Call for Papers: “Teaching Social Justice, Expanding Access to Justice: The Role of Legal Education & the Legal Profession” SALT Oct 2012 Univ. of Maryland

SALT just issued its Call for Panels & Papers for the October 4-6, 2012 SALT Teaching Conference, which includes the 10th Annual LatCrit, Inc/SALT Junior Faculty Development Workshop.

The theme–Teaching Social Justice, Expanding Access to Justice:  The Role of Legal Education & the Legal Profession–will invite discussion about two crucial aspects of legal education: innovative efforts to advance social justice within the law school curriculum and important efforts to extend access to justice to underserved individuals and communities.

Download a PDF of the SALT Call for Panels & Papers. 

New Article: “What Comes After Victory for Behavioral Law and Economics?”

New Article: Russell Korobkin, What Comes After Victory for Behavioral Law and Economics?, 2011 U. Ill. L. Rev. 1653.  Abstract below:

The battle to separate the economic analysis of legal rules and institutions from the straightjacket of strict rational choice assumptions has been won by the proponents of “behavioral law and economics.” With the “revealed preferences” assumption of neoclassical economics—that individual behavior necessarily maximizes subjective expected utility—discarded, what comes next for the discipline of law and economics? This Article argues that theorists should turn their attention to a series of philosophical and methodological problems that surround the measurement of subjective expected utility: (1) the need to recognize and value autonomy for its own sake, separate from its ability to enhance utility; (2) the need to advance a theory of subjective utility that takes into account the use of heuristics in the construction of preferences as well as in understanding facts and judging probabilities; and (3) the need to recognize and confront the consequences of individual difference in the extent of bounded rationality.

CNN Story on Politics and the “Welfare Queen”

Longish story on politics and the welfare queen in the 2012 Election cycle: John Blake, Return of the ‘Welfare Queen’, CNN.com, Jan. 23, 2012.

New Article: “Protecting Low Income Residents During Tax Increment Financing Redevelopment”

New Article: Kristen Erickson, Note: Protecting Low Income Residents During Tax Increment Financing Redevelopment, 36 Wash U. J. L. & Pol’y 203 (2011).

New Article: “Forced Federalism: States as Laboratories of Immigration Reform”

New Article: Keith Cunningham-Parmeter, Forced Federalism: States as Laboratories of Immigration Reform, 62 Hastings L.J. 1673 (2011).  Abstract below:

This Article questions the experimental value of state immigration laws. Analyzing the Supreme Court’s major decisions in this area, including Chamber of Commerce v. Whiting, the Article explains why state immigration laws fail to satisfy two necessary conditions of effective experimentation: internalization and replication. When states internalize costs, other jurisdictions can effectively evaluate outcomes. Replication occurs when states take diverse approaches to common problems. Unfortunately, state immigration laws do not meet these criteria because states operate in a system of “forced federalism”: a division of power between the two levels of government in which subnational jurisdictions attempt to force the federal government to accept state-defined immigration enforcement schemes. But as states thrust their chosen levels of immigration control on the federal government, their potential to innovate on immigration matters is quite restricted. Essentially, forced federalism limits states to a narrow set of enforcement decisions based on federally defined norms — far from the type of diverse testing associated with true innovation.

Today’s state immigration laws also fail to internalize costs — another condition of successful subnational tests. Restrictionist states that encourage unauthorized immigrants to resettle in other jurisdictions export the economic damage they claim illegal immigration causes. In addition to economic spillovers, laboratory states export social costs to the nation by fundamentally altering the concept of a shared national identity. For example, when immigrants flee restrictionist states in order to avoid racial profiling or harassment, the national commitment to values such as egalitarianism and nondiscrimination is weakened. These harms are not confined to restrictionist states but are felt by the nation as a whole.

Not all subjects are ripe for local experimentation and not all tests produce valid results. Despite the appealing image of states as laboratories, today’s immigration experiments will not advance the nation’s ongoing search for sounder immigration policies.

New Article: “Low Income Families’ Utilization of the Federal “Safety Net”: Individual and State-Level Predictors of TANF and Food Stamp Receipt”

New Article: Kelly M. Purtell, Low Income Families’ Utilization of the Federal “Safety Net”: Individual and State-Level Predictors of TANF and Food Stamp Receipt, National Poverty Center Working Paper Series #12-04 (Jan. 2012).

Upcoming Conference: 2012 National Anti-Hunger Policy Conference, Feb. 26-28, Washington, DC

Upcoming Conference: 2012 National Anti-Hunger Policy Conference, Feb. 26-28, Washington, DC

Upcoming Event: Academics Stand Against Poverty Anniversary Workshop, April 12, 2012

Upcoming Event: Academics Stand Against Poverty Anniversary Workshop, April 12, 2012, at Yale University.

Call-for-Papers: ClassCrits V “From Madison to Zuccotti Park: Confronting Class and Reclaiming the American Dream,” University of Wisconsin Law School, Madison, WI, Nov. 15-16, 2012

Call-for-Papers: ClassCrits V “From Madison to Zuccotti Park: Confronting Class and Reclaiming the American Dream,” University of Wisconsin Law School, Madison, WI, Nov. 15-16, 2012.  Full details at the above link.  The deadline for submissions is Feb. 17, 2012.

2012 John Hope Franklin Prize for writing on Race, Racism and the Law

The John Hope Franklin (http://library.duke.edu/specialcollections/franklin/bio.html) Prize is awarded annually by the Law and Society Association to recognize exceptional scholarship in the field of Race, Racism and the Law.  The 2012 Prize will recognize an article published in 2010 or 2011.  The competition is open to all forms of law and society scholarship, to authors at any stage of their careers, and to authors from any country of origin, although article copies submitted to the committee must be in English.  Articles may be published in any scholarly journal, including socio-legal journals, journals in other disciplines, and law reviews, or may be a chapter in a book volume. Co-authored articles may be submitted for consideration.  The Award will be announced during the Annual Meeting.  The prize is a cash award of $500 and appropriate recognition of the recipient(s) during the Association’s Annual Meeting.

The prize is named for John Hope Franklin, a professor of history and law whose interdisciplinary research documented the history of racism and its effects, whose scholarship had both national and international influence, and whose commitments to intellectual freedom, professional service, and civic activism were resolute.

While there is not a limit on the number of articles one may nominate, an article may not be considered for the John Hope Franklin prize and another LSA prize. The decision in determining whether an article should be submitted for consideration by the Franklin prize committee rather than another LSA prize committee rests with the article’s nominator in consultation with the author.

The committee to select the year 2012 recipient of the award includes Tonya Brito, chair (Law, University of Wisconsin), Mario Barnes (Law, UC Irvine), and Tanya K. Hernandez (Law, Fordham University), Blanca G. Silvestrini (History, University of Connecticut), and Kaimipono D. Wenger (Thomas Jefferson School of Law).

Nomination Process: Nominations may be submitted by authors or others.  Articles and letters of nomination must be submitted as an attachment in Word.doc or PDF.pdf format by February 1, 2012 to this address: franklin_prize_nom@lawandsociety.org.