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Marcia Narine Weldon

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Professor Narine Weldon is the director of the Transactional Skills Program, Faculty Coordinator of the Business Compliance & Sustainability Concentration, Transactional Law Concentration, and a Lecturer in Law.

She earned her law degree, cum laude, from Harvard Law School, and her undergraduate degree, cum laude, in political science and psychology from Columbia University. After graduating, she worked as a law clerk to former Justice Marie Garibaldi of the Supreme Court of New Jersey, a commercial litigator with Cleary, Gottlieb, Steen and Hamilton in New York, an employment lawyer with Morgan, Lewis and Bockius in Miami, and as a Deputy General Counsel, VP of Global Compliance and Business Standards, and Chief Privacy Officer of Ryder, a Fortune 500 Company. In addition to her academic position, she serves as the general counsel of a startup and a nonprofit.  Read More

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As I have written about in past posts (see, e.g., here and here), I fall among those who do New Year’s resolutions.

In 2017, I was 25 out of 34 (73.5%). (Yes, I set 34 resolutions; I may be crazy).

The biggest realization I had this year was that I struggled with resolutions that required daily/weekly tracking. A daily/weekly resolution has at least three issues: (1) if screw up once, you’ve blown the resolution for the year, (2) just tracking the resolution takes habit formation and daily/weekly time, and (3) creating a daily/weekly habit is generally difficult.

So, instead of a resolution to run 5x a week, I had better luck with an achievement goal like “run a mile under 5 minutes by the end of the year.” If the achievement goal was tough enough to require roughly 5x a week running then the achievement goal could get you to basically the same place as the weekly goal without the meticulous tracking requirement and with allowing occasional time off. The bigger achievement goals, however, may need to be broken into smaller steps.

My toughest resolution for 2018, and I “only” have 22 resolutions this year, will probably…

We are at a time of year where schools are starting to make offers for professor position.

In business schools, the hiring process is more of a year-round affair than it is in law schools, but business schools have started to learn that they need to hire on the same schedule as law schools if they want to compete for the best legal academic talent. Also, a few business schools, such as the University of Georgia this year, have started to attend the AALS hiring conference.

As I explained a few years ago, working as a law professor in a business school can be a good bit different than working in a law school.

Business school legal studies positions have become more popular in recent years as law school hiring has diminished and as many law schools face financial difficulties. Personally, I have fielded dozens of calls from prospective academics and current law school professors, asking advice about getting a job teaching law in a business school.

The business school legal studies positions are quite diverse – vastly different pay scales, vastly different teaching loads, vastly different research expectations, and some are tenure-track and some are not. As such…

One of the things I have noticed in raising two young children is how both my son and my daughter are much more likely to do what I do than they are to do what I say.

For example, I’ve always encouraged my children to be active, but it wasn’t until I started running that they really started being interested in running themselves. Now, they stage mock races, love their “running shoes,” and ask which foods will make them fast. On the less positive side, when they see me looking at my phone or eating sweets, they want to do the same thing, regardless of what I say is best for them.

Similarly, I had a professor in law school who insisted that we be on-time to class. He explained all the reasons why a habit of punctuality would benefit us in our careers, but then proceeded to be late a number of times himself. He attempted to explain this away, telling us “the partners in the law firm may be late, but that doesn’t excuse lateness from you.” Nevertheless, the students did not seem to respect the professor’s cautionary tale about being late because of the own actions…

Recently, the International Olympic Committee (IOC) announced that Russia will be banned from the 2018 Winter Games for systemic doping. 

If you have not watched Icarus (on Netflix) on this topic, I recommend it. The documentary starts slowly, and the story-line is a bit disjointed, but the information uncovered about state-sponsored doping in Russia is fascinating and depressing.  Even if you are not a sports fan, you may be interested in the parts in the documentary related to the alleged involvement of the Russian government. 

It has been a busy semester, but I am working (slowly) on a journal article on morality clauses in sports contracts. Doping is often specifically mentioned in these contracts, and doping is a sad reality in many sports. Doping also betrays, I think, improper prioritization. While we are starting to see more attention paid to courage and compassion in sports, “winning” has often been promoted as the top priority. Hopefully we will see more people (and  countries) who compete with passion, but also with integrity.  

I have had an opportunity to read the oral argument transcript (112 pages) from Tuesday’s oral argument in the Masterpiece Cakeshop case. 

One of the first things that struck me was that it seemed pretty clear that most of the justices have already taken sides. This is not surprising, but it does sadden me. 

I wish that judges, especially justices on the Supreme Court of the United States, were really trying to get the “correct” answer rather than reasoning backward from some predetermined outcome.  Perhaps that is naive. Perhaps that is not possible. My former Constitutional Law professor warned of some of the political issues with the Supreme Court and recently wrote about the issues in his book Supreme Myths: Why the Supreme Court Is Not a Court and Its Justices Are Not Judges. 

Only Justice Kennedy is thought to be “in play” in this case. All intelligent people of integrity, however, should be aware of their biases, open to the possibly that their initial thoughts are wrong, and open to persuasion based on the law and the facts. Maybe that is too much to ask. Or maybe on of the “reliably conservative” or “reliably liberal” justices will surprise us…

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About five months ago, on June 18, 2017, my paternal grandmother, Septima “Buddy” Holmes Porcher Murray, passed away at age 91. At the time, she was my last living grandparent.

Relevant to this blog, she also provided me a place to live during my second and third years of law school, as she transitioned, slowly on my account, from Atlanta to Charleston. 

Buddy was one of the most positive and generous people I knew. On this Thanksgiving, I am especially thankful for the time I had with Buddy, and that she was able to meet and interact with her great-grandchildren a number of times.

While I am still processing her death, I have decided to post something I wrote shortly after hearing the news and also read at her funeral. These thoughts on Buddy and her life are posted below the break. Buddy’s formal obituary is posted here. 

Paul Caron (Pepperdine) reports that Wake Forest Law has become the 10th law school to accept the GRE. The law school will continue to accept the LSAT.  

Those ten law schools (in chronological order, from earliest adopter to most recent adopter) are:

This shift to accepting the GRE at Wake Forest Law has, apparently, been in the works for over 18 months, and Christine Hurt (BYU) had a nice post on some of the early discussion. Around that time, in February of 2016, Arizona became the first law school to accept the GRE.

Like Christine Hurt, I think this move to including the GRE is probably a good thing, especially if the GRE is shown to be just as predictive as the LSAT. The GRE is offered much more frequently than the LSAT and some pre-law students will have already taken the GRE. Also, I am generally in favor of competition, and the LSAC/LSAT has had a monopoly on law school admissions tests for quite a long time.  

It looks like U.S. News is already converting GRE scores into…

Last week, I posted about the Trump Administration’s hypocritical policy toward Cuba and how the U.S. embargo hurts American businesses (not to mention the Cuban people). The embargo, among other things, focuses on preventing human rights violators in Cuba from profiting from Americans. Wednesday, the Administration significantly rolled back some of the Obama-era changes making it much harder for Americans to travel and making it certain that even fewer U.S. airlines will try to make their fledgling Cuba itineraries work.

Ironically, the Administration released the new regulations while the President is in China and within days of his meeting with the President of Russia in Communist Vietnam. Both China and Russia have a significant number of state-owned enterprises and very few restrictions on U.S. firms conducting business with them. The new policy, which goes into effect Thursday, once again requires people under U.S. jurisdiction to travel under the OFAC  license of U.S. tour groups. As anyone who has traveled to Cuba before the Obama liberalization knows, this significantly increases the cost of the trip. The Trump Administration may not realize that those U.S. tour companies have no choice but to work with the Cuban government, which controls the tourism industry, so…

Every year, the United Nations holds a symbolic but important vote on a resolution condemning the U.S. embargo against Cuba and every year the United States and Israel are the only two countries to vote against it. Last year, the United States abstained in accordance with the rapprochement that the Obama administration began in 2014. A few hours ago, the U.S. and Israel stood alone and voted once again against the UN resolution, while 192 other nations voted for it. Ambassador Haley explained that the vote demonstrated, “continued solidarity with the Cuban people and in the hope that they will one day be free to choose their own destiny.” Prior to the vote she announced to the General Assembly that “today, the crime is the Cuban government’s continued repression of its people and failure to meet even the minimum requirements of a free and just society… The United States does not fear isolation in this chamber or anywhere else. Our principles are not up for a vote … We will stand for respect for human rights and fundamental freedoms that the member states of this body have pledged to protect, even if we have to stand alone.” The United States…