Edward R. Murrow award to our Center on Wrongful Convictions

To:       Law School Community

From:   Shericka Pringle

The Center on Wrongful Convictions and Better Government Association are the recipients of the Radio and Television Digital News Association’s prestigious Edward R. Murrow Award for a 2011 investigation into the costs of Illinois wrongful convictions.

The  CWC/BGA investigation, which was released last July, found that wrongful convictions had cost Illinois taxpayers $214 million in recent years and kept innocent men and women behind bars for 926 years. For details, see http://www.bettergov.org/investigations/wrongful_convictions_1.aspx.

Congratulations to the CWC on this outstanding award.

Chair appointments

We had a wonderful gathering last Thursday to install four faculty members — Thomas Geraghty, Jay Koehler, John McGinnis, and yours truly — into endowed chairs/professorships.  It was a glorious celebration for the recipients.  It was likewise a glorious commemoration of the great work of our law faculty more generally.  On behalf of the Law School, I thank all the faculty, staff, students, and alumni who joined with us in Lincoln Hall to mark this milestone.

East coast travels

Light blogging last week as I traveled to New York City and Washington DC to meet with various alums.

As always, it was terrific to see outstanding Northwestern Law alums, alums doing interesting things in law, business, and public service sectors.  On Wednesday, we began our day with a small meeting at Sidley Austin (arranged by Carter Phillips) and later ventured to the White House to meet with Tina Tchen, Class of 1984, who presently serves as chief of staff to First Lady Michelle Obama.  That night, we hosted 20+ admitted students at a dinner.

Always rewarding to visit alumni in their natural habitat!  And looking forward to another busy week culminating in a meeting of our alumni law board.

Spotlight on public law: Martin Redish

Today is very special for the Northwestern Law School as we celebrate Prof. Marty Redish’s remarkable career.  In response to a simple “what are you up to?,” Marty offers a predictably thorough description of his jam-packed scholarly agenda:

1.  I recently completed a book entitled “The Adversary First Amendment: Free Expression and the Foundations of American Democracy,” which will be published by Stanford University Press, probably early next winter. The book develops a theory of free expression grounded in the theory of “adversary democracy”, which views democratic theory as nothing more than a means of controlled competition between competing viewpoints and interests. While it recognizes the importance of compromise, it views such compromise as merely the mutual promotion of separate individual interests, rather than a joint pursuit of some vague notion of “the common good.” The book critiques the works of more cooperative or collective free speech theorists (e.g., Alexander Meiklejohn and Robert Post), and then applies the “adversary” free speech theory to the subjects of commercial speech, campaign finance and corruption, and expressive anonymity.

2. Next week I will be delivering the Dunwody Distinguished Lecture at the University of Florida Law School; there I will critique established theories of constitutional interpretation, particularly the various categories of originalism and non-textualism, and propose as a viable alternative an interpretive theory I label “controlled activism”, which combines “modest exclusionary textualism” (employing a “no brainer” form of present meaning textual interpretation as a screening device) with a form of principled normative inquiry, policed by A form of Wechslerian “neutral principles” analysis.

3.  My major project over (at least) the next two years is a new book,  to be entitled “American Constitutionalism: The Role of an Independent Judiciary in Democratic Theory.” The book will advance a theory of American Constitutionalism designed to employ a prophylacticly protected judiciary as a means of preserving the democratic system against governmental deception  of the electorate (“macro” constitutionalism) and assuring that individuals may be coerced solely under a consistently applied principled system grounded in the rule of law. The book will argue in favor of the “democratic paradox”—i.e., that democracy may be preserved only through the use of formalistic prophylactic protections of judicial independence. The book will also critique the fallacious theories of departmentalism and popular constitutionalism.

Spotlight on public law: Prof. John McGinnis

I am pleased to turn the spotlight on our cherished colleague, John McGinnis, who is being named to an endowed professorship — George C. Dix Professorship in Constitutional Law — this spring.

John McGinnis will publish two books in 2013—one on improving our democracy for the future and another on preserving the benefits provided by the past in the form of our Constitution.  The first book, to be published in January of 2013 by Princeton University Press, is entitled Accelerating Democracy: Matching Governance to Technological Change.  Continuous technological innovation driven  by the exponential increase in the power of computers creates a restless world of relentless change.  Accelerating Democracy offers a program to adapt democracy to this new world by placing democracy itself within the domain of information technology.   The book shows how new information technologies, like empiricism, prediction markets and dispersed media, can combine to help solve a problem as old as democracy itself—how to help citizens better evaluate the consequences of their political decisions.   If, as the book recommends,  legal reforms take advantage of these new technologies, we can retain and improve the best of the model of governance we have—a politics that seeks to be informed by expertise and social-scientific knowledge—while shedding the arrogance and insularity of a technocracy.  The essential message is that society’s capacity for learning must be increased to match its pace of change.

The second book, to be published in the fall of 2013 by Harvard University Press and written with Michael Rappaport, is entitled Originalism and Good Constitution. Originalism is undergoing a revival in the academy and this book will be in the thick of the debate.  It offers a new justification for following original meaning, arguing that originalism leads to constitutional interpretations that are likely have good consequences for today.  Its key insight is that our supermajoritarian constitution making process likely leads to the entrenchment of good norms and is better than any other process than can be devised for forming constitutional provisions.     And since constitutional provisions are good by virtue of the consensus support they received, their continued beneficence depends on giving them the meaning that gained the consensus.  The book also shows why this justification leads to a particular kind of originalism—original methods originalism—the view that the Constitution should be interpreted according to the interpretive methods the enactors deemed applicable. Following the original interpretive rules remains faithful to the way enactors would derive meaning, which is part of their understanding of what would make the provisions beneficial.   The book thus argues that original methods originalism  provides a way of resolving ambiguities and vagueness inherent in our fundamental law.

Judge Alex Kozinski at Northwestern

Very pleased to be hosting Judge Kozinski, the judge for whom I had the honor and pleasure of clerking for following my law school graduation.  Here is the notice to the Law School community.

Law tuition 2012-13

As we all know, the legal market is in the midst of extraordinary change and the present challenges facing our students –  as with all law students – are considerable.  Since 2008, the supply of law-related jobs has declined sharply and the speed of recovery remains slow and uncertain.  To be sure, Northwestern provides a first-rate legal education and our graduates are much in demand; we remain a worthwhile investment by any credible measure.  Yet, we need to be mindful of the ways in which the current legal economy affects our current and prospective students.

For decades, tuition has increased steadily at a rate higher than inflation at our law school and at nearly every top law school.  Although our rates of increase have been similar to those of our private law school peers, and a good deal lower than the top public law schools, much attention appropriately is being given to the rising cost of legal education and the growing student debt levels of law school graduates nationally.

In order to begin to begin to address this situation in a meaningful way, I am writing to let you know that we are limiting our tuition increase for the 2012-13 academic year to 3%, our smallest percentage tuition increase in at least the past 40 years, if not our entire history.  This rate also coincides closely with current and recent measures of inflation.

This is no panacea, of course.  We are well aware that this first step makes only incremental changes on the significant historical increases in law school tuition at Northwestern and elsewhere.  I am committed to address in manifest and meaningful ways the rising cost of legal education and corresponding burdens of student indebtedness.  Limiting tuition increases is one step; controlling law school costs is another; and looking to our Northwestern friends in the private sector to support the Law School, even in the midst of current economic difficulties will need to be at the center of this strategy.  Northwestern Law School has been a leader in so many respects.  The time has come for us to be an innovative leader in addressing the challenges of the new legal economy.

2011 employment statistics at Northwestern Law

Hot off the presses.

A very comprehensive, detailed report, including detailed salary information and breakdown by law firm size, JD required/preferred, school supported, etc.  We take our commitment to transparency seriously and invite suggestions about how best to collect and provide information to interested constituents.