Discourse.net

Good Thing I Wasn't Expecting a Government Job

NYT, For a Washington Job, Be Prepared to Tell All, reports on the very detailed questionnaire being required of applicants for jobs in the Obama admin. This is one group that will be vetted thoroughly! (Even so, given the numbers, odds are something on someone will slip through the cracks, and by the strange logic of politics, the fact that Team Obama took responsibility for vetting will mean that the press will treat the failure as more significant than if they hadn’t tried so hard. Go figure.)

The NYT article has this arresting graphic, which suggests that bloggers just might have a little trouble getting a policy (as opposed to blogger outreach) job:

New National Security Law Blog

Say hello to Security Law Brief.

Hosted by the Georgetown Center on National Security and the Law.

Welcome 'Hunter of Justice'

We get a lot of great visiting professors at the University of Miami law school — something about being the law school in Paradise, I guess. How well I get to know them has a lot to do with where their offices happen to be; it helps if they’re on my floor, and especially if they are right next door.

When she visited here a while ago, Nan Hunter landed right next door, so I had a chance to get to know her a bit, and I can say that she’s lots of fun to talk to (her partner is also delightful company).

And now Nan has a blog, so we all get to talk with her. Please welcome hunter of justice to the blogosphere. I’m sure it will be great. Here’s how Nan introduced it:

So now, in the mid-summer heat when it seems sane for even mad dogs and law professors to take a turn at the blogging bat, I’m in.

Why? My goal is to provide commentary on sexuality and gender issues, mostly but not exclusively focusing on law. Since I interpret “law” broadly to include a variety of disciplinary and regulatory discourses, you can expect the contents to range pretty widely. I’m looking forward to publishing my own journal of justice seeking, flavored by humor. OK, maybe sarcasm too.

Perspective

Is it just coincidence that Glenn Greenwald, one of our most clear-eyed observers of the political scene, lives and posts from very far outside the Beltway?

Brazil, in fact.

John Flood's Blog Tease

Talk about teasing the reader! John Flood’s Random Academic Thoughts (RATs): From Budapest: 38th World Congress of IIS (edit: Santana):

At another time I will explain why Santana was actually one of the most formative experiences that convinced me law was a subject worth studying. I was in Morocco when I had this conversion.

Inquiring minds want to know.

Oh Frabjous Day! Fafblog IS BACK!

Fafblog! is back!

It’s time for another edition of BARACK OBAMA: THE FINAL THROES! Last week Giblets revealed the dangerous levels of pussification inherent in Obama’s bowling skills and orange juice consumption while exploring the damage done by persistent rumors that the senator is secretly black. But this latest scandal has doomed the Obama campaign more than any dooming doom that has doomed it before, because this time Obama has Insulted America by saying that poor people in impoverished rural areas are somehow “bitter” about being poor and impoverished. For shame!

…

These people aren’t “bitter.” Far from it! America’s impoverished working class are a chipper and cheerful lot, prancing and scampering about their foreclosed homes and crumbling industrial sectors with a spirit of adorable pluckiness, smiling and laughing through their unemployment and their black lung disease like a pack of hardscrabble leprechauns!

…

That’s why Giblets is so certain this final crippling blow to the Obama candidacy will be the finalest and most crippling of them all! By implying that the economic immiseration of America’s rural underclass has made them somehow unhappy, Obama has alienated America’s heartland!

(thanks to SH for the tip!)

…Have they really been gone since July 12, 2006? We needed them.

'Catblogging' Phenomenon Explained

I’ve always been slightly puzzled by the popularity of ‘catblogging’ — the custom of running cat pictures on otherwise serious blogs (especially on Fridays). Cute filler, thought I.

Maybe, however, there is more to it. Consider this pair of articles:

• Blogging makes you feel better
• Cats Help Shield Owners From Heart Attack

OK — It’s therapy!

Second Life Claims Another Vicitm

After a very engaging start to his/her blogging career, Lucky Jim, J.D. wrote on Dec. 15, 2007 that s/he’d started to explore Second Life,

I’ve recently begun to explore Second Life. My cover story is that I’m engaged in fieldwork for socio-legal research on law and informal regulation in virtual communities. There’s more than a grain of truth in that. I am in fact interested in that topic, am in fact working on research in that vein, and do in fact believe there’s plenty of interest along those lines in Second Life. There’s even a Second Life Bar Association and a Second Life Law School.

But, the pathetic truth is that I’ve also found my initial forays to be surprisingly enjoyable.

And the blog hasn’t been updated since.

Best Blog Post Title of the Day

Mark Halperin Doesn’t “Cover” the Freak Show. Mark Halperin Is the Head Freak

Yes, it’s early, but I’m sure it’s the winner anyway.

Say Hello to SFLA Daily Blog

From the ashes of Stuck on the Palmetto rises South Florida Daily Blog run by Rick, who was half of the team on that much-missed local blog casualty.

The mission statement:

My primary focus with SFDB will be to do a daily review of most of South Florida’s independent blogs and comment on some of the more interesting, unique, controversial or informative posts that are written during the course of any day. There is so much going on in the SoFla blogoshere, but at times it seems like everyone is scattered and doing their own things. With SFDB, I’d like to create a place where bloggers and blog readers can visit and get linked up to posts that are especially significant or noteworthy. At the same time, I’m hoping that people will find SFDB an enjoyable place to hang out, discuss the important issues of the day and interact with others who are just as interested as they are with what’s going on in South Florida.

About Blogging For Money

Prof. James Grimmelmann has an interesting post on Lawyers, Blogs, and Money, in which he asks — gently — whether those law professor bloggers who blog for money, be it sponsorship or advertising, run subtle risks of various forms of intellectual corruption.

Grimmelmann admits that in some cases these issues are unavoidable, especially for blogs that have such high traffic that their hosting costs become otherwise unmanageable. But the clear import of the essay is that in most, maybe all, other cases, law professors ought to think many times before taking that shilling.

And it’s not because the shilling leads to straight shilling, although in theory it might. The dangers Grimmelmann points to are more insidious: caring too much about hit counts which can shape content; inflicting ads on the readers; truncating the RSS feed to drive traffic to the ads; not using a Creative Commons license in order to better monetize content; combing logs that ought better to be anonymous for data; seeing oneself as a competitor with other bloggers rather than participants in a shared enterprise.

This here is a non-commercial enterprise, but I don’t claim any special virtue for it: no one, after all, has yet offered me a sufficiently tempting price. The readership here being comfortably ‘B’ list in size (but A+ in quality!), I don’t have the sort of traffic which creates financial pressure. I don’t take ads both because ads are ugly and because the likely revenue seems outweighed by the insurance consequences. (Yes, people do actually threaten to sue me from time to time.)

There’s no point in Grimmelmann’s essay that is self-evidently wrong, indeed most of the points represent the application of standard ideas of conflict of interest to law-professor blogging, but I think nonetheless he’s more or less barking up the wrong tree with this one because almost all of these problems (other than the aesthetic and attention costs of the ads themselves) can and do exist with purely non-commercial blogs also.

Academic and Legal egos being what they are, I think there are a considerable number of people worrying about their hit counts in private. The egoistic desire to increase hit counts can affect content, the RSS feed, licensing and even motivate lack of linking (I speak as one very occasionally plagiarized…). Human nature.

Indeed, when I started blogging I marveled at the growing hit counts. Some weeks I had 3000 or more per day. On very good days, when I wrote something particularly original, I could get over 20,000 visitors to that post. Then I decided to stop worrying, and found myself happier.

Sitemetered traffic nowadays hovers above 1200 or so per day, plus the 1000+ one guesstimates read the RSS feed. And this is still a fun hobby. Which is the main reason why I’d say non-profit blogging is better for academics. Unless you have very high traffic, you won’t make much money off it anyway, and it’s one less thing to worry about.

[On the other hand, I completely agree with this post of Grimmelmann’s.]

The Suddenly Vanishing Palmetto

As a result of some rustication with a local journalist who threatened to out one of the authors, Stuck on the Palmetto, one of the very best, perhaps the best, of the local blogs is gone. It’s not just closing shop, it seems to have taken its archive with it.

I’ll miss it. Please guys, can’t you at least leave the archive up? Local historians will want this some day.

(And if you ever want to guest post anonymously or otherwise, let me know…)

It's Gary Farber Pledge Period

Say what you like about sometime discourse.net commenter Gary Farber, but even when he’s having medical issues and hard times, he’s not doing the hard sell for his pledge drive:

Amygdala: IT’S GARY FARBER PLEDGE DRIVE WEEK!

I’ve been understandably asked at times why someone should help me. And, truth be told, I can’t think of any particularly good reason. So I certainly don’t expect help from anyone: if you’ve done it before, you’ve arguably done your part. If you’ve not, there’s no good reason you should start, and not help someone more deserving instead.

Gary is applying for SSI, because he hasn’t worked enough to be eligible for Social Security disability.

Why’s he asking?

I, in panic-stricken fashion, semi-coherently explained my situation of lifelong recurring clinical depression, as well as other health issues, and that I’d finally decided to apply for Social Security disability, having rightly or wrongly put off that option for decades.

I, with utter shame, loathing, guilt, self-hatred, and a feast of other negative self-directed emotions — as is my wont — asked for people’s help, and an amazing number of people did help, in many ways, including the most important way to help, which was with hard cash. At the time, I said I was afraid I’d need to ask for help again within three months.

Now it’s almost a year later, and I’ve just paid the December rent of $500 and the phone bill ($35), and I’m now down to a total of $241.00 in my bank account, and $22 in my pocket.

…

(The horrible fear that has loomed larger every day and night in my consciousness, and in the pit it creates in my stomach, in the past year is that you won’t, in sufficient numbers, again. My fear is that one can’t go back to the well again. That I’ll wind up with only a few donations, and a few links, and just a bit of response, and have no idea what to do to survive with my disabilities and inabilities and problems until such time as my disability claim is approved. Terror over this has been the dominant theme in my life in recent months, and all I can say is that I’m hoping you’ll help it go away, at least for a while.)

OK, maybe not quite the soft sell.

Every year I’m torn — give to people or give to causes? Mostly I do causes on the theory that systemic changes will in the end help more people. But the people need help now.

Behold the Blogging Magistrate

I know we have at least one blogging ex-judge in the US. There’s the judge who collects legal humor. And, of course, there’s Judge Posner, something of a law unto himself, who give his views online (mostly with his law & economics professor hat on), but do we have any serving judges with a full-time blog who discuss matters at all close to their service on the bench?

England (allegedly) does. See the (pseudonymous) The Magistrate’s Blog. [In fact, I’ve just realized as I was editing this post, there’s more than one, as the View From The Bench plausibly claims to “Being the thoughts, rants, speculations and anecdotes of a magistrate on a northern bench.”]

An English magistrate is a judge of limited jurisdiction, mostly petty offenses punishable by up to six months in gaol. Interestingly, many magistrates are not trained lawyers, although they do have legal advisers. (See the Wikipedia entry for more comprehensive, and perhaps even accurate, information.)

Whoever “Bystander” is, real magistrate or not, The Magistrate’s Blog is an erudite and interesting blog. Yet there are some obvious ethical issues raised by a judge commenting on things that touch on past cases; these concerns are perhaps lessened by the magistrate’s historical role as something of a representative of community values, or (traditionally) at least of the values of the better and rather more upper-crust elements of the community.

The magistrate, if that s/he be, deals with these with this self-description and disclaimer:

Musings and Snippets from an English Magistrate This blog is anonymous, and Bystander’s views are his and his alone. Where his views differ from the letter of the law, he will enforce the letter of the law because that is what he has sworn to do. If you think that you can identify a particular case from one of the posts you are wrong. Enough facts are changed to preserve the truth of the tale but to disguise its exact source.

And perhaps that is enough.

Even so, I don’t think that a sitting US judge would dare do anything like this. We’ve seen a prosecutor get in trouble for blogging. And of course there was the defendant who blogged about his own case pseudonymously — and lost the case when opposing counsel figured out who he was.

There are also a host of juror-bloggers. There’s nothing wrong with a (petit) juror blogging after the trial is over, but it’s obviously a ground for major concern if it happens during the trial as it provides a conduit for juror to lawyer/party communications which (a) might give one side an unfair advantage if only one side is learning what arguments are working ; (b) facilitate jury tampering; (c) provides fertile grounds for appeals. (More on blogging jurors here and here and no doubt elsewhere.)

Don’t get me wrong, as a reader, I’m a fan. And I’m prepared to agree that the world is better off with the Magistrate’s Blog than without it — so long as it’s being true to its promise to change enough facts “to preserve the truth of the tale but to disguise its exact source”. But that is very difficult to do consistently over a long period of time. How, I wonder, was it done in this post, for example? (In the comments, Bystander even states that counsel read a particular case to the court!) If indeed the blog is by an actual Magistrate, the danger of slipping, or even of discovery over time without any slipping, is all too real.

Would discovery be that bad? In principle there’s no difference between a judge writing an academic article about law reform and a magistrate blogging about legal issues that come up in and around the court s/he serves on. Were I a judge, however, I don’t think I’d blog, and I certainly wouldn’t do it pseudonymously if only because people would be sure to see that — however unfairly — as a sign of a guilty conscience. More importantly, print usually has editors and always takes time, which gives one opportunities for reflection. Blogging is quick and usually unedited. Risky….

But meanwhile, I’m going to be reading what “Bystander” writes.

Why rc3.org is a Good Read

Perhaps because I run a somewhat quirky blog (it’s a “personal blog” - says so right in the margin), I like blogs with interesting and not-totally predictable content.

Here’s two recent examples from rc3.org, which is often full of interesting things social, legal, and technical:

First, The pre-bankruptcy debt trade:

Today I learned about a robust industry trading in consumer debt that has been discharged by bankruptcy courts. Business Week explains how firms collect on debts that the debtors have no obligation to pay:

In the 1990s, businesses adept at tracking and trading consumer debt expanded their reach to dabble in accounts enmeshed in bankruptcy. That dabbling has grown into a robust market. Some of the trade in so-called bankruptcy paper involves debts that remain collectible. What’s troubling is that the market now also includes billions in discharged debts, which ought to have no dollar value. Owners of canceled liabilities can revive their value in two main ways: by directly pressuring consumers to cough up cash or by gaming the credit system, as allegedly happened in the Rathavongsa case.

How does this work? The creditors simply refuse to update the credit file of the consumers who filed for bankruptcy, so that it looks like a debt that has been legally discharged is still in collections. If the consumer wants to get a new loan, they have to pay up. In other words, it’s extortion.

Second, How software warps your brain, which meditates on how it can be that the same person can love the open-endedness of Wikipedia and still get hives when managing an office software app in which almost everyone gets admin privileges.

Progressive Blogs in Florida

Wow — there are a lot of Florida Progressive Blogs. (Even if we are all doing a lousy job).

The Blog Host that Makes No Compromises

Looking for a blog host that makes no compromises with quality? Have I got a host for you: No Uptime Hosting - Guaranteed server downtime!

Everybody's Doing It

Bill Clinton has a blog.

Blog Gets Eight Innings of Results

This is a cool example of a blog getting results. Follow the link if your care about either blogs or baseball.

(spotted via rc3.org)

A Fool for a Client

The mind boggles.

Blogger unmasked, court case upended: As Ivy League-educated pediatrician Robert P. Lindeman sat on the stand in Suffolk Superior Court this month, defending himself in a malpractice suit involving the death of a 12-year-old patient, the opposing counsel startled him with a question.

Was Lindeman Flea?

Flea, jurors in the case didn’t know, was the screen name for a blogger who had written often and at length about a trial remarkably similar to the one that was going on in the courtroom that day.

In his blog, Flea had ridiculed the plaintiff’s case and the plaintiff’s lawyer. He had revealed the defense strategy. He had accused members of the jury of dozing.

With the jury looking on in puzzlement, Lindeman admitted that he was, in fact, Flea.

So, here’s a little tip for anyone who finds themselves involved in a lawsuit: don’t blog about the case (or, at least, have every posting approved by your lawyer). And if you do have a blog, maybe you should mention this fact to your lawyer…

P.S. I’m sure someone in the blogosphere will try to spin this case as some sort of attack on bloggers’ inherent right to anonymity. It isn’t.

(Thanks to DF for the link.)

W. David Stephenson Is Back

W. David Stephenson blogs on homeland security et al. is back after months of darkness. He’s got a new feed address too.

Unfortunately, the very useful archives (lots of info on disaster preparedness and on the ways in which citizen-based preparedness might be better than current centralized top-heavy models) have yet to emerge from what sounds like a painful transition from Userland to Wordpress.

Fear of transitioning from my very customized MT 2.x to Wordpress has kept me from making the move, although WP would I think be easier to use (and would standardize me with most of the other blogs I run).

Insiders' Gossip About Wolfowitz

Amazingly, there’s a blog at which World Bank insiders discuss the Wolfowitz scandal and share juicy gossip about possibly forged emails and the like. It’s currently called World Bank President - Scrutinising Paul Wolfowitz, outgoing World Bank president.

Founded in January 2005, when former World Bank president James Wolfensohn announced he would be retiring, the original mission of the blog was to “shine a light on the medieval process for choosing the head of this very powerful institution.” In particular, the author(s) were unhappy about the ability of the US government to pick the Bank’s President. Then they were unhappy with what they got. Then they went on hiatus.

Now they’re back, with a new name.

Best Blog Post Title of the Week

Ann Bartow, An Important Copyright Case About Photos of Naked Women, As Discussed By Men

Stuff You Find Online

Ex MI6 agent and continuing thorn in the side of the UK spy establishment Richard Tomlinson has a blog entitled MI6 v Tomlinson.

Brian Leiter Cares About Rankings

E-mail from Brian Leiter:

I am writing to ask if you would be willing to use your blog to help establish my law school ranking site as a result for those searching my name; oddly it is not at present. You can simply cut and paste from the post here:

http://leiterlawschool.typepad.com/leiter/2007/04/law_school_rank.html

Thanks so much, and sorry for the bother.

That link takes you to this text:

So, dear reader with a blog, please post a link to Brian Leiter with the hyper-link to www.leiterrankings.com, for the benefit of all those souls in Cyberspace in search of my law school ranking site. 

Which all reminds me: Over a year ago, I stopped promoting this blog by sending out emails when I thought I had something worthy of attention. Traffic and links soon sagged — I lost maybe a third of it. But I’m much happier.

Eric Muller Gets a Medal

A while back I posted a link to Eric Muller’s research into the historical trail of his great-uncle who was murdered by the Nazis.

The story now has a surprise ending.

The Stumblng Tumblr

One of my readers has started a new blog: The Stumblng Tumblr, described as “An Australian lawyer’s tumblelog about things (some legal, some not) you might otherwise have missed”. It looks about as disorganized as Discourse.net, so Australian readers, and others too, might wish to take a peek.

The author has an interesting personal history but has decided to run the blog anonymously.

Here is a nice random bit of data I learned from The Stumblng Tumblr today:

Click for larger version.

Herald Does Blogs in Teaching

The Miami Herald has a short article on blogs in teaching in today’s education supplement, Blogs taking place of teachers’ lounge chats, which includes some quotes from yours truly — although what I said is entirely about teacher-student communication and thus has little to do with their headline.

Eric Muller on the Trail

Eric Muller is in Germany, on the historical trail of his great-uncle who was murdered by the Nazis.

Amazing posts at Is That Legal? at “And How Was The Weather In Łodź” and especially Uncle Leo’s Medals.

Rumpole on the Rampage

The Justice Building Blog, a gossipy yet serious attempt to talk about what happens in the local courts, is on a bit of a roll recently: I recommend both Diary of a Mad Jurist and Traffic.Parking (about how to improve conditions in traffic court). Having been through it recently, I especially like the idea of moving traffic ticket soundings (in which the magistrate offers most offenders a plea — usually, so many dollars, no points) online. But I wonder if the proposed rule about never allowing continuances isn’t a bit harsh. Even the feds allow them for illness, for example.

On the other hand, I do think that last week’s post about the TV exposé of local cops is a bit late (unless maybe the local station is doing reruns?). I wrote about it a year ago.

Nancy Pelosi's Office Has a Blog

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s office has a new blog, called appropriately enough, The Gavel. Today there are lots of videos (via C-Span via YouTube) of house members giving speeches about the war.

I also noticed the Comments Policy:

Due to staffing constraints, we regret that we are not capable of monitoring, moderating, and responding to comments at all times. Instead, we will open up comments on selected posts when we, or our guest-posters, have adequate time to give your input the time and respect it deserves. We appreciate your patience and understanding, and we will be sure to give advance notice when the comments are open. Always feel free to contact us via e-mail with any concerns or input you might have.

…which seems reasonable enough. And then there’s the Kid’s Page which is about as treacly as usual, but has some good links and does sport an amazing photo of a young Pelosi with JFK, which I’m hotlinking to below:

Can Workers Be Fired for Off-Duty Blogging?

For most jobs — maybe not mine — you can probably be fired for blogging during working hours unless the boss approved it as a work-related activity. But what about off-duty blogging? On controversial topics? This interesting article from today’s New York Law Journal looks at the rights of bloggers (especially bloggers in New York) relating to their jobs.

And New York has some interesting relevant law,

In New York, an employer may not discharge, discriminate against, or refuse to hire employees because of their participation in “legal recreational activities” off the employer’s premises during nonworking hours unless the activity “creates a material conflict of interest related to the employer’s trade secrets, proprietary information or other proprietary or business interest.” N.Y. Lab. Law §201d(2)(a)©, (3)(a). The statute defines “recreational activities” as including “any lawful, leisure activity, for which the employee receives no compensation and which is generally engaged in for recreational purposes, including but not limited to sports, games, hobbies, exercise, reading and the viewing of television, movies and similar material.” Although very few courts have interpreted this statute (and none have applied it to blogging), courts that have analyzed the statute have declined to give “recreational activities” an expansive interpretation. See, e.g., McCavit v. Swiss Reinsurance America Co., 237 F3d 166 (2d Cir. 2001) (holding that dating is not a “recreational activity” protected by the New York legal recreational activities statute).

Employees can be expected to argue that blogs that may be offensive or embarrassing to the employer are lawful recreational activities under the law. Employers, however, can be expected to press for a narrow interpretation of the law that recognizes the employer’s right to manage its business and protect its reputation and confidential information.

There’s lots more where that came from.

Update: Ack! It’s behind a paywall. I try never to link to stuff like that if I can avoid it, but now that I’ve posted this, I don’t think I can very well take down this item.

China Matters

If you are looking for an interesting blog on an important topic, you might want to look at ChinaRedux, a blog about “China’s Ascent In The Age Of American Hegemony.”

Amygdala In Trouble

Gary Farber of Amygdala (and sometime contributor to the comments here) is having some serious troubles. He's put out a plea for help (as in $$$) -- or for work he can do remotely as an editor, proofreader, or researcher.

Just think -- if we had a decent health care policy in this country, this wouldn't be an issue.

Blog News

Michael Bérubé announces that he’s giving up blogging. I’ll miss reading him almost every day, and especially miss reading about Jamie.

Meanwhile, Bitch Ph.D has outed herself, an action foretold. I just hope this works out ok for her.

Elizabeth Edwards On Blogging and Commenting

Micah Sifry writes about Elizabeth Edwards, Online and For Real at Personal Democracy Forum. In it she discusses her blogging and her commenting on other people's online postings.

Like everything else I've ever read about her, it makes Elizabeth Edwards look good.

And no, this is not going to turn into the Edwards-for-President blog, at least not yet. He's certainly one of my top two or three candidates at present, but the season is young, and the candidates have not yet staked out positions on some key issues I'd need to hear about before being able to commit. Especially Iraq.

For Atrios Junkies

Eschaton has been bloggered, so if you want your Atrios fix you will need to visit the temporary Eschaton site until this gets sorted out.

It's sort of interesting how "I've been Bloggered" is the '00s version of the early 90s "I've been Continentaled". It can't be good when your brand is commonly associated with screw-ups.

Update: It's fixed.

"X-Judge" H. Lee Sarokin Starts His Blog With a Bang

H. Lee Sarokin was a judge on the Third Circuit until he retired and became an arbitrator. Now he's a blogger too, and his first post starts things off with a bang:

This is my first entry in to the world of blog, because I am astonished by the lack of outrage over the case of Jose Padilla---an American citizen who has been held in solitary confinement for 31/2 years, been deprived of the right to counsel for 21 months, all as a result of the unfettered discretion of the President in designating Mr Padilla as an "enemy combatant".

...

The alleged dirty bomb plot is nowhere mentioned in the indictment against him. Mr. Padilla may be guilty of something, but the administration is guilty of far worse.
The administration has justifed (and to large extent the public has accepted) wiretapping, these detentions, and possibly even torture, on the basis that these methods fight terrorism and confine terrorists. But what if they are not terrorists? Hundreds have been released after extended confinement without charges. They are all someone's husband, son, brother or father. For many such persons, the government has now suspended habeus corpus ("the best and only sufficient defense of personal freedom" Justice Chase, 1868), thus denying the means and opportunity for those detained to establish their innocence of any wrongdoing.

American soldiers are dying to win freedom for the people of Iraq, while we are losing freedom for the people of America.

I just hope current sitting judges are equally outraged.

[Update: How long before Mr. Sarokin gets a cease-and-desist letter from Marvel Comics or 20th Century Fox?]

A Scholarship for Bloggers?

A $5,000/year scholarship for bloggers? Apparently so: Announcing The Blogging Scholarship from the Daniel Kovach Foundation.

It seems grad students can apply -- so why not law students too? They want a 3.0 GPA, a lively blog, and an application by Oct. 30, which is just a few days away.

I confess to being a little puzzled as to why blogging seems worth so much more than other things, but there you have it.

They will pick ten finalists and then, uh-oh, have a "public vote" to choose the single winner. I wonder how they plan to prevent ballot-stuffing.

Clever

Doug Berman and Paul Caron are starting the Law School Innovation Blog.

Just Sayin'

I miss Fafblog.

Say Hello to the "Watchdog Blog"

Say hello to the new Nieman Foundation Watchdog Blog:

it seems to us that it could be important, even vital, to have sympathetic, knowledgeable, respected writers offer a little guidance and commentary and, every now and then, show us how our work is supposed to be done.

We took NiemanWatchdog.org online in May 2004 with a focus on having experts from Harvard and elsewhere pose questions the press should ask. Since then we’ve had more than 130 contributors and 440 or so items. We are of course continuing that.

Today we launch the Watchdog Blog, to supplement those efforts.

The blog features an interesting list of contributors although the large majority of them seem to tend to the, um, very experienced end of the spectrum.

OBDisclosure: My brother is the deputy editor of Niemanwatchdog.org.

National Security Blog

Keep an eye on National Security Advisors, featuring UM Law's own Steve Vladeck with Bobby Chesney (Wake Forest), and Tung Yin (Iowa).

James Grimmelmann Lifts the Cone of Silence

James Grimmelmann is blogging regularly again now that his clerkship is over. This is a good thing. Example: How to Annoy Friends and Alienate People.

And he'll be a Resident Fellow of the Information Society Project at Yale Law School and an Adjunct Professor at New York Law School. They're lucky to have him.

Hugmeat

A new word is born before our very eyes: Majikthise coins hugmeat.

The Ultimate Blogging Poster

Brad DeLong brings us the ultimate blogging poster:

Grant McCracken on How to Have a Good Holiday

I didn't really have the greatest summer ever. It sounds as if Grant McCraken, on the other hand, did.

This Blog Sits at the: Your next vacation: I have an idea for your next vacation.

Phone Saida at Saros Research in London and set up ethnographic interviews with 10 people in London.

It sounds strange, I'm sure. Who wants to play anthropologist on their holidays?

Well, if the object is to penetrate the barrier that stands between every tourist and country/culture, ethnographic interviews are really very usful.

Russell Davies and I (with the help of people attending Russell's Account Planning School of the Web) were recently wrestling with the idea of cruise ships, those suburbs of the sea, and it occured to me that almost all touristic experience has the quality of cruise ship containment. We may get off the ship from time to time, but the closest we are getting to the host country is a shop filled with touristic chakahs that play out stereotypes and help extinquish the possibility of cross culture contact.

I do these interviews for a living. But I am suggesting that you do them for the sheer fun of it. On a recent trip, I found Londoners fascinating on several topics, including how dinner parties are changing in London, the difference between lager andstout, what is the deal with Manchester United, anyway, when and how to use one's best "telephone voice," gardening the Tony Blair way, and how English audiences received The Da Vinci Code (in some cases, with audible and enthusiastic scorn, apparently).

You will have to pay these people about 100 pounds each to sit for the interview. But it's bargain, I'm telling you.

And we both went to London....

This is Beautiful

slacktivist: How I learned that song.

Academic Secrets

Some people are really going to love this one: academicsecret blog (spotted via Feminist Law Profs -- who incidentally, have a male guest blogger at present...)

"The Blog that Ate a Presidency"

No, not that Presidency -- a University Presidency. Inside Higher Ed has a story about a blog that helped bring down Uma G. Gupta, until recently the president of the State University of New York College of Technology at Alfred.

Personally, I'm not sure how significant or surprising it is to learn that an anonymous blog served as a major rallying point in taking down a highly unpopular and perhaps incompetent university administrator. But it's interesting that some of the commentators over at Inside Higher Ed think it's an awfully big deal.

Andrew Chin Is/Is Not "Voiceless"

University of North Carolina School of Law Prof. Andrew Chin has a new blog, ironically entitled voiceless. Prof. Chin modestly suggests he is "blogging from the long tail" although in fact he's writing about "the legal and technological structures that keep almost all of us voiceless".

"Blogging from long tail" almost reminds me of the "On fringes of the public sphere", so that has to be good. Although I should note that someone one asked me, fairly enough, how a sphere could have a fringe, and I'm still working on a good answer.

Bob Glushko Has a Blog

Bob Glushko is an original and deep thinker about structured information flows (think XML and its bigger relatives). And he's smart. But he has a blog anyway. It's called "Doc or Die" and shared with Tim McGrath.

Rats

I was going to suggest that this is today's best blog posting anywhere--but it seems that the part about the bearded lady and the talking seal was made up.

But most of the rest about the clowns appears to be true.

Remembering Endo

Eric Muller is publishing a mini-symposium commemorating the life of Mitsuye Endo (of "Ex parte Endo" fame), who passed away last month.

Today, tomorrow, and Wednesday, I will post commemorations of Mitsuye Endo and her quiet legal heroism written by three leading experts on her case and its history and significance.

The first to appear--later today--will be by Greg Robinson, a professor of history at the University of Quebec at Montreal and author of, among many other things, By Order of the President: FDR and the Internment of Japanese Americans (Harvard University Press 2001).

Tomorrow I will post the commemorative thoughts of Patrick Gudridge, Professor of Law at the University of Miami School of Law and the author of, among many other things, the important article "Remember Endo?", which appeared in the Harvard Law Review in 2003.

On Wednesday, I will post the thoughts of Professor Jerry Kang of the UCLA School of Law, whose work includes some of the most careful and probing analysis of Endo, Korematsu, and Hirabayashi...

Another Good Blog

I'm getting to the point where I fear more blogs to read. And Info/Law looks good, so it's especially scary.

It's about law and information (good stuff!), and it's by Minnesota law-prof-to-be William McGeveran and Wayne State law-prof-to-be Derek Bambauer.

"Mixed" Blogging Considered Dangerous?

One last bit of fallout/navel-gazing from the law profs' blogathon. During my talk I made a point of noting that I don't really consider most of what I do here as part of my scholarly activities. Mostly it's my hobby. I do consider my classroom blogs part of my teaching, and ICANNWatch is the sort of informed activism that professors list under "service" when accounting for themselves to Deans. I do post some serious stuff here -- but mostly about topics outside my main areas of specialty.

Larry Solum is skeptical:

Academics should be free, just as free as anyone else, to blog recreationally. Of course. But academics should also be free to pursue blogging as a form of scholarship. This leads to an interesting question: can free form blogging be combined with scholarly blogging? My off-the-cuff reaction to this question is "no." Or at least, "probably not." One reason for this answer is simply practical. Academic blogging mixed with free form blogging is hard to differentiate from blogging that does not aspire to the standards of scholarship--that is, to rigor and an intentional focus on truth. A related point is that it will very difficult for academic administrators to decide how to reward mixed blogging. And if blogging isn't rewarded, then it will tend to fade away, because academics will tend to gravitate towards those scholarly activities that do receive extrinsic rewards. This is especially likely to be true for those who don't yet have blogs and who face large start up costs before their blogs can attract significant numbers of readers.

Now comes Larry Ribstein to suggest that Solum has underestimated the danger of "hobby blogs":

My concern is that there will be pressure from two directions to, in effect, professionally legitimize these blogs by giving their authors credit in retention, promotion and compensation.

First, entertaining blogs get more downloads, recognition, higher USNWR rankings, etc. Might we be heading for the day when the dean tells the faculty, don't bother with with the law reviews; work on your movie reviews?

Second, scholarship, as Randy Barnett pointed out at the conference, is hard work. So is a lot of blogging (e.g., Larry Solum's). But hobby-blogging is fun. Though at the end of the day, we get a lot of satisfaction out of good scholarship, we might be tempted, before the end of the day, to substitute hobby-blogging for scholarship, particularly if our schools reward us for doing that.

I'm concerned, therefore, not about hobby-blogging itself, but that blurring the line between hobby and work may have negative consequences for our work as scholars. After all, incentives matter.

Ribstein's proposal is characteristically hard-edged: don't claim academic credit for your hobbies (so far, so good) and clearly separate your scholarly blogging from your hobby blog; maybe even on two different blogs. You might think, given the above, that I'd agree, but while I see no harm in it, I also see no reason at all to demand this strict separation. If you have an audience for your movie reviews and occasionally slip in something serious, it seems to me that the worst that will happen is that your serious thoughts will get a wider audience. This is not so terrible. The second-worst thing that can happen is that you will drive away part of your audience. This too is not so terrible: if people are interested in what I think for whatever mysterious reason, they better get used to the idea that I sometimes think.

Eric Muller, responding to Solum's earlier post, mostly disagrees. He starts by admitting one real problem: "mixed" blogs confuse some people. Lots of people. And Eric's wonderful blog is a great example -- I can't for the life of me figure out why I usually get included among lists of law blogs yet he often does not. His blog, after all, even has "legal" in the title!

Anyone who has been around lawyers knows that they love to pigeonhole ideas and speakers almost as much as diagnostic physicians like to classify symptoms into known diseases. But that's the risk we take. That doesn't mean we have to pre-screen ourselves.

Indeed, as Eric notes, sometimes mixed blogging works very very well, at least judging by the market metric of hit counts (a metric I personally find increasingly suspect). Eric's final point is interesting also: he suggests that the "mixed" lawprof blogs which best succeed in the market for eyeballs form a pattern: The most highly successful "mixed" lawprof bloggers, he notes, "all blog from, and to a readership primarily on, the political right," although, as Eric admits, why that should be is a bit of a mystery.

Is There a Text In This Blog?

Stanley Fish has a blog behind the New York Times paywall.

Tung Yin is Safe

Fortunately Tung Yin and his family are unharmed by the tornado that ripped through Iowa City.

I don't know which is worse--hurricane warnings days in advance, most of which are false alarms, or tornado warnings, which happen when the twister is already near your house.

Most of my students and I headed to Dairy Queen to celebrate our victory.  Little did I know that four hours later, my wife and baby and I would be down in our basement, listening to the radio report about a tornado touching down in southwest Iowa City, heading east (i.e., toward us). . . .

Apparently, much of downtown Iowa City is a mess right now, exacerbated by people who are inexplicably driving out to take a look at how much damage there is!

UPDATE: Oh my gosh, that Dairy Queen has been destroyed!!!

Then again, hurricanes sometimes spawn mini-tornadoes. And we don't have basements.

Kaimipono Wenger Says I'm Nuts

Kaimipono Wenger starts the DSM for bloggers.

Given the number of people who have written to my ICANNWatch persona and been amazed to get an answer from the guy who writes Discourse.net, I guess at least one of the shoes fits...

The Ultimate Meta-Thread

The ultimate meta-comment thread is at Unqualified Offerings.

I hope Jim Henley will forgive me for quoting the entire post. It consists of one word:

Blog

Hilarity ensues. Yes, really.

Experimental Philosophy Blog

There's late to the party, and then there's learning about something more than a month after Slate runs an article on it, but shameful as it may be I have only just stumbled upon the Experimental Philosophy Blog. Among its virtues are an announcement of the first annual Online Philosophy Conference, and a (rather small?) section devoted to Philosophy of Law.

Incidentally, the blog denizens are not very happy with the Slate article. (Further discussion chez Leiter)

Vote Early, Vote Often

From Michael Bérubé comes this urgent plea:

FrontPage.com, the website run by the Person Who Shall Not Be Designated By His First Initial and a Drastic Truncation of His Surname, is conducting an online poll to determine the very worst professor in America.  You may recall that I was outraged, outraged that He Who Shall Not Be Designated had not ranked his “101 or 100 or 102 Most Dangerous Professors” in the order of the danger they pose to the Republic; but now, friends, you and I have a unique opportunity to redress a grave wrong.  Please vote for me as America’s Worst Professor, if you have the time and inclination.  Right now I’m leading Eve Sedgwick by the slimmest of margins, and as you know, I have no Diebold apparatus to fall back upon.  But don’t worry about ballot-stuffing!  This is FrontPage.com, people—a website whose unofficial (and yet universally acknowledged) motto is “Sloppiness R Us.” There are no limits, no limits at all, on the number of votes you can cast from one IP address.  So stop by FrontPage today, and vote for me as America’s Worst Professor.  I thank you, and all that is good and holy thanks you.

Incidentally, if you missed this Bérubé post on indoctrination of college students in contemporary higher education, well, you have a treat in store.

Feminist Law Profs Blog

Ann Bartow has set up a blog for Feminist Law Professors which sports an impressive list of participants. One more for the blogroll & newsreader

Update: A link in case you are looking for the Feminist Law Proffessors Blog News Feed.

It Makes You Think

David Friedman's Ideas blog will strike some as law, economics and libertarianism run wild, but I think he's doing what academics are supposed to do: thinking, and making us think too.

Note also this piece of self-description,

I am an academic economist who teaches at a law school and has never taken a course for credit in either field.

In Praise of Wonkery

Angry Bear, that most excellent economist, sums up a bloggish debate that apparently broke out while I wasn't looking. Seems that there's otherwise sensible people out there who argue that there's little if any point in bloggish wonkery at this moment in US history because no one in power cares about facts anyway.

A better argument for the "no facts please, we're American" point of view might have commented on the need to break through the right-wing financial and ideological dominance of mass media (and I don't just mean Fox, I mean a New York Times that thinks it is 1944 and FDR is President).

But even the strongest form of that argument is wrong. Angry Bear goes to the trouble of working up wordy justifications for, well, justifications, and does the usual nice job. But I'm afraid my view on this is quite simple, some may even say simplistic:

The truth may not always set you free, but there is no real freedom without truth.

Academics, wonky bloggers, muckrakers, we all play our small parts in the Experiment that is democracy.

So, how's the experiment going this year?

Note to Self: Stuff to Read

From CultureCat | Rhetoric and Feminism:

3. What are some of the best female-written blogs in your opinion? The best liberal blogger? The best conservative blogger? The best in keeping everyone guessing?

Best female-written blogs:
One Good Thing: http://buggydoo.blogspot.com/
Girl Genius: http://girlgenius.typepad.com/girlgeniuscom/
Badgerings: http://badbadbadger.blogspot.com/

Best liberal bloggers:
Pharyngula: http://pharyngula.org/index/weblog
Bitch Ph.D.: http://bitchphd.blogspot.com/
Body and Soul: http://bodyandsoul.typepad.com/
Norbizness: http://norbizness.com/
Feministe: http://feministe.us/blog/
blackfeminism.org: http://blackfeminism.org/
Hullaballoo (Digby): http://digbysblog.blogspot.com/
John & Belle: http://examinedlife.typepad.com/johnbelle/

Also creative endeavors like:
The Rude Pundit: http://rudepundit.blogspot.com/
Wealth Bondage: http://thehappytutor.com/ (“fetish action figures”)

Best conservative bloggers:
Ann Althouse: http://althouse.blogspot.com
Ilyka Damen (now defunct): http://ilyka.mu.nu
(and though they’re more libertarian/fiscal conservative)
Crescat Sententia: http://www.crescatsententia.org/
Marginal Revolution: http://www.marginalrevolution.com/

Yes, We're Begging

The Robert of Robert's Stochastic thoughts and I are just about exactly the same age. And like him, I find the use of the phrase "begs the question" to mean anything far from "avoiding grappling with the issue" to clang horribly. (Robert would have it be something like making a lousy argument, thus leaving the question un-answered, which works for me too).

Just mentioning.

Things Change

Al Brophy, guesting at Concurring Opinions has a great post contrasting 1950s and 2000s Conservatism, with special reference to feminism.

A Guest Blogger to Watch

In what can only be understood as a sign of their fabulous good taste, the clever folks at Prawsblog have persuaded my collegue Steve Vladeck to guest blog for them "for the next few weeks".

See, for example, his first post for them, What if the war on terrorism never ends?.

'Legal Debate' Blog for HS Debaters

Modestly downplaying her own considerable legal acumen, UM Law Lecturer Lindsay Harrison has started a blog called Legal Debate with this mission statement:

This blog intends to provide a forum for high school debaters debating this year's Civil Liberties topic to engage in discussions with law professors about the topic. Many of the arguments that reoccur year after year in the debate community are areas where law professors have special expertise: federalism, presidential powers, separation of powers, the hollow hope, critical legal studies, etc.

My hope is that this forum functions as a site for clarification of debaters' questions about the law, as well as a site for argument innovation.

Initially, I plan to solicit topic-related questions from high school debaters (and coaches). I will locate a law professor with some expertise on the question and will post his or her response on this site. From time to time, I may post my own thoughts on the topic as well.

I was never a high school debater, but the people who I know who were would have loved something like this.

'Concurring Opinions' Blog Issues a 'Registration Statement'

Concurring Opinions, a new blog which so far sports lawprofs Daniel Solove and Kaimi Wenger (strange bedfellows? could be interesting...) has announced itself to the world by publishing a Registration Statement, modeled, rather loosely, on the the ones firms issues when they go public.

I like it.

The Things Friends Do

Eric Muller volunteers me for a new gig. Actually, in the unlikely event anyone was listening, it might be fun...

Blogs, Ads, and Insurance

When stuff on this blog doesn’t work like it should, I start thinking about maybe taking the blog off a shared server and putting on its own machine. The trouble is, it would cost a lot to have my own machine to host this blog, and while I’m happy to pay a little for what is basically a hobby, I’m not sure if I’m willing to spend what it takes to have my own hosted machine run by professionals. (I could run it at home, but I want it done right, and the upload bandwidth on my home line is rather puny.)

One solution many people adopt to defray the cost of a server is to run ads. I intend to resist that option unless I have no choice. There are two reasons.

First, I don’t like ads, so I don’t want to foist them on the people kind enough to follow my ramblings.

Second, I am pretty confident that my homeowners insurance policy covers my hobbies: Suppose, for example, someone were someone crazed enough to sue me for something related to one of my postings. Not only would they lose, but there would be someone who’d pay to defend me. (Otherwise I’d have to throw myself on the mercy of the EFF.)

The trouble is, I am not certain how my insurance would treat a hobby that had a revenue-producing component, even if I wasn’t making a profit off it. Could it be considered a business, in which case it wouldn’t be covered? I could imagine an insurance lawyer making that argument. Heck, if I were the insurance lawyer I’d make that argument. I think the counter-argument is better — it’s a hobby that happens to bring a few bucks — but would I count on a judge inevitably seeing that way. No I would not.

Then again, lots of other academic bloggers run ads. So what does it mean? There are lots of possibilities:

1. I have a more restrictive insurance policy than most other bloggers
2. Other academic bloggers have not thought about this aspect of blogging
3. Other academic bloggers have thought about and are less risk-averse
4. Academic bloggers as a class are judgment-proof¹

Update: Turns out that Eugene Volokh not only had the same thought some time ago, but he actually did some research on the question, which pretty much supports my instincts (although laws do vary by state). And one of the trackbacks to that post, Antinome sounds knowledgeable and recommends David J. Marchitelli, Construction and Application of “Business Pursuits” Exclusion Provision in General Liability Policy,35 A.L.R.5th 375, which I will make it a point to read the next time I have insomnia.

---

¹ To be judgment-proof is to have little or no property (or income) that a creditor can legally take to collect in the foreseeable future.

Good Reads

Recommended reading:

• Brad DeLong's Semi-Daily Journal: The Coming Dollar Crisis?
• Edward Castronova, Terra Nova, From the Mouths of Babes
• Best of BoingBoing
• Jonathan Kozol, Harpers, Still Separate, Still Unequal: America's Educational Apartheid
• FEMA's web site is a disaster area
• Weird Net Tricks: Call-By-Web

Google Blog Search (Beta)

This looks useful: Google Blog Search (beta).

Harry Potter and the Excellent Parody

This Watley Review posting on Disgruntled Harry Potter Fan Releases “Corrected” Version of Book fooled me completely. It so perfectly captures a certain type of reality that when I first read it, I never even imagined it was a parody.

It is a parody, isn’t it? (cf. Ann Bartow’s concluding Note to the exceedingly gullible). I mean, this rapid-fan-translation story is supposed to be true….

Caroline Bradley is Guest Blogging at The Conglomerate

Caroline Bradley, who guest blogged here not so long ago, is now guest-blogging at the Conglomerate. See Miscreant Directors Can Give Back to the Community.

And, oh yes, we celebrated our sixteenth wedding anniversary yesterday.

100+ Law Professor Bloggers And Counting

The tireless folks at PrawfsBlawg have produced a PrawfsBlawg: Law Professor Blogger Census (Beta Version 1.0). It’s interesting to see who is doing what, but upon learning there are more than 100 of us already, all of a sudden my mind was playing a Tom Paxton song. (Link to an mp3 most welcome…)

Good links

• Lies, Uncertainty and Job Interviews. Cultures and lying. Cultures of lying.
• Juan Cole asks, Is Bigotry All Right in Politics?; many people will, alas, not agree with his suggestion that we make certain bigots into pariahs.
• Michael Geist Face To Face With The Great Firewall Of China. (I still claim to be the originator of that term, by the way.)
• Is this the world’s most expensive airport cab ride?
• David Bernstein writes something I agree with: Constructive Response to British Boycott of Haifa and Bar-Ilan Universities. (We don’t agree often.)
• Mark Kleiman, Jeb Bush and rapists’ rights

Beth Simone Noveck Has A Blog

Rising academic super-star Beth Simone Noveck has a blog. The Cairns Blog is tied to the very interesting-sounding Cairns Project:

The Cairns Project builds civic software to promote problem solving and decisionmaking through the application of participatory, and collaborative solutions. Decisions made by and with the input of those groups affected by the decisions represent a more legitimate way of governing, working and living. This is democracy, not as a form of politics, but as a way of life.

The first goal of the Cairns Project is to build open-source, web-based knowledge management software to promote participatory practices. The Cairns software allows those who work in groups to upload, index and map information about their own projects and to search easily for information about those of others.

It also helps match those “doing democracy” to those studying and documenting participative practices across multiple domains.

The Cairns Project offers a high impact visual interface for users to describe their own work rather than relying on third-parties to do so. The success of the Project therefore depends on as many people contributing to it as possible.

The Cairns Project provides a mechanism for “translating” collaborative and participative practices so that people in civic, governmental, business and other worlds can learn from each other’s experiences.

The Cairns Project is not simply designed to study groups but to promote participatory work. It is both a tool for idea exchange and a place for engagement among members of this community of interest worldwide.

Body Slam

Reading Michael Bérubé this week reminds me of the old French proverb: Cet animal est tres mechant. Quand on l’attaque, il se defend (“This animal is very naughty. When you attack it, it defends itself.”).

Another Round, Please

Whiskey Bar: My Back Pages.

A must-read if you have been a regular at the Whiskey Bar; still very interesting if you’ve only visited occasionally. Billmon having gone beyond the the Knight of Faith and even the Knight of Resignation, winds up in a virtual gin joint, mainlining social criticism.

We should all be such existentialists.

Real Law Firms Have...Law Firm Blogging Policies

How much more mainstream can you get. Seems that the guys over at Real Lawyers :: Have Blogs are going to try to draft a model “law firm blogging policy”. But this isn’t about those crazy associates, not it’s going to be part of a marketing strategy:

Legal marketing and business development professionals in leading law firms are chomping at the bit to launch professional marketing blogs for practice groups or particular lawyers. These folks often need some help in getting the firms administration to approve a blog marketing program. One thing that will help is a blog policy.

As far as I can tell, all I get from this blog are nice letters from readers, occasional and very welcome pings from long-lost friends, and pleas for free legal help, some quite heart-rending. But then I’m not a law firm…

Gorilla Hermeneutics

Slacktivist’s essay on Gorilla Hermeneutics is another of those essays that would be screamingly funny if it were not so dead-on.

Brad DeLong As an Object of Study

A journalism student at the University of Missouri-Columbia, formerly a reporter in Shanghai, is doing a thesis on why people read politically-oriented weblogs that are written by non-journalists. In other words, he’s studying Brad Delong.

Stefan Brands's "Identity Corner"

The Identity Corner is a new blog by Stefan Brands, who is one of the top applied cryptographers in the world, yet also a very fluent writer on the social policy implications of cryptographic systems.

Brands’s book, Rethinking Public Key Infrastructures and Digital Certificates: Building in Privacy remains one of the best works on digital certificates and the policy questions that surround them.

I’m sure this will be interesting for anyone who cares about the technological version of ‘identity politics’.

It Was 60 Years Ago Today...

C.E. Petit, he of the luridly designed but very interesting “Scrivener’s Error”, notes an important and under-reported anniversary.

Is That Legal?' Turns Two

The relentlessly sensible and often important Is That Legal? blog written by my law school classmate Eric Muller turns two today. Blogroll it today!

Is Class Bloggable? How About Private Chats?

Yale Law Student Will Baud puts the cat among the pigeons: should (can) professors limit what students say about them in blogs? FWIW, my view is that class is bloggable, but that it’s bad taste to blog any private conversation, whether with a professor or anyone else, without that person’s consent. Smart students will, however, consider that people, yes even professors, may figure out who they are, and modulate their remarks as they would in any other signed communication. Plus, once you post something, it’s pretty much up there for ever.

I certainly feel very constrained, maybe the word is “shy”, about posting much personal stuff here. Pretty much anything that mentions my family I clear with my spouse.

A Dean With Opinions

The Dean of the Massachusetts School of Law, Lawrence Velvel, is a Dean with opinions. That alone is not unusual. He expresses them — that’s a bit rarer, as Deans sometimes mute their views so as to avoid offending alumni. But this Dean has a no-holds-barred blog, Velvel on National Affairs. Try out Re: Fooling and Signing Up Reservists and National Guardsmen For Iraq for a taste:

A blog posted here on Monday, December 6th mentioned the widely known fact that some soldiers are claiming that the Executive’s action in forcing them to continue serving in Iraq is unlawful because their contractual terms of enlistment have expired. It was said here that the soldiers will lose in court, because the gutless judiciary will not rule against the Executive during a war. It took the courts less than 48 hours to prove that this rather elementary prediction was correct. On Wednesday, December 8th, Washington, D.C. Federal Judge Royce Lamberth denied a so-called preliminary injunction against sending one of the soldiers back to Iraq. According to a newspaper report, and putting the matter in lay terms rather than in legal gobbledygook, Lamberth said there is no way the plaintiff could prevail. Lamberth, for whom there was some hope a number of years ago, has in recent years shown himself to be just another judicial shill for the Executive, and has now done so again.

Incidentally, I think this comment is unfair to Judge Lamberth, who actually has an independent streak, and would be seen as one of the top judges in the US but for his temper which gets the better of him once in a while. But it gets better:

In this country people sign up for the Reserves or the National Guard because they need extra money to feed their families or for school — it usually ain’t the rich who sign up for this, baby. They are told their service will involve only a small commitment like some weekends and two weeks in the summer, and are told that their commitment runs for only certain periods of time, e.g., for only one year under the so-called Try One program. When joining up, they sign contracts that say things like “I have enlisted for a period of one year, 0 months and 0 days.” Afterwards, having been told by recruiters that their service will be only minimally invasive (to use a medical term and make a bad pun too) and will last only a fixed period, they suddenly find themselves in Iraq, in danger of being killed, and ordered to remain in that situation far beyond what they thought was the fixed end of their term of service. When this happens, most do not raise legal objections because conformity is the military and human norm. Those who do make objections are met with a barrage of legal arguments purporting to show that they knew of and agreed to the possibility of extended service in a killing zone. (Fittingly, barrage is a military term.)

The barrage comes down to this, in plain English. When they signed up, the soldiers (cum victims?) signed a contract. Like lots of government documents — and much on the order of the completely unreadable Internal Revenue Code — the contract contains legal phraseology meaning that the terms of enlistment can be altered if certain events occur on or in connection with this or that section of the federal statutes — so that one has to read the cross referenced federal statutes to find out what the true situation is. The recruit thinks he is signing up for a fixed term, he signs a paper saying this, but in reality he or she may possibly be signing up for something very different — for a couple of years in Iraq, for example.

Maybe this whole process wouldn’t be so obnoxious if recruits had Philadelphia lawyers with them to explain all this to them. But people who can afford Philadelphia lawyers don’t sign up for the volunteer service, and people who sign up for it can’t afford and wouldn’t dream of using any lawyer in connection with this, let alone Philadelphia ones.

And there’s more…

The Anonymous Lawyer Shouldn't Write A Book

There are two levels to this one. First, there’s the fun marketing angle. You can read about why Evan Schaeffer, author of Notes from the (Legal) Underground thinks that the Anonymous Lawyer should be encouraged to write a book — and that a bunch of bloggers who link to him should help (as if I had any such influence!) . It’s an interesting way to try to find someone a publisher.

But let’s get to the merits. Should the increasingly cranky Anonymous Lawyer write a book? I don’t think so. I think he should get more sleep.

I used to think the Anonymous Lawyer was pretty funny.

These days, I’m much less sure. Consider just the most recent few posts, quoted out of context here for ease of summary:

• …it was good pie. My mother made it, despite her quickly-approaching dementia. She doesn’t understand why I have to work so hard. No matter how many times I explain it, she doesn’t understand. So now I just tell her it’ll pay for the assisted living facility she’s inching closer and closer to each year and she shuts up.
• The one Thanksgiving table I wish I could be at is where a certain one of our first-year associates will be. The bar results came out last week, and she did not pass. Imagine having to explain that to your family. Like all of our peer firms, without a backbone, we give associates a second chance to do what they should have done the first time before we terminate them. I don’t think we should. I think if you can’t pass the bar on the first try you shouldn’t even be allowed to take it again. You should be banned from the profession for life. It is frightening to think that you can spend millions of dollars on legal services and potentially find yourself working with someone who didn’t pass the bar on the first try. Pathetic. …
  
  … if you failed the bar, it’s not like you aren’t going to screw something else up eventually, so the fresh start doesn’t last very soon. And, pretty soon, you’re working for the government. Where everyone failed the bar.
• It’s understood that there are going to be female associates who are prepared to do whatever it takes to make partner, and will find the guys with the vulnerable marriages and make their move. It’s part of how the industry works. But to flip it around, it seems more vulgar. He’s a very good-looking young man (I think he had his teeth bleached) and can surely have his pick of women, yet he chooses the shrew down the hall.
• We had a little par