David Crump - University of Houston Law Center Faculty Blog http://www.uhlawblog.com/david-crump.html David Crump, John B. Neibel Professor of Law & Director of CLE, holds a B.A. from Harvard University and a J.D. from the University of Texas. Professor Crump earned his B.A. from Harvard College, where he concentrated in Chemistry. Before going to law school, he was an aerospace engineer at the NASA-MSC. After receiving his J.D. from the University of Texas, he was a law clerk to a judge of the United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit, a law professor at the University of California (Davis), and an attorney in private practice in Dallas. He served as an Assistant District Attorney of Harris County, Texas, where he tried cases ranging from minor misdemeanors to capital murders. Since that time, he has been a civil trial lawyer and has been affiliated with the law firms of Johnson & Gibbs and Haynes and Boone, among others, while teaching at the University of Houston Law Center. He has published 10 law school teaching books that are currently in use, on subjects ranging from civil litigation to real property transactions. He also has two published novels and a book of children's poetry. He has been a director of the State Bar of Texas and chaired the subcommittee of the State Bar that generated the Minimum Continuing Legal Education plan for Texas. en-us Copyright 2008 Wed, 09 Jul 2008 10:16:55 -0600 Wed, 10 Sep 2008 09:29:21 -0600 http://www.movabletype.org/?v=3.34 http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/tech/rss Abolish the Act of State doctrine? Imagine what would happen if an American President were to persuade Congress to abolish the Act of State doctrine. Presumably, the President would follow this step by “tough negotiations” conducted with the Saudis, which would be convened either “with or without preconditions.” .

]]>And then, when the Saudis politely declined to end their membership in OPEC, the President would say to the Royal Family, “Aw, gee, fellows, do you mean you’re not going to go along? And you’re going to pass your own laws that are different from ours? Fooey on you.”

Such a President might then turn to other projects with about the same likelihood of meaning, such as making water flow uphill, bringing out the sun so we can see at midnight, and maybe, repealing the law of gravity.

This comment is not intended to disagree with the statement that Congress has the theoretical power to repeal the Act of State doctrine—I think it could, but it won’t, because that would be too transparently futile, even for those who want a so-called windfall profits tax.  And I certainly don’t disagree with the statement that cartels are harmful, or at least they are almost always harmful. Unless we want to invade all the OPEC countries militarily, though, the United States can’t eradicate this evil in a practical way—it can’t use the methods that have been used with mixed success in cases involving expropriation, for example—and lawsuits about the subject are quixotic

]]> http://www.uhlawblog.com/2008/07/articles/issues-of-the-day/abolish-the-act-of-state-doctrine/ http://www.uhlawblog.com/2008/07/articles/issues-of-the-day/abolish-the-act-of-state-doctrine/ Act of State doctrineIssues of the Day Wed, 09 Jul 2008 10:16:55 -0600 dcrump@central.uh.edu (David Crump) Hole vs. Donut: A response to Darren Bush Darren, the Stracher piece is a mild call for a corrective to a skewed educational system. Yes, there are occasions for intellectual debate in the law. But they are rare, compared to other things.]]>They are possible in larger doses for people in the Justice Department or academia because they are in a rarified atmosphere; they don’t have clients and can afford “wasted meetings” that other lawyers could not. Yes, law school should prepare people for those relatively rare moments of intellectual debate, because they are important. But you have focused on the hole in Stracher’s piece rather than the doughnut. Most of the law is not intellectual debate. Instead, it is about fact development, transactional planning, and such matters—which require a lot of intellect, but are not developed very well by law school. They determine whether lawyers serve their clients well or poorly. You know this to be true. That is the point, and it’s one that is important enough to take seriously. And that’s why Peter Hoffman sent this article around.

Further, the concept that “articling” can supply what is missing was, indeed, daze of youth!

]]> http://www.uhlawblog.com/2007/02/articles/issues-of-the-day/hole-vs-donut-a-response-to-darren-bush/ http://www.uhlawblog.com/2007/02/articles/issues-of-the-day/hole-vs-donut-a-response-to-darren-bush/ BushDarrenIssues of the DayStracher Thu, 08 Feb 2007 10:42:09 -0600 dcrump@central.uh.edu (David Crump)