Eugene Volokh's Blog, page 2596
March 13, 2012
The Machinery of Criminal Justice: From Public Morality Play to Hidden Plea Bargaining Machine
In yesterday's guest-blog post on my new book, The Machinery of Criminal Justice, I surveyed how colonial American criminal justice was public, participatory, informal, and run by laymen.
To be clear in response to some comments, I did not imply that we should go back to Salem witch trials, let alone medieval European trial by ordeal. Nor did I endorse flogging or rampant use of the death penalty, though actual executions were much less common than most people suppose. Nor did I say that we ought to get rid of all modern due process and lawyers and go back to 20-minute-long trials (though one can question how much better modern plea bargaining is in practice). My point was more modest: that the colonists saw justice done and had their day in court. In our Whiggish assumption that the past was irredeemably backward and all change is progress, we often overlook what we have lost in our quest for efficiency.
Today, I'd like to set forth some of the things that changed over the course of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, transforming the lay-run morality play into a professionalized plea bargaining assembly line.
First, over the course of the nineteenth century, public prosecutors steadily gained control of American criminal justice at the expense of victims. Some colonies did have public prosecutors, but their role was occasional and limited. To give just one example, some public official was needed to prosecute homicides because, for obvious reasons, the victim could not. But there was nothing like a professional, state-dominated system of routinely detecting, charging, and prosecuting crime.
Prosecutors, of course, lack victims' personal stake in the outcome. That is good as a way to check private vengeance, but it also opens the door to what economists call agency costs: the distinctive self-interests and incentives that influence public servants. Salaried prosecutors usually have little reason to invest extra work in any one case, particularly if they are part-time employees who can earn more by getting back to their private clients. Prosecutors are also a politically ambitious bunch who may want to burnish their reputations by winning a few high-profile convictions at trial.
In addition, prosecutors may care about keeping their conviction rates up, trading severity of sentences for certainty in the course of plea bargaining (see below). If they care about racking up conviction statistics, and lack personal stakes in any case, they may lean toward prosecuting easier-to-prove victimless crimes. In a victim-run system, such crimes would be prosecuted only where they at least indirectly affected some victim.
Second, defense lawyers gradually came to stand in for defendants. Back in the eighteenth century, victim and defendant would tell their stories at trial almost in a shouting match, letting juries hear both sides first-hand.
As defense lawyers increasingly entered the picture, however, they advised their clients to let them do the talking. Instead of offering excuses or pleading for mercy, defendants increasingly stood mute. That transformed the trial from a morality play between the protagonist and antagonist into a courtroom duel between professional adversaries. And because those adversaries were professionally trained and repeat players, they developed intricate rules of evidence and procedure, further distracting the trial's focus from who did what and who deserved what.
But third, those courtroom duels became increasingly rare. The sprouting of technical rules made trials much longer, from minutes to hours and then days. (Today, a good number take weeks or even months.)
During the nineteenth century, courts became increasingly busy with civil (tort) lawsuits over streetcar and railroad accidents, factory injuries, and the like. So prosecutors, defense counsel, and judges alike came to share an interest in clearing their dockets through speedy plea bargaining. And since they were all repeat players, they could develop going rates and market prices for recurring crimes.
From the point of view of these insiders, plea bargaining made perfect sense. Lawyers who have seen a lot of trials can predict with some accuracy whether a jury will convict and what sentence a judge will likely impose.
In exchange for offering a charge or sentencing discount, prosecutors free up time and resources to pursue more cases. Defense lawyers cap their clients' sentence exposure, receive discounts, and get cases over with quickly. And trial judges clear their dockets and avoid the possibility of embarrassing reversals on appeal. Just as private bargains make both sides better off, because each side gets something it values more, so plea bargaining makes all the participants feel better off.
If plea bargaining makes everyone happier and is so efficient, why then does it remain controversial today? That depends on whether one looks at it primarily as a matter of public law or of private (contract) law. The lawyers who negotiate the bargain may all be better off; they efficiently dispose of caseloads and trade off severity of sentences for certainty of more sentences. The lawyers see the process primarily as a contract, a private deal that happens to serve their professional and personal interests as well as their understanding of the public interest.
But that perspective leaves out the public, the laymen to whom criminal justice is not a private bargain but a public morality play. From the public's point of view, plea bargaining is opaque, it cheapens justice by commodifying it, and it is often dishonest (as when, for example, a charge bargain reduces attempted murder or rape to aggravated assault). Victims may feel sold out and excluded, and defendants may feel they have gotten away with something.
These wildly divergent perspectives on plea bargaining track what I call the great gulf that separates criminal justice insiders from outsiders. The contours of that gulf, and the ways that it harms criminal justice, will be the topic of my next post tomorrow.
March 12, 2012
Bob Levy's Statement on the Cato vs. Koch Conflict
I agree with most of what co-blogger Jonathan Adler says about Cato Chairman Bob Levy's recent statement on the conflict between the Kochs and the Cato Institute. It is, overall, a persuasive document and much more detailed than Charles Koch's earlier defense of the Koch position.
As I have said from the beginning, the best and easiest solution to this problem would be for the Kochs to drop their lawsuit. Regardless of whether their suit is legally meritorious (which is not clear), it is likely to do far more harm to the cause of libertarianism than good. Even if the Kochs win, and even if they have a good plan for the future of Cato, the new Institute is likely to lose much of its credibility, and many of its top scholars and analysts might well depart. The Kochs would end up acquiring an asset that has lost much of its value. If the Kochs aren't willing to drop their suit, they can at least reduce the likely damage by announcing a credible slate of independent, libertarian board members whom they would appoint to the Cato board should they win.
I recognize that the Kochs genuinely believe that their legal rights have been violated and that Cato's leadership has acted badly. Even if they are completely right about this, this is one of those cases where the best course of action is to forego asserting one's legal rights.
For now, the legal and public relations war between Cato and the Kochs seems likely to continue. Unfortunately, both sides could end up losers. Cato because the lawsuit is a distraction from their work and contributors are less likely to give money to the Institute while its future is in the air; the Kochs because this confrontation is a public relations setback for them, and because it is more and more evident that they are unlikely to gain much from it even if they win.
Like Jonathan, I probably will not post again on this topic unless and until there are some new developments.
New Case on Ex Ante Restrictions on Computer Warrants
As regular readers know, I'm very interested in the new practice some magistrate judges have adopted of conditioning computer warrants on ex ante restrictions that they themselves create and attempt to impose on law enforcement. A district judge recently decided a new case on the role of the restrictions that in my view demonstrates why such restrictions are troubling. The case is United States v. Salceda, decided on February 27 by Judge Snyder of the Central District of California.
First, a brief background on those who are unfamiliar with the practice. (If you want more details, read my recent article Ex Ante Regulation of Computer Search and Seizure.) Imagine the government wants to conduct a search, and they apply for a warrant. Traditionally, the role of magistrate judges has been to review the warrants applications for probable cause and particularity, as the text of the Fourth Amendment requires. If the warrant application establishes probable cause and satisfies the particularity requirement, the judge must issue the warrant. In the last few years, however, some magistrate judges have taken on a new role. These judges worry that computer searches are more invasive than traditional searches. They also don't trust the process of litigating the constitutionality of computer warrant searches after-the-fact. As a result, they have begun conditioning the issuance of computer warrants on special conditions that they devise.
For example, a judge might say that he won't allow the warrant unless the government agrees to not use any evidence discovered in plain view. Or the judge won't allow the government to have the warrant unless the government agrees to search a computer a particular way. The basic idea is to use the magistrate judge's power to issue or deny the warrant ex ante to try to regulate what happens later, with each magistrate judge free to impose whatever restrictions he or she wants (beyond probable cause and particularity) to try to ensure that the resulting search won't be too broad. Most magistrate judges have not imposed these new restrictions, but a number have. The lawfulness of imposing such restrictions currently remains uncertain. The Vermont Supreme Court heard argument nine months ago on what likely will be the first appellate case to directly consider the lawfulness of the practice, but no decision has been handed down yet.
That brings us to the Salceda case. The police had probable cause to believe that Salceda had child pornography on his home computer. They asked for a warrant to enter Salceda's home, seize his computer, and look for evidence. Magistrate Judge Parada agreed that the government had established probable cause and particularity, but then decided to impose conditions on the warrant. Specifically, Magistrate Judge Parada decided to impose a condition designed to deal with the fact that the police can't know what is inside a computer when they execute the initial search at the suspect's home, and therefore for practical reasons have to seize each computer they find and search it back at the lab to see if it has the evidence sought. Appellate precedent has allowed this initial seizure on grounds that such a practice is reasonable. But the magistrate judge imposed a condition that law enforcmeent had to conduct an initial search back at the lab within 60 days of seizing each device to determine if the device had evidence described in the warrant. The warrant then included the following instruction:
If, after conducting such an initial search [within 60 days from the date of the execution of the search warrant], the case agents determine that a digital device is an item to be seized or contains any data falling within the list of items to be seized pursuant to this warrant, the government will retain the digital device for further analysis; otherwise, the government will return the digital device.
In Salceda, the government seized the suspect's computer, searched it in the initial 60 day period, and found lots of child pornography on it. The agents then put the computer aside. Almost two years later, as the case picked up again, the agents decided that they wanted to search the computer a second to find the rest of the child pornography on it. But at this point the agenta ran into a problem: Judge Parada's warrant restriction wasn't clear about whether they could do this. The warrant said that they could "retain the digital evidence for further analysis," but it's not clear if that meant that they could search the computer again or merely hold on to it or analyze files already searched.
The police applied for a second warrant to search the rest of the computer based on the evidence of the child pornography already discovered during the first search. As far as I can tell, the request for the second warrant was submitted to the duty judge, who happened to be a different judge. The second judge, Judge Zarefsky, told the investigators to go ask Judge Parada to clarify what the search restriction was intended to do instead of obtaining a second warrant, and denied the second warrant application.. The agents decided instead to search the computer again based on the first warrant, taking the view that the restriction allowed the agents to conduct "further analysis" such as searching the computer. The second search of the computer discovered more child pornography. The defendant then moved to suppress the extra child pornography discovered during the second search.
Held: The extra child pornography must be suppressed. Here's the analysis:
The Court finds that any evidence discovered during the September and October 2011 forensic searches is inadmissible. The original warrant's "further analysis" language is ambiguous as to whether it permits the government to analyze defendant's digital devices for additional evidence of contraband, or whether it merely permits additional analysis of previously discovered contraband. Given this ambiguity, suppression of the evidence is appropriate. See Transfiguracion, 442 F.3d at 1228 (construing ambiguities in plea agreements in favor of a defendant because the government, as drafter of the agreement, bears the "responsibility for any lack of clarity") (internal quotation marks and citation omitted); Wilhelm, 425 F.3d at 463 (finding fourth amendment violation because officer "recognized the warrant as ambiguous before the execution of the warrant, but failed to immediately stop execution and seek the necessary clarification of a warrant in order to make certain the warrant particularly described the place to be searched. . . ."). The Court's decision is informed by the fact that the government sought–and was denied–a new warrant from Judge Zarefsky, and thereafter sought ex parte relief from this Court before conducting the subsequent searches. At the very least, the government's conduct demonstrates its acknowledgment that the "further analysis" language is ambiguous. In denying the government's ex parte application, the Court directed the government to seek clarification from the issuing judge to cure any ambiguities. Because the government chose to proceed with the searches without clarification or without securing a new search warrant, that evidence must be suppressed. See Wilhelm, 425 F.3d at 463.
Salceda is premised on the wrong analysis, I think. The Fourth Amendment requires reasonableness, and the Supreme Court and circuit courts have created a doctrinal structure for what reasonableness means and when unreasonable searches justify an exclusionary remedy. In my view, it is improper for magistrate judges and district court judges to simply ignore that binding appellate caselaw and replace it with an inquiry into whether agents properly followed a particular magistrate judge's ex ante restrictions. In Salceda, the court seems to envision the warrant as some sort of contract between the government and the magistrate judge. She then asks if the agents lived up to their end of the deal, without ever considering any actual Fourth Amendment principles. But that's just wrong, in my view. Warrants are not contracts, in which judges get to strike deals with investigators about what investigators can do. The Fourth Amendment requires reasonableness, and that allows investigators to do some things and not others. Reasonableness is up to the appellate caselaw, not individual magistrate judges with particular preferences.
The important Supreme Court precedent here is Richards v. Wisconsin, 520 U.S. 385 (1997). In Richards, a magistrate judge refused to allow agents to execute a warrant without first knocking and announcing their presence. The agents did so anyway. The defendant moved to suppress the evidence on the ground that the search was unlawful because it violated the magistrate's express condition of granting it. The Supreme Court disagreed in a unanimous decision by Justice Stevens:
In arguing that the officers' entry was unreasonable, Richards places great emphasis on the fact that the magistrate who signed the search warrant for his hotel room deleted the portions of the proposed warrant that would have given the officers permission to execute a no knock entry. But this fact does not alter the reasonableness of the officers' decision, which must be evaluated as of the time they entered the hotel room. At the time the officers obtained the warrant, they did not have evidence sufficient, in the judgment of the magistrate, to justify a no knock warrant. Of course, the magistrate could not have anticipated in every particular the circumstances that would confront the officers when they arrived at Richards' hotel room. [n.7] These actual circumstances–petitioner's apparent recognition of the officers combined with the easily disposable nature of the drugs–justified the officers' ultimate decision to enter without first announcing their presence and authority.
In my view, that's the right way to analyze Salceda, too. The issue should be whether the search was reasonable, and if not, whether the exclusionary rule should apply. The details of whether the agents did or did not follow the search restriction — and how that ambiguous search restriction should be interpreted — should be irrelevant because it is not relevant to the reasonableness of the search itself.
2013 US News Law School Rankings
are up on USN's website a bit early. I've grown weary of all the hoopla around U.S. News, but here they are for what there worth. The one thing that stands out is that Arizona State somehow managed to propel itself to number 26. Comment away. Please keep in mind, though, that US News ranking should at most be a guide to the general reputation of law schools, with a significant margin of error. For the vast majority of prospective law students, the most important criteria to narrow down law school choice should be where you want to practice, followed by how much debt you are willing to take on. And I'll repeat the advice I've given before: incoming students' LSAT scores, reflecting an objective indication of the decisions of tens of thousands of law students, is the best overall indication of how desirable a law school is. But individual circumstances vary, and, for example (to choose a random example), a student who can't stand smallish towns and wants to live in the San Diego area after graduation is almost certainly better off going to USD than to, say, Indiana University.
Debating the Constitutionality of New York Blight Condemnations
The Fordham Urban Law Journal City Square website has posted a debate between NYU Professor Roderick Hills and myself on the the New York Court of Appeals controversial decisions upholding "blight" condemnations in the Atlantic Yards and Columbia University cases. In my 2011 symposium article "Let there Be Blight," I argued that these takings violated both the New York state and federal constitutions. I especially emphasized the incompability between the court's decision defining blight so broadly that virtually any area could qualify with the New York state constitutional provision limiting blight condemnations to "substandard and unsanitary areas." Hills has written a critique of my analysis. My reply is available here.
Hills is one of the leading property and federalism scholars out there, and I always learn from our exchanges. As I explain near the end of my reply, in this case there may be more areas of agreement between us than initially meet the eye.
Pseudonymous Posting Using AOL, Hotmail, or Yahoo Now Works
We had a glitch that kept people from posting using AOL, Hotmail, and Yahoo (all of which make it easy to post pseudonymously) — sorry about that — but that's been fixed.
Court Refuses Ron Paul Campaign's Attempt to Subpoena Identity of Video Author
The opinion (Ron Paul 2012 Presidential Campaign Committee, Inc. v. Does (N.D. Cal. Mar. 8, 2012)) also in the process rules — correctly, I think — that signing one's video "Vote Ron Paul" doesn't violate federal trademark law, because it's not a "commercial use":
Plaintiff argues that it has met the Lanham Act's commercial use requirement for two reasons: (1) Defendants used a Twitter account to post the video on YouTube and both of these websites are commercial in nature; and (2) the video was intended to frustrate Plaintiff's fundraising efforts and increase the amount of money contributed to Presidential nominees other than Ron Paul.
The first reason is meritless. Plaintiff essentially argues that any individual who uses a commercial website — whether it is to post a video on YouTube or send an e-mail through Gmail — has automatically satisfied the commercial use requirement under the Lanham Act. While it is true that the websites for both Twitter and YouTube may have commercial purposes, it is Defendants' conduct that is at issue here. And it is this conduct that in some way must be connected to the sale of goods and services for the Lanham Act to apply. Accordingly, Plaintiff's first reason does not persuade the Court that Defendants' own use of Plaintiff's trademark was in a "commercial or competitive context." See Stanislaus Custodial Deputy Sheriffs' Ass'n v. Deputy Sheriff's Ass'n of Stanislaus Cnty., 2010 WL 843131, at *7 (N.D. Cal. Mar. 10, 2010).
Plaintiff's second reason requires a closer analysis. The Court agrees with Plaintiff that Bosley [a Ninth Circuit precedent] does not directly address the question of whether an individual who improperly uses the trademarked name of another politician to express an opinion has done so in a commercial context that satisfies the requirements of the Lanham Act. But Bosley does explain that "[T]rademark infringement protects only against mistaken purchasing decisions and not against confusion generally." Bosley goes on to stress that the "appropriate inquiry is whether [the defendant] offers competing services to the public." See also Stanislaus, 2010 WL 843131, at *6 (analyzing Bosley and other cases to find that "if an actual sale of goods is not involved, the infringer must be engaged in some form of commercial competition"). The District Court in Utah summarized the Tenth Circuit's view on this issue as follows:
In our view, the defendant in a trademark infringement and unfair competition case must use the mark in connection with the goods and services of a competing producer, not merely to make a comment on the trademark owner's goods and services …. Unless there is a competing good or service labeled or associated with the plaintiff's trademark, the concerns of the Lanham Act are not invoked.
Koch Indus., Inc. v. Does, 2011 WL 1775765, at *3 (D. Utah May 9, 2011) (citing Utah Lighthouse Ministry v. F.A.I.R., 527 F.3d 1045, 1054 (10th Cir. 2008). In Koch, the defendants created a website that impersonated the plaintiff's company website, and then issued a press release that contained a political message and was designed to appear as coming from the plaintiff. The Koch Court dismissed the plaintiff's Lanham Act claims for failing to meet the commercial use requirement, explaining that the defendants' "press release and fake website did not relate to any goods or services and were only political in nature." Koch specifically rejected the plaintiff's theory that the defendants issued the press release to attract more contributions to their activities since the defendants never even identified themselves in their press release or fake website.
While Koch is not exactly analogous to this matter, it — as well as other decisions in the Ninth Circuit — establish that a critical issue in this analysis is whether the trademark infringer is alleged to have offered any competing services. Plaintiff does not address this issue in its amended ex parte application. And the Court's review of the video shows that Defendants did not identify themselves as a competing organization and did not solicit any contributions. More importantly, and why Plaintiff's request for expedited discovery is denied, the complaint does not contain any allegations that Defendants released the video to compete with Plaintiff.
Paul Alan Levy (Public Citizen) has more on the subject; Public Citizen was the lawyer for the defendants.
Debating the Moral and Legal Status of Secession
Jason Kuznicki and Timothy Sandefur have written responses to my post critiquing Kuznicki's earlier statement that the idea of legal secession is a "category error."
Kuznicki writes:
Of course, it's indisputably true that some secessions are authorized by some countries' constitutions. Others, however, are not. Within these two types of cases, authorized and unauthorized, we can also imagine specific acts of secession that we find ethically justified or ethically unjustified.
That a given constitution forbids secession does not in my view mean that all secessions from it are necessarily unjustified. It means only that we have to justify them through extraconstitutional means, and these means must in themselves be weighty enough to also justify overthrowing the existing legal order.
Similarly, that a given constitution allows secession does not in my view automatically justify all secessions carried out under it. We may still find some of them ill-advised or even unjustified. There's nothing about constitutional law that says that where the law permits a thing, the conscience has to be silent.
I agree with all of the above. But I think it is in some tension with Kuznicki's previous comment on the subject, which claimed that "[s]ecession is the decision to step out of an existing political order, so it's a category error to try to justify it legally." Kuznicki's most recent post, by contrast, suggests that such justifications are not category errors at all, though sometimes they may be wrong for other reasons. However, we all sometimes make off-the-cuff statements (or, in this, case twitter posts) that don't fully reflect our considered views. I know I have done it, so I can hardly blame Kuznicki for doing so.
I have more disagreements with Sandefur's post:
Jason Kuznicki and Ilya Somin make the critical error of mistaking "secession" for "revolution." Revolution means to overthrow a political and legal order, while secession is a legal theory—it is the theory that for a state to leave the union is itself within the legal order. It is therefore literally incorrect to say that secession is the "attempt to step outside the legal order." That's revolution. The American Revolution was not an attempt at secession—note that the word was virtually never used by the Revolutionary leaders. On the contrary, the term secession came into use in the decades before the Civil War as an attempt to justify a (pseudo-)revolutionary act within the legal order.
As I explained in this post, secession and revolution are not mutually exclusive categories. At least as used in contemporary English, secession is used to denote any effort to split off part of a state's territory and form a new nation, whether legally or not. Some secessions also qualify as revolutions, in the sense that they seek to establish a political regime very different from that which existed before. The American Revolution was an example of revolutionary secession. By contrast, some secession movements are not revolutionary in this sense (e.g. – today's secession movements in Scotland and Quebec, which seek to establish parliamentary democracies only modestly different from those that presently exist in Canada and the UK). It is true that the American Founders did not use the term "secession" in the 1770s. But that's because it had not been invented yet, not because it isn't an accurate description of (part of) their agenda.
Sandefur is also far more certain than I am that secession was illegal under the US Constitution as of 1861, arguing that "many of [the Constitution's] pre-1865 provisions—from the Guarantee Clause to the Privileges And Immunities Clause—were absolutely incompatible with secession, and the subsequent amendments are even moreso." This may be true, but I am not so sure. The Guarantee Clause and Privileges and Immunities Clause impose various obligations on "states" that the federal government can enforce. However, if states have a right to secede, they would no longer be "states" of the American Union after such as secession has occurred. At that point, the Constitution – and the federal government's power to enforce its provisions – would no longer apply to it. The clauses Sandefur mentions are plausibly interpreted as applying to all states in the Union, for so long as they remain part of it, but not if they secede. Imagine an Alcoholics Anonymous chapter that has a clause in its charter giving the organization the authority to guarantee that the members never drink alcoholic beverages. Does such a clause necessarily mean that members are forbidden to leave AA (and therefore no longer be subject to this clause)?
I don't think any of the above proves that secession is constitutionally permissible. It only demonstrates that the issue is a closer call than many suppose.
Sandefur also suggests that, if secession is legal, it requires no additional justification:
[I]f the law allows secession, then no more justification is required—just as a person wanting to sell his car requires no further justification than that he wants to and it belongs to him. If secession is a legal right, no further rationale is required (at least, vis-a-vis the federal union). But if secession is not legal—that is when further justification is required (and in the case of 1861, is lacking). Only if it is a law-breaking act do we get to the question of whether it is nevertheless justified in some moral sense.
I think this is wrong. Many legal activities might also be immoral or unjust. Slavery was legal in many states until 1865, but it was still an evil, and people still had a moral obligation not to become slaveowners. Similarly, secession for the purpose of protecting slavery was evil even if it was legal under the Constitution.
Change in Commenting Platform
As many of you have noticed, over the past several months we've been dealing with server load problems, comment posting glitches, and comment functionality problems (such as the lost ability to edit comments). These have been related, since optimizing comment functionality seems to have lead to untenable server loads, and optimizing server load has led to comment problems.
On the advice of our technical people, we're therefore moving comments off-server, to the Facebook commenting system used by sites such as the L.A. Times, TechCrunch, Power Line, and others. This should let us provide more usable comments without service brownouts or long page load delays.
Note that you will still be able to post anonymously (or pseudonymously), simply by using an AOL, Yahoo, or Hotmail account, or indeed from your Facebook account, if your Facebook account is pseudonymous. You should also be able to easily delete your own comments; and comments will also be nested into threads, you'll see the comments of people you're friends with at the top, and you will be able to notify friends via your Facebook wall if you've commented on a VC post. And we'll be better able to do housekeeping, such as deleting duplicate comments, and deleting the rare comments that violate our posting guidelines.
To use the commenting feature, just go to the comment page, as you have before. You will then see either (1) a box for your comment text, in case you are already logged in to your Facebook, AOL, Yahoo, or Hotmail account, or (2) a login prompt, if you aren't yet logged in. And if you are logged on to your Facebook account, but don't want to post using that account, you can easily just click on "Not you" (in the "Posting as YourName (Not you?)" line).
Old comments to old posts will still be visible, as before. Posts that were open for comments before the changeover will have the legacy comment threads still readable.
We think this should be the optimal solution for everyone -– for those who just read the posts, and thus need to avoid brownouts; for those who want to comment under their own names; for those who want to comment pseudonymously; and for us, since we'll be able to more easily manage comments. Please bear with us for the next few hours, as the conversion takes place, and for the next few days, as any glitches are ironed out.
Law Students Interested in Summer Study in Rome?
Just wanted to let any VC readers who might be interested in studying in Rome this summer about our Temple Law program – I'm particularly excited about this summer's program, as I'm going to be teaching a new course of "Rome, the Roman Republic, and the Constitution" and I think it's going to be really quite interesting. [I know the flyer says that the deadline has passed, but I think they're still accepting applications ...]
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