Toby’s blog

Just got this e-mail from the Berkman Center — pretty interesting stuff! They are always on the cutting edge of law & technology:
Beyond Broadcast 2007: From Participatory Culture to Participatory Democracy

February 24th, 2007
Kirsch Auditorium, Stata Center
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Cambridge, MA

For 50 years broadcast media have played a powerful role in shaping political culture and mediating citizen engagement in the democratic process. Now a participatory culture is putting the tools of media creation and critique in the hands of citizens themselves. We invite you to explore the means and meaning of this transformation.

Beyond Broadcast 2007 builds on the overwhelming success of last year’s sold-out event, “Beyond Broadcast 2006: Reinventing Public Media in a Participatory Culture.” The conference is hosted by the MIT Comparative Media Studies program, in collaboration with the Berkman Center for Internet & Society at Harvard Law School and the Information Society Project at Yale Law School. The one-day event will bring together industry experts, academic leaders, public media professionals, and political activists for panel discussions and focused working groups. Henry Jenkins, Director of the Comparative Media Studies program at MIT and author of “Convergence Culture: Where Old and New Media Collide,” will give the Keynote Address, followed by panel discussions with media makers and policy commentators.

In the second-half of the day, the conference turns its focus to working groups that attendees will help organize. Participants will target specific issues or questions and join efforts with the diverse crowd of others. Many attendees last year expressed their appreciation for this hybrid conference approach in which they had a chance to “do something before heading home.” There will also be an evening reception, called “Demos and Drinks,” showcasing groups that are doing exciting work related to conference themes. After the demos, attendees can keep discussion flowing in informal birds-of-a-feather dinners around Cambridge.

Registration is only $50, and includes lunch and the evening reception. There is also a special 50% discount for students. We suggest that you register early to avoid losing a spot if Beyond Broadcast sells out again this year.

Info & registration: http://www.beyondbroadcast.net
Questions: info@beyondbroadcast.net

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Save the Date:

Internet & Society 2007: How Open Should Universities Be to Internet & Society?

May 31 - June 1, 2007
Harvard Law School campus
Stay tuned for more information!

It’s hard to believe, but February 1 is fast approaching. As is usual, we prefer that you get your applications in by the deadline, but as our staff is saying a hundred times a day on the phone, “As long as we believe we can fairly review your application, we will do so.” So I guess that makes February 1 a soft deadline. Nevertheless, the longer you wait, the fewer spots remain. Will we look at applications that are held for the February LSAT? Sure, but the longer you wait, the fewer spots remain.

As of last week, applications were up a bit this year, which is encouraging during these good economic times. I’m guessing that you are all as excited about everything going on at HLS as I am. (Though that would be a bit hard!)

One last thing: I noticed recently that I neglected to post the actual audio file for the interview I did with Diane Rosenfeld on her work here on law & gender and domestic violence issues. Visit this link to check out the corrected entry.

Are you a Con Law fanatic? If so, you would have been in for a treat the other day! Blog contributor Lauren Weldon and a few friends attended a Federalist Society debate titled, “Can Originalists Defend Brown v. Board of Education?” She offers up a meaty entry for you future constitutional law scholars right here:

“The debate featured Judge Michael McConnell (10th Circuit) defending the originalist position against Professor Michael Klarman, who argued that the originalist position was spurious (Professor Michael Seidman served as moderator).

“If you’re interested in knowing the quick and dirty answer as to the winner of the debate, my friends all found Professor Klarman’s non-originalist, non-textualist arguments as the most persuasive (but we might be biased). Regardless of one’s position, though, the debate provided a great opportunity to learn more about the history of and the legislation immediately after the 14th Amendment.

“Judge McConnell spoke first and argued that legislative attempts to pass civil rights legislation immediately after the 14th Amendment suggested that the Republicans who voted in favor of the 14th Amendment would have supported school desegregation.

“Professor Klarman then responded with several arguments, one of the most persuasive of which was that the United States Congress controlled the D.C. school system and chose not to desegregate the system. In addition, Professor Klarman noted that nothing in the legislative history of the debates and conversations at the time of the 14th Amendment suggested that the Republicans believed that the 14th Amendment would bar school segregation.

“Professor Klarman concluded by noting that the Brown Court did not rely upon these originalist positions or upon any textualist interpretation of the 14th Amendment to justify their decision. The fact that none of the justices turned to originalism or textualist interpretation was further proof that these arguments lacked a sound basis. According to Professor Klarman, the Brown decision was rooted in deep moral commitments on the part of the justices to oppose unequal treatment.

“Overall, the debate was quite interesting, particularly as a chance to learn more about the history of the 14th Amendment. At dinner after the debate, my friend also commented that the debate was a chance to think about how reliance upon one consistent method of judicial interpretation could lead to unfortunate social consequences.”

The campaigns are in high gear already, as 2L Sarah Isgur has found. Here’s what she recently sent me:

“It was 70 degrees on Saturday. As much as I miss my friends back in Cambridge, it was well worth it to be able to call them from the Lincoln Memorial in a t-shirt. We have all been having a fantastic time down here. Four of us HLS-ex pats took a six-hour walking tour to introduce the DC neophytes to the city. At one point I actually got a phone call from one who was lost that went like this: ‘I think I might be at the Supreme Court…I’m not sure but it seems eerily legal.’ But between performances at the Kennedy Center and parties with alumni, I guess we have been working quite a bit too.

“Once it became clear that Gov. Romney (HLS ’75) was going to be a serious presidential candidate for 2008, I decided I needed to be involved. During the Federalist Society’s National Lawyers Convention, I ran into Barbara Comstock, former Director of Research and Strategic Planning for the RNC and Assistant Attorney General for Public Affairs. She offered to let me help her with strategic communications planning for the Romney Exploratory Committee. When I brought this to the administration, I was expecting to have to put up a fight (to shoehorn this opportunity into the clinical program). But from the second I walked in the office, Lisa Dealy, the Clinical Office Director, was as enthusiastic about it as I was. The school is even defraying the cost of travel and lodging.

“Without going into detail about the type of work I am doing, let it suffice to say that it is some of the most fun and intellectually stimulating work I could imagine doing on a political campaign. And since the headquarters are in Boston at this point, I will get to continue my work with Comstock and the general counsel’s office when I get back to Cambridge in a few weeks.

“This has also been a great time to work on some side projects. On the weekends, I am finishing up a piece I am trying to get published in our Journal on Law and Public Policy on the Establishment Clause. Today, I spent a few hours scheduling various cabinet officials, congressman, and Justices to meet with the HLS Republicans during our Spring Trip that I am putting together. And perhaps most importantly, I am catching up on old episodes of The Office.

“The temperature is back in the 30s tonight, but a bunch of us are getting to watch Ohio State beat up on the Gators [editor’s comment: this didn’t end up happening]. I love J-Term!”

Vanessa Friedman, on preparing for a singular experience: Professor Elizabeth Warren’s Contracts class:

“You might think a 10:30 class Monday morning is convenient because it means a chance to catch up on sleep missed Saturday night (when you were up late studying, of course). Not so when it’s a 10:30 Contracts class with Professor Warren. The timing is helpful – life-saving, actually – because it means a chance to meet with friends at the Hark to discuss the day’s cases, argue over the relevant issues, and laugh at each other’s attempts to predict what Professor Warren might pull out of each opinion. You laugh because no matter what you come up with, you will never be fully prepared for this class. When Professor Warren works her magic, the best you can hope for is to stay focused and have something on point (and to the point) to say when your name is called. And you laugh because you know that most of the time you will be wrong, or at best, close.

“At the beginning of the semester, hearing my name in this class was terrifying. I recognized myself in my classmates’ reactions: when someone was called on in the midst of frantic note-taking, his head popped up and he stared blankly at the professor for a moment before the fear set in and he would attempt a coherent answer. One of my friends had nightmares about this moment. But we could laugh because we were all in this together. This has been the most unexpected thing about HLS for me – it is an incredibly supportive and cooperative place.

“Even as each of us is humbled daily by our amazing professors, we all gain confidence from them and each other. When Professor Warren zeroes in on a particular student, you can see his classmates on either side mouthing suggestions and nudging their notes closer to the current target. And when she has moved on, there are sympathetic smiles or looks of congratulation (depending on how the answer was received) from around the room. And as the semester progressed, as Professor Warren taught us how to evaluate cases and pushed us to refine our answers and think on the spot, we all started to see the method in the madness. Professor Warren was not only teaching us to think and speak, she had compelled us to work together, rather than against each other.

“As we learned these skills and began to realize that almost everyone else felt similarly anxious, and that Professor Warren was actually on our side, trying to help us improve, class seemed less terrifying and became just an incredibly interesting and challenging experience. So although our predictions about class did not actually become more accurate, this was never the point. The goal was the process itself – to get us to push each other and engage in this place outside of class, even first thing Monday morning.”

“One can’t be a lawyer without thinking in some measure historically, because lawyers think about how doctrine changes over time, and how legal institutions change over time,” explains Professor Kenneth Mack. “I find it very natural to think historically when I’m teaching property.”

When Mack teaches property law to 1Ls, he takes them on a hundred-year journey through American suburban residential development. Suburbanites “…want a certain type of house, want a certain type of community. Lots of doctrines that govern that type of thing were changed in the early 20th century precisely to accomodate that development.”

He also has a uniquely historical view of constitutional law, public interest law and civil rights. Every year or two, Mack teaches a survey class from 1865 to the present. He guides students in the study of how modern concepts of U.S. citizenship—”and I use the term ‘citizenship’ very broadly”—came into being, tracing the idea from the end of the civil war to the present.

In an article in the Yale Law Journal [PDF], Mack addresses the power of law to re-order American race relations, challenging today’s take on the past civil rights effort. “There’s a particular narrative that undergirds lots of debates about civil rights law, and much of that narrative is incorrect.”

“There’s a standard story that you find in lots of works about public interest lawyering, civil rights lawyering and civil rights history right now: That the lawyers in the 1940s and 50s tried to transform society by getting decrees from the court, hoping it would revolutionize American race relations…Appended to that narrative is this: Most people think that the public interest lawyers of the 60s and 70s tried to model themselves off this earlier group of lawyers.

“I try to take that story apart. There was a quite vigorous debate among the civil rights bar about …precisely this question. What could you get out of the Supreme Court? Out of law? There was debate that was quite sophisticated in our terms. We could learn a lot from examining the contours of that debate. What was not there was the uncriticized idea that we could just get a Supreme Court decision, and implement it, and revolutionize American law and society.”

When I ask him for advice on becoming a legal academic, he says, “There are lots of different routes to law.” His combination of Ph.D. and law degree is helpful, he says, but the main thing to do, if you’re interested in academia, is to write. Law school has become an even better place to do that, says Mack, since he was a student here 16 years ago.

Podcast: Kenneth Mack (13:10)

3L Lexi Nunn writes from our nation’s capital:

“I am spending my winter term at Advancement Project in DC. AP is a national, racial justice non-profit that examines civil rights from the perspective of the community lawyer. AP lawyers partner with community groups to advocate for social change in the education, voter protection and post-Katrina contexts. By using litigation, public awareness campaigns, community organizing and policy reports, AP pushes for national reform.

“I interned at AP for one-half of this past summer and loved it so much that I wanted to return. Because it is so difficult for public interest organizations to hire recently graduated lawyers, returning to AP in January was an ideal situation. During this month, I am mainly working on education issues. I am helping finalize a new discipline policy and code for Denver Public Schools – a policy that incorporates concepts of restorative justice and alternative interventions. I am also gathering the ‘lessons learned’ from AP’s work in the schoolhouse to jailhouse pipeline in three different cities to help produce a report to disseminate nationally. I am also starting to investigate the quality of K-12 education in Guilford County Schools by gathering initial data.

“I am most happy when I can work ‘on-the ground’ and take ‘breaks’ from the traditional classroom setting. By taking advantage of clinical opportunities outside of campus, this winter term experience allows me to do just that. With the amount of responsibility that AP gives me, I am acting as a lawyer before I graduate! I am unbelievably happy at this organization.”

3L Lauren Weldon recently attended a two-day conference on International Law at HLS. Here’s her take:

“Part of my interest in the conference stemmed from the fact that I live in the law school dorms, and, therefore, am surrounded by dozens of international students. On my floor this year, there are students from Spain, and Korea, and, one flight up, I have friends from Ireland and Nigeria. The more I speak with these friends, the more I appreciate my ignorance about their legal systems.

“As a result, I thought the conference would provide an opportunity to learn more, and – maybe – to catch a glimpse of former Justice O’Connor, who was attending the conference. I managed to fulfill both goals. I arrived late to the first night’s panel, and, therefore, ended up sitting in the second row. When I stared across the aisle, Justice O’Connor was about twelve feet away. After my momentary awe resided, I was able to pay more attention to the panelists, who included the Honorable Richard Goldstone (Former Justice, Constitutional Court of South Africa), the Honorable Navi Pillay (Judge, International Criminal Court), and the Honorable Adel Omar Sherif (Deputy Chief Justice, Supreme Court of Egypt).

“For me, one of the most interesting aspects of the panel involved a conversation about the role that international law should play in rendering decisions. Several panelists and some of the scholars who spoke during the Q & A pointed out that foreign court decisions come from countries with different political systems and often quite different legal systems. In addition to the challenges of understanding the context of the decisions, several of the judges talked about the complexity that arises from the potential scope of the decisions: there are numerous democratic courts and, therefore, hundreds of decisions that might impact any one case.

“It was pretty amazing to get a glimpse inside the heads of jurists bringing such different perspectives and experiences to the table! I suspect Justice O’Connor would agree with me.”

Abbye had been out of school for a bit before coming to law school. Here’s her take on the experience:

“So let me just dive right in and tell you that this first semester at HLS has been completely transformative in so many wonderful ways. That’s a pretty strong statement, I know, but it is also the truth as I come to the end of this first semester of my 1L year.

“I have to admit that I was nervous about coming here. Having heard all the stereotypical accounts of HLS life, I was worried that I’d thrown myself to the proverbial wolves. Well, I was absolutely wrong in that regard. Certainly, these three months have been challenging…difficult even… However, they have been overwhelmingly positive, and after a mere three months, I am a better person having had these experiences.

“This semester, I have been challenged to reform my modes of thought, to extend my points of view and to question my static opinions about the world in which we live. Consequently, I am already a sharper thinker, better able to assess this world and my role in it. Add to that the incredibly rich opportunities available to students here. Indeed, the other night I found myself with the dilemma of deciding if I wanted to see Cornel West (upstairs in Ames) or Sandra Day O’Connor (downstairs in Austin West)…Hello!!!…only at Harvard Law School is this an issue!!

“As for the people, well, HLS is populated by some of the loveliest and brightest folks around. It is a complete pleasure to take classes with such an engaged and engaging student body. My classmates hail from all walks of life and are so generous in sharing their perspectives and insights. In addition, the faculty and staff (besides being awe-inspiringly brilliant!) are truly sensitive to the needs of the student body. Generally speaking, I have found that their doors are open to us in all manner of circumstances. Lastly, there is our Dean who from day one seemed to make it a priority to make us feel honestly welcomed and important…she even holds office hours for all students…

“So in a nutshell, there it is. Harvard Law School is a great place to be…I feel truly blessed to have this opportunity.”

January is typically a very fast-paced month for us and I expect we’ll get a lot of decisions out. As a reminder, at this stage we either admit, deny, or put people on “hold”. I’m posting a link to a message I wrote last year on the subject of “hold” as I know it provides some confusion for many people:

 http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/admissions/…

Hope 2007 is off to a good start for you!