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ContractsProf Blog: Law Schools Are Hiring in Contracts and Related Fields The Blog is back from its partial hiatus! We hope our readers, like us, took some time to stop and smell the summer roses. You now can look forward once again to daily posts during the work week. And ...

The Blog is back from its summer break, and we start with a list of schools that are hiring in contracts and related fields. Positions at Loyola NOLA, Rutgers, Santa Clara, Georgia, Mitchell-Hamline, and Cal Western
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ContractsProf Blog: Tuesday Top Ten - Contracts & Commercial Law Top SSRN Downloads for July 29, 2025 Top Downloads For: Contracts & Commercial Law eJournal Recent Top Papers (60 days) As of: 30 May 2025 - 29 Jul 2025 Rank Paper Downloads 1. The Value of Finance Journals Douglas J. Cumming Florida Atl...

New Top Tens are out! Friends of the Blog Mitu Gulati and Glenn West have seized the #2 spot on both charts!
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Bewildering and disappointing. Is it even possible to arbitrate under the 8th Circuit’s reasoning, where “data” can come from any source?

Lear to Cordelia, “Nothing will come of nothing.” It might take a while, but I think he’s right.

ContractsProf Blog: Tuesday Top Ten - Contracts & Commercial Law Top SSRN Downloads for July 22, 2025 Top Downloads For: Contracts & Commercial Law eJournal Recent Top Papers (60 days) As of: 23 May 2025 - 22 Jul 2025 Rank Paper Downloads 1. The Value of Finance Journals Douglas J. Cumming Florida Atl...

The new Top Tens are out. One top paper promotes an AI product. I have no problem with entrepreneurs developing and marketing new law-related technology. I just don’t think marketing materials are scholarship, so it doesn't belong on SSRN. Harumph!
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Peerless is one. Also Hadley, Mills v Wyman, Kirksey, and Hamer v Sidway

Con Law is the one course for which I used a casebook. Editing the cases is much more challenging, and there is much more change. I still use 19th-century cases in contracts. Students complain about antiquated language, but some of the old cases remain great teaching vehicles.

So much to love in the book. I love the image of him trying to continue with Maus II while offers are rolling in He shows the bodies of the dead to indicate his guilt over profiting from the Holocaust. Also love when he strugles to reconcile inconsistencies between Vladek and the historical record.

Jules Pfeiffer should know!

That said, I assigned Maus because he grapples uniquely with historical method and the relationship of history and memory. It’s a great vehicle for teaching both history and historiography.

People do refer to it that way, and Speigelman probably doesn’t mind for the reasons you give. But I had tiresome arguments in graduate school with people who believed that comic books were just as sophisticated as Kant’s Kritik der reinen Vernunft, and I just can’t.

I have a recollection that Spiegelman (or his publisher) had some fun with this, presenting two blurbs on the back cover. One said something about what a great novel it is; the other just said “ . . . not a novel . . . “ I don’t have that edition anymore, so I can’t check.

Assigned it when I taught undergrads in the 90s. I get that it is hard to categorize. It is graphic, but I think of it as history/autobiography. It’s not a work of fiction and thus not a novel. People are drawn as animals, but they are recognizably human.

ContractsProf Blog: C3 Conference in Canada (Doesn’t that Make It C4?) Conference on Contract, Consumer, and Commercial Law (C3) The Ascension of Contract: Understanding the Crucial Role of Contractual Ordering and of Consumer and Commercial Transactions in the Continuou...

Call for papers for the Conference on Contract, Consumer, and Commercial Law (C3) in Vancouver, Canada, which makes it C4. It promises to be an explosive gathering! 250-word bstracts due by August 25th.
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ContractsProf Blog: Tuesday Top Ten - Contracts & Commercial Law Top SSRN Downloads for July 15, 2025 Top Downloads For: Contracts & Commercial Law eJournal Recent Top Papers (60 days) As of: 16 May 2025 - 15 Jul 2025 Rank Paper Downloads 1. The Value of Finance Journals Douglas J. Cumming Florida Atl...

New Top Tens are out! Still mostly not about contracts. SAD!
Thank you for your attention to this matter.
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Scales of Justice

Just in time for the new semester, @guyrub.bsky.social, Ethan Leib, @pamelabookman.bsky.social, @matthewtbodie.bsky.social, Tal Kastner, & @jakelinford.bsky.social have made available a new open-source contracts casebook.
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ContractsProf Blog: Tuesday Top Ten - Contracts & Commercial Law Top SSRN Downloads for July 8, 2025 Top Downloads For: Contracts & Commercial Law eJournal Recent Top Papers (60 days) As of: 09 May 2025 - 08 Jul 2025 Rank Paper Downloads 1. The Value of Finance Journals Douglas J. Cumming Florida Atl...

New Top Tens are out! There is more contracts scholarship on the list, and the big news is that it only takes a few dozen downloads to make the list at this point, so submit now!!! lawprofessors.typepad.com/contractspro...

I mean, this is nice, but I would prefer to have a government that anticipates problems takes preventative measures over a private sector that provides piecemeal support after catastrophe has struck.

A stack of books, image by Microsoft Copilot

New Top Tens are out. SSRN’s list covers contracts and commercial law, and very few of today’s top tens are about contracts. Bummer for us.
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ContractsProf Blog: Quiet July Expect for things to be quieter in July. I have exiled myself from the Blog for one month in order to finally shove a piece of scholarship over the finish line. I hope to be back in August with new-fo...

I’m taking a break from the Blog for the month of July, so those of you who have been ignoring my posts here can take a break from doing so.
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College sports should be limited to intramurals like it is in virtually every other county in the world.

ContractsProf Blog: Update on Academic Freedom and Professor Maura Finkelstein I wrote last year about the case of Maura Finkelstein. Here is a lightly edited version of the story as we had it back then: Maura Finkelstein (left) was, until recently, a tenured anthropology profes...

Update on the fate of ‪@mauraf.bsky.social‬, who has left a tenured position at Muhlenberg College and academia because she was likely going to be fired for her anti-Zionist views despite faculty and AAUP support. All is not well in the academy.
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I’m also curious to hear what you think of the ToS. Can they really provide that the class action waiver survives even if the arb clause is struck? What if plaintiff files in a state that prohibits class action waivers in consumer contracts?

Count on it. I am planning a section reckoning with your (and others’) arguments in defense of the current scope of the FAA. It’s three years in the making, and I don’t see light of the tunnel yet. I would like to stand on the shoulders of giants, but for now, I can’t see past them.

ContractsProf Blog: Yahoo Has Released the New Terms of Service with the Most Confusing Arbitration Provision Yet! Yahoo released its latest terms of service (ToS), dated May 15, 2025. For mediations initiated in the U.S., the ToS provide for individual arbitration through National Arbitration and Mediation (NAM),...

Thanks to @profstephenware.bsky.social for alerting me to the arbitration provision in Yahoo’s new terms of service. Cleverly designed to force claimants to choose between batch arbitration and individual court claims. Seems sus to me.
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Great points! I share them with my sisters. Oh wait, I can’t because they blocked me on social media when I made arguments like that, so we stay close by avoiding the topic. They are real people, not stereotypes, and there are plenty more where they come from.

Or it’s a reflection of something real. I’m Jewish. I have family members who are generally progressive but fear the left and basically support Trump & Netanyahu when it comes to Israeli security

ContractsProf Blog: A Brilliant Scam Based on the Structure of Spotify’s Revenue Streams and Contracts As in yesterday’s post, I learned of this case from listening to the Money Stuff Podcast with Matt Levine and Katie Greifeld. Like yesterday’s post, this case is mostly about alleged criminal miscondu...

Another story I learned of from the Money Stuff Podcast: Musician charged with scheme to make $10 million from streaming services by programing bots to make hundreds of songs that other bots streamed 24/7.
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ContractsProf Blog: We are occasionally a day late, but never a dollar short! Welcome to this belated edition of the Tuesday Top Ten, falling on a Wednesday but otherwise chock full of all the current content you've come...

The new Top Tens are out. Behold the power of the Blog! The Form Knows Best rides its Blog Bump to #1, while Glenn West’s response debuts this week.
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ContractsProf Blog: Crazy Like a Jaguars Employee Who Stole $22 Million to Bet on FanDuel? This is the first of two posts this week on subjects that I learned of though the Money Stuff Podcast. In the Men’s Haircuts Episode, Matt Levine and Katie Greifeld discuss the case of Amit Patel, who...

Thanks to The Money Stuff Podcast for sharing blogworthy content. Man in prison for stealing $22 million from the Jacksonville Jaguars to bet on FanDuel now sues FanDuel for $250 million.
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