News in Brief @ Yale Law school opening Argument’s unique double-sided layout ensures that topics receive equal treatment. Alumni who wish to contribute op-eds to opening Argument should contact Justin Muzinich (justin.muzinich@yale. edu) or Tara Helfman ([email protected]). | Y L r Summer 2006 publications It was Opening Argument’s third issue Opening Argument Broadens Debate at YLS (which simply asked contributors “Is NSA WHEN JOINT-DEGREE STUDENT Justin Muzinich and Tara Helfman ’06 first con- wiretapping good policy?”) that garnered sidered starting an op-ed publication at the Law School, they envisioned their peers the most attention from outside the Law School. Contributors included Harvard and faculty as their primary audience. A non-partisan publication focused on current Law School Professor Alan Dershowitz ’62, issues, they reasoned, would be a means of fostering political dialogue within the YLS Senator Conrad Burns, Yale Law School community. Professor John J. Donohue, and several YLS But Opening Argument quickly found ground as far as what’s going on, what students. The issue, in fact, had just been legs beyond the Law School’s courtyard people are talking about,” Muzinich says. printed when it was included in brief- and classrooms. By its second issue, the Among the issues Opening Argument ing materials for members of the Senate publication included opinions on U.S.-U.N. has debated: the Law School’s stance on Judiciary Committee on the eve of their relations penned by former House Speaker military recruiting; the Alito nomination; NSA hearing. Newt Gingrich and former Member of the economics and employment policies of Besides that unanticipated audience of Parliament Tony Colman. By the third issue, Wal-Mart; the South Dakota abortion ban; policy makers, the editors’ greatest reward the publication found its way into the dos- and energy policy. has been seeing Opening Argument being siers of the Senate Judiciary Committee Opening Argument’s form follows its read and discussed at the Law School. just as its NSA surveillance hearings were function as the publication’s philosophy of “Some of the best reactions have been beginning. pluralism guides both its graphic design from people who hold staunch viewpoints Since last September, Helfman and and editorial content. Inspired by Mark and who are sometimes surprisingly grate- Muzinich have put out four issues of Opening Argument. Each issue tackles two By the third issue, Opening Argument found its way current, hot-button public policy topics. into the dossiers of the Senate Judiciary Committee, Though Opening Argument takes aim at just as its NSA surveillance hearings were beginning. controversial subjects, its editors hope to create discussion without being divisive. “We want to foster an exchange of Twain’s Diaries of Adam and Eve, each issue ful for having had read a well-written, views where different sides can be debated is designed with a double-sided layout, opposing viewpoint,” Helfman says. openly and given equal treatment,” ensuring its topics receive equal treatment. The other reward, Muzinich adds, has Helfman says. “We want to shy away from Diversity of both viewpoint and experi- been the positive response and financial people assuming staunch viewpoints and ence is the editors’ key criterion in selecting support Opening Argument has received. talking only to their own camps. What contributors for the publication. First-year Every good publication has its fairy god- we’re trying to do is bring all of the camps law students’ opinions are frequently mother; Opening Argument’s came in the into one eminently readable and concise printed alongside those of senators and form of the Zelia P. Ruebhausen Student publication.” business leaders as the academic and voca- Fund established to foster student and fac- The questions posed by the co-editors tionally oriented alike are invited to weigh ulty intellectual exchange. are frequently inspired by email, classroom, in. The issue that tackles Wal-Mart, for Though Helfman graduated this year, and student lounge discussions. In fact, an example, includes a rather theoretical con- she plans to stay involved in Opening email thread that began on the 3L listserv tribution by Richard Epstein ’68 and a more Argument. “Justin and I both feel a bit pro- after a YLS student asked a question on operationally oriented opinion written by prietary over this,” she says. “We started C-SPAN gave Opening Argument its first Wal-Mart’s Executive Vice President and Opening Argument with a commitment to topic—diversity in judicial nominations. Chief Operating Officer Eduardo Castro- first-rate content, and we’ve striven to pro- “We really try to keep our ear to the Wright. vide exactly that, issue after issue.” Œ ˘ News in Brief Law School Announces Five Faculty Appointments Five new faculty members join the YLS community this academic year, bringing their expertise in the areas of constitutional, criminal, corporate, employment, and immigration law. Christine Jolls, a leading scholar in employment law and law and economics, joined the Law School faculty as a professor of law. Jolls has been in the forefront of the emerging field of behavioral law Heather K. Gerken, whose areas of and economics, a cutting-edge area Yair Listokin ’05 was recently study include election law, constitu- of scholarship that incorporates appointed associate professor of law. tional law, and civil procedure, joined behavioral models into the eco- His primary research and teaching the faculty as a professor of law on nomic analysis of law. interests are business organizations, July 1. Gerken is one of the country’s A Phi Beta Kappa graduate of bankruptcy, contracts, corporate leading experts on voting rights Stanford University, Jolls majored in finance, and empirical legal studies. and election law, the role of groups English and quantitative economics Listokin earned an A.B. magna cum in the democratic process, and as an undergraduate. She received laude in economics from Harvard the relationship between diversity a J.D. magna cum laude from in 1998, a Ph.D. in economics from and democracy. Harvard Law School (where she won Princeton in 2002, and a J.D. from Yale Gerken comes to YLS from Harvard the John M. Olin Prize in Law and Law School in 2005. Law School, where she was appointed Economics) and a Ph.D. in economics As a YLS student, Listokin was twice assistant professor of law in 2000 from the Massachusetts Institute of named the John M. Olin Prize winner and promoted to professor of law Technology. for the best student paper in law in 2005. An acclaimed teacher, she Jolls joined the Harvard faculty in and economics, and he was a John M. was the first junior professor in the 1994 before serving as a law clerk for Olin Fellow in Law and Economics. In history of Harvard Law School to Judge Stephen F. Williams of the D.C. 2005-06, he clerked for Judge Richard receive the Sacks-Freund Award for Circuit, and then for U.S. Supreme A. Posner at the U.S. Court of Appeals, Teaching Excellence, awarded Court Justice Antonin Scalia. She Seventh Circuit. annually to Harvard Law School’s returned to the Harvard faculty most outstanding instructor. in 1997 and was named professor A summa cum laude graduate of of law there in 2001. Jolls won the Princeton University, Gerken earned Harvard Law School Dean’s teaching her J.D. (also summa cum laude) award in spring 2003, and served as from the University of Michigan Harvard Law School’s vice dean for Law School. She served as a law scholarship and intellectual life in clerk for Judge Stephen Reinhardt 2003-04. of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Jolls serves on a number of Ninth Circuit, and for Justice David H. editorial and advisory boards, is a Souter of the United States Supreme research associate of the National Court, before entering private prac- Bureau of Economic Research tice in Washington, D.C. (where she co-directs the Program Gerken is currently working on a in Law and Economics), and serves book on the trans-substantive con- as reporter of the American cept of “second-order diversity” in Law Institute’s Restatement of American public law. Employment Law. Jolls is currently working on a book entitled Equality’s Tools. | Y L r Summer 2006 Access to Knowledge conference Draws hundreds to Law School The information revolution holds great but fragile promise for devel- opment, freedom, and justice. But without a coherent framework for Michael J. Wishnie ’93, a graduate why access to knowledge matters, of both Yale University and Yale Law this potential could be undermined by School, recently joined the YLS faculty Tracey L. Meares will join the Law the growing trend of ownership and as clinical professor of law. School faculty in January 2007 as a regulation of knowledge. Wishnie’s expertise includes immi- professor of law. Meares’s teaching To help determine the future of this gration law and the civil rights of and research interests center on Access to Knowledge (A2K), Yale Law immigrants, including the rights of criminal procedure and criminal law School’s Information Society Project, non-citizens in the workplace, under policy, with a particular emphasis led by Professors Jack Balkin and the welfare laws, and on habeas on empirical investigation of these Yochai Benkler, sponsored a confer- corpus. His work at the Law School subjects. ence on April 21-23, 2006, at the Law will address employment issues Meares earned a B.S. in general School. affecting low-wage and undocu- engineering from the University Policy makers, activists, industry mented workers and civil liberties of Illinois, and a J.D. from The leaders, and academics addressed after September 11, in a program University of Chicago Law School.