Category Archives: Jotwell

Attention Jotwell RSS Feed Readers

Nov 17, 2015 A. Michael FroomkinJotwell

This week Jotwell is having its first-ever fund-raiser. Regular visitors to the site probably already noticed a large yellow popup informing then of this fact, but people who get Jotwell via the RSS feed or by email will have been denied that experience. There is no reason for the hundreds of people who read us via the RSS feed–or by email–to be left out.

So here’s the pitch: Please will you make a small donation to support this journal? All the faculty who write for and edit Jotwell do so for free, but even so, producing the journal is not costless: we need to pay for our server, for our student editors, and for various types of technical and design support, including a coming makeover to keep up with a procession of software updates. This adds up.

We don’t charge for Jotwell and we don’t run any ads, and we would like to keep it that way. If every Jotwell reader donated just $7 a year, we’d cover all of our costs…but alas not everyone is generous.

If you can afford it, please don’t be a free rider. If you like us lots–or even just some–please make a small donation? Of course, if you want to make a large one, we would not say no to that either.

Thank you.

Yours sincerely,

A. Michael Froomkin
Jotwell Editor-in-Chief

What We Like

Oct 27, 2015 Annie Brett & A. Michael FroomkinJotwell

A. Michael Froomkin

Annie Brett

Jotwell began on October 27, 2008 with the goal of identifying new and interesting legal scholarship. Over the past seven years, Jotwell has recruited more than 300 Section and Contributing Editors who are leading academics (or in a few cases leading practitioners) and asked them each to write a short essay once a year identifying one of the best examples of recent scholarship relating to the law in their respective fields. This year, we wanted to reflect on where Jotwell is, and attempt to measure how well it is achieving its goals.

Jotwell has two objectives. On the one hand, we wanted to provide a service for persons who are not trying to be expert in a particular sub-field of law but still would like to keep up with the major developments in it. Given the proliferation of law reviews, ¹ and the resulting evolution away from having a few top journals act as the gatekeepers for high-quality scholarship, ² it is increasingly difficult for legal academics to know what is happening in their own fields, let alone what is most important and relevant in other fields. We expected, therefore, that some of the reviews would inevitably be of work by famous scholars and/or work appearing in top-ranked journals. On the other hand, we hoped also that our reviewers would be moved to call attention to significant work published in less prestigious journals and works authored by younger academics and others who were not yet widely recognized.

Although these goals were communicated to Jotwell’s Contributing Editors, and are noted in our author guidelines, we did little behind the scenes to enforce or even incentivize adherence to either goal. Instead we let Jotwell’s editors determine on their own what works of current scholarship they believe are worth recognition. Our thinking was that having assembled such a talented group of contributors we should leave it to them to decide what they liked and wanted to recommend.

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Jotwell 2015 Summer Break

Aug 17, 2015 JotwellJotwell

Jotwell is taking a short summer break. Posting will resume on Tuesday, September 1. However, even while we’re on break, we’ll be accepting submissions, editing them, updating the site’s theme, and preparing new sections we plan to be launching in Fall.

If you like Jotwell, share — help us find more readers. Tell a friend about Jotwell. And if you are an academic reader, please consider recommending Jotwell to your students. Continue reading "Jotwell 2015 Summer Break"

Jotwell Winter Break 2014

Dec 22, 2014 JotwellJotwell

Jotwell is taking a short winter break. Posting will resume Monday, January 5, 2015.

Happy Holidays! Thank you for reading, and for your support.

(If you have a moment, please could you vote for Jotwell at the ABA Law Blog 100 competition (look under “profs”)? Do it now, before you forget.)

Update: You may need to Login or register before you can vote.

Legal Scholarship We Like and Why It Matters -Program and Links to Papers, Part Two

Nov 8, 2014 JotwellJotwell

Legal Scholarship We Like and Why It Matters -Program and Links to Papers, Part One

Nov 7, 2014 JotwellJotwell

What Belongs in the Academic Legal Canon?

Nov 6, 2014 JotwellJotwell

Should there be an academic legal canon? Are we condemned to “repetition and recycling of a handful of ideas” without one? Those are among the questions raised by Steven L. Winter in his paper When Things Went Terribly, Terribly Wrong Part II which leads off the Jotwell Conference tomorrow afternoon.

If that isn’t sufficiently provocative, Appendix One of Prof. Winter’s paper offers a first draft of what a legal scholarship canon would look like, noting that “Most of the articles and books on my list can be characterized as classics, though I assume that among any group of well-read law professors there will be disagreements with respect to both omissions and inclusions.”

What works would you add to his list?

Jotwell Legal Scholarship Conference Next Week

Oct 30, 2014 JotwellJotwell

Our 5th Anniversary conference on “Legal Scholarship We Like and Why It Matters” is coming up late next week. In the United States, the role of scholarship is under assault in contemporary conversations about law schools; meanwhile in many other countries legal scholars are routinely pressed to value their work according to metrics or with reference to fixed conceptions of the role of legal scholarship. We asked contributors to write addressing at least one of three broad topics: improving the craft of legal scholarship, improving the reach of legal scholarship, or when and how legal scholarship matters.

The program promises to stimulating to say the least. The papers are or will be available online. Papers discuss what makes legal scholarship great (or terrible), what legal scholarship is good for, how to make it more accessible, what role metrics should play in the sorting of legal scholarship, and how best to make more of the good stuff. The Keynote will be by Margaret Jane Radin, which she has titled Then and Now: Developing Your Scholarship, Developing Its Audience.

It’s already clear from the submissions that there will be controversy. Consider, for example, the opening words of Improve Yourself; Not the World by Jeanne L. Schroeder & David Gray Carlson (footnotes omitted),

We question the common assumption that most legal scholarship should be oriented towards policy, or to quote the title of this session, at improving the world. Jurisprudential, critical and doctrinal scholarship should have equal prestige with policy-oriented scholarship because they more closely relate to the practice of law. Consequently, we start with one policy recommendation : “Lay off the policy recommendations.”

Policy oriented scholarship is what French psychoanalyst, Jacques Lacan, called a “university discourse.” This terminology is ironic, referring to what academics tend to do, not what they should do.

We’ll post some more teasers in the coming days. Meanwhile, it’s not too late to Register.

Jotwell 2014 Summer Break

Aug 20, 2014 JotwellJotwell

Jotwell is taking a short summer break. Posting will resume on Tuesday, September 2. However, even while we’re on break, we’ll be accepting submissions, editing them, updating the site’s theme, and of course getting ready for Jotwell’s 5th Anniversary Conference on Legal Scholarship We Like and Why It Matters. Please note that Registration for Jotwell’s conference is now open.

If you like Jotwell, why not share — help us find more readers. Tell a friend about Jotwell. And if you are an academic reader, please consider recommending Jotwell to your students.

We have a Jotwell Flyer that you can print out and post, or perhaps even hand out at Orientation.

We’ll be back in two weeks — after the US Labor Day holiday.

Program and Registration Information for “Legal Scholarship We Like and Why It Matters”

Jul 13, 2014 JotwellJotwell

We’ve posted a draft program for our conference on “Legal Scholarship We Like and Why It Matters” and also have opened up a registration page for the conference.

We hope to see you Nov 7 & 8, 2014 at the University of Miami School of Law.

If you are planning on coming, you can take advantage of the UM rate at local hotels. The main conference hotel is the Sonesta in Coconut Grove, but the UM discount also applies to the other hotels on the list.