Marc Rotenberg is talking right now. He has much better slides than the rest of us. There's been a running joke through today's conference about people joking that I'm gloomy, and he's Pollyanaish. He denies it, though. Although he did say this morning that he thinks I read the Supreme Court's cases too gloomily…
And he has a great riff on the name of his panel 'Life During Wartime' in which he re-writes the song. I'm hoping he'll email me the lyrics. Or someone will do a parody/cover…
Letters of Marque asks,
Let us suppose that you are a law professor, and that we decide to reject your piece within hours of receiving it.
OK, so far this sounds all too plausible.
Would you be offended if you received the rejection right away? If so, how long would you want to wait before receiving a rejection?
Please note that this need not imply that we didn't read your piece; it might also mean that we thought it interesting enough to pluck from the pile, but then decided to reject it later on.
I want to know right away. Unless you are willing to send substantive comments, I don't care that much why you rejected it — although if it's just because your issue was full, then it would be handy to be told when are the best times to (re)submit articles. Rejecting me now saves me the bother of phoning you for a rush read once I get another offer if I'm playing that game. Or, if I am working the system in a different way, and sending out only a few copies at first to save paper, knowing that I bombed helps me work out when it's time to send out that second wave.1, 2
But that's easy for me to say: it's not that my ego is, in relative terms, necessarily any more hardy than average, although I've been accused of that. No, the fact is that these days I rarely submit articles to law reviews any more. Nearly 100% of my articles are solicited for symposia (and these days I have to very regretfully turn down more requests than I can accept if I want each one to be sufficiently original). Yes, I know how lucky I am. And, yes, it can't last. Can it?
1 You can play this either way. Start low, get some acceptances and then ask for rush reads for the 'better' journals to whom you just sent the article — on the theory that it's more likely to be rejected, or disfavored on rush, if it has been lying around. Or, you can be arrogant, start high, and if that doesn't work then work your way down the pile. This can save more paper, but means you don't get to engage in as much strategic behavior.
2 There's something about writing about law reviews that makes me want to footnote.
There's wifi here, but all I can get is http, not ssh or sftp. So I haven't been able to upload my slides to the fast(er) server at UM. But that's ok, there's a workaround.
Here, since a few people at the conference claimed interest, is link to my Powerpoint slides Anonymity Law in the USA: Latest Developments, Familiar Problems.
One of my first research interests was the regulation of cryptography, and this quickly led me to the equally interesting topic of the regulation of anonymity. So I'm just delighted to be attending On the Identity Trail: Understanding the Importance and Impact of Anonymity and Authentication in a Networked Society in Ottawa today, as it's jammed packed with interesting people doing great work.
The conference is joint venture of a muldisciplinary team headed by Ian Kerr that works under the rubric On the Identity Trail and faculty from the Law and Technology Program at the University of Ottawa. Talk about critical mass!
The organizers asked me to report on legal developments in the US relating to anonymity, so I'll be giving a somewhat gloomy — and uncharacteristically doctrinal — presentation at this morning's session.
Did I mention it is about 60-70 degrees colder in Ottawa than Miami?
Jaye Ramsey Sutter (“in a bad mood & telling you about it since 1962”) walks much, much a harder road than I do:
Today the Supreme Court did a good thing, no more death penalty for those who commit crimes when they are juveniles. To hear people discuss it,however, you would think that the Supreme Court took away everyone's Christmas present. For a bunch of Christians, these Americans are strangely pro-death penalty. I am positive that Christ himself would support the execution of juveniles while they are still juveniles. Amen.
I wanted to discuss the opinion with my students. I wanted them to see what an actual opinion looks like. We went up on line in the classroom and saw it. As we talked about what it meant my students opened up about their legal issues and problems.
I was stunned.
One young woman asked about what to do when her boyfriend beat her. Should she call the police from their appartment, should she leave the scene, should she sleep on it and call the next day.
I feel odd discussing the elegance of a Supreme Court decision with its beautiful citations and form when these students experience such violence.
One young man, so full of energy and intelligence asked if his girl friend had a restraining order against him and she walked into their favorite club and he was there, should he leave or should she? I told him bluntly to be a man, don't argue over some childish right to be drinking in their favorite club, and leave. Just walk away. Why don't she have to do that, he begged. Why don't we skip over that part and you be the adult and leave, I replied.
How can we teach the civilization of this Supreme Court decision to people who live with such violence as part of their lives?
I don't think it was a wasted class. I think our textbooks and our curriculum should address the violence that is our students' lives. They asked me who to call if the neighbors are abusing their children. I replied that a call to the police would certainly work and that Child Protective Services would investigate. I told them if they did not call the police they were making the abuse possible because they are aware of it and are doing nothing.
And I'm going to conferences.
AP has the story about the whistleblowing complaint against Scott Bloch, the head of the U.S. Office of Special Counsel, the office that's supposed to protect whistleblowers and investigate their complaints. He's accused of instructing staff to deep-six complaints without even interviewing the complainant. And of refusing to enforce laws protecting gay workers from discrimination.
“While publicly congratulating himself for reducing the caseload … Mr. Bloch has failed to explain just what happened to all of the cases he closed,” said the complaint filed in Washington.
…
Bloch came under fire last year when he moved to deny gay federal workers protection against discrimination based on sexual orientation and removed references to sexual orientation from the agency's Web site and complaint forms.
…
In a letter to Bush, the employees' lawyer, Debra S. Katz, wrote: “Mr. Bloch ignored your express direction that federal agencies enforce” anti-discrimination laws against gays.
What you have to understandis that all these whistleblowers are bad people. Not with the program or they would air dirty linen in public. They're probably Democrats. Which makes them near terrorists. And you expect Mr. Bloch to protect them?
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