Saturday • May 6, 2006

Law-related blogs are beginning to make an impact on legal scholarship and judicial decisions

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There is growing evidence that law-related weblogs ("blawgs") are hitting the mainstream as a source of information about the law -- and that the courts are paying attention.  In particular:

The growing number of blogs by law professors

In February the National Law Journal reported that:

"An increasing number of law professors are using blogs -- online journals or newsletters -- to break free from traditional modes of legal scholarship. With an immediacy and ability to reach millions of readers, blogs are proving an attractive vehicle among legal scholars for spouting and sharing ideas.

. . .

"Some 182 law professors have blogs, according to a count taken in November by Daniel Solove, a law professor and blogger at George Washington University. That number represented a 40% increase from Solove's previous count, taken five months earlier. ... The schools with the most bloggers are University of Chicago Law School, University of California at Los Angeles School of Law, University of San Diego School of Law and George Washington University. Among the top 20 law schools, as ranked by U.S. News & World Report, there are 59 bloggers."

See "Blogging law profs assault ivory tower," in the February 27 issue of the National Law Journal, available on-line.

Of course, some law professors choose to write blogs as an intellectual hobby or source of amusement, with no pretense that their blogs constitute scholarship in any conventional sense.  A prime example is the Althouse blog written by Wisconsin law professor Ann Althouse.

But other law professor blogs are clearly intended to provide reliable information and commentary about developments in the law. Examples of that genre include the thirty or so blogs that are members of the "Law Professor Blogs Network." As explained on the Network's home page:

"Law Professor Blogs is a network of web logs ('blogs') designed from the ground-up to assist law professors in their scholarship and teaching. Each site focuses on a particular area of law and combines both (1) regularly-updated permanent resources and links, and (2) daily news and information of interest to law professors. Our editors are leading scholars and teachers who are committed to providingthe web destination for law professors in their fields.

"What Law Professor Blogs Are

"The permanent resources & links and daily news & information are designed to collect in one place materials helpful to law professors in their scholarship and teaching  ...

"What Law Professor Blogs Are Not

"Our blogs are not a collection of personal ruminations about the Presidential campaign, the war in Iraq, or what the editor had for dinner last night. Neither do our editors offer their personal views on every policy issue in the news or every new court decision. We leave that terrain to the many existing blogs with that mission. Instead, our editors focus their efforts, in both the permanent resources & links and daily news & information, on the scholarly and teaching needs of law professors. Our hope is that law professors will visit the Law Professor Blog in their area (or areas) as part of their daily routine."

The April 28 "bloggership" conference at Harvard Law School

As I previously reported in Blawg Review #55 on SoloBlawg, the role of blogs in legal scholarship also received a recent boost from a "bloggership" conference held on April 28 at Harvard Law School's Berkman Center for Internet and Society. 

The speakers included distinguished law professors from all over the country, who addressed four topics: 'Law Blogs as Legal Scholarship,' 'The Role of the Law Professor Blogger,' 'Law Blogs and the First Amendment,' and 'The Many Faces of Law Professor Blogs.'

As I wrote in Blawg Review #55, "the most important thing is quite simply that the conference was held. The very fact that such a conference was held at Harvard Law School ratifies and legitimizes the role of blawgs in legal scholarship, just as the establishment of the Berkman Center ratified and legitimized the scholarly examination of the Internet."

For additional coverage of the Harvard conference, see:

• 'The Harvard Bloggership Conference in a Nutshell,' posted by GWU law professor Daniel J. Solove on his Concurring Opinions blog;
• The 'Bloggership Conference Recap' posted by Marquette law professor Eric Goldman on his Technology and Marketing Law Blog;
• 'A Discussion about Law Professor Blogging,' posted by UNC law professor Eric Muller on Is That Legal?;
• 'Historical reflections on the law blogging conference' posted by Moritz law professor Doug Berman on Sentencing Law and Policy; and
• 'Blogging the Harvard Bloggership Conference,' posted at 3L Epiphany by Ian Best, the same law student mentioned in the National Journal article above.

The growing evidence that judges are reading and paying attention

In late April the National Journal ran a piece called "Judges Read Blogs, Too" which reported, in part:

"If you want to know about the growing influence of legal blogs, third-year Ohio State University law student Ian Best is the man with the answers.

"Late last week at his 3L Epiphany blog, he posted an entry that lists court decisions with blog citations. The list encompasses 23 cases from federal and state courts across the country. The states include California, Florida, Indiana, Massachusetts, New York, Nebraska, North Dakota, Ohio Tennessee, Utah, West Virginia and Wisconsin.

"The earliest citation was in a 2003 case before the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of appeals; the rest occurred between 2004 and the present, with the latest being cases in Florida and Ohio this year.

"The blog with the most case citations is Sentencing Law and Policy, with 21 citations in 17 cases,' Best wrote. He added that "three other well-known legal blogs" -- How Appealing, Legal Theory Blog and The Volokh Conspiracy -- merited citations, too.

"Eugene Volokh praised Doug Berman of Sentencing Law and Policy for getting so much attention from judges. 'Many (likely most) law professors never get that many court citations for all their law review articles put together, much less for their blog posts,' Volokh wrote.

"Best followed his research on blog citations in court cases with insightful interviews about blogs with two judges: U.S. District Judge Richard Kopf in Nebraska and Ohio Supreme Court Justice Judith Lanzinger

"Lanzinger offered this warning: 'Assuming that legal blogs are now in their infancy, and that they will grow to have a long and fruitful life, I think that lawyers who ignore them altogether will do so at their peril.'"

See "Judges Read Blogs, Too"  in the April 28 issue of the National Journal, available on-line.