Opinio Juris

I see that my alma mater, Stanford, is set to formally eliminate letter grades. Beginning perhaps as early as fall, students will receive one of four marks for their work: honors, pass, restricted credit, and no credit. Stanford will be the third major law school to eliminate grades, joining Berkeley and Yale.

I have nothing against the change, notwithstanding a bit of retroactive jealousy. But here's my question: aren't the new marks just grades by other names? Consider Berkeley's system, which awards high honors, honors, pass and fail. That looks suspiciously like A, B, C, and fail -- just without the pluses and minuses.

Frankly, the changes seem like faux egalitarianism to me. As the article makes clear, although Stanford students support the change, they still want to ensure that a decent percentage of them can receive the "best" grades:

Daniel Bernstein, heading into his third year at Stanford Law School and a member of the Law Review staff, said, "most students have reacted positively" to the grade reforms. "Most students wanted it all along and lobbied for it," he said.

Bernstein, of Washington, D.C., said he didn't know what is in the wind for the top grad quota, but he thinks caps should be higher than the 10 percent allowed at Berkeley.

"You want to give students a bigger chance to hear honors and the chance to reward student initiative and distinguish the better students," he said. "I'm not sure, but a 25 percent to 35 percent cap would be good ... or give professors a band within which to work," he said.

"If you're going to eliminate grades you still need a way to distinguish performance," Bernstein said.

Exactly. Let's face it: ranking students is an important, if regrettable, function of legal education. That's why students want to go to prestigious law schools, and that's why students at prestigious law schools want to "distinguish" themselves from their peers. Same as it ever was, to quote the eminent legal scholar David Byrne.

When the first prestigious law school goes straight pass/fail, call me.

A confession: except for the basketball, I don't watch the Summer Olympics. In part, that's because I'm not particularly interested in the medal sports. The more significant reason, though, is that I simply can't stomach the rampant jingoism that inevitably accompanies the Games. Case in point — the reaction to Becky Hammon's decision to play basketball for the Russian team:

The other day, Anne Donovan, former sweetheart of Old Dominion basketball and current coach of the U.S. Olympic team, called Hammon a traitor. What Hammon is doing, Donovan said, "is unfathomable to me."

Detractors notwithstanding, Hammon is going ahead with her summer plans. In Beijing, this small-town girl from Rapid City, S.D., will be living out her American dream... by playing point guard for the Russians.

"I don't expect everybody to understand or jump on my bandwagon," Hammon said recently.

She's a 10-year veteran of the WNBA who finished second in the MVP voting last year playing for the San Antonio Silver Stars but, until recently, she flew very low under the radar. Now she's an Internet target who's being asked to defend her patriotism.

"I know how I feel about my country," she said. "I'm very proud of what America represents to the world. But this is a basketball game. This is not life or death."

Hammon will enter Beijing National Stadium during the opening ceremonies under the Russian flag, wearing Russian colors. She has no genealogical connection to the country but was granted a Russian passport after signing a seven-figure contract with a professional team in Moscow over the winter.

[snip]

Despite her WNBA credentials, at 31, she had never been invited to try out for the U.S. squad until after signing with her Russian club. The gesture was too little, too late as far as she was concerned.

Hammon could have been like thousands of U.S. athletes with thwarted Olympic ambitions. Instead, she chose the unorthodox, less-traveled route - seizing her one shot at the dream, knowing it would leave her open to abuse from self-styled patriots, cold warriors and anyone for whom the Olympics are more about nationalism than athleticism.

[snip]

"If you play in this country, live in this country and you grow up in the heartland - and you put on a Russian uniform - you are not a patriotic person," Donovan said.

I could perhaps understand (though would still deplore) calling Hammon a traitor if she had been invited to play for the U.S. Olympic team but chose to play for the Russian team instead. But that's not the case. Her choice was a simple one: play for Russia or not play Olympic basketball — probably ever. After all, she is 31; the chances that she will be playing better in 2012 are next to zero. So I think it's perverse to call her a traitor simply because she would rather live out her dream of playing in the Olympics than be a "true American" and stay home.