 Wednesday, January 25, 2006
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Getting to Know You
Bernard Hibbitts at 12:27 PM
One reason I've launched this blog is to start a conversation with JURIST readers around the world. I'd like to know more about who you are, what you think, how you use JURIST, and how you'd like to see the service improved.
Sometimes of course JURIST readers are our eyes and ears, alerting us to stories we may not have seen, resources we should link to, or a perspective we might have missed. If you see a story or perhaps have a document that deserves wider circulation, e-mail it to me. I already read hundreds of e-mails here every day, so what's a few hundred more?
So don't be shy. Speak up. Are you an interesting person from an unusual place? Say hello. Join the JURIST community. We'll all be better for it.
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The Worst of Times, the Best of Times
Bernard Hibbitts at 3:45 PM
A formula developed by a British psychologist suggests that today, January 23, is the most depressing day of this year, taking into account seasonal trends, the weather, what day of the week it is, post-holiday blahs, and so on. Last year it was January 24. Mid-January, it seems, is the worst of times.
There unfortunately seems to be more to this theory than you might think, at least as far as JURIST is concerned. At the University of Pittsburgh School of Law, Friday January 20 was our day to remember Professor Welsh White [profile], a longtime friend, colleague and contributor to JURIST who passed away on December 31 at the too-young age of 65. Regular readers will remember that after New Year's we threw JURIST's main title banner into black in his memory. January 16 this year was also the fourth anniversary of another tragic loss for us, the murder by an estranged student of Appalachian Law School dean Tony Sutin [JURIST condolence book], the editor of JURIST's 2000 presidential recount coverage who in fact was "blogging" before there were blogs.
Both Welsh and Tony are sorely missed. They were both taken from us too soon. Today we celebate their memories by continuing their legacies and (hopefully) carrying to new heights the online educational efforts that they aided and encouraged. Working towards the best of times is, after all, a sure cure for depression.
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Thursday, January 19, 2006
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How to Lose a Supreme Court Confirmation
Bernard Hibbitts at 2:15 PM
One of the great things about editing JURIST is that you hear from all kinds of interesting people. In November 2004 I heard from a reader about a JURIST This Day at Law entry on failed US Supreme Court pick Harrold Carswell, nominated by President Nixon on January 19, 1970. The nomination of the US Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals judge, never hugely popular in the first place, went down in flames in a 51-45 Senate floor vote after a reporter discovered the text of a 1948 political campaign speech by Carswell in which he said "segregation of the races is proper."
Thirty-four years later Edward Roeder wrote to JURIST:You are factually correct. The speech is accurately quoted. But the most significant part of it wasn't that quote -- which, after all, reflected the law of the land through Brown v. Board of Education.
The most significant part was Carswell's avowal of his "firm, vigorous belief in the principles of white supremacy." I recall this because I was the reporter who discovered the speech, in the basement of the Wilkinson County courthouse in Georgia, where it was preserved as lead story in The Irwinton Bulletin, a weekly Carswell edited, which was kept because it was the legal paper of record. Roeder later added:I found and reviewed my photo of Carswell's 1948 speech. First, it may be helpful to provide a bit of context for the part you quoted. The graf read, "I Am A Southerner By Ancestry, Birth, Training, Inclination, Belief And Practice. I Believe That Segregation Of The Races is Proper And The ONLY Practical And Correct Way Of Life In Our States."
The first letter of each word is capitalized, the the word ONLY is in all caps.
The "white supremacy" quote, two grafs later, is as strident: "I Yield To NO MAN, As A Fellow Candidate, Or As A Fellow Citizen, In The Firm Vigirous Belief In The Principles Of White Supremacy, And I Shall Always Be So Governed." Again, the first letter of each word is capitalized, and NO MAN is in all caps. "Vigorous" is misspelled in the newspaper. But segregation wasn't the only thing at issue in the failed Carswell nomination. Roeder recalled:Another great quote spawned by that confirmation battle was by Sen. Judiciary Committee Ranking Republican Roman Hruska, in response to the charge that Carswell was "mediocre." Hruska famously told the cameras staked outside the hearing room:
"Even if he was mediocre, there are a lot of mediocre judges and people and lawyers . . . They are entitled to a little representation, aren't they, and a little chance? We can't have all Brandeises and Cardozos and Frankfurters and stuff like that there." Perhaps Harriet Miers, back in the White House after her own brief flirtation with judicial fame, would agree.
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Wednesday, January 18, 2006
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Googleanche!
Bernard Hibbitts at 11:40 AM
Googleanche, n. A flood of visitors to a website from Google...
Timing is everything. On Tuesday, high online interest in the Alito nomination combined with a JURIST op-ed by Ohio State law professor Peter Shane provocatively entitled Hollow Ritual: The Alito Confirmation Hearings to put that piece on the front page of Google News [screenshot] for much of the day. At several points, readers were hitting it more than once a second, and by the end of the day it had racked up more than 12,000 downloads. It was a classic Googleanche. Our server is still trying to recover.
Now of course we're happy with the traffic, but it was, in essence, an accident. Other excellent pieces and well-researched news items from JURIST do not do nearly as well. Some do not get into Google News at all for technical reasons having to do with how Google crawls websites, even though JURIST is an approved Google News source.
In an online world where more and more people find out what's going on through Google, we need to do better than this, at least if people are to be properly informed. Web crawlers and algorithms are helpful if you're running a news site with few staffers, but ultimately human editors need to intervene to set substantive priorities, fill in the gaps and filter out the dross. Good or bad, pro or con, technical "accidents" should not determine who sees particular information or opinions. If they do, what you've got is a prescription not for understanding, but for chaos.
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Tuesday, January 17, 2006
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Spring Training
Bernard Hibbitts at 9:02 AM
It might be a bit early for the Grapefruit League, but 22 of JURIST's Pittsburgh-based staffers - veterans and new recruits - convened over the holiday weekend at the University of Pittsburgh law school for a semi-annual review of our production procedures. Editors and senior law student staff members discussed the challenges of headlining, writing and researching stories in real time, sharing tips and insights from their own experiences.
Of course I said a few things, but I also got a chance to watch students and former students explain JURIST in their own words. It's clear that in JURIST's third year as a largely student-powered website, our law students have a pretty good idea of what's involved in reporting important national and international legal news stories online. They know what it is to write accurate, short news stories under pressure, finding and incorporating primary sources and background links to help readers gain perspective on events. And they realize that what they're doing is unique, both in terms of how JURIST's online anchors and senior editors work together simultaneously to craft a finished product and in terms of the non-commercial public service they provide.
In the process of working on JURIST, of course, our students are honing critical legal skills. They learn how to analyze and evaluate new information quickly. Frequent and repeated story-production improves the fluidity, style and succinctness of their writing. Real time feedback from online editors continually looking over their virtual shoulders as they work accelerates and reinforces this learning process, which in the short term translates into more comfort with immediate time-limited writing challenges like exams, and in the long run will help them produce quality briefs and other legal papers on deadline. Researching JURIST stories teaches our staffers what's online where (reminding them that WestLaw and Lexis are only the tips of the vast information iceberg of the Internet) and familiarizes them with a wide range of finding tools that may come in handy for clients down the line. And then of course there's the general sense of connection and engagement that JURIST's law student staffers get from a better appreciation of what's happening in the legal world around them, in the US and abroad. They may be in the Ivory Tower, but they're looking out.
Sounds like an education, doesn't it?
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Martin Luther King Day
Bernard Hibbitts at 11:37 AM
Today JURIST celebrates the legacy of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. with a powerful and evocative op-ed by Ben Davis of the University of Toledo College of Law entitled Heeding MLK's Call to Action. Ben's father Griffith Davis, a noted photographer, went to Morehouse College with King in the 1940s and the two kept in touch during the civil rights movement. Ben's link to King is personal.
On what would have been King's 76th birthday, Ben urges us to recommit ourselves to the principles Dr. King proclaimed, and to take up again the causes of social justice and human dignity which lately seem to have been forgotten, even by some of those ostensibly liberated by the more open standards and polices King helped to bring about. His words - and Dr. King's call - are a important challenge to complacency and careerism at a time when America would seem to have lost its way.
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JURIST via RSS
Bernard Hibbitts at 8:07 AM
RSS (Really Simple Syndication) feeds are a great way of keeping up to date with dynamic websites that are frequently updated. Once you subscribe to a feed, new posts appear in your news reader as they are produced, saving you the trouble of having to continually go back to a website (or many websites!) to check for updates.
RSS feeds can also be incorporated directly into other websites, allowing institutions or individuals to display continually updated content from other sources for their own online visitors.
JURIST offers RSS feeds for most of our major legal news-related services:- Paper Chase [our main legal news service, updated 20+ times daily]
 - US Legal News [our US news, updated 10+ times daily]
- World Legal News [our non-US news, updated 10+ times daily]
- Gazette [new legal news-related documents; updated daily]
- Monitor [new legal news-related video; updated about every other day]
- Live Webcasts [live law-related video; updated daily]
- This Day at Law [legal history; updated daily]
- Forum [latest op-eds; updated about every other day]
Legal sites and intranets display JURIST feeds in various ways. For example, Georgetown University Law Center Library, the National Judicial College, and the Nelson Mullins law firm in Columbia South Carolina carry Paper Chase headlines and leads from our news stories. Yale Law Library, the Southern Methodist University Law Library, and the Texas Center for the Judiciary carry headlines only. The University of Arkansas at Little Rock School of Law carries our feed in a ticker, as does New York Law School Library.
Some of these institutions use special code blocks we've produced and insert those into their websites to build in the dynamic context; others use third-party providers like Feedroll. Either way, however, they keep their visitors up to date with the latest national and international legal news as our law student editors research and pump it out every day here in Pittsburgh.
For more information on how to use JURIST's RSS feeds, click here. And of course if you have any questions, or problems, just e-mail me!
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