Michigan sends its students and graduates to virtually every jurisdiction in the country, and our recent Food and The Law Mini-Seminar readings have been pushing us to eat and drink more locally. To that end, The Beer Guy would like to inaugurate a new series aimed at exploring the local beers and drinking habits in a few of the most popular summer job destinations. Some of these will be published exclusively on the Res Gestae website, and indeed all of them will end up there, so please comment and add your expertise if you happen to have local knowledge of the jurisdiction.

You've seen 'em in every bar. They hog the stools at Bar Louie, they descended upon your favorite watering hole in Cambridge or Chicago, and they love playing cornhole.

Yep, it's definitely January. We're knee-deep in Seasonal Affective Disorder, and the prevailing color all around us is gray - gray skies, gray buildings, gray food, gray people, and, if you're in Crim Law, lots and lots of gray areas. And let's not pretend that it's not cold out. So here's a list of beers that might keep you warm in these cold, dark times.

The Beer Guy is proud to continue Prof. Pick - an occasional series in which a member of our esteemed faculty is invited to reflect on a beer of his or her choosing. John Pottow is a fixture around Michigan Law, known both for his lightning quick wit and his willingness to tell it like it is. Both are apparent here.

After a somewhat delightful trip through a few local beers of Michigan last issue, we continue this time with a salute to our international students and faculty. Michigan Law School draws from over thirty countries, and each has something special to bring to the great pub table. Some are delicious, some are intriguing, and (to be perfectly honest), some are not very good. A word to our international friends: if you feel that I have unfairly maligned your country of origin or its beer, let's meet over a pint so you can set me straight. One thing missing is a beer from Africa--if anyone knows where I can get one in Ann Arbor, let me know. Now without further ado, let's get started.

The Beer Guy is proud to present Prof. Pick - an occasional series in which a member of our esteemed faculty is invited to reflect on a beer of his or her choosing. As part of our international beer survey, we could hardly ask for better than Judge Bruno Simma of the International Court of Justice. Prof. Simma has roots in Munich, long considered the capital of the beer universe, so we asked him to describe his favorite beer.

Welcome, and Welcome Back!

After Ben's fabulous foundation of the RG's beer column, I can only hope to build on his legacy as the new beer guy. Which is to say, "Hi, I'm the new beer guy." I enjoy beer, I love that the Ancient Mesopotamians, in their wisdom, gathered everything they needed for bread before deciding to make beer instead. I love that the Egyptian paradigm of knowledge was to write information down onto a papyrus and then wash the words into a cup of beer before ingesting the beer. I tried that once - it made reselling my law textbooks difficult.