Voir Dire


"Covers topics such as social science approaches to law and legal institutions, legal doctrine and legal policy implementation, and profession issues for academics. On occasion we dabble in the areas of pop culture, politics, and social issues, but for the most part we are not interested in becoming a pundit blog."

Author: Jeff Yates is an attorney and professor of political science at Binghamton University. Andy Whitford is associate professor of public administration and policy at the University of Georgia.

Blawg Related Categories: Law Professors

Recent Posts from Voir Dire


  • Facebook Dilemma — Should we be “friends” with colleagues?

    OK, so I’m a pre-tenure professor lucky to have lots of friends and acquaintances from multiple phases of life including high school, college and grad school. I also have several academic colleagues who I consider…

  • Take on currrent enviornment for judicial nominees

    From BreakingLegalnews.com: Controversial court nominee survives Senate test Political and Legal – POSTED: 2009/11/18 06:23 Democrats on Tuesday crushed a Senate filibuster against a controversial appeals court nominee, demonstrating to Republicans they can’t stop President…

  • What role academia?

    So building off my comments from yesterday I’d like to raise the issue of what political science research has to say about the legitimacy of judicial institutions, point out an apparent discrepancy in research on…

  • New wave in Empirical Research on Law and Courts:

    First, I would like to thank Jeff for the nice intro and for inviting me to blog this week. Second, you should all know I have not done this before so I am hoping you…

  • Introducing guest blogger Eileen Braman

      Please welcome to the Voir Dire blog, our guest, Professor Eileen Braman. Eileen is an assistant professor of political science at the University of Indiana, Bloomington. She earned her J.D. at Fordham University School…

  • Lesson plans on Ebay?

    A NYT article indicates that there is indeed a market for teachers’ lesson plans. Should teachers be allowed to sell lesson plans? Should the schools get a cut? Judging from the number of hits on…

  • Benching the judge-umpire analogy?

    Professor Aaron Zelinsky has recently posted “The Justice as Commissioner: Benching the Judge-Umpire Analogy” (forthcoming, Yale Law Journal). Given that this analogy gets tossed around a good bit in Law & Courts and ELS circles,…

  • A nice opportunity for law & courts junior candidates…

    … if they also have a JD. But, I imagine that at least some of them do. Check out the position at University of Indiana below the fold. KELLEY SCHOOL OF BUSINESS, INDIANA UNIVERSITY Assistant…

  • Evidence based medicine?

    If you can pry yourself away from C-Span and the healthcare debate for a moment, the NYT Magazine has an article this week that addresses, arguably, an even more fundamental aspect of medicine – how…

  • Snitch and the Wire

    Reason’s Damon Root writes about John McWhorter’s list of books on race that should receive more attention. He highlights a quote about Ethan Brown’s Snitch: If there were no War on Drugs, I sincerely believe…