CAREER
Service to Academic Institutions
Service to Public Institutions and Foundations
Service to the Legal Profession
Welcome to my website!
This website was created while I was a candidate for public office in the summer of 2004. It has been revised and is now being maintained for use by students, academic friends and critics, descendants and relatives, and any strangers who happen upon the scene. It presents my views, acquired over half a century, on many legal topics of continuing public interest.
Its original purpose was to disclose my views on a range of subjects and that is still its purpose. In 2008, my strongest interest is in a manuscript entitled Democracy at the Courthouse: The American Tradition of Private Enforcement of Public Law. The work will suggest that if the world is to succeed in dealing effectively with abuses of the environment or the corruption of government in weak states, it may be necessary to accept the need for contingent fee lawyers empowered to discover information in private files, perhaps with a role for lay decision makers who are invulnerable to intimidation or capture.I am also still actively engaged in efforts to bring the profession and the Justices of the Supreme Court of the United States to a more constrained view of the Court's role and responsibilities. I share this endeavor specially with Roger Cramton, but also with many others. In 2006. Roger and I edited a book on the possibility of term limits. We have other essays in the works to suggest other structural reforms intended modestly to lower the profile and self-image of the Justices. And I have been trying to elevate the interest of Senators and Congressmen in addressing this problem. I share the widespread concern for judicial independence but believe that this virtue would be more likely to be maintained if the Justices set a better example of judicial modesty.
And I remain actively concerned with the abuse of mandatory arbitration clauses. I am delighted that Congress in 2008 has liberated contract farmers from this form of oppression. They now join automobile dealers as the two classes of smaller businesses protected from overbearing contracts of adhesion. I played a minor role in preparing a statement to Congress for those groups and have begged the Judiciary Committees to do more.
Also, I continue to participate in the search for a method of selecting state court judges in light of new impediments to the democratic traditions of some states, including North Carolina. In fashioning new First Amendment law, the Court has been indifferent to the harms to judicial elections. These have become nightmares of heavy campaign spending, much of it defamatory of rival candidates. I had a very minor hand in contriving the 2002 North Carolina system of public finance of judicial campaigns. In 2008, it has survived a constitutional attack in the United States Court of Appeals, but it is far from perfect. The problem requires continuing attention.
My interest in transnational corruption has led me to take an interest in false claims laws, and I have been urging interest groups in North Carolina to consider its uses here.
Although I am no longer a member of the panel of the National Academy of Science, that experience left me with a concern for the ambition of the science community to employ the federal judiciary to override local government in the conduct of publication. I have an essay on that subject that will soon be published.
As the foregoing suggests, the subjects in which I have been professionally involved over the past fifty years are varied and numerous. They are categorized and indexed in the column on the right so that anyone sharing an interest can see what I think about a matter without being burdened with any other information.
Each contains a brief account of my involvement in the subject. Most are linked to one or more of my previous writings, and each contains a bibliography of my utterances. Responses to any or all of the opinions expressed or positions taken are invited by the link to my website provided at the top of each item.
On the left column below the image are links to a curriculum vita supplemented by brief accounts and some links to previous utterances of an autobiographical sort. Those curious about my 2004 campaign will find answers under Political Activity. For kinfolk and anyone curious about the source of my questionable views, there is also a link to my family connections.
INTERESTS: No doubt I would have done better to concentrate my efforts over fifty years on fewer subjects, but it would have been less fun.
Academic Freedom and Civil Liberties
Criminal Law and the War on Drugs
International Relations and Comparative Law
Judicial Independence and Accountability: State Courts
Legal Profession: Contemporary
Local Government and Public Education
Supreme Court of the United States
Transnational Dispute Resolution