Defamation, SLAPP, and medicine: Doctor's Data, Inc. v. Barrett et al
Doctor’s Data filed a defamation lawsuit against Quackwatch and Dr. Stephen Barrett. Should this be considered a SLAPP lawsuit intended only to silence their critics?
Cassirer and the Enlightenment
Cassirer’s work on the Enlightenment is quite unlike many of the other works of science studies I have worked on over the last couple of years.
Science and Sociability in Mary Terrall's The Man Who Flattened the Earth: Maupertuis and the Sciences in the Enlightenment
For the enlightened of the mid-eighteenth century, the most fundamental aspect of their enlightenment was “sociability,” according to Mary Terrall in The Man Who Flattened the Earth.
Thinking about theories of historiography
Recently, I’ve been struck by the sense that what seems to drive history as a profession is not specifically the investigation of new archives, new materials, new places, or new times, but rather simply the larger desire to always pursue what is new qua new.
Changing technology, changing expectations of privacy
My goal here is to compare and contrast the legal changes that occurred as new technologies – state-run postal services, the telegraph, the telephone, and email, for example – emerged, and through this to seek insight into these larger questions.
Dorinda Outram on the Enlightenment
In her book The Enlightenment, Dorinda Outram gives a broad introduction to the history and historiography of the Enlightenment.
Technology and the archive
One of the primary interests of mine is the connection between technology and law. The development of archives is one place where this connection plays out in practice. This I am deeply interested in the question presented by Schwartz and Cook present as to what the impact of new technologies – like “postal services, the telegraph, the telephone, radio, photography” – was on “on the production, preservation, and use of records and archives since the mid-nineteenth century.”
Measuring the impact of technology on the law
It’s difficult to come up with more quantitative measurements to look at how technology has impacted law. One could look at the development of new technologies (via patent applications, perhaps?) and then look to see how soon afterwards the invention began to show up in legal cases. Another interesting idea would be to see if changes in technology – the development of new citation systems, more rapid dissemination of decisions and publications, and later the creation of electronic repositories such as Lexis and Westlaw – had any impact on the way lawyers and judges developed law.
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