UofL LAW - THE CARDINAL LAWYER

»  Reprinted from the May 2009 issue of the Louisville Bar Association's Bar Briefs  «

Andrew Franklin Young, a third-year law student at the University of Louisville, died March 19, 2009, mere hours before the vernal equinox and mere weeks before graduation. With grief and respect, the entire Law School community paused to remember him and to reflect. I write now to urge all of us to do the same.

I cannot add to the praise that Andrew's friends, family, and classmates have already given him, in memorial services at the Law School and in his hometown of Princeton. I mean this literally: I cannot add significant details to the portrait of Andrew's life because I scarcely knew him while he was alive. At best I recall him as an eager, inquisitive, friendly face among many others. He served on the University of Louisville Law Review and represented the Law School in university-wide intramural competitions. His energy, his ambition, his physical vigor — his whole life epitomized the promise that lies before every student.

True to his name, Andrew Young embodied the quintessence of youth. In the lyrical language of the prologue to John Dos Passos' trilogy, U.S.A.: "blood tingles with wants; mind is a beehive of hopes buzzing and stinging; muscles ache for the knowledge of jobs . . . ."

Fifty candidates attempted the Alaska bar exam in February 2009. Among these candidates, 26 passed. One of them was Mitchi McNabb, an August 2008 law graduate of the University of Louisville. Congratulations!

It gives me great pleasure to share correspondence from Lisa Fairfax of the University of Maryland School of Law about Louisville's own Lisa Nicholson:

Dear Professor Nicholson Lisa,

I would like to thank you very much for taking the time to participate in the University of Maryland School of Law's Roundtable on Corporate Governance and Securities Law Responses to the Financial Crisis. Your insights on how to most effectively integrate issues relating to the financial crisis into teaching as well as your comments during the Roundtable discussion were thought provoking and greatly contributed to the success of the event. In particular, thank you for moderating-you were able to guide the discussion in a manner that enhanced the quality of discussion and the effectiveness of your session.

As I mentioned at the Roundtable, Maryland's Journal of Business and Technology Law will be publishing papers in connection with the Roundtable. If you are interested in contributing something to the Journal, I know the staff would welcome your contribution. I have enclosed a letter from the Journal regarding deadlines, other pertinent information, and how to let them know is you plan to participate in the issue. Thank you again for your participation.

Sincerely,

Lisa Fairfax

Lisa M. Fairfax
Professor of Law and Director of the Business Law Program
University of Maryland School of Law

P.S. Lisa — Thanks for everything. You did an amazing job of steering the conversation. Your insights on teaching and scholarship were terrific!

Herewith my latest contribution to SSRN and the Law School's legal studies series, a paper called Creamskimming and Competition:

Creamskimming and Competition

The concept of “creamskimming” arises with regularity in the law of regulated industries. As a rhetorical weapon, the term “creamskimming” readily conjures images of the sort of putatively destructive competition that regulatory commissions are charged with patrolling. As a result, allegations of creamskimming have become a standard weapon in the legal arsenal of incumbent firms seeking to resist competitive entry. At an extreme, incumbent firms will characterize all forms of competitive entry as creamskimming. Sound regulatory responses to these allegations therefore depend on a proper understanding of the creamskimming concept.

This article proposes a definition of creamskimming that will help state and federal regulatory agencies distinguish genuine objections to proposed competitive entry from reflexive (and often improper) efforts to shield incumbent firms from competition. “Creamskimming” should be defined as “the practice of targeting only the customers that are the least expensive and most profitable for the incumbent firm to serve, thereby undercutting the incumbent firm’s ability to provide service throughout its service area.” Moreover, regulatory approaches to this practice should make clear that creamskimming can take place only where a competitive firm proposes to serve only a portion of an incumbent firm’s service area. In other words, when a competitive entrant proposes to serve an incumbent’s entire service area, creamskimming by definition cannot occur.

Relatively few law school deans maintain blogs. One who does, and with extraordinary grace, is Cyndi Nance of Arkansas. Her blog, called simply The Dean's Blog, documented this informal gathering of law school deans of color at Sanctuary Camelback Mountain in Scottsdale, Arizona, in January 2009. In attendance were Cyndi Nance (Arkansas), Athornia Steele (Nova Southeastern), Don Lewis (Hamline), Freddie Pitcher (Southern), JoAnne Epps (Temple), John White (UNLV), Linda Ammons (Widener), Peter Alexander (Southern Illinois), Jim Chen (Louisville), Beto Juárez (Denver), McKen Carrington (Texas Southern), and Dan Bernstein (president of the Law School Admissions Council). The post-dinner picture of our group appears at right.

Dean Nance visited Louisville in 2007 as a contributor to one of our Law School's signature CLE events, the annual Warns Institute on Labor and Employment Law. She invited me to visit Arkansas in November 2007. During my visit, in addition to making presentations on agricultural law and the role of technology in contemporary legal education, I helped cheer the Razorbacks to a crushing defeat of the University of South Carolina Gamecocks. Wooooooooo, Pig Sooie!

This post has a dual purpose. In addition to lauding my good friend Cyndi Nance, I also write in praise of her approach to communicating with her law school's constituents. Dean Nance's blog, like The Cardinal Lawyer, aims to bring law school life closer to the people who matter most in legal education: students, graduates, friends, faculty, staff, community. Dean Nance is even on Twitter, a microblogging platform that I also use. These electronic platforms represent the essential ingredients of what I call Law 2.0, or legal education in our interconnected and interactive world. As a law school dean who also uses a blog, Twitter, and other social networking tools to stay in touch with his community, I'm pleased to be in Cyndi Nance's esteemed company.