Neither Novel Nor Procedural Nor Questions

Episode Notes

Transcript

[Music]

Joe Patrice:  Hello.

Kathryn Rubino:  Hello.

Joe Patrice:  I’m just going to keep talking.  Hello and welcome to Thinking Like A Lawyer.  I’m Joe Patrice from Above the Law.  That’s Kathryn Rubino.  We are back as per usual to talk about the stories of the week.  This time — we got a kind of a truncated week that we’re in the middle of a year because – 

Kathryn Rubino:  Did you get to do anything fun over the long weekend?

Joe Patrice:  Nope.

Kathryn Rubino:  I at least saw Shang-Chi, The Legend of the Ten Rings.  The new Marvel movie.

Joe Patrice:  I know, because you put that on Twitter.

Kathryn Rubino:  I did.  I thought about it.  First of all, it was a beautiful movie.  I don’t know.  Have you seen it yet?

Joe Patrice:  Hold on.  I’m a little put off because — wait there it is.  We’re having small talk.

Kathryn Rubino:  Indeed, we are.

Joe Patrice:  Yeah.  No.

Kathryn Rubino:  You know the worse of this.  I really thought that if I just barreled right into it, you would forget about the sound effects.

Joe Patrice:  Are you kidding?  This is the most fun part of this job.

Kathryn Rubino:  That’s the highlight for you?

Joe Patrice:  Yeah.

Kathryn Rubino:  Is it that it annoys me or is there something about the sound effect?

Joe Patrice:  I just think it’s going to — I like sound effects.  I think they’re fun.

Kathryn Rubino:  So it’s not that it annoys me or not.

Joe Patrice:  No, no, no, no, no.  It was didn’t annoyed Ellie.  And it’s just carrying over to you.

Kathryn Rubino:  Okay.

Joe Patrice:  Yeah, so again I did see it and I did not have the same theory that you did, which – 

Kathryn Rubino:  I don’t think this is much of a spoiler.

Joe Patrice:  No, it’s not.

Kathryn Rubino:  But I just said that I thought that one of the plots of the movie sort of echoes, the way millennials feel when their parents have been sort of enamored by Fox News, QAnon, Conservative Talk Radio, that kind of world view where it’s like — but “Dad, why do you think that …” that it like make sense?

Joe Patrice:  It is one of those things I did not think.  But then I saw your tweet about it, and it’s now the only thing I can think.  It is absolutely retroactively changed how I pay attention to the whole thing.  So good work on that.

Kathryn Rubino:  I thought I like the second it started happening.  I’m like, this is like a dad who’s into QAnon, huh.

Joe Patrice:  That’s goddamn boomers from a thousand years ago.  Yeah, so that was cool.  That’s fun.  I did also see that.  So I guess that’s a thing that I did or will do because we’re recording this before, whatever.  It’s happened.  I didn’t want to blow your time travel spot here, but we are recording this before the weekend begins.

Kathryn Rubino:  But I still haven’t seen the movie.

Joe Patrice:  Because obviously we aren’t around on the actual Labor Day, which is usually when we would record so it’s a bit of a time.

Kathryn Rubino:  In time you want me wibbly-wobbly.

Joe Patrice:  Yeah, exactly.  Whatever.  I feel like – 

Kathryn Rubino:  Do you know, I made that reference with Chris or other – 

Joe Patrice:  Chris Williams?  Yeah, yeah.

Kathryn Rubino:  Chris Williams are our new assistant editor and occasional co-host of this podcast, and he got it.  He’s like, don’t close your eyes.  I’m like – 

Joe Patrice:  Oh, nice.

Kathryn Rubino:  He get my old doctor who reference.

Joe Patrice:  References, yeah.

Kathryn Rubino:  It was pretty impressive.

Joe Patrice:  Yeah. I felt like we normally try to keep up the – 

Kathryn Rubino:  The charade?

Joe Patrice:  The charade that we record things like the day off, but that’s obviously not true.

Kathryn Rubino:  and you can’t.  No, I can’t do that.

Joe Patrice:  Exactly.

Kathryn Rubino:  No one does that.  Not when you have such high tech things, like sound effects as part of your production value.  You got that six times to put together, you guys.

Joe Patrice:  Yeah, I know.

Kathryn Rubino:  Anything else going on?

Joe Patrice:  Yes.  Actually, the Next Lawyer Up Podcast, which is not one that we’ve talked about much but that podcast, which is a podcast where they interview lawyers from different stripes all over.  It’s kind of a deep dive, I’m like our 30 minutes show.  It’s like a longer, hour long show that really gets deep into lawyers and their careers and how they got to where they were and what prompted then getting into the law and whatever.  And the most recent episode was a deep interview with — I thought, an endlessly fascinating legal journalist.

Kathryn Rubino:  You’re not really fooling anyone, right?  Everyone knows that you’re talking about you.

Joe Patrice:  I mean, it’s interesting.

Kathryn Rubino:  Everybody knows.

Joe Patrice:  I guess I’ll take the compliment if – 

Kathryn Rubino:  That’s kind — no, it’s not a compliment.  It’s that you are obviously the one who says that you are endlessly fascinating.  That’s what I know.  I don’t know that you’re endlessly fascinating.  I know that you think you’re endlessly fascinating.  I mean, where’s the lie?  Where’s the lie?  What I’m saying?  Because your – 

Joe Patrice:  The listening public.

(00:05:00)

Kathryn Rubino:  They get it.

Joe Patrice:  The listening public, all they get.  That’s why this show.

Kathryn Rubino:  I mean listen they understand.  They come here for me giving you some shit.  Let’s be clear.

Joe Patrice:  I object.

Kathryn Rubino:  It was an aggressive little – 

Joe Patrice:  Yeah, I need to find a better objection.  Sound effects.

Kathryn Rubino:  That was a lot.  It was perhaps more than you intended.

Joe Patrice:  Yeah, it definitely was.  But I guess that was my bit of small.  Look, it’s a work in progress.  All these sound effects.

Kathryn Rubino:  You?

Joe Patrice:  No, I know.  The sound effects are a bit of a work of progress.  You know, I’m a bit going to get them all, whatever.  Yeah, so it is at all that we’ve got?  Because if so, I feel like we’re coming to the conclusion of small talk.

Kathryn Rubino:  Yeah, here’s the thing.  The sound effects didn’t used to annoy me.

Joe Patrice:  Interesting.

Kathryn Rubino:  They’ve only annoyed me the more into them you get.  I think maybe that says something about me.

Joe Patrice:  Yeah.

Kathryn Rubino:  Interesting.  To host of weekend legal news, I don’t think anything big happened.

Joe Patrice:  No, I didn’t see anything particularly major on the horizon.  But first, let’s first do an ad.  So let’s hear from Lexicon, and then we’ll get into this.

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Joe Patrice:  No, it was a super slow week in news.  There just wasn’t anything happening.  And then, big news.  Big news had happened.  What was it?

Kathryn Rubino:  It’s not funny.

Joe Patrice:  See, I’m aggressive.

Kathryn Rubino:  It’s not funny.

Joe Patrice:  No, it’s not.  I mean, the news isn’t funny.  The explosion sound effect was funny.  See – 

Kathryn Rubino:  Nuance.

Joe Patrice:  Yes.  Yeah, go on.

Kathryn Rubino:  Yeah, the Supreme Court shadow docket gave its blessing to Texas’s anti-abortion law, SB8, which outlaws abortion after six weeks and horrifyingly deputizes all citizens to turn in anyone they think has aided or embedded someone getting an abortion.

Joe Patrice:  Yeah.  Put together a posse to do this, which of course, for those who don’t necessarily know the weird structure of this law, the reason it’s set up in this way where the government doesn’t go after people who theoretically violate this but instead, random citizens, whistle blow to bring lawsuits to win out $10,000 bounty on people who “aid or embed” abortions is because to make the government or the cops or whatever, prosecute people at this would be illegal.  That is clearly unconstitutional.  So this law was structured in this unique way where they say, “Oh, we the government who it would be illegal to do this unconstitutional, etc.  We are not doing this.  What we’re doing is saying private is individuals can do this and there’s nothing that stops that.  That’s the way it’s put together, which is what the real legal issue here is – there’s multiple legal issues here, but the legal issue that the majority of this shadow docket opinion and the one opinion that all the descending justices agreed to, which it was a 5-4 with Roberts and the democratic appointed justices on the bottom of this.

The one opinion that all of the four agreed to is very much about a procedural issue, which is whether or not given that this question has come up, whether or not it is problematic and should be reviewed, this idea that random citizens can go enforce this law.

Kathryn Rubino:  It would otherwise be unconstitutional.

Joe Patrice:  Right, the majority said, “Well, Golly, this has never come up before so it’s not something we can weigh in on at this point.  So therefore, it should be able to go into effect.”

Kathryn Rubino:  Which is completely disingenuous.

Joe Patrice:  Of course.

Kathryn Rubino:  Right.  And you know, because if it was anything that they politically did not agree with all of a sudden.  Well, this is an issue at first impression.  Therefore, we have to put and stay on the enforcement of the law so that we can hear arguments about this.  It’s absolutely what they want.

(00:10:00)

Joe Patrice:  I mean, I think it was our colleague in legal journalism, Mark Joseph Stern, who put up a tweet just saying something along the lines of, “Imagine if California banned guns tomorrow, but just told private citizens would get $10,000 if they sued for knowing somebody had a gun.  There is zero chance that this law would be allowed to move forward.”

Kathryn Rubino:  Yes, 100%.

Joe Patrice:  And to Robert’s credit — Roberts is in my mind, alternatively kind of a charlatan and that he really doesn’t care about these things, but people pretend he does and people legitimately pointing out that maybe he does care about the institutionalism of it though his opinion just reads as, are you all kidding me?  Of course we can have procedural decisions like this.

Kathryn Rubino:  Yeah.  He seemed pretty salty.  Like reading between the lines it seemed almost incredulous that he has lost control of the court.  And this is a court that will forever bear his name, right.  As chief justice it will always be known as the Roberts Court.  No matter how many dissent he is a part of, it will still be known as the Roberts Court.  I think that he has a very sharp, keen sense of that and I don’t think he’s pleased.

Joe Patrice:  If there’s one legal doctrine or not doctrine, legal trend that I would say dominates, pull out his store — go way, way in the future.  What defined the Roberts Court at least up until now, would be the idea that the doors of courthouses should be shut to as many people as possible.  He’s all about constricting who has standing, constricting who has access to this and that, it’s all about closing down the number of court cases that can ever exist.

Meaning that putting aside whatever personal feelings he has about the Roe v. Wade.  The idea of sending random people into courtrooms to have trials about whether or not they saw a Goody Proctor getting an abortion that is absolutely the opposite of everything he believes.

Kathryn Rubino:  Yeah and I think from his perspective it’s a completely unforced error as well.  Because the court could absolutely, enjoying the Texas law.  Don’t worry they still have the Mississippi law that’s going to have – we’re going to be in this term they’ve already scheduled the opportunity to overrule Roe v. Wade or probably not overruling exactly those words, but kind of death by a thousand cuts mean that functionally people do not have a right to reproductive freedom in this country at least large swath of this country.  And so from his perspective, I think it is – he’s probably not the most angry, but he has a real unique sense, I think of the issues, and his perspective is interesting in that way.

But for the most inspiring, I thought that Sotomayor’s decision was great.  It captured a lot of the anger.  I think many of us feel about SB8.  Justice Kagan’s decision also put a spotlight on the shadow docket and the notion that all these cases are really shaping our law that have not been gone through the official normal practices and procedures that bringing light.

Joe Patrice:  Let’s talk a bit about the shadow docket issues.  Because I think that’s a concept that people aren’t real deep into this law thing.

Kathryn Rubino:  Well, before the last five or so years it didn’t matter so much.  It didn’t happen.  Didn’t come up all that on.

Joe Patrice:  The concept of the shadow docket is that the Supreme Court hears these appeals from the Appellate Courts or State Supreme Courts.  They get them and they schedule them and there are hearings and they go over the record and there’s oral argument, and then they take a long time, and they write these detailed opinions about them.

There was another parallel docket that ran always which was there for emergency issues.  Somebody saying, a good example of this historically is executions.  Somebody says someone’s going to be executed in two days, can the Supreme Court step up and stop this and so there was a docket that basically allowed the justices to act quickly without hearing from people, without writing detailed opinions, but just say, “Hey, you can’t do that right now.”

Kathryn Rubino:  Put a break on it.

Joe Patrice:  Put a break on it, whatever.  And this docket was for those execution injunctions that we’re going to take effect immediately, have huge problems.  It existed for that purpose, and normally as a way of just holding things for some future decision.

Kathryn Rubino:  Mostly for holding the status quo.

Joe Patrice:  Which technically this does.  But only to the extent that the Fifth Circuit had blocked the District Court, which had already itself then blocked the law from going into effect.

(00:15:02)

So the point is, it’s gotten to a point where the shadow docket, which used to be just for these super emergency cases often of literal life and death.  Now is being used over the last few years increasingly by the conservatives on the court as a way to make substantive decisions without any argument on the case, without any paper trail of what they actually think about it.

Kathryn Rubino:  Being unsigned.

Joe Patrice:  Being unsigned as it generally is.  And this has been true of not just this case, but Transban that Trump did.  That was all handled on here.  All of these cases are moving into the shadow docket as a way of putting them increasingly outside the purview of what.

Kathryn Rubino:  To minimize transparency.

Joe Patrice:  To the extent that the Supreme Court is a transparent democratic institution, which is very little – 

Kathryn Rubino:  L-O-L

Joe Patrice:  Which is very little in the first place.  This is an assault on the idea that it’s even that.  I mean, this is reaching star chamber levels of we just make decisions and you live with them.  That increasing reliance on the shadow docket is problem.

Kathryn Rubino:  I think that this is a weird case in the sense that it was an emergency situation because the law was set to go in effect, and that did close all of the abortion providers in the state.  And so, I do think that there is a need for it in these cases, but when they’re using it to change what is constitutional, that’s really where the problem comes

Joe Patrice:  And I think Robert’s dissent is dead on the shadow docket to the extent it exists should be existing to say something like, “No, you can’t do this law right now.  We’re going to have to hear full argument talk.”

Kathryn Rubino:  Right to preserve the status quo.

Joe Patrice:  To preserve where we are.  That would be where he would like to be.  And there’s a reason why of all the justices every dissenter agrees with Roberts, but Roberts doesn’t join any of the other dissenters because they are making constitutional arguments about this, which he probably doesn’t agree with.  But he definitely feels like there’s a problem with the procedure here which is interesting.

Kathryn Rubino:  And the fact that it was also a 5-4 decision puts none to find a point on Amy Coney Barrett’s nomination and elevation to the Supreme Court, which prier is still on the court.

Joe Patrice:  Yeah.  Well, isn’t that’s a good place to transition.  So what gets done about this?  This brings us back to a classic argument that when Elie Mystal was our co-host here, he and I would have but what gets done in light of the kind of Amy Coney Barrett.  Look, I’m going to say this, whether it’s Amy Coney Barrett or Neil Gorsuch, one of them shouldn’t be on the Supreme Court.  I actually don’t care which.

My personal read of how law should work is that Amy should be on the court.  Neil shouldn’t have been because I think that the President gets to do whatever under the current law and — but you can’t really have both in any reasonable way.  But what has to be done to steal someone in there?

Kathryn Rubino:  Yeah.  Who knows?  I know that there have been some legislations introduced 18-year term limit.  Something I know you and I talked about on this podcast before to get rotate folks off of the active Supreme Court, which is I do 100% support but doesn’t provide a ton of relief in the short term.  It’s better than doing nothing.  Obviously, expanding the court is something we’ve heard a ton about.  I am very concerned about the way that plays out.  Not in a year, but in 5 or 10 or 20 years.  I think no one wants to see an 80% Supreme Court.  No one wants to see cater myself on the court.

Joe Patrice:  I still feel bad that she’s the foster child for this.  My issue is there’s nothing necessarily to say that she’s the worst thing in the world is just she’s wildly unqualified to be a federal judge.

Kathryn Rubino:  Sure.  In a world where Amy Coney Barrett, that ship has already sailed.  That’s the next thing.

Joe Patrice:  We mean, Amy Coney Barrett, at least been a law professor.  It catered myself, who’s now a federal judge per the Trump administration.  She was still an associate.

Kathryn Rubino:  Associates are not qualified to be federal.

Joe Patrice:  She had been clerking the year before she was named to be a federal judge.

Kathryn Rubino:  It’s terrible.

Joe Patrice:  Yeah, it’s somewhat terrifying.

(00:20:00)

Kathryn Rubino:  I do worry that expanding the court has massive repercussions in the long term.  But for the short term and I feel very badly but I don’t necessarily know what to do in the short term.  Because in the short term, people will be put in terrible situations.  Folks will lose their lives because we don’t have access to safe abortions across the country.

Joe Patrice:  In the states, yeah.

Kathryn Rubino:  I meant like sea to shining sea kind of a way.  There are plenty of places in the country and it’s only going to get worse where ovulators cannot access safe abortions in a reasonable amount of time and that is going to lead to deaths, and that is terrifying.  And I don’t know what other plan there is in the short term besides expanding the court.

Joe Patrice:  Right, and this is the thing.  This is a conversation on Twitter I had with a host of another podcast, the 54 Pod.  One of their co-hosts made the point that we’ve gotten to a point because of an action where the only reforms that are available are far more aggressive and probably not as good as ones that could have been done earlier, which prompted me to be like, “Yeah.”  Then, I wrote a peace elucidating my thoughts from that conversation, which is there were so many off ramps where somebody could have said, “Look, this court thing seems to be getting out of hand.  Let’s past term limits now.”  I got at a point when it was had bipartisan support.

Let’s do some fundamental reform and jurisdiction stripping to use an issue that Professor Sprigman has been writing a lot about from NYU.  Maybe this is the time for just some jurisdiction stripping, which is a fully available option that legislatures have to just change the Judiciary Act to say, “The Supreme Court doesn’t get to talk about these particular issues.”  None of this happened in the past when it was a viable solution, and everyone just kind of plotted along thinking that this increasingly dysfunctional body of the government was going to be just fine, and it didn’t.  And so we’re left where we are.

Kathryn Rubino:  I think the question of blame is something that I’ve seen a lot on social media and there are some folks who say that we shouldn’t be blaming the left because they’re not the ones who are passing the law.  These laws, they are not the ones who are actively trying to strip women ovulators of their rights, which is true.  But at the same time, I think that it’s very short sighted to say that there was nothing that could have been done to sort of play defense against these threats that we knew were coming.  And I think we need to really interrogate what happened?  What can be done in the future?  And earlier I brought up Justice Breyer, and his desire not to retire.  It is pretty large, especially when Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s seat went to Amy Coney Barrett, and she had the opportunity to retire for eight years of Obama’s administration.

These things are still true, and we really do have to think about it.  And we do have to look backwards in order to have a better understanding, because something I think that you mentioned in your piece as well but something I’ve long thought is that the left — the Liberals have really enjoyed the Supreme Court pretty much ever since Brown v. Board, right?  It has kind of gotten the shine and this glow that the Supreme Court will save us from our worst impulses.

Joe Patrice:  Organization of the Court.  I think is how I put it.

Kathryn Rubino:  Accurate way to put it.  But I do think that there is a sort of shining glow and – gosh, the court will save us.  And that why we ever thought that a fundamentally undemocratic branch of government was our salvation.  And I felt that way too.  I can remember in law school thinking that I’m like, yeah.  The Supreme Court will fix that, and having that.  And maybe it’s also going through law school and kind of being taught and indoctrinated that the Supreme Court is this sort of elite rule, not rulemaking but this check and is rulemaking a little bit.  But this kind of not that many law professors would say that.  But it’s this check on terribleness that happens, particularly when you get through all the civil rights legislation and litigation and whatnot.  And the truth is, no one can save us but ourselves and that’s voting rights, that’s passing legislation, and we can’t depend on nine people.

Joe Patrice:  Unfortunately, voting rights probably depends on those same nine people as it turns out.  And this brings it back to – 

Kathryn Rubino:  Well, I mean there’s also things that can be — yes, anything is shoot.  It does depend on the court.  But that’s also because the Congress and Senate are refused and have not acted on.

(00:25:01)

If they weren’t — well, the courts will take care of it because I think that it also infects our legislators as well.  There’s a back check on all this stuff and there was no back check, no, it’s on you.  You have to pass this.

Joe Patrice:  Not to quote somebody for that proposition that you may not be happy to be on the same side of, but this is very much the old school Scalia opinion.  He wrote back in the day that what bothered him about some of the ways in which the court was being operated as it was being used as a check — used as a backstop by legislators who could then talk a big game without ever worrying about repercussions because they can push all that off on courts and then either do nothing or just talk big.  Either ignore the issue or talk big.  I guess this is his point.  While the court is shouldered with all this stuff that should not be its job.

Kathryn Rubino:  I mean, that is not – well, also was in the sense that it wasn’t by the end of his career, right.

Joe Patrice:  Exactly.  I mean, obviously he didn’t.

Kathryn Rubino:  I mean I do think that looking back at Scalia’s jurisprudence is particularly interesting because I do think he can kind of document where the kind of honest judicial philosophy kind of started morphing into a more practical.  This is the result that is desired.

Joe Patrice:  When he went from Gorsuch to Alito, as I’m saying it, my bad.  Because I think that really is the distinction between those two.  Like there’s a kind of – 

Kathryn Rubino:  Naked politicalism.

Joe Patrice:  A goofy true believer and somebody who literally has no feeling other than naked partisanship.

Kathryn Rubino:  Right.  I do think that – 

Joe Patrice:  Multitudes and by that, I mean, those two.

Kathryn Rubino:  But I do think that they we’re in a dilly of a pickle and – 

Joe Patrice:  Nice.

Kathryn Rubino:  I don’t know how we’re going to get out.  It’s terrifying.  It’s horrible.  You should be angry about it.

Joe Patrice:  Yeah, no.  Absolutely.  Well, so I was going to transition us off of talking about the courts to talk about law school.  You remember law school?

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So talking about law schools, the big news, the big rankings, which are the scholarly impact ranks.

Kathryn Rubino:  No one really cares.  Well, I mean the people on the list probably care.

Joe Patrice:  Years ago, Brian Leiter created these scholarly impact rankings where he would go around and rank based on how many vocations and citations people have which professors are the best.  Since generally our position in this world is rolling our eyes whenever Brian Leiter’s name is mentioned.  We tend not to pay attention to but this task has been handed over to some other people.

Kathryn Rubino:  Or just say, I don’t think Brian does.

Joe Patrice:  Who now handle the – 

Kathryn Rubino:  Scholarly impact ratings.

Joe Patrice:  Scholarly impact ratings and then we have scholarly impact ratings.  And so what do you think about these?  What would you learn from them?

Kathryn Rubino:  I mean my recollection is what Erwin Chemerinsky is one – q

Joe Patrice:  Erwin Chemerinsky is ranks first, yes.

Kathryn Rubino:  Eric Posner second.  I mean, I don’t know.  I just bought Eric Posner’s books.  So pretty influential at the moment for me.

Joe Patrice:  They also work it out by schools, so you can find out what schools have the – 

Kathryn Rubino:  I don’t remember which school?  I’m assuming it’s Harvard.

Joe Patrice:  No.  Yeah, okay.  I mean, obviously largely – 

Kathryn Rubino:  But I would have thought that Harvard might have gotten the none because it’s slightly larger.

Joe Patrice:  It’s bigger.  Yeah, I know.  In a lot of ways with a little bit — more or less tracks, in some ways, it’s actually a more accurate tell of how good a law school is because it’s like the strength of the professors.  But Yale still is number one.  Chicago comes in second, largely driven I think by Posner, as you point out.  Then Harvard gets in there.  Then obviously, NYU.  Further down on this lists so we have Columbia, then at five, then – 

Kathryn Rubino:  So by further down, you mean next?

Joe Patrice:  Yeah.

Kathryn Rubino:  Just to be clear, four to five.

Joe Patrice:  Hey, there’s only 20 points separating NYU and Harvard, and it’s over 100 separating NYU and Columbia.  I don’t know.

Kathryn Rubino:  Anyway, because NYU is so much larger.  Because they’re so much less competitive.

Joe Patrice:  Was that the issue?  All right.  Well, Columbia, then Stanford and Berkeley are tied at six, which, “Wow.”  They did that just for the pure rivalry of it.  Like, say what you will about NYU – 

Kathryn Rubino:  Factual.

Joe Patrice:  — and Columbia but Stanford and Berkeley.  At 8th is – 

Kathryn Rubino:  Probably you’re the only one, I think at this point still holding on to NYU – 

(00:30:02)

Joe Patrice:  What are you talking about?  We have a charity basketball game every year between the two schools?

Kathryn Rubino:  Do they still do that?

Joe Patrice:  No, yeah.

Kathryn Rubino:  They did — when you were in law school?

Joe Patrice:  I mean, I’ve reported on it since I’ve been at Above the Law, actually.  Yeah, it’s one of my favorite things to report on is the results of that game.  I’m not sure they’ve done it recently because – 

Kathryn Rubino:  COVID.  Moving through a global pandemic blah, blah, blah.

Joe Patrice:  In 8th is Pen and then tied for 9th so therefore rounding out the top 10 are Vs, Virginia and Vanderbilt.

Kathryn Rubino:  There you go.

Joe Patrice:  So that’s your scholarly impact.  You know, what’s interesting you were saying that there was this whole thing about the Chemerinsky posting or whatever.  I don’t really know what that metric was because another metric in the study is about general academic influence.  I think maybe that was the most cited.  The one that you were talking about, and then the general academic influence one.  The rankings on that were Cass Sunstein from Harvard, obviously.  Kimberlé Crenshaw comes in second.  Your old professor, Erwin Chemerinsky, then comes in there.  So that was what I saw.

Kathryn Rubino:  Well, there’s lots of different metric, obviously.  And I don’t necessarily think they’re super important, but it is interesting just to kind of see what areas are trending.  Also, obviously, I think Kimberlé Crenshaw’s area of expertise is gotten a lot of play.

Joe Patrice:  Well, at least the words describing it.  Not so much the actual thing she writes about but – 

Kathryn Rubino:  Sure, sure.  But when Kimberlé Crenshaw says something about critical raise theory, I would hope a lot of academics take notice.

Joe Patrice:  Yeah, exactly.

Kathryn Rubino:  Particularly now.

Joe Patrice:  Every time it comes up, I’ve been very quick to always point out to people that there’s a wide gulf between critical race theory and what people keep calling critical race theory.  Anyway.  So, yeah, that was the scholarly impact ratings.  And with that, I think we’re done.

Kathryn Rubino:  There you go.

Joe Patrice:  Let’s have something else?

Kathryn Rubino:  I’m here at your – 

Joe Patrice:  Not really.  You should be subscribed to the show.  That way you get new shows when they come out.  You should give reviews, stars, write something, all that extra engagement but the effort it takes to write it quick this is a great show, specifically that if possible helps the shows that somebody cared enough to write it, and that helps the algorithm and say, “Hey, maybe this is something somebody else wants to listen to.”  You should be listening to the other shows.  She’s got Déjà vu, which she is the host of which talks about diversity issues in the law and I am a panelist on the Legaltech Week Journalists’ Roundtable.  There’s a Legaltech Week Journalists’ Roundtable.

Kathryn Rubino:  Can you — do want to write it down?  You have an entire file full of notes for this podcast.  Just write it down.

Joe Patrice:  I do.  You get the – 

Kathryn Rubino:  I mean, read it.  You read like ad.  You read stuff.

Joe Patrice:  You’re acting as though the issue is me as opposed to the fact that the title of it is somewhat loose.

Kathryn Rubino:  Whatever it is.  Decide what you’re going to call it and just write it down.  Just take notes.  Why are notes difficult.

Joe Patrice:  You know what, I don’t need.

Kathryn Rubino:  You’d be like any Amy Coney Barrett during the recuperation hearing.

Joe Patrice:  Anyway, if you are quite done.

Kathryn Rubino:  Always.

Joe Patrice:  All right.  With all that said, those shows, other shows from — you should check out other shows from The Legal Talk network.  You should follow us on social media.  I’m at @josephpatrice.  She’s at @kathryn1, the numeral one.  You should be reading Above the law.

I know there are some who just listen the show and don’t need update.  You should check that out because then you get some advanced notice of the sorts of stories we’re going to be talking about.  Always, thanks again to Lexicon and Nota powered by M&T Bank for sponsoring the show.

Kathryn Rubino:  Peace.

Joe Patrice:  Okay.  That actually was the end.  Yes, thank.

[Music]

Outro:  The views expressed by the participants of this program are their own and do not represent the views of nor are they endorsed by Legal Talk Network, its officers, directors, employees, agents, representatives, shareholders, and subsidiaries. None of the content should be considered legal advice. As always, consult a lawyer.

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