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Monday, July 24, 2006
Courts - So what if the judge reads the lawprof's blog?
As noted in this ILB entry Saturday, Howard Bashman of How Appealing has written a commentary concerning "What should judges do if, while visiting the legal blogosphere, they encounter discussions about how pending cases ought to be decided?"
For more, see Bashman's entry this afternoon, and, more particularly, see law prof Ann Althouse's take (and here is her main blog site) on the article, plus the many reader's comments, all available here. Her take:
Is there any trace of a problem here? There's the suggestion that blogging is a too-easy way around writing an amicus brief. (But so is doing an op-ed.) And there's the suggestion that blog posts are written hastily and without much editing. But judges and lawyers are thoroughly used to reading things and deciding what they are worth. (And plenty of law review articles and court briefs and cases are badly done.)The main thing I can think of is that blog reading can be seductive, eroding your patience for belabored writing, and judges and their clerks might read blogs out of proportion to their actual worth. A relatively small proportion of lawprofs are writing blogs, and the ones who are doing it aren't necessarily the best scholars. We're just the people who love to write in this form.
Posted by Marcia Oddi on July 24, 2006 03:38 PM
Posted to Indiana Courts