Erwin Chemerinsky was up for the inaugural deanship of UC-Irvine's law school - and just had that offer removed. Thoughts?
His casebook may be used around the country, but it is crap.
But he's a very smart and articulate guy and well qualified. He deserved better than to be hired and canned a few months later over nothing.
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...details may be found here. The general consensus that I've seen so far from legal bloggers is a general head-scratching: if he was going to be a lightning rod for organized opposition, it's news to them.
The Fuzzy Puppy of the VRWC. I've been usurped!
http://www.abovethelaw.com/2007/09/erwingate_dean_for_a_day.php
On that poll you choose 'justified' or 'unjustified'. So far it is running 12% justified 88% unjustified.
"We should scrap this “comprehensive” immigration bill and the whole debate until the government can show the American people that we have secured the borders -- or at least made great headway."
Fred Thompson
the guy's a nutter, and so I have no idea why they hired him in the first place (other than the fact that universities hire an overwhelming number of nutters), but once they did, it makes no sense to fire him.
I guess the closest poll option for me is the last but one. As little as I care what I eat tomorrow, it probably generates more emotion than this.
Chemerinsky is the same fool who after the 2000 elections, wrote an op-ed page in the LA Times on December 12, 2000 alleging that voters in Palm-Beach County were confused and deceived by the so-called "butterfly ballot" and that the courts should order a new election just for Palm Beach County to determine the final outcome of the Florida vote in a presidential election. I kid you not!
As if this is not enough, Chemerinsky brought suit on behalf of the Guantanamo detainees in the famed Ninth Circus claiming a violation of due process, and was kicked out even in this unserious arena for failing to establish the threshhold requirement of "standing" that all litigants must meet to commence litigation in federal court.
Then he wrote another op-ed page in the LA Times saying that the Democrats in the Senate must flibuster all of W's Supreme Court nominees. The MSM gives this guy the platform to propagate his left wing ideology. As Dean of UC Riverside Law School, he would have been awaded yet another perch- taxpayer supported- to spout this drivel.
this fool was an advisor to Mike Newdow in his Pledge of Allegiance case, and then wrote an op-ed in the LA Times (6/14/04) yipping about the SCOTUS refusing standing on the case. LAT not surprisingly failed to point out Chemerensky's vested interest in the case.
I don't care how many people call him brilliant, and he may be. He is a hard-left idealogue, a loud and influential one, who has no problems doing his very best to wipe out everything that makes America the "land of the free and the home of the brave".
Screw him. Serves him right, and while UCI has severely misplayed this one (and blamed 'conservative pressure' -- that's rich, in the land of fruits and nuts), the world is a better place where butt-munches like him are not deans of law schools.
It's war -- so when can we start shooting back at the enemy Democrats?
Would Ervin not have led the charge against hiring a conservative, from what we know?
And, is his story as told by the LAT even accurate?
I have strong doubts about the answer to both questions.
That's who he is and why we should be gunning for him.
Well in that case good riddance.
...only applies to L.A. and San Fran. The rest of California, including Orange County, is solidly conservative.
The "conservative pressure" wasn't a grass roots movement, but likely came directly from Donald Bren, a high-profile conservative businessman who donated the millions to start UCI's new law school.
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"We want great men who, when fortune frowns, will not be discouraged." - Colonel Henry Knox
it's that baby-bathwater thing. Lots and lots of good conservative folks in Cali, but they add up to at best 40% of the voters.
It's war -- so when can we start shooting back at the enemy Democrats?
30-40% mainstream Republican types, 5-15% RMSP types.
The frustrating part is though, if we were our own state we'd be one of the biggest sources of Republican EVs around.
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I am certain no lefty would sweat one drop if a conservative were fired.
I am certain Chemerinsky would applaud the firing of a conservative the way he was fired.
Yet that does not make his firing justified.
But I wonder this about that - and Hugh did not explain it to my satisfaction this afternoon when I asked him on air- why should I give a hoot?
This cretin drummed up the false story that the 2000 election was stolen. He has worked to undermine the GWOT. He is against most of what I believe is good for America.
So if he was fired in some left-on-left power problem, why should I give a flip?
I live in Irvine and we definately don't need Erwin here in our city. We don't need to produce any more lawyaers in our state and country for that matter. We have too many already
Allan Bartlett
The nation is denied it's next ultra-liberal law professor. Aspiring liberal lawyers will still have plenty to choose from.
They should hire Eugene Volokh to be their dean.
:-)
While I'm not a supporter of Chemerinsky,(IMO, his legal and social thinking is a part of the problem in this country) UC Irvine Chancellor Michael V. Drake should be fired for making such a horrendous miscalculation.
In the L.A. Times today: "Chemerinsky said in an interview today that UC Irvine Chancellor Michael V. Drake had flown to North Carolina on Tuesday and told him at a hotel near the airport that that he did not realize the extent to which there were "conservatives out to get me." [...]
He said that "concerns" had emerged from the UC regents, which would have had to approve the appointment, Chemerinsky said. The professor said Drake told him that he thought there would have been a "bloody battle" among the regents over the appointment."
http://opinion.latimes.com/opinionla/2007/09/righties-defend.html
Reaffirmation of the Peter Principle.
"Conservatives out to get me"? I assume he means the Board of Regents? Sounds like another leftist denizen of the academy caught trying to slide a komrade in under the radar. Now he's the victim? And the Chancellor of a presitigious university? Sounds like he missed his calling...he oughta run for Congress!
Remember Chancellor Drake...just because you're paranoid doesn't mean that they're not really out to get you!
Fire the bum and then get him some help.
Props to Drake for one thing. At least he had the stones to go tell Chemerinsky to his face. Maybe he hoped no one would notice if he fired him in NC.
Chemerinsky was one of the major, top-tier, A++list intellectuals that a lot of the A-list (and B-list) intellectuals at DePaul used to send their manuscripts to for review. He was a very popular guy there and I'd be shocked!, just shocked! if there's not a lot of email traffic going back and forth in discreetly outraged tones going back and forth right now about this.
I'm the bum who voted "I'd be ticked if they did it to a conservative, so unless he eats puppies or something..." because unless I hear otherwise, this case sounds like some kind of academo-political hit on Chemerinsky. The knee-jerk response is to say: "So what? The guy is anathema here at RedState and I'd never want him to be deciding anything for our country or be in a position of power at any law school."
The problem is that when that gets applied to Conservatives, they not only don't get Deanship positions, they don't get hired *period* -- as faculty members, as janitors, it doesn't matter.
I was at DePaul during their most recent Dean Search and I was appalled at how internecine and scheming the political warfare is in academic law behind the scenes. One of the most qualified candidates was summarily destroyed by an email whisper campaign, based on innuendo and anecdotal reports about his "management style" a-la John Bolton. And no, the candidate wasn't in any way what you could call a "Conservative."
So I'm going to say to Erwin C. that I think if he peels back all the layers of the onion he'll find that the same kind of mean-spirited and downright unacademic tactics were at work here -- except in this case coming from people who are probably like minded!
I am saying this out of basic fairness and because I know how the sausage gets made. If Erwin Chemerinsky can't get hired as a law school dean, you can *forget* about the idea of any Conservative scholar being hired in a similar position if this kind of attack is any indication of how far the "process of self-correction" has fallen.
Legal academia is a hornet's nest, buzzing even louder than other areas of academia simply because it's *much smaller* and everyone literally knows everyone else. So the personality conflicts can be very brusing and brutal. As far as his academic credentials are concerned, Chemerinsky was a regular touchstone and manuscript reviewer for two professors whom I respect quite a bit (although I disagree with them on many, many things) -- Steve Siegel and Susan Bandes, the husband-and-wife legal team at DePaul.
I'd be interested to hear more about how Chemerinsky managed to get kicked out of the running. UC-Irvine is *not* known as a Conservative law school. I guess the problem was that he wasn't *left wing enough* -- or some other similarly silly notion.
How many frickin' lives do you have? I thought you quit, again. I guess I missed your latest apology for quitting and then coming back. Can you provide a link? Why don't you just admit you have a USB shunt in your arm and you have to download your RedState fix every day? Junky.
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Erickson is a pusher and Krempasky is his capo/kingpin/overlord. I need RedState Rehab, but unfortunately because of RedState's charter, I can't get government assistance to go.
It's like a drug, isn't it? :-)
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...and it was funded by a multi-million donation by Donald Bren, a leading O.C. conservative. I wouldn't be surprised if Mr. Bren shared his thoughts on Drake's hiring of a hardcore liberal to head the Bren School of Law.
In a very short period of time, Drake has proven himself to be only slightly better than incompetent and it doesn't stop at academic decisions.
Just a few short months after UCI made national news by making the College World Series, Drake announced that athletics would be de-emphasized, resulting in the resignation of the school's AD and the loss of their baseball coach to cross-county rival, Cal State Fullerton.
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"We want great men who, when fortune frowns, will not be discouraged." - Colonel Henry Knox
I didn't know about the Bren contribution. That changes things a little, because Chemerinsky would have definitely been a slap in the face to Bren if he had kept the Deanship. Who suggested him? I'd like to know more about how it came to be that Chemerinsky made it to the top of the list at a law school that was funded by a Conservative. My guess is that a lot of liberals decided that the Conservative can fund the school but they'll stick it in his eye by hiring one of the most politically liberal deans they can find.
Thanks for the info., that alters the whole landscape. Now I'm glad they canned him.
Chemerinsky did not manage "to get kicked out of the running".
He had already been hired. I suggest that we not celebrate too much that someone has lost a job in academia because of their political beliefs.
That's a weapon that's going to be trained on us a lot more than on the liberals. It's wrong in either case.
At this point I'm all in favor of fighting fire with fire, particularly in schools funded by my tax dollars.
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who should be well able to take care of himself so, I don't much care.
Hopefully the lawsuit will bankrupt the University.
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As a part-time teacher at UC-Irvine, I am quite interested in this case, just learning about it today on the blogs.
I don't agree with this guy at all, but on the other hand, do we as conservatives want to use the tactics of the left?
Furthermore, it puzzles me how conservatives could have so much sway in the UC system. Suggest you check out Captains' Quarters posting on this. Supposedly Chancellor Michael Drake personally went to Durham to rescind the contract telling Chemerinsky that "unnamed conservatives" were making a big ruckus about it.
I think Chancellor Drake should name these "conservatives" that supposedly shipwrecked the hire.
Gary Fouse
adjunct teacher
UC Irvine ext
fousesquawk
It can't hurt the students any more, really, to start fighting back hard.
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I've saw Chemerinsky speak this year. I'm from the far-right, but the man is qualified and brilliant.
Moreover, his casebooks and hornbooks are used for prestigious law schools around the Country. I think this was not only unjustified, it was stupid.
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