171. Where indeed?

Over at 3L Epiphany, Ian Best asks: "Where is the Hudson v. Michigan blog?"   Part of the reason for the founding of law reviews in the first half of the 20th century was that they provided student-written "comments" or "notes" on recent legal developments.  There was actually a reason for practicing lawyers to read them.

That day is long gone.  A quarterly or bimonthly publishing schedule seems pretty hectic when you're meeting it during those spare moments you can spare from studying, pizza-binging, nursing hopeless crushes across the lecture hall, and trying to corner some faculty member into a long-term commitment to write as many recommendation letters as changing circumstances in your future life might demand. 

But to people on the other end of the mailing list, it means  notes and comments appear months, even years, after the cases they're intended to inform readers about.  Anybody who hasn't already read the case in question can't be seriously interested in it.  So the notes and comments in the back of law reviews have gradually turned into a species of term paper, their purpose fulfilled by their writing.

As for the featured articles in law reviews, mostly articles written by professors, well ...  At the risk of sounding critical, not all of them are as pithy as might be.   (Check out these word totals.)

It's no wonder that law professors typically publish a note giving thanks to a list of all the people who read the article in draft and provided such valuable comments, etc.  I mean, how many other authors can say they have thanked in writing every person who will ever read their work?  Because, really, no matter how fascinating a topic might be as a conundrum of administrative law, by the time the article grows longer than the history of time itself, well ...  I'm sure their mothers were very proud to receive the offprint.   And justly so.  It's not easy to achieve that level of unpithiness.

Scholarship-by-accretion remains the dominant mode in law schools.  Here's a good description of the scholarly method employed by students and assistant professors alike:

In the scriptorium, or writing studio, of every monastery the brethren dipped their sharpened goose quills into their phials of coloured acid and bent over their transcriptions of ancient manuscripts.  The writing stand of each monk held two books, the manuscript on which the scribe was working and the volume from which he was copying, for to be learned in the year 1000 was to copy.  You did not innovate.  You learned by absorbing and reproducing the wisdom of earlier authorities.

Do that long enough and you have a law review article.

Given that the monks and monkettes have, in the last 5 or 10 years, turned in their quills for laptops, shouldn't they be posting instead of copying?  The old purpose of law reviews might once more be served, if Ian can convince others to take up his blog challenge.

(Incidentally, I'm deeply grateful to all those who read this posting, including in particular you.)

Comments

[me-mo]

Are you checking out the New York Times series on judges?

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/09/26/nyregion/26courts.html?hp&ex=1159329600&en=858c1bfeab1815d5&ei=5094&partner=homepage

[Rash]

My favorite search system

[Kristifer]

I like your blog.

Kristofer

[Kristifer]

I like your blog