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There Are No Poor People in the Rust Belt

What?

In recent days, I’ve come across not one but two online features that celebrate contemporary Pittsburgh for its economic and cultural sexiness. Largely because of the regional tech economy, the millennials and GenXers who dominate it, and the insistence of Pittsburgh’s Old Guard that what you see today was always the plan for economic recovery after the collapse of steel in the early 1980s, Pittsburgh is back, baby! If this were Southern California and if there were waves on the three rivers, I could imagine Jeff Spicoli saying, “Hey bud! Let’s party!”

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FLW

The Future of Law Teaching

SLU Law
St Louis University

The faculty of the St. Louis University School of Law invited me to deliver the 2017 Vincent C. Immel Lecture on Teaching Law on April 20, 2017. The lecture was not and is not designed for journal publication, but I thought that some (including the audience at SLU) might be interested in what I said. Some of my themes recapitulate things that I’ve written about before, on this blog, on other blogs, and/or in papers posted to SSRN. My remarks, extended and edited and with some end notes, appear below.

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What I Didn’t Know About Pittsburgh, #1

Carrie Furnace and the Oakmont Country Club. George Westinghouse and the Pittsburgh Opera. These things go in pairs – Pittsburgh’s industrial history and its contemporary arts and cultural resources. Having written about Pittsburgh for close to 15 years, I’ve learned about a lot of those pairings. What’s good for the bank account often turns out to be good for the spirit.

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Two Cheers for Copyright

Some people are cheering and some people are shrugging in the wake of the Supreme Court’s decision last week in Star Athletica v. Varsity Brands.[1] The Court held that designs for Varsity Brands’ cheerleading uniforms may be protected as copyrighted works against unauthorized copying by its upstart rival, Star Athletica.Read More »Two Cheers for Copyright