PrawfsBlawg

Rotations, Jotwell, etc.

Greetings from East Lansing, MI, where I'm hanging my hat for the night, en route from YUL to TLH via a workshop at MSU tomorrow. Per Tim Zick, I should not be apologizing for my absence or delay in getting this announcement up, but I'm feeling guilty all the same. 

We have a great cast of characters for Prawfs during the month of November. In addition to the previously mentioned Zick, we have some other newbies: David Friedman (Willamette); Jon Siegel (GW); and Noah Sachs (Richmond). We also have a number of distinguished veterans: Bill Araiza, Paul Secunda, Michael Risch, Marc DeGirolami, Marc Blitz, and Will Baude. (Oops: sorry. We also have Rob Vischer). I am hopeful Jeanne Suk will join us to blog about her new book, At Home in the Law (YUP), but it might have to wait until a different month. 

By the way, pretty soon, I'll be putting together the schedule of guests for the spring. If you are a prawf and are interested in trying your hand at this ol' blogging thing, what with its tubes and noise and all, drop me a line. Feel free to nominate your colleagues who could use the distraction of blogging too.

In the meantime, thanks to all the great bloggers from October. Some might linger a little bit as they get their last few words off their collective chests...

Finally, please take note that Jotwell, the Journal Of Things We Like Lots, is now alive, and it promises to be both an exciting and welcome addition to the conversations about scholarship. I'll be a contributing editor/writer for some of the crim stuff, and, in a mad game of turnabout, I'll be laboring under the fierce and relentless leadership of co-blogger, Jonathan Simon, and the inimitable Donna Coker. To lash myself to the mast, I herein commit to write some nice things in the (near?) future about relatively recent pieces I've mentioned here in the past (or meant to at least) by: Laudan/Allen/Risinger; Gershowitz; Myers; and not least, that scoundrel O'Hear :-)

More from M. Froomkin on Jotwell after the jump.

Welcome to Jotwell: The Journal of Things We Like (Lots). Here you will find leading academics and practitioners providing short reviews of recent scholarship related to the law that the reviewer likes and thinks deserves a wide audience.

Jotwell is a special type of law review housed on a set of inter-linked blogs. As a law review, Jotwell has only one mission: to bring to readers’ attention great recent scholarship related to the law. As a blog we invite your comments, and hope that some of our reviews will spark a conversation.

On the Jotwell main page you should expect new content once or twice a week, although as we add more sections contributions may become more frequent. Each of the subject-specific sections will have something new at least once a month. In any case, every time a new review appears in any of the subject-specific sections, an excerpt with a link to the full text will also appear here on our front page at http://jotwell.com.

There are three ways to read Jotwell.

1. You can visit this page, the main Jotwell site, which aggregates all the sections; or you can sample just the sections you like, choosing from the list in the right column.
2. If you use a newsreader, you can sign up for the RSS feed for the main Jotwell section, or select among the feeds for the subject sections by choosing the link to the RSS feed found in each section.
3. Or, if you prefer to get your updates by e-mail, you can click here to request a message every time we have new article, or click on the email link found in every subject section for a more tailored, and less frequent, reminder.

No apologies

Since we all seem to be announcing our arrivals here, I guess I should follow suit.  Thanks to Dan and my other hosts for agreeing to have me back for another tour of blogging duty.  It has been a long time since I was a regular blogger, and an even longer time s ince my last visit here-- a little over three years, I think.  In the meantime I've graduated from law school and clerked for a couple of fantastic bosses.  Because of those clerkships, I most definitely will not be blogging about Bilski. 

I also [not-so-shameless self-promotion alert] published an article laying out my side of a long argument we had here about the limited power of judicial opinions.  Maybe this trip will be similarly fruitful.  At any rate, it should be fun.

[P.S. I can be reached both through comments and through email to william.baude on gmail.]

Blogging Etiquette: Blawpologies and Self-Promotion

Thanks to Prawfsblawg, and especially Howard Wasserman, for the invitation to post some thoughts here. 

I am a regular reader of blogs, but thus far have been only an occasional contributor.  So I thought I would begin with two curiosities, at least to me, that may relate to bloging etiquette.  The first is the blawpology (not to be confusd with the blapology). Some bloggers who fail to post for a period of time, typically several days to a few weeks, issue an apology upon returning.  Some of the blawpologizers explain, on occasion in some detail, what it is they have been doing while they have not been blogging.  Is this simply a matter of etiquette, as for example when one leaves a room or a conversation for a period of time and later returns ("sorry, I had to feed the meter -- you were saying")?  Or is there a guilt condition of some sort relating to regular blogging, one that afflicts only some (perhaps small) portion of the blogosphere?  I only occasionally read non-legal blogs, and have not noticed this phenomenon elsewhere.  I have no reason to believe the apologies are anything other than sincere.  And to be clear, I do not think those who do not account for their absences are rude or borderline sociopathic. 

The second phenomenon is the attachment of the "shameless self-promotion" qualifier to one's self-promotion.  This practice seems most prevalent on blawgs, although again my experience with other forums is somewhat limited.  Is this too a matter of etiquette?  Modesty, false or otherwise?  Isn't one of the primary benefits of regular blogging that it provides a forum for promoting your work?  Is there really any shame at all in self-promotion? 

In light of the foregoing, let me say two things:  Since I last guest-blogged about a year ago, it might be polite to apologize for my extended absence.  For those wondering what I've been up to, you'll find out when I, without any shame or hint of self-consciousness, promote some of my work during this guest stint.

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First, I want to apologize for not having issued a Shana Tova/G'mar tov post on behalf of Prawfs last week; I hope the Jewish folks in the crowd will forgive the oversight. Though baby Benjamin is happily getting more uninterrupted sleep (kein ayin hara...), life has been a bit busy for reasons I hope to sketch out later this month. One of those reasons has been a paper I'm off to present, Taxing Punitive Damages, in Toronto at the Canadian Law and Econ Association this week/end and to celebrate the work of Michael Trebilcock, for whom (along with Rob Howse) I used to RA the summer before I started law school. If you'll be there, please let me know--would love to meet other prawfs/readers.

Anyway, with the new month upon us, we have some brand new voices to add to the conversation here at Prawfs: Rick Bales (NKU) and S. Todd Brown (Buffalo). We are also thrilled to welcome back Jack Chin (Arizona); Kelly Anders (Washburn), Eric E. Johnson (UND); Nadine Farid (Gonzaga); Chris Lund (MC); and David Schleicher (George Mason). 

Many thanks to our guests from this past month: Marcia Zug (South Carolina); Amy Landers (McGeorge); Kurt Lash (Loyola Law School LA);  Gregory Bowman (Miss. College of Law); Jason Solomon (UGa); Adam Kolber (San Diego); Rick Esenberg (Marquette); and Tung Yin (Lewis & Clark).

Last, some of them may linger a little while after today. In any event, we hope they'll come back soon for another visit.

Thanks to Prawfs

A quick thanks is due to Dan & Co. at Prawfsblawg for inviting me to guest blog this month. It was my first time guesting on Prawfs, and I hope it won't be my last.  It has been a great deal of fun, and the dialogue has been superb (no surprise there).  I look forward to hearing what the October guest crew brings to the Prawfs table with their posts.

Best regards to all,

Greg

Jonathan Simon Joins Prawfs

I'm thrilled to announce that Jonathan Simon, who's been a regular guest blogger with us in the past, and who has been with us this past summer, will be joining Prawfs for the balance of the academic year.  Welcome, Jonathan! 

For those of you wondering: Jonathan is Associate Dean for Jurisprudence and Social Policy, Boalt Hall, School of Law, UC Berkeley; Faculty Co-Director, Berkeley Center for Criminal Justice; and author of Governing through Crime: How the War on Crime Transformed American Democracy and Created a Culture of Fear (OUP 2007).

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Happy September! September 1 wasn't the happiest day in history, but as the kids song I hear every day now says, the rest of the day is whatever you make it...

Anyway, with the new month we have some brand new voices to add to the conversation here at Prawfs. Appearing here for the first time, we are thrilled to welcome Marcia Zug (South Carolina); Amy Landers (McGeorge); Kurt Lash (Loyola Law School LA); and Gregory Bowman (Miss. College of Law). I'm also excited to welcome back some more familiar voices: Jason Solomon (UGa); Adam Kolber (San Diego); Rick Esenberg (Marquette); Jeremy Blumenthal (Syracuse), and Tung Yin (Lewis & Clark).

Last, I want to extend special thanks to all the wonderful visitors we've had at Prawfs over the summer and this past month of August.  Thankfully, some of them may linger a little while after today. In any event, we hope they'll come back soon for another visit.

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I've been a bit, um, occupied the last few days so I apologize for the delay in getting this up, but I wanted to use the occasion of the new month to thank all the wonderful guests we've had in the past month; some of them may linger as they get a few last things off their chest, and I think Jonathan Simon will be staying on the whole month. Second, I also wanted to welcome for the first time to Prawfs Jody Lynn Madeira from Indiana U (Bloomington), and also welcome back a stellar group of folks: Verity Winship (Cardozo); Bennett Capers (Hofstra); Jessie Hill (Case Western); and Miranda Perry Fleischer (Colorado). In the past, it's not every month, I know, where we have women prawfs as 80% of our guests but I hope that will be the case in the future.  For what it's worth, this month's list, like the rest of our guest list, turned out to be based largely on the choice of the guests when I fill out the schedule and hear from people interested. (I hope to find some time to change the guests list soon; my apologies in advance for that.)

I will largely be on survival mode this month with our newborn and trying to help my coauthors push out a couple of pieces so forgive my silence on the blog. Happy August and if you're Canadian, Happy Family Day!

Update: Miranda's had some last minute but very legitimate distractions from blogging come up this month so we'll hope to see her here very soon. 

The Attorney-Client Privilege and the Collateral Order Doctrine

It wouldn't be a blog post from me without an apology for disappearing for a year and a day, but it's been a surprisingly busy summer thus far.  Part of what I've been preoccupied with is an amicus brief that a team of lawyers from Proskauer Rose and I filed today in a fascinating case on the Supreme Court's docket for the 2009 Term.

The issue in Mohawk Industries v. Carpenter is whether a district court decision finding waiver of the attorney-client privilege is immediately appealable under the so-called collateral order doctrine that the Supreme Court has read into 28 U.S.C. 1291 in a series of cases dating back to Cohen v. Beneficial Industrial Loan Corp.  Both the district court and the Eleventh Circuit said no, but the Court granted cert. anyway, ostensibly to resolve a circuit split that has arisen over the issue.

What's fascinating to me about this case is that I doubt it would even be an interesting question if it were any other evidentiary privilege.  It's well-established that the run of discovery orders are largely within the discretion of district courts, and are not subject to immediate appellate review except in extraordinary cases (e.g., where the discovery order raises serious separation of powers questions--and even then, only through writs of mandamus). This general rule makes sense, since litigation would be far more costly and take far more time if parties could run to the court of appeals over every little discovery ruling.

So is there a legal argument for why the attorney-client privilege is different? The American Bar Association thinks so, as it argues in its amicus brief in support of the Petitioner.  So too, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. But I'm not so sure. Our brief, which is signed by a group of 25 former federal judges and/or senior experts on the federal courts, argues that the attorney-client privilege is not distinguishable from other comparable evidentiary protections, and that extending the collateral order doctrine to this case could therefore have disastrous consequences for the workload of the courts of appeals and for civil litigation more generally.

Leaving aside the specific doctrinal issues vis-a-vis the collateral order doctrine, I'm curious what folks think about the underlying issue, i.e., whether there's something fundamentally different about the attorney-client privilege, as compared to the work-product rule, the priest-penitent privilege, the spousal privilege, etc. Are lawyers special, in this regard?

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Happy Canada Day everyone (and particularly, Paul, Rob, Erik, Glenn, Trevor, Austen, and derivatively, Alice)! Here are some reflections on the holiday by notable expats.

With the onset of the new month, it's time to thank our guests from June for their wonderful contributions. As usual, a few of them will be lingering a little longer as they have some things they want to get off their chests still. I'd like to single out Jay Wexler and thank him for his extended stay; I hope we'll see him back here with his very funny posts in the near future. Congrats again, Jay, on the publication of your new book Holy Hullabaloos.

Also, I am thrilled to welcome Miriam H. Baer from Brooklyn Law, who is visiting with us this month for the first time. And I'm similarly pleased to announce the return of Carissa Hessick (ASU); Jeff Lipshaw (Suffolk);  Jonathan Simon (Berkeley); and Nelson Tebbe (Brooklyn). You can learn more about these wonderful peeps from the links on the sidebar.

Thanks all.

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With the onset of the new month, I want to take a moment first to thank all the wonderful contributions over May and April from Mark Kende, John Pfaff, Marc Blitz, Marc DeGirolami, Rose Cuizon Villazar, Brooks Holland, Chad Oldfather, Jessie Hill, Bill Araiza, Hillel Levin, and Brian Galle. As per usual, some of these guests may linger for a little while.

Also, I'd like to welcome Jeanne Fromer (Fordham, IP); Naomi Cahn (GW; family law); and Helen Norton (UColorado; con law/torts/1A), all of whom are visiting Prawfs for the first time. And of course I'd like to welcome back Dave Fagundes (SW; property and IP; former MVP Pfest); Michael O'Hear (Marquette; crim law/pro); Michael Risch (WVU; IP), and Eduardo Penalver (Cornell; property).  We're so glad you could join us for this month.

Since it's early June, it's also the time that I'll be soon creating the guest list for the second half of the year. If you're a prawf and interested in visiting for a month or know someone who is, please let me know and we'll try to slot you in during a month of your choice between July and December. We ask our guests to have 2-4 posts a week during the month they visit. We're always interested in having a diversity of voices and I'm especially hopeful that some of the rising prawfs and rookies finishing up their first year will take up this invitation to introduce themselves and their work to the larger community of legal academics.

Update: Prawfs-Co-Op Happy Hour, May 30th, 9pm, Marlowe's Denver.

For those of you planning on attending the LSA meeting in Denver at the end of the month, please mark your calendars for Saturday May 30th at 9pm. The festivities will begin shortly after the end of the LSA reception at the University of Denver, and they will continue into the night.

The gathering will be at Marlowe's, upstairs in the Mezzanine.  Marlowe's is about a a block away from the Hyatt hotel in downtown Denver at the 16th Street Mall and Glenarm Place. There's a map you can use to navigate. Feel free to call them at 303.595.3700.  Lucky for us, we will also have the Happy Hour Drinks Specials.  Please spread the word: all are invited. 

Co-authoring Strategies; books, etc.

Here's a question: have any of you tried co-authoring a law review article with someone using Google Docs? Is there some other software (preferably easy and free) to use also? I ask because I wonder what the best technology strategies are for collaboration. With the Privilege or Punish book and its related projects that I've done with Ethan and Jennifer, we basically just used Microsoft Word, redline and email attachments for everything. That strategy was reasonably effective, but it required each of us to take turns with "command" of the particular project for the most part. Not necessarily the best use of time.

Still, my fear with Google Docs is that one can't easily redline or do things with footnotes. Am I missing something--is there a way to achieve Word-type functionality through some kind of sharing mechanism?

Btw, speaking of intellectual collaborations and other distractions from grading, I thought I'd draw your attention to a cool book that literally just landed across my desk and that I look forward to reading over the summer. It's a festschrift for Morton Horwitz published by Harvard Law School (I've not seen their imprint before) but through Harvard University Press. It's called: Transformation in American Legal History (ed. by Daniel Hamilton & Al Brophy), and it's available here. Here's part of the description:

In this book, Horwitz’s students re-examine legal history from America’s colonial era to the late twentieth century. They ask classic Horwitzian questions, of how legal doctrine, thought, and practice are shaped by the interests of the powerful, as well as by the ideas of lawyers, politicians, and others. The essays address current questions in legal history, from colonial legal practice to questions of empire, civil rights, and constitutionalism in a democracy. The essays are, like Horwitz, provocative and original as they continue his transformation of American legal history.

In addition to this book, HUP has a bunch of other new books that look very promising as sources of distractions or objects of focus over the summer. If you've read any of them already, feel free to weigh in with thoughts in the comments.

Abramson, Jeffrey--Minerva's Owl: The Tradition of Western Political Thought (cloth)
Garsten, Bryan--Saving Persuasion: A Defense of Rhetoric and Judgment (paper)
Grafton, Anthony--Worlds Made by Words: Scholarship and Community in the Modern West (cloth)
Lamont, Michèle--How Professors Think: Inside the Curious World of Academic Judgment (cloth) (I'm about 2/3ds of the way through this interesting study and hope to share some reactions later this summer)

Mann, Bruce H.--Republic of Debtors: Bankruptcy in the Age of American Independence (paper)
Posner, Richard A.--A Failure of Capitalism: The Crisis of '08 and the Descent into Depression (cloth)
Powe, Lucas A. , Jr.--The Supreme Court and the American Elite, 1789-2008 (cloth)
Schauer, Frederick--Thinking Like a Lawyer: A New Introduction to Legal Reasoning (cloth)

Shachar, Ayelet--The Birthright Lottery: Citizenship and Global Inequality (cloth)
 

Weekend Trivia Challenge: First Regular Professorship of Law for Non-Undergrads

Which U.S. school established the first regular professorship of law for students other than undergraduates?

Answer below the fold ...

The University of Transylvania in Lexington, Kentucky, in 1798.

Today, Transylvania University is a liberal-arts college, with no law-school program. However, in 1865, Transylvania developed a publicly funded land-grant school which was eventually spun off as a separate institution. That spin off is the University of Kentucky, which does, of course, have a law school.

UK's College of Law was founded in 1908, its heritage tracing back to Transylvania's 18th century professorship.

Source: Ralph Michael Stein, The Path of Legal Education from Edward I to Langdell: A History of Insular Reaction, 57 Chi.-Kent L. Rev. 429, 441 (1981). A Chronology of UK About UK Law

Happy 4th Anniversary Prawfs!

Today (Sunday) marks our 4th anniversary of blather, bloviation, and blogging at Prawfs.com. 

In case you're looking for a trip down memory lane, here's a link to some material from our first few weeks.

My genuine thanks go to all of the PrawfsPals and readers who have helped transform this space into a meaningful one for me, and I hope some others too.

Hello and a Conference Announcement

Thank you so much to Dan and PrawfsBlawg for inviting me to post here again. I teach at Gonzaga University School of Law in eastern Washington State, where Mother Nature played a bit of an April Fool's Day joke on us this week by fooling us into thinking that winter had ended. Hopefully better weather will greet us for the start of the baseball season this Sunday evening!

I look forward to posting on an assortment of topics this month, but let me begin with a conference announcement that hopefully will interest some readers. Our law school co-directs the Institute for Law Teaching and Learning with Washburn University School of Law, and this June 23-24 we are hosting the Institute's summer conference, Implementing Best Practices and Educating Lawyers: Teaching Skills and Professionalism across the Curriculum. The program looks great, and the Spokane area is quite lovely in the summer, so we hope to see many of you here. Full details on the conference can be found in the most recent edition of The Law Teacher.

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With the onset of the new month, it is time to greet our merry band of new contributors. Please welcome back returning visitors Eric Johnson, Nadine Farid, Mark Drumbl, and Brooks Holland.  And appearing here for the first time, we have Rose Villazor, Mark Kende, John Pfaff, Charlton Copeland, and Colin Miller! What a lineup.

My thanks are extended also to Don Braman, Verity Winship, Chris Lund, and Austen Parrish for their wonderful contributions. Some of them may linger a bit, but in any event, I hope we'll get to see all of them here again in the near future.

Comments on Prawfs

We've been getting tons of spam comments lately that have been escaping the usual spam filters at Typepad. Consequently, we're going to experiment with a requirement that the comments come from "authenticated" users (those with typepad accounts).  Hopefully we'll revert to the prior strategy soon enough; but if it's not effective, we might have to hold comments before they get published.  Feel free to weigh in with suggestions in the comments.

Update: well, the authenticated users mode didn't save us from the spam attacks. Bah!

Goodbye for Now - Just as President Obama Releases Some Secret War on Terror Legal Documents

I sign off from PrawfsBlawg just as I see the AP news story about President Obama’s releasing secret Bush Administration "War on Terror" legal documents.  This glasnost is a move in the right direction, and I hope that many of us will pore over these materials and sort the good legal reasoning from the bad.  I am struck most by the CIA’s destruction of videotapes of their interrogations of suspected terrorists.  Guantanamo interrogations were apparently based on a “mosaic theory” (as explained here by Joe Margulies in his excellent Guantanamo and the Abuse of Presidential Power (2006)), meaning that prisoners (assuming they are terrorists) might all have little bits of information, information that even they might not know was valuable - and that even the interrogators might not know was valuable.  The value might come to light only later, as other pieces of the mosaic appear.  So, might CIA review of these tapes, even years later, yield important “new” information about al Qaida? If so, then destroying the tapes was a very bad idea. And not just any old tapes were destroyed. The AP story says, “Tapes of those interrogations [of two al-Qaida leaders, including Abu Zubaydah] were destroyed, in part, the Bush administration said, to protect the identities of the government questioners at a time the Justice Department was debating whether or not the tactics used during the interrogations were legal.”  Conclusion: Backside-covering trumped national security.

Anyway … Thanks so much, Dan, for the guest slot. And thanks to all who read, and all who commented on, my posts. I enjoyed the exchange. I will be visiting at BU again next year, so I look forward to seeing many of you around, at conferences, in journals, in the blogosphere, and in the regular old atmosphere (even down the hall). And, I hope to see some of you at our second Applied Legal Storytelling Conference, at Lewis & Clark Law School in Portland, Oregon, July 22-24, which I’m co-organizing with Steve Johansen (Lewis & Clark), Robert McPeake (The City Law School, University of London - UK), Erika Rackley (Durham Law School - UK), and Ruth Anne Robbins (Rutgers-Camden).  We will launch a website soon with program and registration details.

All the best.

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Greetings all.

I'm still just coming down from my Slumdog Millionaire/3 year anniversary high, so I'll have to be brief as the new month turns. First, let me express my gratitude to our guests from February for their great contributions. Happily, Chris Lund will continue to enlighten us during the month of March.

And with the month of March now upon us, it's time to welcome back Verity Winship (Cardozo); Austen Parrish (Southwestern, home of Pfest! 6); and Jason Solomon (UGA).  I'm also excited to say that we'll have Don Braman (GW) and Josh Walker (Stanford) joining us for their first time this month. Please welcome all of them!

Entry Level Hiring Report at Legal Theory Blog

For those of you with relevant information on the hiring of entry level profs, please visit the Legal Theory blog of our friend Larry Solum to share the info. Larry reports he is going high-tech this year:

This year, I will be using surveymonkey to collect the data. The data elements are similar to prior years. I am collecting information on the candidate's first law degree (JD), other advanced degrees in law or another discipline, practice experience, post-doc's/fellowships/VAPs, and areas of specialization/methodological orientation. Click Here to enter data for the 2009 Entry Level Hiring Report.  The first preliminary results will be reported in about one week.

For those lacking patience, readers of prawfs might be happy to hear that FSU has already made three hires and we are still hoping to hire more. So far, we've hired Tara Grove (HLS, Climenko); Franita Tolson (UChicago, VAP at NW); and Shawn Bayern (Boalt, Duke VAP). Prospective students (and professors) keen to learn more about FSU might want to check out our latest propaganda tool information sharing device. :-)

Five years of Mirror of Justice

For the "things that make you go . . . I'm old" file:  This week marks the fifth anniversary of my other blog-home, Mirror of Justice.  (Here is the first post.)  Tempus freakin' fugit.

Good Night and Have a Pleasant Tomorrow

Thanks to Dan for letting me hang here for the last two months. I look forward to coming back. But, for now, I have one less excuse for not finishing my spring projects and managing to make Products Liability interesting at 5 pm on a Monday evening.

I think I can say, as I sign off, that Mr. Areeda would have friended no one on facebook and, if he did, they would have been terrified. I cannot trace the origins of the phrase "see you in the funny papers," but it was uttered by George Bailey's friend Sam Wainwright ("Hee Haw") in "It's a Wonderful Life." suggesting, I think, either the frivolity or the carefree nature of the speaker. Life's just one big comic strip and I'll see you there.

Time to get out of my pajamas and leave the basement.

See you in the funny papers

I've never understood how that expression might have originated (unless it was among mutual acquaintances of Garry Trudeau in his college days) or how it makes sense as a farewell. Still, for some reason it feels apt.

Many thanks to Dan for giving me the chance to blog here for a month, and then giving me an extra month so I could end up with something like one month's worth of posts. I've enjoyed it a lot, and I hope I'll get the chance to do it again some time.

Good to be back

Thanks to the nice people at Prawfs for letting me crash on the couch for another month.  I'm glad to be back blogging after a long lay-off.

It's probably because I'm trying to write a Criminal Procedure casebook that being a guest blogger puts me in mind of Justice White's opinion for the Court in Minnesota v. Olson, 495 U.S. 71 (1990):

"Staying overnight in another's home is a longstanding social custom that serves functions recognized as valuable by society. We stay in others' homes when we travel to a strange city for business or pleasure, when we visit our parents, children, or more distant relatives out of town, when we are in between jobs or homes, or when we house-sit for a friend. We will all be hosts and we will all be guests many times in our lives. From either perspective, we think that society recognizes that a houseguest has a legitimate expectation of privacy in his host's home."

I agree with the Court's conclusion in this case, but I've always found Justice White's trumpeting of crashing at someone else's house just this side of ridiculous.  I'm getting a sense he rarely imposed on friends when he was on the road....

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Just a quick note to say thanks for all the wonderful posts by our guests this past month. Some of them may linger a bit longer before saying goodbye, but with the new month, it's time to welcome (back) some new and familiar voices to the conversation. 

Making a debut at Prawfs this month are Marcia McCormick (Cumberland, Employment law and fed courts); Rob Vischer (St. Thomas; law and religion/professional responsibility); and Brian Foley (vap at BU; crim and evidence law). Returning we have a stellar crew: Chris Lund (Mississippi; con law); Bernie Meyler (Cornell; con law/law and humanities); Michael Steven Green (William and Mary; jurisprudence); Sam Kamin (Denver; crim); and Zak Kramer (Penn State; anti-discrimination law). You can find links to their scholarship on the sidebar to your right under Guests. Thanks again for joining us; we are so thrilled to have you here for February!

Media ethics and law-prof blogs

I am quoted today in an op-ed in the Daily Tar Heel. (H/T: My former colleague Joel Goldstein). The op-ed discusses the motion filed by former Durham District Attorney Mike Nifong, the main culprit in the Duke lacrosse mess, seeking to dismiss the § 1983 actions against him on absolute prosecutorial immunity grounds (and without seeing the motion, I have argued previously that he has a pretty strong argument). The op-ed, clearly not coming close to understanding what prosecutorial immunity is all about, argues that Nifong should not have immunity because by "withholding DNA evidence, Nifong clearly deprived the defendants of their right to due process." Um, yeah, but the point of immunity is that does not matter, because other policy concerns trump. AndI did not read the piece as arguing that prosecutors should not have immunity (an arguable point), only that Nifong should not.

Anyway, I am identified as a Saint Louis University law professor and described as saying that Nifong only has immunity for those things he did as an advocate for the state. One problem--I never spoke with anyone at the Daily Tar Heel at any point. (Actually, I suppose a second problem is that I no longer teach at SLU, so there is a pretty glaring factual error there that would get them nailed in a newswriting course). The "comment" attributed to me was something I wrote in one of several posts, here and at Sports Law Blog, analyzing the players' lawsuits against Nifong, Duke, and others.

So, my question--Did the authors of the piece act appropriately (as a matter of journalistic practice) in attributing a comment to me without identifying it as something I wrote on a blog and attributing the blog? Is it OK for reporters to make it sound instead as if we had had a conversation? I am not suggesting that journalists should not read blogs as part of their reporting or that they should not report what they see written here. Indeed, one purpose of blogging is to be part of the broader public conversation beyond the academy, so having newspapers report on what we write here goes a long way to making us part of that conversation. My question is strictly how journalists should describe the source of a comment when they get it not from an interview, but from something the source has written.

Blawg rankings

Paul Caron's 2008 law-blog rankings are up and available, here.  As usual, no one comes close to Reynolds, and Prawfs is in a tight cluster of 6 (with Leiter, Bainbridge, Balkin, etc.) in the "top 14" (sounds like the U.S. News rankings, doesn't it?).  Any thoughts about, or reactions to, the list?  What does it say (if anything) about the state and future of the law-blogging "thing"?

Now playing in the non-law-prof blogosphere

A couple of non-law-prof things worth taking a look at.

Noam Scheiber in the New Republic considers the stylistic and pedagogical differences between Harvard Law School and Yale Law School and how their different law school experiences affect the respective governing styles of Barack Obama and Bill Clinton.

[ed: My bad: Paul (as always) beat me to it on the Scheiber piece--and I basically share his take.]

TPMCafe is running a special feature on Barack Obama's America, discussing what this administration must do to bring the nation back from the past eight years in areas of liberty, equality, community, opportunity, and democracy. Several law professors are playing, including our own Steve Vladeck. Some good stuff there.

Beware the extra "http://"

A word to Typepad users:  the new format now puts in an "http://" at the beginning of the link in the prompt box.  I'm expecting to see a lot of http://http:// links in the near future.  Any other comments on the new format are welcome.  I myself find the slower delete key very aggravating.

Reminder: Happy Hour at AALS San Diego Marriott tonight at 9pm in Lobby Lounge

Greetings from San Diego. So much to share, so little time. Here are two. I had breakfast yesterday near Super Dave Osborne. Wow. And tonight is the happy hour at the San Diego Marriott Hotel/Marina in the Lobby Lounge. We're co-hosting it with our friends at Co-Op and ELS Blog, and we're especially grateful to the folks at Indiana University Maurer School of Law--Bloomington for buying the first 200 drinks. See you after the gala!

Happy Hour at AALS: save the date for Thurs Jan 8th at 9ish (confirmed)

Some very exciting news: we will once again be hosting a happy hour with our friends from Concurring Opinions and the Empirical Legal Studies blog during the AALS conference in San Diego. Please mark your calendars for 9pm on Thursday January 8th. Place (now confirmed): The Marriott's Lobby Lounge.

Importantly, this year we will be joined in sponsorship by our very generous friends at Indiana University Maurer School of Law — Bloomington. The first couple hundred drinks will be thanks to them!

Resolutions, Libations, and Rotations

It's the end of the year, and the onset of the new one. PrawfsBlawg had a good year: our visitor traffic is about 30-40% higher than it used to be in 2007. So we've got that going for us, which is nice.

And things are only getting better. I'm very pleased to say that Jay Wexler has agreed to stay on at Prawfs through June, enlightening us with his twisted and deviant notions. For the new month, some of our friends from December will be staying on, and we will be welcoming back our friends Hadar Aviram (Hastings) and Jonathan Simon (Berkeley Law, aka Boalt). We still have some places available for our Spring 2009 schedule for guest bloggers, so if you're a prawf (or about to be one), and you're interested, please let me know.

Last, if you'll be in San Diego next week, please resolve to mark your calendar for January 8th, Thursday at 9pm. Along with our friends from Concurring Opinions and Empirical Legal Studies Blog, we'll be meeting in the Lobby Lounge of the Marriott where the AALS conference will be. Arrive early enough and it's a good chance that you'll be able to take advantage of our extremely generous friends over at Indiana University Maurer School of Law -- Bloomington. They're buying the first couple hundred drinks. In fact, if I can get Bill Henderson and his friends there sufficiently liquored up, I might just sell this blog to them...at the right price.

Happy New Year everybody!

Prawfsfest! 4, MVP's, blogging in 2009, and thinking ahead...

After the Prawfsfest! in Miami, and a briefer than expected visit to the treetops of Costa Rica, I have finally returned back to my desk, where, among other things, I'm hoping to do some more substantive blogging the next few months. In the meantime, let me just take a moment to thank Deans Paul Verkuil and Donna Coker at U of Miami for their hospitality and support in underwriting the costs associated with our recent Prawfsfest! workshop at UMiami. 11 of us showed up (5 from Florida and about 6 from outside) to the lovely UM campus, where thanks to Ben Depoorter's effortless charm, we were well cared for.

As is typical with the Prawfsfest! series, the focus is on public law and legal theory papers. The idea is to present a work in early progress (attendees are expected to read at least 20 pages of manuscript). The papers are supposed to be raw or 1/4 baked; in other words, pre-SSRN and pre-placement.  The presenter talks for no more than 5-7 minutes and for the remainder of the hour, we go around the room with folks offering their comments. There's a no-foreplay norm that's softly enforced. As one attendee archly characterized the prevailing spirit: if you have something nice to say, don't say it! In the past, the 20 pages standard has been subject to varying interpretations. I suspect for the next one, we will move to a more clear rule, something like: please determine which 7000 words of text (ie, excluding foot/endnotes) you'd like everyone to read at minimum. This set of norms is still in flux; I'd be curious to hear how organizers/participants in other workshops structure the incubation of these sorts of projects.

For what it's worth, I circulated an early version of a paper on intermediate sanctions and complex litigation that I've barely begun. Sure enough, I was persuaded to peel off aspects of the project for another paper (retributive damages regarding public entities), and to give more consideration to various topics. Though I didn't take a formal poll, I'm guessing that Dave Fagundes would again win the MVP (most valuable prawf) award for his amazing comments on so many of the papers, if not for the meticulous binder with tabs he made of all the various papers.

The next Prawfsfest! will be hosted here at Florida State (thanks to my Deans, Don Weidner and Wayne Logan). It will take place sometime b/w tax day and the ides of May--still nailing that down. Attending Prawfsfest! is one of the perks of guest-blogging here, so if you anticipate having a paper in the right stage of development and the right area-focus, and have already guest-blogged here, please let me know of your interest and we'll try to see if there's room in this one or the next one (likely in LA in December). If you are interested in being a non-presenting commentator, let me know about that too--we can usually accomodate a couple of those too. And while I'm at it, I should mention that I'll be co-ordinating the schedule of bloggers for the first half of the year very soon.  If you're a prawf (or rising prawf) who's been blurking, or know of someone suitable who's interested, please get in touch with me via email.

Last but not least: Happy Chanukah and Chag Sameach to our Jewish readers.

Prawfsfest! comes to UMiami

Thanks to the PR people at UM, you can see these nice people up close. Here's the official announcement.

The University of Miami School of Law will host the 4th Prawfsfest! from December 8-10, 2008. The event, to feature 11 sessions, will bring up-and-coming scholars from various areas of legal scholarship together to discuss their working papers on public law and legal theory and foster scholarship in those areas of law. 

UM Law Professor Ben W.F. Depoorter co-organized the December 2008 conference with Dan Markel from the Florida State University College of Law. 

"This is perhaps the most collegial type of conference in academia. Everyone reads every paper, leading to very deep and constructive discussion. The goal is to help each other get the best possible placement for their papers," said Professor Depoorter.

Markel was a visiting professor at the Law School in 2006, when he and former UM Law Associate Professor Stephen Vladeck organized the inaugural Prawfsfest! Since then, conferences have been held at Loyola Law School in Los Angeles, California and Hofstra University School of Law in Hempstead, New York.

"I'm excited and grateful to return to the Prawfsfest! birthplace at UM Law. In the past, the scholarship incubated at Prawfsfest! has appeared in many top law reviews and peer-reviewed journals and we are hopeful that the same will be true of the 11 papers we will workshop next week at UM Law," said Markel.

Among those participating in the conference are UM Law Professors Ben Depoorter and Charlton Copeland; Dan Markel andLesley Wexler from Florida State University College of Law; Tommy Crocker from the University of South Carolina School of Law; Dave Fagundes from Southwestern Law School; Jessie Hill from Case Western Reserve University School of Law; Chad Oldfather from Marquette University Law School; Stephen Vladeck from Washington College of Law at American University;Howard Wasserman from Florida International University College of Law; and Verity Winship from the Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law at Yeshiva University.

Long-Time Listener, First-Time Caller

Hi everybody. As Dan mentioned a couple of days ago, I'll be guest-blogging here for the next month or so. Having never done this before, I find myself experiencing a mix of curious eagerness and stomach-churning anxiety. Though I told Dan months ago that I'd do this in December, it more recently has struck me that "four months before my tenure vote" might not be the ideal time to start posting my half-baked thoughts online for the world to see. But anyway, I suppose the die is now cast, and I look forward to several weeks of trumpeting my own work, killing time when I should be grading exams, boring Brian Leiter, and engaging in all the other proud traditions that have made Prawfsblawg the stimulating and profitable (I get royalty checks, right?) venture it is today.

Thanks, ABA Journal

Yes, we too are part of the ABA Journal's Blawg 100.  You can find us under the "Professors" link.  Here is their description:

Less sidetracked than most by the bailout and the election, Prawfsblawg stayed true to its focus: “prawfs.” It posts about books and papers, law school job openings, and concerns of working professors.

And I must say, these ABA folks are savvy about web promotion.  They have a whole page entitled "Promote Your Blog" -- it's devoted to providing ways to "tell the world" about your blog's membership in the top 100.  Below is a catchy link that was really easy to embed.

Thanks to the ABA folks for providing some publicity for us bloggers.  And we hope to stay true to our focus on prawfs.

The No-Longer Reluctant Blogger Says Good-Bye

Like a rude guest at a party, I fear I've stayed past my welcome by a few days. I really want to thank Dan and everyone at PrawfsBlawg for having me. But before I go, a few more thoughts. When I first joined PrawfsBlawg at the beginning of the month, I posted that I was trying my hand at blogging for the first time with both curiosity and hesitation. On the one hand, I felt that there was something very exciting and valuable going on in the blogosphere, and I wanted to be a part of it. But on the other hand, I wasn't sure if I had the right personality for blogging and if it would be a productive use of my time. So I offered to be a "Blogging Guinea Pig" for any other reluctant bloggers out there who also weren't sure if this was something they'd like to try. For all of you, I offer my final report:

My month of blogging went by in a flash. I managed to post nine times (including this one) but several of them were not particularly substantive. I felt like there were so many more things to say but the time simply wasn't there. I was surprised at how long it took to compose even one seemingly simple post. But I was also amazed that once I started to blog, I started to see the events of my day as potential blog entries (here's an interesting thought about something I read in the paper, is there a post in that? or what about that discussion with a student in class, is that worth writing about?) Having both a duty and an opportunity to explore small thoughts seemed to light up a part of my brain that often lies dormant and that must be a good thing. The bad news is that my blogging definitely interfered with my ability to do other research and writing.

The potential for immediate feedback, however, was enticing. When the feedback came, it was fun and exciting, but when it didn't the silence was deafening. (Embarrassingly, I got the most comments when I simply copied and pasted an entertaining email from a colleague.) Being part of an online community was a really nice feeling. And there were no "piranhas" -- I found the PrawfsBlawg crew to be a positive one. One post even resulted in me reconnecting with a former professor.

In the end, I'm so glad I jumped in the deep end by giving blogging a try and I urge others to do the same. The more voices that join the conversation can only make it that much richer and more productive. For now, however, I'm retreating back to my private world where I can get some "real" work done. But maybe I'd like to join the party again some day if you'll have me . . .

Rotations

Today is World AIDS Day. You can get involved here.

It is also December 1, and thus the onset of a new month where we thank our prior guests and welcome our new ones. Many thanks to our October and November crew--some of them may linger a bit longer. I also want to welcome the new voices joining the Prawfs conversation for the month of December: Susan Kuo (USouthCarolina); Michael Cahill (Brooklyn); Rick Esenberg (Marquette), and Jay Wexler (BU). And of course, I'm pleased to welcome back Joe Slater and Geoff Rapp (both of U Toledo), and Zak Kramer (Penn State). Thanks and welcome one and all.

Giving Thanks

Just wanted to take a moment to welcome the holiday tomorrow by giving thanks to all the wonderful people who help make up the Prawfs community--readers, writers, and sponsors. It's hard to believe that we've generated over 4 million pageviews in the last 3 years, and indeed that our traffic has  spiked over 30% the last six months or so. Amazing. Those of you who have been visiting more frequently as you transition fulltime into the legal academy--please think of Prawfs as the space for you to make your introduction to the academic community this upcoming year.

To my mind,  one of the best parts of Prawfs  has been the Prawfsfest! workshops in public law and legal theory that we've been doing, lately every six months or so.  Thus, I'm grateful and excited to announce our upcoming Prawfsfest! at University of Miami, where we began two years ago. This coming Prawfsfest! (which will take place the week of Dec 8th, just on the heels of Miami's Art Basel show) will feature: B. Jessie Hill, Charlton Copeland, Lesley Wexler, Ben Depoorter, Dave Fagundes, Steve Vladeck, Chad Oldfather, Tommy Crocker, Verity Winship, Howard Wasserman, and myself. Special thanks go to Ben Depoorter for helping me organize it at UM with the strong support from the deans at UMiami.  We'll be having another Prawfsfest! at Florida State Law in April--more details on that in the new year.

In the meantime, I hope to see many of you at our traditional AALS happy hour in San Diego in six weeks (details tba), and more immediately, I wish everyone a joyous and restful holiday filled with blessings and innumerable reasons for gratitude.

Kind of feels like being an Article III Judge . . .

I am thrilled/surprised/relieved to report that the faculty at the College of Law has recommended me for tenure. I mention this to echo and add to Bill Henderson's comments at ELS of how he addressed blogging in his tenure materials. The statement I included in my submission, similar in some respects to Bill's (although I have not been as prolific or high-profile a blog writer as he), is after the jump.

Since blogging has become a more common and important part of the legal academy within the last eight years, there has been a lot of discussion about the wisdom of blogging without tenure. But the reality is that a substantial number of bloggers are untenured (Aside: Has anyone examined the status of the contributors on the top legal blogs in Caron's most recent study?). And that number goes up when we consider the large number of guest bloggers who cycle through here, CoOp, and other places. So the real question is not whether pre-tenure blogging is a good idea; it already is happening. The real question is how to present blogging as part of our package of scholarship, teaching, and service.

It seems to me that any discussion of blogging in tenure materials will be one part education and one part justification. We have to explain a lot to some senior law faculty, as well as to central administrators and perhaps to faculty in other departments and who are involved in the review process (FIU does not have a university-wide faculty committee between the law school dean and the provost, although many schools do). We have to explain what blogging is at its most fundamental level, why we do it, why it is not a waste of writing time, how it relates to our core scholarship, how it benefits us professionally in terms of scholarship, teaching, and service, and how it benefits the school. It may be a good idea (as Bill did) to provide at least a representative list of (more substantive) blog posts, which makes blog writing look, at least, like writing op-eds and other short pieces.

It also seems to me that the level of needed explanatory detail will decrease as more and more bloggers gain tenure (say, within the next five-seven years) and blogging becomes a routine and understood part of our writing activities. In about 5-10 years, it should be enough to say "I blog at ______" in the "other scholarly activities" section of the tenure folder. The interesting question will be whether committee members begin reading some blog posts for evaluation--not in the same way or with the same interest as they review scholarship, but with an eye towards evaluating how good this person is at this particular, accepted scholarly activity.

Alternative Scholarship and Blogging

More recently, I have begun regular blogging, which provides an even-more timely outlet and a chance to directly reach a repeat audience with short (anywhere from 200-2000 words), very immediate commentary. Blogging is a new and essential component to legal scholarship, a forum for regular and frequent writing and commentary on law and policy, as an alternative outlet and as a complement to core legal scholarship. I am a regular contributor on two legal blogs. The first is PrawfsBlawg, a general legal blog targeted primarily at law professors and law students, for which I began writing this past year. My writing on this site has been beneficial to my scholarly profile and to raising my name recognition, particularly among people who do not otherwise write in my scholarly areas. The second is Sports Law Blog, a blog targeted at the sports-law community, academics, practitioners, and fans. This site has been the primary outlet for my writing on sports and the law, particular about connections between sport and legal rules and processes. The site also is widely read by sportswriters and has provided me with many media interview and commentary opportunities.

Writing on these blogs has kept me involved in broader conversations about the law. These outlets also enable me to speak to different audiences about a broad range of legal and policy issues. This includes discussions of new and ongoing legal and political controversies that connect to broader scholarly subjects of interest, as well as discussions of subjects or questions that do not lend themselves to immediate, full-fledged scholarly treatment (although many may be the focus of future scholarship), but that I wanted to write and present to an audience in a timely fashion.

The Blogging Guinea Pig

In my first post last week, I wrote about my hesitancy in signing up to guest blog. On the one hand, I wasn't sure how comfortable I'd be with such a public sharing of such nascent thoughts. I tend to be more a writer who ruminates, revises and reworks before sharing and later publishing. I'm sure I was attracted to academia in part because of the slow and deliberate pace of legal scholarship. And while I always welcome constructive criticism of my work, I also feared how I'd handle the lurking "piranhas" as Orin dubbed them. Not to mention that I already had plenty of ways to spend the limited hours in my day.

But I decided to give it a try because I couldn't shake the feeling I was missing out by not being a part of this virtual law school. Some of my blogging colleagues have assured me that it's not only useful but fun and addictive. They thrive on the ability to throw out a still-forming thought and crave the immediacy of the feedback. I also wanted to blog because I think the time will come when law blogging will be a pseudo-requirement for our job much like going to conferences and presenting papers. After I noted in my last post that I felt some self-imposed pressure that this was something I should be doing, our Dean and several tenured faculty members sought me out to assure me that they didn't give one whit about whether I blog or not. I should only do it if I enjoy it. I believe them that they don't care and that it won't make the slightest difference when I go up for promotion and tenure (although apparently they're all reading PrawfsBlawg!). But I nevertheless wonder about the near future. As the percentage of bloggers on tenured faculties grows, so most likely will the perceived esteem of blogging. It's only natural for us to value what we ourselves have done.

Whatever the importance of blogging to the young law professor, I'm giving it a try. And while I'm here, I'm offering to be a blogging guinea pig for all the other reluctant bloggers. It'll be hard to know how many of you there are because, by definition, you won't be posting and commenting. But I'm going to assume you're out there and wondering, "Is this something I'd enjoy? Is this something I should be doing?" At the end of the month I'll let you know my thoughts, because that's what we bloggers do.

Greetings

Thanks to Dan for the invitation to blog.  I have long been impressed by the scope of topics addressed here.  Perhaps I can expand the range even further.  My own scholarship and teaching have addressed criminal law doctrine and theory, tort doctrine and theory, and topics in moral and political philosophy.  I am especially interested in the subtle ways that certain normative perspectives--especially economic and utilitarian views--infiltrate our teaching and research.  More about this soon...

Greetings & Salutations

Thanks to Dan and the gang for inviting me back.  I’m glad to be here. 

Since my last visit, I’ve had the opportunity to add a couple of Constitutional Law courses to my teaching load—Comparative Constitutional Law over the summer, and Constitutional Law II this term.  Not surprisingly, preparing for and teaching these courses (particularly in an election year) has buttressed my relevant research interests in law and religion as well as in matters of voting.  I plan to blog about those in addition to my usual mainstay, IP.  Hopefully, I’ll be able to come up with a few music posts as well.  As usual, I’m looking forward to an array of thoughtful and interesting comments.

Rotations

Happy Halloween!

A number of our guests this past month will be sticking around for a bit longer  but I wanted to take a moment to thank all of them for their wonderful contributions. We hope to see you back here soon.

And as the new month begins, we have another exciting group of new and familiar voices to add to our conversation here. Joining  us for the first time are Sonja West from UGA, Ken Simons from Boston U., and Chris Lund from Mississippi College School of Law. And I'm also pleased to welcome back our stalwart guests, Nadine Farid (Gonzaga), Geoff Rapp (Toledo), and Bill Araiza (Loyola en route to Brooklyn).

Welcome one and all!

Hiring thread update

Update: the comments to the hiring thread are now working. Because of a change in Typepad's software, we can't display more than 50 comments on a particular page, so you need to scroll down to the bottom of the comments and then click on "Next" a few times to get to the recent comments. But they are all there. Typepad explained the switch: "Comments Pagination was introduced to speed up the loading of blogs for our users, and to be less of a drain on resources for blogs with a high number of posts and comments."

There seems to be a minor glitch with the comments to the hiring thread. The comments for the last month are currently not showing up, but rest assured they are showing up somewhere in the typepad software, so they  have not been lost permanently. I will find out from Typepad how to restore them. In the meantime, feel free to use this post as a place to put comments relevant to that thread. Thanks for your patience.

Bloglines or Google Reader?

Eric Goldman laments that Bloglines randomly drops his feeds and for that reason (among others) he is switching to Google Reader.  I am relatively new to online readers - I have always used Firefox bookmarks and/or Sage Extension for Firefox, both of which work quite well for what they are.  Portability, however, is a problem.  I toyed around with rss feeds on my own website (which has rss modules) and on my yahoo, but those aren't the same as a reader.

So, I started with the base Bloglines product - yuck.  Terrible interface, and not intuitive at all.  I do, however, like getting email list and searches in my rss feeds.  It took about 10 minutes to move to the beta product, which I think is quite great - it allows for quick, full, and three-pane viewing, including a slick iframe that allows me to see the original page (useful for site that have short pre-jump intros or interesting comments (like Prawfs, for example!).  It does have its problems - feeds don't always update in a timely fashion, and links to the backend database seem to be broken a lot.  That said, it is a beta and I have high hopes.

Compared to the beta version, Google Reader is simply unusable.  The list is nice, but you have to jump out to see the full page - no better than my Sage reader in that sense.  Also, the menu at the top left is mostely useless to someone who has no interest in sharing feeds or doing whatever else is available there- on my laptop the feeds don't appear until the bottom of the screen - pretty annoying.  I also don't like being logged in for Google search (privacy concerns), and Google Reader requires me to log in.  Eric mentions some "oddities" in Google's product, but I think that it goes way beyond that - I don't think Google Reader is anywhere on par with Bloglines - at least not the new beta version.

Given that this is all new to me, I am willing to be convinced otherwise.  Is there a nicer Google version I don't know about?  Some way to improve the viewing or rearrange the menus?  Is there another online reader that is better than both of them?

A new not-blog: "Public Discourse"

"Public Discourse" is (it insists) the not-blog (though it is kind of like a blog) of the Witherspoon Institute (one of Robby George's projects) at Princeton.  Here is the link, and here is a description of the not-blog's mission and a list of the Editorial Board's members.  A bit:

We call it Public Discourse: Ethics, Law and the Common Good for three simple reasons. First, the topics we cover all center on public life. Second, we approach these topics using methods of discourse that are inherently public, open and accessible to all fellow citizens. Third, we contend that at the heart of our public debates are ethical questions - questions about good and bad, right and wrong, just and unjust. As to our approach, we rely on neither revelation, emotivism, nor majoritarianism. Rather we aim to address these questions rationally through critical reflection on man's nature, his personal and communal flourishing, and the ethical principles that should guide his conduct.

Aristotle taught that the central question of political life is how we ought to order our lives together. This is an inherently ethical question. Whatever the pressing question of the day may be - debates surrounding economic policy, biotechnology, international relations, marriage and the family, constitutional law and religious liberty - they all entail ethical positions. . . .

Blogging Without Tenure

I know many of us blog without tenure, but is it really a good idea?

Some advise that blogging doesn't help.  For one, it may not always look like it, but blogging takes time.  And that time could be spent writing law review articles.  That's the theory, at least, although in my experience it is nice to have a variety of projects of different lengths, media, etc.

But does it hurt?  Any practicing lawyer has seen indiscreet email come back to haunt its author.  Blogs are more overtly public, but they are also a place to float ideas that aren't entirely worked out.

Arctic Sovereignty, Climate Change, and the Inuit Tapirit Kanatami

Thanks again to Dan for the opportunity to return to PrawfsBlawg as a guest blogger. During this month, I hope to make a series of posts related to transnational and international issues – my scholarly area of focus. I thought I would start off with a post about Arctic Sovereignty. I had blogged on this topic during my last PrawfsBlawg stint. The topic hopefully is one of general interest, but this post might be particularly useful to law students, many who are madly searching for appropriate note topics.

The issues surrounding Arctic Sovereignty are fresh in mind: On Friday, with a generous grant from the Canadian government, Southwestern’s Journal of International Law hosted a conference on the topic. It was the first comprehensive treatment by a U.S. law school on the recent legal issues related to the Arctic and Northwest Passage that have arisen because of the melting ice and the anticipated increase in Arctic shipping and economic activity. I was fortunate to be able to hear from leading Law of the Sea experts (people like John Norton Moore and Ted McDorman), government officials (J. Ashley Roach, U.S. State Department), interest groups (Rosemary Cooper, ITK), leading scientists (Larry Mayer and Vincent Gallucci), as well as many rising stars in legal academia (e.g., Suzanne Lalonde, Michael Robinson-Dorn, Noah Hall, Rebecca Bratspies, Sarah Krakoff, Sophie Theriault).

Much is potentially at stake. For Canada, climate change, runaway oil prices, environmental degradation, and various other issues have vaulted the issue of Arctic sovereignty to the top of Canada’s economic, defense, and diplomatic concerns. News articles are published on a daily basis in Canada on the issue, and it is a point of contention in Canada’s upcoming election. The issue, however, is also important in the U.S. -- although it receives much less coverage in the media (see, e.g., NY Times Op-ed by John Bellinger, legal adviser to Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice) and among legal academics. My take is that the legal issues related to the Arctic may well spur a renewed interest for the U.S. to ratify the Law of the Sea Convention.

I wanted to quickly highlight one issue raised in the Arctic Sovereignty debate -- an issue that seems under-treated in the U.S., and presumably something that would make for a great student note topic. Rosemary Cooper spoke from the Inuit Tapiriit Kanatami about the challenges facing the Inuit with climate change and the "race to the Arctic." The Inuit Tapiriit Kanatami is an organization that represents and promotes the interests of the Inuit. The challenges related to housing conditions, education, infant mortality, suicide rates, and life expectancy in Inuit communities is stunning. Although much is at stake for the Inuit (and Alaskan natives) with recent environmental changes, little has been written in the U.S. law reviews on this important topic. The issues raised are fascinating, and bring together concepts in human rights, indigenous rights, and environmental law.

The national attention is understandably drawn elsewhere to more immediately pressing matters (the financial crisis, the election etc.). I suspect in the next few years, however, we'll be hearing much more about the Arctic Sovereignty debate.