inadequacies to insult me about. It makes you look bad. Thanks, come again. Or not.
PS: In regard to outlining, you're obviously welcome to follow the example of all those top 10% students who didn't. I don't know how they know they're top 10% or whether they're even credible, but that's not my problem. I'll just say that, though the plural of anecdote is not data, all the top quartile students I discussed grades and studying with did their own outlines, so it's probably something worth considering. There are certainly some that didn't, but I wouldn't just discard the concept because you know some people who did well without. Just an FYI.
and just to chime in an unnecessary two cents: I don't think anyone can, in good conscience, sign the petition uless they have read BOTH the "torture memo" AND the Geneva Conventions.
Yates
P.S. and on a totally unrelated note, have you ever heard anyone but a 1L refer to us as a "top 20 lawschool?" I think the rest of us had that illusion beaten from our souls during the OCI process.
Is it just me, or is the thrust of both arguments (in favor of and in oppostion to the hiring of Delahunty) founded on an irritating amount of self-righteousness?
Opponents of the co-deans' hiring decision base their argument on the professor's "ethical violations". Two points to make here. First, have they read the Geneva Conventions? More importantly, do they understand their applicability to the United States and the breadth by which States Parties to the Convention may interpret such international agreements? Second, it seems fairly clear that people are trying to make news here. I don't know most of these 1L's, but I imagine they are trying to make a name for themselves through their public adherence to some ethical ideal. I imagine these are the same kids who say it is never OK to lie and then lie ten minutes later. They are either flawed idealists or hypocrites, both of whom make me nauseous.
Supporters of Delahunty hiring are throwing fuel on the fire. To me, this is less about the support of conservative and liberal viewpoints and more about stirring the proverbial shit.
Who really wins here? Delahunty must be thrilled that he has gotten so much attention (sarcasm). The Co-Dean's decisions will be second-guessed from here on out, regardless of their final decision on Delahunty's role at the school. As for professors, imagine how awkward the end-of-year faculty party will be! Student commentaries are forgotten and we all get back to studying and working. The U.S. News Reports continue to come out, with UMN drifting between 18 and 22, based on an arbitrary and easily-manipulated evaluation system.
The "good" students in the top 50% get good jobs. The "bad" students in the lower 50% get screwed. (Please note my sarcastic tone, again--I truly do not believe anyone's ability or success as an attorney can be measured by a GPA.) Discussions, like the one from yesterday, are helpful. But let's have these discussions about matters that are important--like the CPDC's inability to bring more than 60-70 firms on campus for interviews.
K.O.
If I could add a couple things. First, let me make it clear that I have a tremendous, almost unfathomable amount of respect for several of the professors who wrote the open letter to students. In fact, I would vouch for their pure excellence and brilliance on any day of the week, including yesterday. I would like to point out some concerns, however, regarding the letter.
I'm not trained in such complex issues, but as a citizen, some of the points didn't make sense.
If Prof. Delahunty gave an "opinion" on the war crimes act, is he not a "decent human being" compared to the undersigned?
Did the "torture memos," -- not a very objective term, eh? -- "facilitate"
the problems at Abu Ghraib, or was that poor leadership and the fog of war? War is generally pretty messy ... soldiers try hard to be humane, but war itself is essentially an inhumane act. War is about achieving political ends through other means. Killing and destruction are some of the core competencies. It is a hard job to decide when to go to war.
However, once you decide, limitations are for those who never see the battlefield.
How does Amnesty International fare in credibility to the DoD Inspector General or the US Military? Are they smarter and more honorable? Or since Delahunty supported the Bush administration, then is he already a war criminal?
Who says Delahunty is "likely to be subjected to investigation?"
Who are the "commentators" who say Prof Delahunty "may be complicit?" How many attorney's at Univ of Minnesota may be "violating their professional obligations" according to another third party? Lots of likely's, may be's ...
I think a judge would throw this case out the door.
I would err on the idea of freedom of speech. If he is a qualified and reputable professor according to the Law School leadership, the other professors need to welcome him. They may not like him, but they can't accept the hiring process that provides their pay check and a relatively positive life style, and then complain when a sheep of a different color shows up.
K.O.
A few corrections. Roberts recused himself from Hamdan, making the final tally 5-3, for whatever that is worth. Berkley did not hire Yoo after he ascended the throne of the second coming of Carl Schmitt. Yoo already worked there when he went to OLC, though presumably was a scumbag then too.
K.O., I found the following to be obfuscatory and troublesome:
"Did the "torture memos," -- not a very objective term, eh? -- "facilitate"
the problems at Abu Ghraib, or was that poor leadership and the fog of war? War is generally pretty messy ... soldiers try hard to be humane, but war itself is essentially an inhumane act. War is about achieving political ends through other means. Killing and destruction are some of the core competencies. It is a hard job to decide when to go to war.
However, once you decide, limitations are for those who never see the battlefield."
That graph serves to associate the recent and widespread torture seen at military prisons throughout the world with the confusion of war. Which to some degree is correct. Torture is an attendant circumstance of war. You are incorrect to the extent you believe this excuses those who facilitate it. You are especially wrong regarding the civilian command, which you nearly recognize when you write: "War is about achieving political ends through other means." Those who help shape and direct the war, politicians (or their lawyers) are the most responsible for the horrors. When you mention poor leadership as a potential explanation you contradict yourself. Delahunty was one of the leadership. So many more thing trouble me about that graph but they are wide-ranging and get off-topic, so I'll leave that for a later day.
Allow me to clarify. You will find that most of my arguments are founded on realist grounds. That goes for my first 2 posts placed in this commentary. What is the reality? What is realistically possible/probable? I have no paitence for idealism.
I agree that the leadership is ultimately responsible for the horrors of war. This seems to be an inherent characteristic of war, generally. My point is simple: war sucks, and war is violent. To what extent can we really expect to halt our violent tendencies in a clearly violent atmosphere? I don't propose the use of or advocate torture in any form. But let's be honest: we chose to pursue our political objectives by killing people. Only an idealist would think that such a Hawkish, brutal mechanism for success stops on the battlefield.
And as for idealists, you know my thoughts. At the very least, my dear Frog, this gave you a chance to take a crack at "the" K.O.
You guys should really be studying and not worrying about what a few excitable, old law professors are worried about......
Andrew
'04 Grad
Hey Ivan, occasional reader, first time poster.
I signed the petition, for sentimental and non-law-talking reasons. I'll leave the hardcore legal analysis to smarter people.
Here's the thing- everyone is freaking out about a petition. It's just a petition. No one's going to drop out of school or blow up the building. At least if they have, they haven't told me. My old hippie parents once got themselves involved in a protest where marshmallows were hurled at a college dean so he would end the Vietnam War. A petition looks incredibly reasonable in comparison. Signing the petition was a fairly dry and ineffective way of saying that I, as a tuition-paying student, disapprove of the way the deanage handled dude's hiring. It asked that deanage to reconsider-well, reconsider what wasn't considered in the first place. I don't think it's a BFD to ask that the deans freaking Google their potential hires. I'm sure they could hire an RA to handle such a task. If people don't like the petition, they can make their own, and it can say whatever they want it to. That's the beauty of America. Besides, as one of the support staff pointed out to me, none of this would have happened if anyone in that building had the stones to say no to a tenured professor.
Second, it's just sad that they care so little about finding someone to teach the class. Second semester con law is where you get into the sticky stuff that gets you excited about being a lawyer. It should be taught by people like Carpenter who can do it well. I hear through incredibly unreliable sources that dude's Con Law class at St. Thomas does reflect his views. Maybe it's true, I hope it's not. Carpenter has lots of views, but he taught Con Law from all sides, without letting his beliefs set the agenda. If the school wanted to hire some wackjob like Dworkin (I think she might be dead, too lazy to look it up) to teach Con Law, I'd be just as irritated. I hope they didn't let her teach things like Con Law back in the 70s, she probably would have run around the room, frazzly hair flying, screaming about the penistocracy or something. People outside the norm in either direction can be kind of fun for seminars, but you need someone who can pull it together and just teach for a required 1L class.
Third, it just skeezes me out. Between the Center for Human Rights and the clinics, the school helps a lot of people who have been victims of torture and torture-related misery. The school has committed itself to human rights work, and that's the reason I chose it. It's like putting the bitch-slappers' club next to the domestic violence clinic. It just feels wrong. And yeah, Paulson is clearly pissed at Weissbrodt. Well, duh. The guy has spent the last 30-odd years trying to end torture, now he's got a coworker who facilitates it. Of course he's going to freak out! Why is anyone surprised? Personally, I think a cage match is in order. Paulson might be younger, but WB is scrappy.
Fourth, and most disturbing, why are we taking sloppy seconds from St. Thomas?
I don't expect that the administration will really do anything about the petition, but it will ensure that the next time they hire an adjunct, they will remember that we are watching. There are some fabulous adjuncts at the school right now who can't get hired. Maybe if we can rattle the deans' collective cages, we can get more input on future hiring decisions. The school exists for the students and the state, not the management. God, we should totally unionize.
-Darcy
K.O.: Everything you said is fine, but apropos of nothing. You agree that the leadership is responsible for the horrors of war, yet disagree that Delahunty, as part of the leadership, is responsible for the horrors of war, ostensibly because war is inherently horrible.
That is an unteneble position, and has nothing to do with your distate for people who refuse to settle (that was cheap, but what the heck).
"Sloppy seconds from St. Thomas"?
"Robert Delahunty grew up in New York City. He was educated by the Jesuit order at Regis High School in Manhattan and graduated summa cum laude from Columbia University in 1968. He was awarded a Kellett Fellowship to study at Oxford University, from which he obtained a B.A. with First Class honors in Classics in 1970 and a Bachelor of Philosophy degree in 1972. He then studied or taught philosophy in England, Scotland, and Canada until 1980, holding research and teaching positions at Oriel College, Oxford University, and a tenured teaching position at the University of Durham in the north of England. During that time he wrote his book Spinoza, which was published in 1985.
Delahunty returned to the United States in 1980 to study law at Harvard Law School, from which he graduated cum laude in 1983."
Columbia, Oxford, Harvard.
He's obviously unqualified, and probably dumb too.
I want to revisit the rank argument for a moment.
1. The context of the position is critical to how interested people would be. It's not a look-see, there's no chance of moving up, and it's in addition to a normal teaching and writing load at another school. There's little to be gained from coming here. It'd also be potentially disruptive to an out-of-the-Cities' candidate's scholarly writing, which further amplifies the risk and restricts the scope of our applicant pool.
2. Rankings arguments that cite just a number do not account for the nonlinearities in the ranking process, nor the breakpoints, nor non-prestige factors concerning the desirability of the position (from Minnesota winter to family concerns of a potential substitute prof). "We're top 20" leaves out a lot of crucial elements to finding replacements on short notice for a no-potential extra class to teach.
3. It's 2nd semester Con Law he's teaching. It's a basic class, where he'd be picking up from a prior prof to teach the remainder of some material. The fact that it's a mandatory core class and that some of the subject matters have been preempted by the first semester add to the undesirability of the position.
4. The fact that he's currently teaching at UST being a contention is snobbery without any other support. As discussed above, his own pedigree (from the educational perspective) is very strong.
Our "status" shouldn't be invoked as an argument against Delahunty, because it fails to account for both the nature of the rankings and the nature of the position.
As far as "sloppy seconds from St. Thomas goes," I'm tired of people treating the U of MN as if it some kind of elite academic institution that hires only the best professors. Mark Rosen turned down an offer of tenure from the U to remain at Chicago-Kent and Heidi Kitrosser was hired (from some school I'd never heard of) after a year in which I didn't hear one person (apart from myself, perhaps)comment positively on her abilities as a teacher. K.O was right about rankings.
Rana--
I need to come up with a cool spanish name for myself. Then again, K.O. is such a great set of intitials, don't you think?
I do believe, after some pondering, that the argument that Delahunty was a "leader" is a bit attenuated. He was an advisor to a leader. As Mr. French noted in the Dean's discussion, he was "lawyering" when giving his interpretation of the Geneva Conventions. He advocated a policy, but did not execute it. Ok, wait. I know you are going to have a field day with the assumptions in that argument, so don't bother. I know what they are.
I am so sick and tired of the discussion that I must recuse myself from further commentary. Given my support though, do you think I could pick up a research assitant position with him? I got a feeling my current employer would not agree with the "position" I have taken in this contest. He might have to "unhire" me.
Now THAT was clever.
"The" K.O.
Yeah, fine, fine. It ain't elitism, it's good old-fashioned annoyance. And my love of the term "sloppy seconds." My distate for St. Thomas comes from my undergrad experiences with Tommies, and some hilariously paiful dealings with their law students. If you've kicked around town for a while (like me), you've encountered Tommies who go out of their way to explain why their (undergrad) school is sooooo much better than the U. They play this three card monte with law school rankings and tell their students they are ranked higher than Mitchell or Hamline, when they're really talking about bar passage rates. It makes me want to throw things. The U doesn't claim to be Harvard, and we'd all have a good laugh if they did. Hamline and Mitchell do their thing without bullshitting their students or themselves, and they turn out some great lawyers.
If Minneapolis is a hard sell for reasons such as weather, proximity to other cities or whatever, then it must be 10 times harder for St. Thomas to hire people. If the guy could teach anywhere, would he be teaching at St. Thomas? Do we even know what his students think of him? I read somewhere on the internets that they aren't particularly impressed with teaching, but I don't know for sure.
And my point exactly is that the U should be choosing profs who are good for the students. I think we all agree on that. If they didn't know that dude wrote the memo heard 'round the world, you seriously think they investigated his teaching abilities at all?
If you ever hear me toss out the phrase "top 20" feel free to slap me. I didn't even apply to any other schools- I'm a yokel, and relly could care less what a managing partner in Miami or L.A. thinks of us. You out-of-towners might go to a Top 20 school, but I go to Da U.
And I definitely agree with the assessment of that one particularly vexing tenure offer :)
-D
Few things.
I've read the memo, while taking Paulsen's Constitution in a Time of War class. It's really, really bad. Not because it advocates torture, which I don't remember it doing.
The memo says the Geneva Conventions do not cover enemy combatants taken in Afghanistan because they are not state actors. It never deals with the commonly held view that Common Article 3 of all 4 conventions makes their coverage gapless. That he disagrees with the "gapless coverage" view is fine, but not even addressing it is like skipping an obvious proximate cause issue on your torts exam.
The US Supreme Court ruled (Hamdan v. Rumsfeld, 5-3, 5-4 counting roberts who abstained as it was an appeal of an opinion he joined at the DC Circuit) Geneva applies , and if I read it correctly, coverage is "gapless."
Ok. So he wrote a pathetic excuse for legal analysis. If given the question on a test at the U of M, he might have failed. I don't fully understand how you guys get grades now, but I would give it between 5 and 7 on the old 16-point scale. That shitting job gave legal cover for awful and inhuman policy.
Nonetheless, I'm still fine with him filling in. I read the open letter and I think the world of Ni Aolain, Gross and Weissbrodt. Ironically, if past experience watching them debate right wing sorts continues to hold, they run circles around him. The problem with people who hate international law is they do not understand it. And in light of Lawrence, Hamdi, Hamdan, etc, big parts of it are now clearly viable authority in US Courts. Then the main argument becomes "I'm not familiar with that treaty/ICJ decision/EU Court of Human Rights/other source, but I don't don't know if that's the way it is in the US." But I do think their view of legal ethics is a bit aspirational.
I don't think one can say that legally Delahunty's client was the US public, and the administration seems fine with his work. As for facilitating torture, that's simply a stretch. But let's assume that the memo makes him complicit and sanctionable. If I remember that rule correctly, the opinion would also have to be incompetent. It was a weak argument. It was overly agressive and ignored the other side -- it seeks to bend the law farther than I've ever done in a brief, but it's AN argument. Further, since I'm sure it will be used the next time the issue comes up if there is a change in the Supreme Court composition, to call it incompetent is pushing things a bit.
This how I see it at the end of the day: I think you have to be either stupid or seeking to justify the unjustifiable to write what he did. If he's stupid, I don't want him teaching. He's not. So moving on, his actions are unethical from a larger moral standpoint. But those are my values. Since I can't say his actions are so bad that they violate legal ethics, the law school is supposed to have all different stripes of thinkers.
TJB
PS -- The difference between Yoo and Delahunty? Go read their bios and tell me if you think they are equal academics. I've see Yoo cited for all mannor of things. Most of the time Delahunty is cited for anything, its along with Yoo and its Yoo's poorer work.
TJB -
Those typos in your postscript were a joke, right? I guess you must have missed Delahunty's BOOK on Spinoza. You probably don't know who Spinoza is, do you? As for Delahunty's legal scholarly work, do you suppose the fact that he spent fifteen years working for the government might have had something to do with his not publishing a plethora of journal articles? Given your legal analysis, I hardly think you are one qualified to judge whether Delahunty would have passed a U of MN law final - as if that's some huge accomplishment.
Wow. Just wow.
I forgot the dead philosopher rule: if you are otherwise not very well-published, one book about an influential philospher improves your academic bonafides exponentially.
Sorry. My bad.
TJB
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