Do blogs "have nothing to do with scholarship"?

From Paul Caron I learn about this NLJ article and the Harvard conference on blogs and legal scholarship. The NLJ article quotes Kate Litvak as saying that blogs “have nothing to do with scholarship."

Well, I wasn’t invited to this conference (nor, for that matter, to any other conference or panel on blogging, but I'm not bitter). But I’m a blogger so I don’t need no stinking conference. Here’s my two cents.

First, Kate’s right to the extent that a blog entry is not, and never will be, a substitute for a full-blown work of scholarship.

Second, some blogs have nothing to do with scholarship.

Third, some blogs have a lot to do with scholarship in the sense of importantly contributing to the process. My blog, for example, conveys scholarship-relevant information, and I learn the same from other blogs. I also use my blog to germinate and develop ideas that eventually appear in polished scholarship.

Fourth, law professors should stop navel-gazing and think more broadly about a theory of blogging, into which they can then fit what legal academics do. That’s what I try to do in my Bricks to Pajamas article which, by the way, germinated from blog posts, was developed over the last year on my blog, and is now, I think, a full-blown article.

Update: Looks like I will be at the Harvard conference after all!  Thanks to all the people (person?) who supported my attendance. Which gives me an idea:  what about polling (or a market?) for conference slots?

Comments

[Matt Patterson]

Kate's right that blogs have nothing to do with scholarship. People read blogs.

[Jim Maule]

My extensive comments are at In Defense of Law Blogging: Part Two

[Jim Maule]

My extensive comments are at In Defense of Law Blogging: Part Two
Link: http://mauledagain.blogspot.com/2006_02_01_mauledagain_archive.html#114105387435623393

[3L Epiphany]

Here are other examples from Ideoblog on this subject, collected here: http://3lepiphany.typepad.com/3l_epiphany/2006/02/academic_bloggi.html

1. Blogging: distraction from what?, Larry Ribstein (Jan. 9, 2006):
http://busmovie.typepad.com/ideoblog/2006/01/blogging_distra.html

2. Blogging and scholarly productivity, Larry Ribstein (Oct. 11, 2005):
http://busmovie.typepad.com/ideoblog/2005/10/blogging_and_sc.html

3. Blogging, tenure and the incentives of tenure committees, Larry Ribstein (Oct. 11, 2005):
http://busmovie.typepad.com/ideoblog/2005/10/blogging_tenure.html

4. The Drezner tenure denial, Larry Ribstein (Oct. 11, 2005):
http://busmovie.typepad.com/ideoblog/2005/10/the_drezner_ten.html

5. Do Bloggers Just Want to Have Fun?, Larry Ribstein (Aug. 2, 2005):
http://busmovie.typepad.com/ideoblog/2005/08/do_bloggers_jus.html

6. Blogging and tenure, Larry Ribstein (June 22, 2005):
http://busmovie.typepad.com/ideoblog/2005/06/blogging_and_te.html

7. Blogging as academic publishing, Larry Ribstein (Apr. 12, 2005):
http://busmovie.typepad.com/ideoblog/2005/04/blogging_as_aca.html

[Aaron]

I found the distinction between peer-reviewed journals and law reviews to be crucial to understanding what the article is getting at. Peer-reviewed journals have the benefit that the articles in them have been substantially critiqued before they are published (and quite often after they are published).

Blogging is sort of like opening the process of academic publishing with one caveat - you have to read the comments on a post in order to see where the conversation is going. In economics, you often pull out papers written by men who are long dead, which speaks to the permanence of books, something which the electronic form lacks.

There's a really interesting book by Mason Gaffney entitled "the corruption of economics" wherein he describes why and how the main academic journals in Economics were founded as a result of populist economic thinking. Books on Social Credit and Georgist Economics, he claims, outsold the textbooks written by 'qulified' Ph.Ds in Economics, and in order to reign in and define what 'economics' was really about (the neoclassical version) the journals served as 'gatekeepers' to keep populists out of the game. They may have had good intentions in preserving what they thought to be economics, but the underlying issue is power.

Gaffney argues that many university chairs were funded by the 'rentier' class who derived their means of income from owning the land upon which capitalists built their factories. They also generated land rents by 'donating' their land towards the public good of building universities, and saw substantial gains from property value increases. It is peculiar that Georgist economics illustrated this process explicitly and laid it bare; so it makes sense that they would not want to fund Georgist economic thought.

Admittedly, it's a bit of a conspiratorial view on the history of economic thought, but it does go to show that class issues are involved in scholarship. If there were blogs on how to fight traffic tickets, for example, I may have changed my decision to hire someone to represent me in court recently. But, due to my ignorance of the process, I had to hire a lawyer to represent me.

Generally, I am cynical about societies for Law, Accounting and Medicine, and that's due to my economic background. There are powerful incentives to restrict entry in order to keep yourself in demand and therefore maintain high wages.

[Online Casino]

best site
http://www.onlinecasino.org.in