Thursday, September 07, 2006
My Favorite Rock Star
As a kid, I learned it was really a losing proposition to have any one person be your hero-- if you invest too much in a person being perfect, you always end up feeling let down. Instead, I started to develop a system of fractional heroes-- where I admire certain qualities of several people, without weighing any one of them down with undue expectations. One of my many such heroes is fellow sentencing geek and Ohio State Law Prof. Doug Berman.
About two years ago, Doug started blogging at Sentencing Law and Policy. Like most things that end up changing the world, at first his blog seemed an afterthought in the realm of legal scholarship. Some of us sentencing folk posted comments there and checked it daily for updates in our little world. But, those were heady times in the world of federal sentencing-- the Blakely bomb had been dropped by the US Supreme Court, and Booker was on the way. Soon, Doug was racking up hundreds of thousands of hits, and his blog became the center of our community of scholars and practitioners. In no small part, this was because of Doug's ability to write short, punchy, meaningful posts that are unfailingly compelling. It was the first blog cited by the Supreme Court, an incredible breakthrough, and is recognized as one of the most significant blogs (and perhaps the most significant blog) in the field of law.
Perhaps more than even Doug knew, things began to change, in part because of what he had done. Last year, we began to work together on a series of U.S. Court of Appeals briefs addressing the crack/powder sentencing disparity in federal courts. Our first target was a case in the the First Circuit, US v. Perry. I drafted a brief with Doug, and we prepared to submit it to the court. A few days before the brief was to be filed, Doug posted it on the blog. Within a few hours, the AUSA on the case, others involved in the action, and several students had either called or emailed me. Within the next few days, the First Circuit pre-empted Perry with an opinion in United States v. Pho that seemed a little hurried. The world had changed. The blog had a power we perhaps underestimated.
The work of Doug and others to make blogs the center of information in specific legal fields was at the expense of the archaic, ponderous realm of traditional legal scholarship, where 100+ page articles are written, considered by editors, accepted for publication, edited, and finally published a year or two later. While this model works for long-term policy analysis and development (up to a point), it was always too slow to respond to or influence faster-moving legal developments.
Not surprisingly, top law reviews at Harvard and Yale have now reacted to this development by creating on-line journals with shorter articles and quicker turn-around. This development was necessary, if such journals are to remain relevant in an exchange of ideas with practitioners, courts, and litigants.
But it was Doug and a few others who lit that fuse. Not bad for a Harvard guy.
About two years ago, Doug started blogging at Sentencing Law and Policy. Like most things that end up changing the world, at first his blog seemed an afterthought in the realm of legal scholarship. Some of us sentencing folk posted comments there and checked it daily for updates in our little world. But, those were heady times in the world of federal sentencing-- the Blakely bomb had been dropped by the US Supreme Court, and Booker was on the way. Soon, Doug was racking up hundreds of thousands of hits, and his blog became the center of our community of scholars and practitioners. In no small part, this was because of Doug's ability to write short, punchy, meaningful posts that are unfailingly compelling. It was the first blog cited by the Supreme Court, an incredible breakthrough, and is recognized as one of the most significant blogs (and perhaps the most significant blog) in the field of law.
Perhaps more than even Doug knew, things began to change, in part because of what he had done. Last year, we began to work together on a series of U.S. Court of Appeals briefs addressing the crack/powder sentencing disparity in federal courts. Our first target was a case in the the First Circuit, US v. Perry. I drafted a brief with Doug, and we prepared to submit it to the court. A few days before the brief was to be filed, Doug posted it on the blog. Within a few hours, the AUSA on the case, others involved in the action, and several students had either called or emailed me. Within the next few days, the First Circuit pre-empted Perry with an opinion in United States v. Pho that seemed a little hurried. The world had changed. The blog had a power we perhaps underestimated.
The work of Doug and others to make blogs the center of information in specific legal fields was at the expense of the archaic, ponderous realm of traditional legal scholarship, where 100+ page articles are written, considered by editors, accepted for publication, edited, and finally published a year or two later. While this model works for long-term policy analysis and development (up to a point), it was always too slow to respond to or influence faster-moving legal developments.
Not surprisingly, top law reviews at Harvard and Yale have now reacted to this development by creating on-line journals with shorter articles and quicker turn-around. This development was necessary, if such journals are to remain relevant in an exchange of ideas with practitioners, courts, and litigants.
But it was Doug and a few others who lit that fuse. Not bad for a Harvard guy.
