Everybody from outside of New Orleans thinks Mardi Gras is just one day, next week. But in real life, here in New Orleans, it's been going on for what seems like the last two weeks. You can't go anywhere without being fed a piece of king cake, or seeing people wearing beads from last night's parade, or getting ready to go to today's parades.
Despite all of this, however, life does go on at the Law School. Classes are in session, students are attending, the first-year students just turned in their appellate briefs, there was a judicial clerkship information program last night, and virtually the entire faculty has participated in academic advising meetings almost every day for the past two weeks. These are something new here--teams of faculty members in difference academic and practice areas have met with interested students to talk about their own backgrounds and to discuss what courses students should consider taking as electives if they're interested in a particular area. The goal is really to encourage students to come and talk with faculty members individually after being introduced to them in a group setting.
Professor Feldman just told me that he's just agreed to serve as the on-air legal analyst for the NFL Network, coivering the collective bargaining negotiations. Anyone following the NFL/Players' Association situation cannot have missed the fact that Gabe Feldman is the leading expert quoted in the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, and elsewhere.
And to prove that we're not just a sports law school, coming up after the break are the annual Deutsch Lecture on public international law and the Eason-Weinmann Center's Symposium on "The European Union 20 Years After Maastricht - Transatlantic Perspectives." This year's Deutsch lecturer is Peter Sand, one of the world's leading environmental legal experts. The Eason-Weinmann conference will bring together experts from both sides of the Atlantic to discuss issues of transatlantic trade, currency and the financial crisis, models of multileveled governance, and the role of the European Union as a player in a multi-polar world.