Legal Industry News

NBA Economics and the Next Collective Bargaining Agreement

The Lebron James feeding frenzy notwithstanding, these are troubled times for the National Basketball Association.  The league is already losing hundreds of millions of dollars per year, and the continued sluggishness of the natonal economy does not bode well for an imminent turnaround in the league’s fortunes.  Perhaps some Greek-style austerity measures are in order.  The league’s collective bargaining agreement with the players’ union limits its flexibility, but the current CBA expires after next season, setting the stage for a potentially bitter confrontation over the division of a shrinking pie.

For anyone in need of a scorecard, Matt Parlow provides an engaging review of NBA economics and preview of the coming labor negotiations in a new paper on SSRN.  Entitled “The NBA and the Great Recession: Implications for the Upcoming Collective Bargaining Agreement Renegotiation,” the paper will be published in the DePaul Journal of Sports Law and Contemporary Problems.  The abstract appears after the jump. 

Like most businesses, the National Basketball Association (NBA) has suffered significant negative impacts from the Great Recession. The league’s drop in revenue exposed distinct flaws in the NBA’s current business model and in the terms of employment for...

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Marquette’s Original Law School Curriculum

The students who enter Marquette University Law School this year will take a first-year course load consisting of one-semester courses in Torts, Contracts, Civil Procedure, Property, Criminal Law, and Constitutional Law, and a year-long course in Legal Research and Writing.  After the first year, the curriculum is largely elective, although the diploma privilege makes Evidence, Professional Responsibility, and Trusts and Estates upper-level required courses.

The students who enrolled in the inaugural class at the new day division of the Marquette Law School in the fall of 1908 faced a much different situation.  All classes were required, and there was no flexibility as to when a particular class could be taken.  In addition to the regular classes, law students were also required to attend special lectures by prominent lawyers and judges on topics outside the regular curriculum, and there was a practice court where students learned the nuts and bolts of civil and criminal law practice.

Marquette Law School has a long tradition of tinkering with its curriculum and that was true even in 1908 and 1909.  However, from what can be extracted from the catalogs for 1908-1912, the following appears to have been the...

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Best of the Blogs

Time for a new feature here at the Marquette University Faculty Blog.  From time to time the editors of the blog will share links to some of the more interesting recent law-related posts appearing on the blogosphere.  I will get things started.

Over at Scotusblog, Tom Goldstein has an excellent round up of the recently concluded Supreme Court term.  It is commonplace to read broad generalizations about the Roberts Court in the media lately, for example during the hearings on the nomination of Elena Kagan.  Is this an activist Court, rejecting precedent and beholden to corporate interests?  Or has the Court found its moorings once again after years of drifting along according to the whims of Justice Kennedy?  Tom takes a cold hard look at the evidence, and his conclusions may surprise you.  You can read his post here.

Readers of this blog know that we often have posts related to sports law, and over at the Law Blog at the Wall Street Journal you can find a good post on the Phillie Phanatic, dubbed the most dangerous mascot in all of professional sports.  According to a recent academic study, the Phanatic holds the dubious distinction of being the most sued sports mascot. ...

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