LawCulture

The Economy of Time and Blogging

The general conversation today at the the Berkman Center's conference on Bloggership revolved around the risks and benefits of blogging.  The benefits seem obvious given the panel membership.  Every panel speaker was an example of how blogging can raise one's academic profile, or, for some, catapult them into the realm of stardom beyond the academy. (I am thinking of the cult of Ann Althouse, and perhaps even of Eugene Volokh, although I gather some will disagree that the blogs are what made them stars and still others will think there are better examples of starprawfs out there.)  The risks were less obvious -- or at least were less dwelled upon. There were concerns over libel and defamation lawsuits; intellectual embarrasment; and the time blog takes from scholarship and teaching that are required features of our jobs as law professors. It is this last one I am most interested in.

Insofar as effective blogging (and by that I mean a having a sustained, engaged readership) requires regular and frequent postings on subjects of interest, it seems the economy of time is a central mechanism of the blogosphere.  I wonder, then, if there isn't a certain privilege associated with this economy of time.  That is successful bloggers have more of it to spare.  This might mean that more often the successful blogger is a tenured professor (although Christine Hurt's statistics suggest that untenured law professors are overrepresented in the blogosphere).  Dan Solove told us that a majority of the blogs out there are created by teenagers (I would assume those teenagers are from class backgrounds where the afterschool or weekend job is unnecessary and  access to everyday computer use goes without saying).  The economy of time as a measure of successful blogging might also mean that working women with young children are underrepresented on the blogosphere, or at least are less likely to have successful blogs.  I wonder if this helps explain the underrepresentation of women in the legal blogsosphere.  (Thinking more cynically, I gather the economy of time as a measure of successful blogs may also translate into a reified privilege based on class and/or gender status, which works to entrench working mothers as second-class professionals.)

Dare Doctrine in (News) Print

Boston Globe columnist Chris Shea has written an article for the Ideas section of the Sunday Boston Globe about the Dare Doctrine, discussed here on this blog. 

In our reactionary utopia

In the comic-operetta reactionary utopia created by Stendhal in The Charterhouse of Parma, all the liberals are in prison, or packing their bags to go into exile. The crowning stroke of the Prince of Parma’s administrative style is his appointment of the chief of the liberal party as director of the Citadel, where the political prisoners are incarcerated. To please the prince, the liberal leader must daily demonstrate that he is at heart a tyrant.

When this repressive regime eventually sparks an abortive revolution, a number of the rebels are shot—and their families then are informed that the individuals in question are traveling for their health. History is immediately rewritten to efface the event, just as the marks of musket balls are effaced from the Prince’s statue. Language is twisted, reality gives way to fantasy. The leader of the revolt is reduced to writing satirical sonnets.

The generals vs. generalissimo Rumsfeld

Los Angeles Times Rosa Brooks:

A 4-star defense of the republic

April 21, 2006

WHEN SIX recently retired generals criticized Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld's handling of the Iraq war and urged his resignation, the Bush administration reacted as if the generals had announced an impending military coup. Within days, administration loyalists were suggesting that the generals had been disloyal not merely to Rumsfeld but to American democracy itself.
The rest is here.

Peculiar Affinities: Legal Academia and the Blogosphere

The Berkman Center for Internet and Society at Harvard Law School is hosting a symposium next Friday, April 28th entitled "Bloggership: How Blogs Are Transforming Legal Scholarship." Some of the usual suspects, and some not-so-usual suspects, will be speaking. I am curious if academic disciplines other than law have experienced the blog explosion.  I won't assume that other disciplines will be much discussed at the Berkman next week, but asking the question about other disciplines might shed some light on whether the blogosphere and legal academia share a peculiar affinity.

Mommy wars -- a false battle

Los Angeles Times
Rosa Brooks
March 31, 2006

Mommy wars -- a false battle

IN HER MUCH-DISCUSSED new book, "Mommy Wars," Leslie Morgan Steiner likens the tensions between working mothers and stay-at-home mothers to "a catfight." Personally, I think it's more like dueling roosters: a cockfight.
more here.

One more job for immigrants

Los Angeles Times
Real Americans Pout, Don't Protest
Rosa Brooks:
One more job for immigrants
April 14, 2006
OVER THE LAST few weeks, it's become obvious that the immigrant community is seriously out of the American cultural mainstream. Mainstream Americans don't go in for protest marches anymore (mass protests are so '60s). But demonstrating a mind-boggling degree of cultural obtuseness, hundreds of thousands of immigrants turned out for nationwide rallies opposing the punitive Republican-sponsored immigration bill passed by the House in December. [more]

Last week's column, Those Ungrateful Iraqis, is here.

Social Movements and Constitutional Interpretation

A recent Boston Globe article described what appears to be a growing popular movement in South Dakota aimed at overturning the legislation that prohibits all abortions except in the case of women for whom the pregnancy threatens their life.

I thought this article was interesting for at least two reasons (others welcome). One, if the referendum passes and a majority of South Dakotans vote to overturn the recently passed state law, it shows how the state legislature may be very out of touch with its own electorate. Lesson: the state legislature may be more responsive to what appear to be national trends (as embodied in Republican party discourse) than to its own local citizenry. Two, as on example of a concerted effort by Planned Parenthood Federation of America to mobilize South Dakotans, we see how civil rights organizations might be moving away from litigation as a tool for social change. Lesson: the stability of the meaning of the Constitution (insofar as that is a value, perhaps it is not), depends as much on stare decisis, as it does on popular consciousness.

The Real Scandal?

            I have been looking for some sensible comment on the Duke lacrosse team case—the allegation that team members (male, white) raped a hired exotic dancer (female, African-American) at a party in the house where the team mates apparently all live together (how is that for dumb idea number one?).  The official university responses have been fine, indeed serious and significant.  But unsurprising.  It was novelist Allen Gurganus who in an op-ed in Sunday’s New York Times finally addressed the issue, in a somewhat disorganized but nonetheless vivid way.  “The imperative to win, and damn all collateral costs, is not peculiar to

Durham

—and it is killing us.”

            The real problem is simply university varsity sport programs themselves.  They are out of control, and cannot be brought back under control except by abolishing them completely.  Which should be done, at once. Think what a liberation that would be for universities across the country. 

Using Film to Teach Law

At the Law and Film Conference at the University of Maryland School of Law last weekend, several law professors spoke about the ways in which they use film to teach their law courses.  For example, Margaret Russell at Santa Clara University of Law spoke about showing clips from the documentary entitled The Untold Story of Emmett Till and from the documentary entitled Soul of Justice: Thelton Henderson's American Journey.  Both were used to bring to life certain issues in her law courses.  The documentary about the Emmett Till case could be used, she suggested, to talk about jury composition and evidentiary burdens. In the wake of so many debates over Supreme Court nominees, Professor Russell discussed how she showed parts of the documentary about the Honorable Thelton Henderson to discuss what makes a good (or bad) judge. In particular, she played for the conference attendees a particularly illuminating clip from the film in which Judge Henderson and others speak about the reason Judge Henderson did not recuse himself from civil rights cases despite his profound involvement in the civil rights movement.  In a world where students are more easily engaged with the visual image and the screen (be it a computer screen or a movie or television screen), Professor Russell admitted that sometimes the best way to communicate with students is to mobilize the visual language with which they are most at ease.

Professor Marilyn Berger from Seattle University School of Law spoke about her film Lessons from Woburn about the case (Anderson et al v. W.R. Grace et al) on which the book and film The Civil Action were based.  This film is an interactive documentary that students and the professor can explore together to review documents and testimony from the legal case as well as testimonials and other information that were not part of the legal saga.  Meant to be used in a civil procedure course, the film discusses the bifurcation of the trial, ethical issues faced by the attorneys, procedural and subject matter issues raised by the trial, as well as juriprudential questions that students might consider in evaluating the case and its result as a whole. 

These presentations at the conference got me thinking about the case books that have come out in the past several years that include DVDS or video supplements to enhance classroom discussion.  I believe George Fisher's book on evidence includes such a supplement. And I think Lempert, Gross and Liebman's evidence casebook does as well.  I wonder how many other casebooks could be enhanced with visual supplements. I can think of a dozen film clips that I would like to show in my constitutional law class (I already show clips from Eyes on the Prize, Tying the Knot, Unfinished Business (on the Japanese Internment Camps during WWII), and Seizing Power: The Steel Seizure Case Revisited).  I would love to hear what other films people can think of that would be particularly illustrative or thought provoking for core law courses?