Robert L. Birmingham

Robert L. Birmingham is a professor of law at the University of Connecticut School of Law. He is known for his unconventional manner and mastery of the Socratic teaching method.

Early life

Robert Lewis Birmingham was born in 1938 and is believed to have grown up in Western Pennsylvania.

Education

In 1960, Birmingham earned an A.B. from the University of Pittsburgh. In 1963, he earned his J.D. at the University of Pittsburgh School of Law. While earning his law degree, Birmingham distinguished himself as Editor-in-Chief of the University of Pittsburgh Law Review. While completing his third and final law school year, and also serving as law journal Editor-in-Chief, Birmingham was enrolled in the first year of a Ph.D. program in economics. After receiving his law degree, Birmingham traveled to New England where he earned his advanced law degree, an LL.M, from Harvard University (1965). Birmingham returned to the University of Pittsburgh where, in 1967, he completed his doctorate in Economics, and then a Ph.D. in Philosophy in 1976.

Career

Birmingham's first teaching position was as Visiting Assistant Professor of Law at Ohio State University in 1967. From there he moved on and taught as Assistant Professor of Law at the University of Indiana, Bloomington from 1967-1971. Upon ascending to Associate Professor in 1971, Birmingham stayed for three additional years ending his time in Indiana in 1973. He returned as a visiting professor in 1978-1979, but the majority of the time between 1974 and 2007 has been spent lecturing on the campus of the University of Connecticut School of Law.

As of 2004, Birmingham was one of only eight professors at UConn Law with a Ph. D in addition to a J.D. and the only professor with two such degrees. Using this myriad of education experiences, Birmingham is able to bring broad perspectives to the classroom. Combining law, behavioral science, economics and philosophy, Birmingham delves into and develops theories and legal philosophies seldom explored in the typical legal education.

As a result of this interdisciplinary approach, Birmingham continues to offer a wide range of classes including Contracts, Admiralty Law, Energy Law, Feminist Legal Theories, Federal Courts, Imperium, The Nuremberg Trials, Jackson, Galileo, Remedies, Law and Economics and Law and Science.

The Law and Economics

Birmingham students notice the impact of his economic education, but particularly in his approach to contracts and damage measures. The first systematic statement of the efficiency of expectation damages to appear in the legal literature was that of Professor Birmingham, in his article Breach of Contract, Damage Measures, and Economic Efficiency, 24 Rutgers L. Rev. 273 (1970). Illustrative is Birmingham's following statement in that piece: "Although choice among Pareto optimal states requires appeal to subjective values, the superiority of at least one such state over any given state outside the set may be defended as almost tautological." Since that time, contract scholarship has increasingly adopted economic perspectives. In the abstract for Damage Measure and Economic Rationality: The Geometry of Contract Law, Birmingham writes "The question of damage measures presented by the conscious decision of a promisor to breach a losing contract raises one of the most perplexing conceptual problems in contract law. Recognizing the present inability of the courts rationally to resolve the problem, as illustrated by the opposing decisions in Groves v. John Wunder Company and Peevyhouse v. Garland Coal and Mining Company, the author undertakes to examine the premises of contract law with a fresh perspective-economic analysis." It is precisely this "fresh perspective" of "economic analysis" that pervades and infuses much of this legal theory and is one of his biggest contributions to the legal world. At the same time, however, one would be wise not to overlook Birmingham's further remarks, now issuing some twenty years after Breach of Contract, Damage Measures, and Economic Efficiency: "Scholarship about contracts suffers too, however, under our hypothetical hegemony of economics. There are no more revolutions for us, no new paradigms. Starting with our single rule, we practice Kuhnian normal science, writing successive articles showing that rule X, rule Y, etc. of contract law are efficient. This practice is useful and necessary but unheroic; our physics-envy is of Newton not of some anonymous technician."

Select publications

The following is a list of Birmingham's Publications:

Books

• Reliance, in The Palgrave Dictionary of Economics and the Law, Vol. 3, 294-300 (1998).

Journal Articles

• Recent Developments in Evidence Law, 34 Journal of Maritime Law and Commerce 1 (2003) [with Tara Shaw and Carolyn Shields].
• Daubert, Proof of a Prior, and the Soliton: Bernert Towboat Co. v. USS CHANDLER (DDG996), 34 Journal of Maritime Law and Commerce 173 (2003) [with Tara Shaw and Carolyn Shields].
• Economic Integration in East Africa: Distribution of Gains, 9 Virginia Journal of International Law 408 (1969).
• The Growth of the Law: Decision Theory and the Doctrine of Consideration, 55 Archive and Social Philosophy 467 (1969).
• Legal and Moral Duty in Game Theory: Common Law Contract and Chinese Analogies, 18 Buffalo Law Review 99 (1969) (excerpted in The Economics of Contract Law (1979)).
• The Prisoner's Dilemma and Mutual Trust: Comment, 79 Ethics 156 (1969).
• Integration and Economic Development, 1965 Villanova Law Forum 781 (1965).
• The War Crimes Trial: A Second Look, 24 University of Pittsburgh Law Review 132 (1962).

Reviews

• Book Review, AA Nice Book, 23 Connecticut Law Review 1029 (1991) (reviewing Richard A. Posner, Cardozo: A Study in Reputation (1990)) [with Sharon Jones].
• Book Review, 69 Boston University Law Review 435 (1989) (reviewing P.S. Atiyah, Essays on Contract (1986)).
• Book Review, 13 Villanova Law Review 884 (1968) (reviewing J. Cohen, The Criminal Process in the People's Republic of China (1968)).
• Book Review, 21 Stanford Law Review 201 (1968) (reviewing D. Bodde & C. Morris, Law in Imperial China (1967)).
• Book Review, 25 University of Pittsburgh Law Review 623 (1964) (reviewing E. Stein & P. Hay, Cases and Materials on the Law and Institutions of the Atlantic Area (1963)).

Quotes

• "Posner Good, Cardozo Bad"
• "The poor want to be rich, the rich want to be happy, the single want to be married, and the married want to be dead."
• "'Shut up!' he explained."
• "That... is exactly wrong"
• "Good! Good! Good! You're wrong, but you're wrong in an interesting way." (to Constitutional Law student, Indiana University, Fall 1978)
• "That's not even wrong."