Lakehead University in Thunder Bay, Ontario has three tenure-track law professor openings.
Information is available here.
Legal Studies Position – Oklahoma State University
Oklahoma State University is the most recent addition to my updated legal studies position list. Oklahoma State is looking for an assistant professor of legal studies to begin in a tenure-track position in August of 2015.
North Dakota State University – ESPN’s College GameDay and Business Law
First Joshua Fershee visits North Dakota, now ESPN’s College GameDay.
North Dakota State University, which is being featured on GameDay this morning, is also one of the schools looking for a business law professor (albeit a “lecturer”) on my updated list here.
While most of my co-bloggers teach at much bigger sports schools than I, as I mentioned previously, it is a lot of fun teaching at a school that gets at least occasional national attention for its sports teams.
Delaware Judges and Law Review Articles
In 2007, J. W. Verret (George Mason) and then Chief Justice Myron Steele authored an article entitled Delaware’s Guidance: Ensuring Equity for the Modern Witenagemot, which discussed “some of the extrajudicial activities in which members of the Delaware judiciary engage to minimize the systemic indeterminacy resulting from the resolution of economic disputes by a court of equity.”
One of these extrajudicial activities is authoring or co-authoring law review articles. In this post, I am not going to weigh in on whether Delaware judges should be authoring law review articles, but rather, I simply note that there are two recent law review articles and one recent book chapter by Delaware judges that warrant our attention.
Vice Chancellor Travis Laster – Evidence-Based Corporate Law.
John Maynard Keynes is said to have observed, “When the facts change, I change my mind. What do you do, sir?” In Delaware’s Choice, Professor Subramanian argues that the facts underlying the constitutionality of Section 203 have changed. Assuming his facts are correct, and the Professor says that no one has challenged his account to date, then they have implications for more than Section 203. They potentially extend to Delaware’s jurisprudence regarding a board’s ability to
Law Professor Positions – Campbell and Wyoming
Two recent professor postings that may be of interest to our readers:
Campbell University School of Law (Raleigh, NC) has posted a law professor opening (commercial law).
University of Wyoming College of Law (Laramie, WY) has posted a law professor opening (business law).
Fried on The Uneasy Case for Favoring Long-Term Shareholders
Last Monday, at Vanderbilt Law School, I attended a presentation by Jesse Fried (Harvard Law) on his new article, The Uneasy Case for Favoring Long-Term Shareholders (Yale Law Journal, forthcoming).
The paper’s abstract describes the thought-provoking thesis:
This paper challenges a persistent and pervasive view in corporate law and corporate governance: that a firm’s managers should favor long-term shareholders over short-term shareholders, and maximize long-term shareholders’ returns rather than the short-term stock price. Underlying this view is a strongly-held intuition that taking steps to increase long-term shareholder returns will generate a larger economic pie over time. But this intuition, I show, is flawed. Long-term shareholders, like short-term shareholders, can benefit from managers destroying value — even when the firm’s only residual claimants are its shareholders. Indeed, managers serving long-term shareholders may well destroy more value than managers serving short-term shareholders. Favoring the interests of long-term shareholders could thus reduce, rather than increase, the value generated by a firm over time.
I provide more information about the paper and offer a few thoughts after the break.
Resumes and Interviews
I have been an interviewee and an interviewer dozens upon dozens of times in my legal career. As a professor, drawing on my interviewing experience from both sides of the interview table, I spend a fair amount of time giving my students comments on their resumes and giving them advice before they go on interviews. Below are some of the comments that I find myself making consistently.
Generally, I think employers want to know three basics things about you as an interviewee: (1) are you capable?; (2) are you likeable? and (3) are you dedicated? (For the purposes of this post, I am going to assume you haven’t given the employer any reason to question your intergrity, but, obviously, integrity is also extremely important.)
I describe each category in greater detail, and provide advice, after the break.
Law Professor Position – California Western School of Law
A California Western faculty member provided me with the announcement below (the emphasis is mine for the benefit of our readers):
CALIFORNIA WESTERN SCHOOL OF LAW in San Diego invites applications for an entry-level, tenure-track faculty position to begin in the fall of 2015. Our curricular needs are in Family Law, Business Law, and Clinical Teaching. We are particularly, though not exclusively, interested in candidates who are interested in teaching in our Clinical Internship Program, as well as in one of the above-mentioned subject areas. Candidates who would contribute to the diversity of our faculty are strongly encouraged to apply. Interested candidates should email their materials to Professor Scott Ehrlich, Chair of the Faculty Appointments Committee, at sbe@cwsl.edu. California Western is San Diego’s oldest law school. We are an independent, ABA-approved, not-for-profit law school committed to producing practice-ready lawyers. California Western is an equal opportunity employer.
Course Objectives and Syllabi
Rebecca Schuman authored a recent article in Slate entitled Syllabus Tyrannus: The decline and fall of the American university is written in 25-page course syllabi.
In the article Schuman complains that in the last twenty years syllabi have grown from 1-2 page simple documents with only the course location, required books, and assignments to “Ten, 15, even 20 pages of policies, rubrics, and required administrative boilerplate, some so ludicrous (“course-specific expected learning outcomes”) that I myself have never actually read parts of my own syllabi all the way through.”
While I won’t go as far as Professor Paul Horwitz goes in criticizing Schuman’s writing, I do want to push back a bit on her critique of “course-specific expected learning outcomes.”
I admit that bloated syllabi can be a bit cumbersome, but drafting what we at Belmont call “course objectives” can be a helpful process and can lead to important changes in the course. Believe it or not, each semester I look at my course objectives, evaluate whether they were met, and revise my courses as necessary. My course objectives have reminded me that I shouldn’t drop that undergraduate group presentation assignment, no matter how difficult it gets logistically.
Dweck on Mindset
This summer, on the recommendation of two colleagues, I read Mindset by Carol Dweck (Stanford Psychology Professor).
On Wednesday, in my first set of fall semester classes, I mentioned Dweck’s descriptions of “fixed mindset” and “growth mindset” because I thought it might be helpful for students to consider.
Dweck says that those with a “fixed mindset” embrace a static view of intelligence, avoid challenges, get defensive in the face of obstacles and criticism, and are threatened by the success of others. People with a “fixed mindset” view failure as a negative verdict on their worth as a person. (pg. 244-46).
In contrast, Dweck says that those with a “growth mindset” believe that intelligence can be developed, embrace challenges, persist and learn in the face of obstacles and criticism, and are inspired by the success of others. People with a “growth mindset” view failure as an opportunity to learn and improve. (pg. 244-46).
To be clear, I (and Dweck) realize that there are limits to personal growth – otherwise I would be at an NFL practice right now instead of blogging – but it is helpful to realize that we can generally improve substantially with effort.
In the