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Cleveland State University

David Barnhizer

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Full-Text Articles in Law

A Quartet Of Essays On Scholarship, David Barnhizer Sep 2015

A Quartet Of Essays On Scholarship, David Barnhizer

David Barnhizer

Regardless of academic rhetoric, universities are powerful institutional systems that are as doctrinaire and hidebound in their behavior as any other institution whose beneficiaries are seeking to protect vested interests or simply defend that with which they are most familiar and on which their training is based and reputations sustained. This is consistent with Keynes’ conclusion that most university faculty are little more than “academic scribblers” who live their lives content to operate within the safe confines of the ideas and reward system in which they were initially indoctrinated and from which they extract benefits. While the ideal of the …


The Moral Lawyer And The Machiavellian Nature Of Law Practice, David Barnhizer Sep 2015

The Moral Lawyer And The Machiavellian Nature Of Law Practice, David Barnhizer

David Barnhizer

In Western culture the name Niccolo Machiavelli has become Machiavellianism, a pejorative signifying the willingness to do anything to achieve desired ends. American lawyers do have limits, however, and are expected to operate according to an ethical code that is at least intended to prevent the worst abuses. The effectiveness of this ethical code has often been questioned, as have the questionable efforts of the organized bar to enforce its rules, but on the surface it differentiates law practice from hand-to-hand combat and military struggles. Even though I have sometimes used the concepts of the warrior lawyer, the general and …


A Trilogy Of Essays On Scholarship, David Barnhizer Jan 2015

A Trilogy Of Essays On Scholarship, David Barnhizer

David Barnhizer

At the beginning it is helpful to realize that the five versions of the scholarly ideal produce different forms of intellectual work with distinct goals and motivations. The scholar engaging in such activity can vary dramatically in terms of what the individual is seeking to achieve through his or her research output and actions that might be taken related to the findings reflected in that product. Similarly, there is a diverse set of targets at which the work is directed. These targets include communicating ideas and knowledge to other scholars who are invested in a specific sub-discipline. They also include …


“Fire Away”: I Have No Right To Not Be Insulted, David Barnhizer Jan 2015

“Fire Away”: I Have No Right To Not Be Insulted, David Barnhizer

David Barnhizer

In theory, universities are the institutions that are responsible for advancing our freedom of thought and discourse through the work of independent scholars and the teaching of each generation of students. But for several decades, universities and other educational institutions have increasingly set up rules aimed at protecting individuals and groups from criticism that those newly empowered individuals and groups consider insensitive, offensive, harassing, intolerant and disrespectful, or critical of their core belief systems. Even though it has been claimed that disadvantaged interest groups have a right to use one-sided tactics of intolerance against those they consider to be responsible …


Assessing The Velocity, Scale, Volume, Intensity And “Creedal Congruence” Of Immigrants In Setting A Nation’S Admissions Policy, David Barnhizer Jan 2015

Assessing The Velocity, Scale, Volume, Intensity And “Creedal Congruence” Of Immigrants In Setting A Nation’S Admissions Policy, David Barnhizer

David Barnhizer

Table of Contents Death of the “Melting Pot” The Rejection of Assimilation and the Rise of “Identity Sects” Western Europe and the US Face Significant Challenges to Their Creeds and Cultures The Radicalizing Search for Identity and Meaning The Velocity, Scale and Difference of Migrant Entry Into Dissimilar Cultures Assimilation Is Not Easy Under the Best of Circumstances ISIS, al-Qaeda and The Old Man of the Mountain What Are the Creedal Values For Which Western Nations Should Expect Commitment from Immigrants and Citizens? “Warning! Do Not Approach!” Beyond Non-Assimilation to Cultural Transformation The Right to Preserve a “Cultural Ecosystem” The …


“Something Wicked This Way Comes”: Political Correctness And The Reincarnation Of Chairman Mao, David Barnhizer Jan 2015

“Something Wicked This Way Comes”: Political Correctness And The Reincarnation Of Chairman Mao, David Barnhizer

David Barnhizer

Mao’s Red Guards and the “Wicked Wisdom” of Lesley Gore There could not possibly be any parallel between the actions of Mao Tse Tung’s young Red Guard zealots and the intensifying demands of identity groups that all people must conform to their version of approved linguistic expression or in effect be condemned as “reactionaries” and “counter-revolutionaries” who are clearly “on the wrong side of history”. Nor, in demanding that they be allowed to effectively take over the university and its curriculum while staffing faculty and administrative positions with people who think like them while others are subjected to “re-education” sessions …


Apps, Artificial Intelligence, And Androids: Beyond Schumpeter’S “Creative Destruction” To “Destructive Destruction” David Barnhizer, David Barnhizer Jan 2015

Apps, Artificial Intelligence, And Androids: Beyond Schumpeter’S “Creative Destruction” To “Destructive Destruction” David Barnhizer, David Barnhizer

David Barnhizer

The analysis offered here is not a Neo-Luddite rage against “the machine”. As with the oft-stated reproach about paranoia, there sometimes really are situations in which people are “out to get you”. In our current situation the threat is not from people but from the convergence of a set of technological innovations that are and will increasingly have an enormous impact on the nature of work, economic and social inequality and the existence of the middle classes that are so vital to the durability of Western democracy. The fact is that developed nations’ economies such as found in Western Europe …


The Moral Lawyer And The Machiavellian Nature Of Law Practice, David Barnhizer Jan 2015

The Moral Lawyer And The Machiavellian Nature Of Law Practice, David Barnhizer

David Barnhizer

In Western culture the name Niccolo Machiavelli has become Machiavellianism, a pejorative signifying the willingness to do anything to achieve desired ends. American lawyers do have limits, however, and are expected to operate according to an ethical code that is at least intended to prevent the worst abuses. The effectiveness of this ethical code has often been questioned, as have the questionable efforts of the organized bar to enforce its rules, but on the surface it differentiates law practice from hand-to-hand combat and military struggles. Even though I have sometimes used the concepts of the warrior lawyer, the general and …


The American Law School And Nine Elements Of “Thinking Like A Lawyer”, David Barnhizer Jan 2015

The American Law School And Nine Elements Of “Thinking Like A Lawyer”, David Barnhizer

David Barnhizer

The idea of “thinking like a lawyer” represents a form that combines strategic analysis, assessment and action. At this point my analysis takes an unusual step and seeks to enhance our understanding through use of a seemingly “exotic” framework. In A Book of Five Rings, Miyamoto Musashi describes nine points a strategist must master. I have long thought these points represent the true meaning and composition of what it means when we say “thinking like a lawyer” and am offering them here as a focusing device. Musashi’s nine elements are: 1). Do not think dishonestly; 2). Become acquainted with every …


Survival Strategies For "Ordinary" Law Schools, David Barnhizer Jan 2014

Survival Strategies For "Ordinary" Law Schools, David Barnhizer

David Barnhizer

This analysis is focused on approaches and actions that involve “ordinary” American law schools located in the middle range of competition that are not insulated from the worst of the trends. It is important to understand that for those “ordinary” law schools there is no single choice that could be effective in their struggle to adapt to the changing environment. The specific conditions for creating and implementing effective strategies vary depending on the particular law school, and the applicant and employment markets to which the school has access. These are further influenced positively or negatively by reputational and programmatic realities …


Self-Interest And Sinecure: Why Law School Can’T Be “Fixed” From Within, David Barnhizer Jan 2014

Self-Interest And Sinecure: Why Law School Can’T Be “Fixed” From Within, David Barnhizer

David Barnhizer

The issue of how best to do a legal education is being approached as if it were an intellectual and pedagogical question. Of course in a conceptual sense it is. But from a political and human perspective (law faculty, deans and lawyers) it is a self-interested situation in terms of how does this affect me? The reality is that for law faculty and deans it is mainly a life style, status, economic benefit and political situation in which the various interests protected by the traditional faculty slot placeholders [as well as the non-traditional practice-oriented teachers) are being masked by self-serving …


Law School Enrollments And Adaptive Strategies, David Barnhizer Jan 2014

Law School Enrollments And Adaptive Strategies, David Barnhizer

David Barnhizer

There is no “national” or “global” law school enrollment crisis but a serious enrollment decline being experienced by a large number of law schools that requires adaptive strategies. Those strategies are not general but need to be designed and applied within a realistic understanding of the specific competitive marketplaces within which individual law schools are operating. In some cases not all obstacles can be overcome or problems fixed within a relevant timeframe. It is likely that some law schools will be forced to close their doors. And it is difficult to argue against that outcome in a number of instances. …


The Aging Of The American Law Professoriate, David Barnhizer Jan 2014

The Aging Of The American Law Professoriate, David Barnhizer

David Barnhizer

A recent (rather tasteless) article argued: “Professors approaching 70 … have an ethical obligation to step back and think seriously about quitting. If they do remain on the job, they should at least openly acknowledge they’re doing it mostly for themselves.” In “The Forever Professors: Academics Who Don’t Retire Are Greedy, Selfish, and Bad For Students”, the insensitive author added: “the number of professors 65 and older more than doubled between 2000 and 2011.” The author’s most intellectually savage comments were that: “faculty who delay retirement harm students, who in most cases would benefit from being taught by someone younger …


Surveillance, Speech Suppression And Degradation Of The Rule Of Law In The “Post-Democracy Electronic State”, David Barnhizer Jan 2014

Surveillance, Speech Suppression And Degradation Of The Rule Of Law In The “Post-Democracy Electronic State”, David Barnhizer

David Barnhizer

None of us can claim the quality of original insight achieved by Alexis de Tocqueville in his early 19th Century classic Democracy in America in his observation that the “soft” repression of democracy was unlike that in any other political form. It is impossible to deny that we in the US, the United Kingdom and Western Europe are experiencing just such a “gentle” drift of the kind that Tocqueville describes, losing our democratic integrity amid an increasingly “pretend” democracy. He explained: “[T]he supreme power [of government] then extends its arm over the whole community. It covers the surface of society …


An Essay On “Framing” And Fanaticism: Propaganda Strategies For Linguistic Manipulation, David Barnhizer Jan 2013

An Essay On “Framing” And Fanaticism: Propaganda Strategies For Linguistic Manipulation, David Barnhizer

David Barnhizer

In his brilliant classic, Propaganda, French philosopher Jacques Ellul explains that the stereotype—a key tool of propagandists--“helps [humans] to avoid thinking, to take a personal position, to form [their] own opinion.” The problem for a political system is that stereotypes do not require thought. They are “acquired by belonging to a group, without any intellectual labor.” Deborah Tannen describes what has occurred as the “Argument Culture”. In the “argument culture” we are fanatics, unable and unwilling to engage in the kinds of fact-based reasoned discourse that we always were told was at the core of the democratic system. Tannen observed …


The Implementation Gap: What Causes Laws To Succeed Or Fail?, David Barnhizer Jan 2013

The Implementation Gap: What Causes Laws To Succeed Or Fail?, David Barnhizer

David Barnhizer

It is important to go behind the “paper systems” many countries and private sector actors have created to manufacture the appearance of commitments to responsible economic activity, environmental protection and social justice. This produces the need to penetrate the veils that mask governments’ “apparent compliance” with the terms of sustainable development, and to be honest about the inability of voluntary codes of practice to shape the behavior of business and government. Implementation requires effective systems to carry out the law and policy mandates. Laws and policies are often poorly designed or deliberately sabotaged in their creation, but in many instances …


The Reality Of Business And Governmental Decision-Making In The Context Of Sustainable Development, David Barnhizer Jan 2013

The Reality Of Business And Governmental Decision-Making In The Context Of Sustainable Development, David Barnhizer

David Barnhizer

It is absolutely rational for economic actors and decision-makers to seek to operate in their own self-interest. The challenge for anyone who wishes to influence or alter the process lies in knowing where that self-interest lies and changing the nature of the self-interest if that is required or possible. That is a far greater challenge than many understand because regardless of what we might like to do in our personal lives, it is the institution within which we work that dictates how we think and what we value in our service to that institution. Given the short time frame within …


Through A Prism Darkly: Surveillance And Speech Suppression In The Post-Democracy Electronic State", David Barnhizer Jan 2013

Through A Prism Darkly: Surveillance And Speech Suppression In The Post-Democracy Electronic State", David Barnhizer

David Barnhizer

Through a PRISM Darkly: Surveillance and Speech Suppression in the “Post-Democracy Electronic State” David Barnhizer There is no longer an American democracy. America is changing by the moment into a new political form, the “Post-Democracy Electronic State”. It has “morphed” into competing fragments operating within the physical territory defined as the United States while tenuously holding on to a few of the basic creeds that represent what we long considered an exceptional political experiment. That post-Democracy political order paradoxically consists of a combination of fragmented special interests eager to punish anyone that challenges their desires and a central government that …


"Linguistic Cleansing": Strategies For Redesigning Human Perception And Behavior, David Barnhizer Jan 2013

"Linguistic Cleansing": Strategies For Redesigning Human Perception And Behavior, David Barnhizer

David Barnhizer

James Madison recognized the need to balance competing interests in his analysis of factious groups. In Federalist No. 10, Madison sets out the idea of faction in the following words. “By a faction I understand a number of citizens, whether amounting to a majority or minority of the whole, who are united and actuated by some common impulse of passion, or of interest, adverse to the rights of other citizens, or to the permanent and aggregate interests of the community.” Madison goes on to describe two “cures” for faction. One is to “destroy the liberty” that allows it to bloom, …


New “Architecture” And Revitalizing The Un Global Compact, David Barnhizer Jan 2013

New “Architecture” And Revitalizing The Un Global Compact, David Barnhizer

David Barnhizer

Some advocates of sustainable development possess an almost theological faith in what I refer to as “rhetorical” sustainable development as the path to providing for the sound future of human civilizations and critical ecological systems. Simply put, if we try to think “too big” and “bite off too much” then the system we are trying to control or influence consumes us and our resources and we fail miserably. There is real and predictable danger in grandeur. This means we need to think about achieving sustainability in very specific and concrete terms applied to clear goals and an honest understanding of …


Assimilation Anxiety: Islamic Migration As A Perceived Threat To Western Cultures, David Barnhizer Jan 2013

Assimilation Anxiety: Islamic Migration As A Perceived Threat To Western Cultures, David Barnhizer

David Barnhizer

In this cynical age it is common to smirk at claims about what is sometimes called American Exceptionalism, a term standing for the conclusion that America is an historically distinct (and better) system. To some degree it does represent cultural arrogance founded on assumption rather than fact. It also ignores “exceptionally” dark chapters in American history, including slavery, seizing of lands from Native Americans and imprisoning of US citizens of Japanese descent. Nonetheless it seems that given the diversity of the population and the sheer enormity of the nation that, as stated by an Asian Indian friend who is a …


"Practice Ready" Law Graduates, David Barnhizer Jan 2013

"Practice Ready" Law Graduates, David Barnhizer

David Barnhizer

Whatever view one holds on the idea of “practice ready” law graduates in the abstract it seems clear that it does not and could not mean that a new graduate can be fully capable of providing high quality services across the board to clients unfortunate enough to be using the services of the neophyte lawyer. If that were the case I can hear a client’s conversation with the brand new lawyer in a complex corporate merger with numerous parties, millions of dollars at stake, estate and tax issues, patent rights and differing valuations for the deal. “How many of these …


Ten Elements Of "Real" Ethics In The Practice Of Law (And Life), David Barnhizer Jan 2012

Ten Elements Of "Real" Ethics In The Practice Of Law (And Life), David Barnhizer

David Barnhizer

The legal profession has been “running a game” on its clients and on American society in its claim that it can self-regulate. The system of ethical regulation as practiced by the legal profession and courts is not a “real” system nor can it even be said to be an Ideal system. It is a deceptive pretense and pretension. It is time to stop the deception and to construct a new way of regulating lawyers and holding them to account for deficiencies and neglect. Many lawyers will not accept this interpretation either because of self-interest or to avoid facing the uncomfortable …


The Illusion Of Creative Scholarship In American Universities And Law Schools, David Barnhizer Jan 2010

The Illusion Of Creative Scholarship In American Universities And Law Schools, David Barnhizer

David Barnhizer

The aim of this brief essay is to explore several of the dominant forms of scholarship in the university and in law schools. This is done by examining what are described as five sometimes incompatible ideals, those of development and pursuit of original knowledge for its own sake, preservation, refinement and transmission of the best forms of knowledge, objective social critique, individual activism and collective activism. Tenure track positions in American universities and in law schools particularly are comfortable sinecures. In far too many instances these privileged and lifetime positions serve mainly the personal interests and agendas of the purported …


Redesigning The American Law School, David Barnhizer Jan 2010

Redesigning The American Law School, David Barnhizer

David Barnhizer

In other industries when there is a decline or severe curtailment of the demand for their product we see companies downsizing, layoffs and even bankruptcies. American law schools have to this point been able to operate largely without any required adaptation to the economic realities of demand for their product. The problem is created by the fact that law schools are part of a rigid and intractable business system in the same way that the large firms and solo practitioners are driven by their need for money. The economic downturn is not a simple cycle but a transformation. Law schools …


An Essay On Strategies For Facilitating Learning, David Barnhizer Jun 2006

An Essay On Strategies For Facilitating Learning, David Barnhizer

David Barnhizer

There is a convenient assumption among many American law teachers that the existing model of the American law school works effectively. This includes the belief that the dominant methods and goals are not only appropriate and comprehensive but are being achieved. The reality is quite different. Law teachers tend to be amateurs from the perspective of the quality of our teaching. We are largely unaware of the most effective ways to structure a curriculum, integrate course offerings and design and execute individual courses. This essay focuses on goals, strategies and techniques for the facilitation of student learning. It reflects a …