.: I Respectfully Dissent :.

New group blog: www.StubbornFacts.us

As of sometime last week, there is a new group blog called Stubborn Facts which I will be (and have been) contributing to. That doesn't mean that I RESPECTFULLY DISSENT is coming to an end (this will continue to be my main home), but anyone who enjoys this blog will likely enjoy Stubborn Facts a great deal more; the other three contributors are three of the best writers from Centerfield (Pat, Tully and Bobby), and I'm lucky enough that they've let me tag along. The intention is to lean maybe a bit to the right of Centerfield, and to really make an effort to focus on being quite factually-grounded (and, from my perspective, to reject the recent third-party leanings of the Centrist Coalition).

One of the things that's most interesting about group blogs is that they tend to have their own institutional ethos, and that I think is certainly true of how I perceive SF; thus, my contributions (at least at first) are going to really be efforts to do something more serious, planned (as opposed to reactive) and thoughtful than my output here of late; my first "real" post there, The Geography of a Failed Amendment, a quantitative study of the prospects of the FMA being ratified, is probably a model for how I want to approach it. We'll see how it goes. In any event, check it out.

Posted 17:28, 6/26/2006 by Simon | Filed under: Blogs and blogging | Comments (2)

New (ish) blog, updates, and a couple of posts from me

I've been kind of pressed for time in the last few days, and thus, no updates or replies to comments - Rock, Marghlar, I'll try to get back to y'all today.

Check out the new-ish blog Legal Miscellania, written by Fern Richardson. One of my pet bugaboos is Kelo v. New London (see dissents passim), on which front, Fern reports:

Iowa Governor Tom Vilsack vetoed a bill which would have limited local governments' ability to take private property for economic development. Vilsack said the bill did not contain the proper balance of protecting private property rights while allowing economic development.

Here's the bill - you decide.

RussiaBlog, of course, isn't new, but I've been meaning to link to this superb post for about a week and haven't gotten around to it. I visited Russia in 1996, and in my view, although there are undeniably some problems there (the top-heavy constitution, for a start), Russia and America today have many strategic interests in common, and I believe it is in our best interests to cultivate our relationship with that country.

Speaking of Russia, Gary Becker has an excellent post here, talking about that country's demographic problems.

At Centerfield, I've put up a couple of posts in the last couple of days exploring the problems with Senator Wyden's bill to fix network neutrality and some historical perspective on how (and why) the House of Representatives decides elections when the Electoral College fails.

And lastly, because sometimes it's nice to get props, at Concurring Opinions, Jason Mazzone gives me an 'A' for my 28th Amendment (which, I admit, I've had lying around for some time, it wasn't written specifically for his ConLaw exam question, which may or may not have been cheating).

Posted 09:25, 6/6/2006 by Simon | Filed under: Blogs and blogging | Comments (2)

How to cite blogs

Having just said that it would be light...

Ann Althouse posts an e-mail conversation with her son, who's an editor on the Yale Law Review, about the Bluebook citation form for blogs. Despite my misgivings, it seems that blogs are considered increasingly citable. Thus, for the sake of posterity and possible technorati searches - and because I'm self-important enough to feel that my own approach is the right one - here's my take on how blogs should be cited.

Rule 1. Blogs written anonymously should not be cited in any writing of sufficient import that the citation style matters. Period.

Rule 2. The first citation to an online resource should always include a parenthetical given the last time the information was validated:

(all web resources last visited __/__/__)

Rule 3.
(a) Citing a blog post should be done in a manner harmonious to the style in which newspaper articles are cited in your chosen poison.
(b) Rule 3(a) notwithstanding, the citation form should include, as a minimum: the author, the post title, where it was posted, when, and the URL.
(c) The best-practise form is: [author],[post title]at[BLOG TITLE]([url]),[date], as in the following examples

See I. Best, Cases Citing Legal Blogs at 3L EPIPHANY (http://3lepiphany.typepad.com/3l_epiphany/2006/04/cases_citing_le.html), 4/15/2006.
Accord A. Althouse, Will Rudy run? at ALTHOUSE (http://althouse.blogspot.com/2006/04/will-rudy-run.html), 4/7/2006 (arguing that "Giuliani's sheer brilliance as a speaker" gives him an edge).
See M. Waters, Reading Justice Kennedy's Tea Leaves at CONCURRING OPINIONS (http://www.concurringopinions.com/archives/2006/04/reading_justice.html), 4/13/2006 ("[i]n a speech just last year before the Eleventh Circuit Judicial Conference, [Justice Kennedy] discussed at length the numerous international law issues before the Court, and defended the Court’s use of foreign legal sources in its decisionmaking").

Rule 4. Any citation system for blogs must provide a framework for citing comments as distinct from posts, as the Bluebook system fails to do. In my system, comments are also citable, as in the following examples, parallel to the list in rule 3(c):

Accord A. Althouse, Will Rudy run? at ALTHOUSE (http://althouse.blogspot.com/2006/04/will-rudy-run.html), 4/7/2006 (arguing that "Giuliani's sheer brilliance as a speaker" gives him an edge), but see id., comment by "MadisonMan" at 4/7/2006 07:45 (noting disparity in effect for those who do not use audiovisual materials in deciding votes).
See M. Waters, Reading Justice Kennedy's Tea Leaves at CONCURRING OPINIONS (http://www.concurringopinions.com/archives/2006/04/reading_justice.html), 4/13/2006, comment by "Simon" at 4/14/2006 11:45 (suggesting that "given the political realities of the situation, a robust defense of the merits of comparative analysis would have been impolitic").

Rule 5. When comments are written pseudonomymously, usernames should be enquoted, as in the examples above. If Rule 1 is to be discarded, this rule will govern.

I admit that I have not always been scrupulous in using this form (see, e.g. Compromising on Abortion, 2/8/06 at nn.1-2, but see I think they’re turning Portuguese: The stealthy emasculation of the royal prerogative and the expansion of executive power in Britain, at n.1), but I shall henceforth be.

Are there any glaring shortcomings in this system?

I'll also take this opportunity to pitch a bit of a bitchfit about the alternatives. While my proposed Rule 3 is perfectly compatible with the Maroonbook's rule 4.4(a), I think the approach counselled by both the Bluebook and the CMS to citing blogs simply isn't going to wash. When I write blog posts with footnotes, or the occaisional PDFcast, I decline to follow in whole either the bluebook or the Chicago Manual of Style, as a general matter; I think both are excessively enamoured of their own self-importance, at the expense of providing a useful and clear style. I generally incline towards the latter, but even here there are problems, typified by the CMS-based Maroonbook's rule 2.1(a), an example of the worst kind of self-indulgent tripe (arbitrarily decreeing the omission of abbreviating periods from citations, seemingly for no purpose other than to have "a distinctive feature of the Maroonbook," as it puts it):

Periods are generally inserted in abbreviations in text, and in footnote text . . . [but] should be omitted from abbreviations in citations. This omission is a distinctive feature of the Maroonbook. [Refer in the main text] to the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia as the “D.C. Circuit,” not the “DC Circuit” or “D C Circuit” . . . [but] [i]n the “court of decision” parenthetical following a case name, however, “DC Cir” is the proper abbreviation

I think it's fine to have style guides, and I think that the CMS and the maroonbook have some very strong features (which is why I tend to follow it, in the main); I agree with rule 3.4(c) that it is functionally redundant to include the "J." or "C.J." when referring to court opinions, which is why I have used it for some time (see, e.g., Turning Portuguese, supra, at nn.9-10; The Supremacy Claus and Bad Precedent, 1/10/2006, at n.23). Given the choice, I'll stick with the CMS, but fortunately, I have to be bound by the arbitrary dictates of neither, at this time.

Posted 14:55, 4/17/2006 by Simon | Filed under: Blogs and blogging | Comment on this

A thought on blogging and commenting

This thought originally cropped up in a comment at ConcurringOpinions.com (it's appropriate: Prof. Solove concurs, I mainly dissent). I don't really like blogs that don't permit comments; not because I like to have my say (although that's often true), but because I think one of the real values of blogs is that they keep the writer honest: if the writer can be challenged - right there, in the comments - that forces a certain level of accountability for the arguments contained therein. That's not to say that blogs without comments sections are inferior, just that I think that the accountability created by permitting comments is favorable to good argument.

One of the main reasons I write is because mistakes and logical errors come out in the writing. I find that it's very easy to skip over details that might be contrary to an argument when I just talk, and even more so when I just revolve it in my head. It's in the writing - when you're forced to actually read your argument as if for the first time - that what seemed a reasonable argument in one's head turns out to be a non sequitur. Under the principle that pursuasive writing is "show me don't tell me," it's almost impossible to hide an argument put on paper, and there have been times when I've started drafting a comment or essay only to realize having read the draft (or even in writing the draft) that I'm just flat-out wrong. In this regard, I love Keynes' remark that, "[w]hen the facts change" --or at least, one's knowledge and understanding of the facts -- "I change my mind - what do you do, sir?"

This applies even more so when someone else can read your arguments, and poke holes in it; indeed, over at ConfirmThem recently, one of the main posters there and I got into a discussion of the Commerce Clause and the 21st Amendment, and he very sucessfully led me to a point where it became apparent that there is a glaring hole in my logic regarding the scope of the dormant commerce clause (you can find the exchange here, starting at post #37). I haven't yet worked out what my answer is to his point. Now, I may not necessarily be wrong, but it's great to have that error-correction built in, and what's good for the goose (commenters keeping each other honest) is good for the gander (keeping bloggers in line).

Posted 16:55, 12/20/2005 by Simon | Filed under: Blogs and blogging | Comment on this

Javascript snow

Internet ghetto or appropriately seasonal? Either way, it's about to snow heavily here in Indiana, and I don't think js snow is really so wrong. So it's here for a while.

Posted 10:47, 12/8/2005 by Simon | Filed under: Blogs and blogging | Comments (1)