Brian L. Frye
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brianlfrye.bsky.social
Brian L. Frye
@brianlfrye.bsky.social

Dogecoin Professor of Law & Grifting. Securities artist & conceptual lawyer. Legal scholarship's #1 plagiarism apologist. Maybell Romero’s +1. https://linktr.ee/brianlfrye

Brian Lawrence Frye is an American independent filmmaker, artist, and law professor. His work includes Our Nixon, for which he served as a producer with his ex-wife, Penny Lane. His film Oona's Veil is included in the permanent collection of the Whitney Museum of Art, and his writings on film and art have appeared in The New Republic, Film Comment, Cineaste, Millennium Film Journal, and The Village Voice. Filmmaker Magazine listed him as one of the 25 New Faces of Independent Film 2012. He currently is the Spears-Gilbert Associate Professor of Law at the University of Kentucky College of Law, where he teaches courses on civil procedure, intellectual property, copyright, and nonprofit organizations. Frye is currently a visiting professor at Tulane University Law School where his spouse, Maybell Romero, is the McGlinchey Stafford Associate Professor of Law. He is a vocal critic of the bar exams and refers to his course on professional responsibility as "Managing the Legal Cartel". .. more

Law 31%
Business 20%

I think there’s a big seen/unseen problem. And we tend to pretend it doesn’t exist. Cases aren’t representative. Or even worse, they represent anomalies.

An observation: Surveying judicial opinions may tell us interesting things about judges & what they think, but rarely if ever tells us anything interesting about litigants or the markets in which they participate.

Word. Ideally, systems are dismantled by people who want to make them more equitable & efficient. Unfortunately, that seems to happen by accident, if at all.
I sort of wonder whether this is true, that systems are usually dismantled by those who are losing under them. I rather think that they’re typically dismantled by second sons—those who are winning, by all objective measures, but who *perceive* that they are losing. Sound familiar?
The “rules-based international order” Trump is so rapidly dismantling made America both the richest and the indisputably most powerful nation on earth.

Usually systems are dismantled by those losing out under them, not by the winners.

Reposted by Brian L. Frye

I sort of wonder whether this is true, that systems are usually dismantled by those who are losing under them. I rather think that they’re typically dismantled by second sons—those who are winning, by all objective measures, but who *perceive* that they are losing. Sound familiar?
The “rules-based international order” Trump is so rapidly dismantling made America both the richest and the indisputably most powerful nation on earth.

Usually systems are dismantled by those losing out under them, not by the winners.
We’re withdrawing from the International Law Commission??? This whole list is absolutely insane.

www.whitehouse.gov/presidential...

Reposted by Brian L. Frye

I think we’re ready

I agree. But I also observe that we seem to tolerate a lot of dishonesty. There are an awful lot of retractions & scandals & a lot of people who should have done something about them sooner.

In my experience, at least some people are pretty good at both. Although it can take some work to learn how to shift from one to the other.

Some of us even associate with plagiarists.

Perhaps we might ask how much we actually value and police scholarly integrity, as opposed to the appearance of integrity?

Exactly. I don’t think you can withdraw to protect your scholarly integrity either. You have to put your client’s interests ahead of all others.

Indeed. I think that kind of litigation is often in tension with duties to the client, even when the lawyer isn’t an academic. Perhaps it’s a special case? Is it worth compromising scholarly integrity if the public benefit is sufficiently large?

For better or worse, the only way to avoid the conflict is not to represent clients at all. If we're going to police scholarly dishonesty more aggressively, I'm not sure this is where I'd start. However, legal scholars definitely shouldn't provide dishonest expert opinions or amicus briefs.
Genuinely curious about what profs think about this. I don’t think holding lawyers accountable for their clients views is ok. But academics are different. We have a duty to be intellectually honest, and I think advocating for positions that our expertise rejects abandons the scholarly mission.

Is it ok to as a scholar argue both sides of the same position? E.g. originalism is an invalid method of constitutional interpretation, but this originalist reading of a constitutional provision that supports my preferred outcome should control (or vice versa, of course)?

I represent plenty of copyright defendants pro bono. If I didn't do it, they'd be unlikely to have any representation. I do think there's some public interest there?

Reposted by Brian L. Frye

Genuinely curious about what profs think about this. I don’t think holding lawyers accountable for their clients views is ok. But academics are different. We have a duty to be intellectually honest, and I think advocating for positions that our expertise rejects abandons the scholarly mission.

Reposted by Brian L. Frye

So @brianlfrye.bsky.social and I are having a party for the second(?) night of AALS, next Wednesday, Jan. 7. Want to come? Let us know here: docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1F...

Writing a symposium article. 😭

I'll keep you posted! We should have a draft sometime soon.

Huge GIGO problem with this meta-ranking tho...

Major GIGO problem with this meta-ranking tho.

Basically, an effort to recreate the original US News ranking, which was determined almost entirely by the survey scores, but without having to do any surveys, just relying on existing datasets.

We are working on a synthetic prestige ranking of law schools. Back to the future!

Well, wait till you see the new ranking system we're cooking up. I think you'll "like" it.

I wonder how much longer that (IMO currently correct) heuristic is likely to work? papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers....
The Decline & Fall of the US News Rankings
Have the U.S. News & World Report law school rankings become irrelevant? The ostensible purpose of the US News law school rankings is to give prospective la
papers.ssrn.com

It seems to me that you might be able to make the paper broader than just state search & seizure provisions? Can we infer that state Supreme Court indifference to their text is typical of state constitutional interpretation? “State Common Law Constitutionalism”?

So @maybell.bsky.social indisputably wins Hanukkah gifting this year with an Hermes homage to the CD-ROM tie & matching Sony tie bar with real pearl!

Illiberal legislation is still democratic. But liberal democracy isn’t the only kind of democracy.
She helped pass a bill—which is 100% part of liberalism. Maybe you don’t like the bill. Maybe the bill will hurt some people and have bad outcomes. But that’s part of liberal democracy.

The candlestickmakers say no to AI. papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers....
She helped pass a bill—which is 100% part of liberalism. Maybe you don’t like the bill. Maybe the bill will hurt some people and have bad outcomes. But that’s part of liberal democracy.

News you can use.
I used to manage wine programs for movie theaters and I am in the extremely unique position to say with professional certainty that the answer here is a crisp Albariño.
asking the sommelier which wine pairs best with swedish fish