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Google and the historian
Dan Cohen gave an interesting talk at the American Historical Association meeting recently, where he discussed the benefits Google brings to historical research, as well as some pointed criticisms.
January 2010 / 4 min.
Obama’s newest FOIA-related order a boon for historians
President Obama came into office pledging greater openness, and his latest executive order seems to directly speak to that pledge – though it will likely benefit historical investigations especially.
December 2009 / 2 min.
Applying Robert Merton’s “The Normative Structure of Science” to the law
Robert Merton, in “The Normative Structure of Science” (from The Sociology of Science: Theoretical and Empirical Investigations), posits four sets of “institutional imperatives” that together “comprise the ethos of modern science”: universalism, communism, disinterestedness, and organized skepticism. How well do these four sets of imperatives describe the “ethos of modern law”?
December 2009 / 4 min.
Law school vs. graduate school
Last May I finished my 3L year, and am now the proud possessor of a JD. On Thursday I began my first year program as a graduate student in the history of science. The experiences, perhaps unsurprisingly, have been strikingly different: law school is, ultimately, preparatory to practicing law as an attorney, and much of its emphasis is on tracking students in that direction. Graduate school in the humanities and social sciences, meanwhile, is about training future academics.
September 2009 / 2 min.
What does it mean to be in the public domain? Thoughts about the AP licensing scheme.
The AP has begin trying to license content through a payment scheme. Some of the content – as recently demonstrated by James Grimmelmann “purchasing” a Thomas Jefferson quote – is in the public domain. Does the AP have the right to sell/license this public-domain content? What does it mean to be in the public domain?
August 2009 / 3 min.
Current themes evident in copyright arguments from 100 years ago
From thepublicdomain.org comes this interesting and revealing series of excerpts from the legislative history of the 1909 Copyright Act.
July 2009 / 2 min.
The long history of restrictions on speech
It’s too easy to look at recent trends, or project current biases, on the law, and assume that the trend extends backwards in time in a similar fashion. This is a useful lesson to keep in mind whether one is look at law and technology, or Constitutional issues.
June 2009 / 1 min.
Secret evidence is incompatible with the rule of law
While the use of secret evidence may be acceptable initially (as part of an investigation or short-term detention while more evidence is gathered), the defense needs access to this evidence. Without it, any trial or legal process is simply unfair.
June 2009 / 4 min.
Music Pirates in Canada!
“MUSIC PIRATES IN CANADA: American Publishers Say They Are Suffering by Copyright Violations There - Steps Taken for Redress” While this sounds like a headline ripped from a newspaper of today, it actually comes from an 1897 article in the New York Times. Enterprising Canadians were selling the sheet music of popular songs via mail […]
April 2009 / 3 min.
Law, War, and the History of Time
Image by AlaskanLibrarian via Flickr Law, War, and the History of Time - Balkinization: I’ve posted a new paper on SSRN on a theme I’ve blogged about here and here: Law, War, and the History of Time. While I wrote this paper in the interest of making sense out of the 20th century history of […]
April 2009 / 1 min.