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March 2007

Cultural Environmentalism and the Wealth of Networks

I have finally posted my review of Yochai Benkler’s excellent book, The Wealth of Networks: How Social Production Transforms Markets and Freedom.  It is a somewhat atypical book review in that I situate the book within cultural environmentalism.  (I almost titled the review, Boyle, Benkler, and Beyond, but that seemed a bit corny.)  I welcome comments.  Abstract below the fold …

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The Rise of the Research Dean

Release of this year’s U.S. News & World Report ranking of law schools is only days away, and I’ve been thinking about this recent paper on the growth in the number of “Research Dean” positions at American law schools over the last decade. The authors hypothesize that the increase in the number of appointments is caused by schools’ reacting to rankings anxiety. Find ways to encourage the faculty to produce scholarship, and academic rankings will increase, the hypothesis goes, and academic reputation benefits will blow overall school rankings in the right direction. What a “Research Dean” does will vary a lot from school to school, but one constant is a mandate to support faculty research and scholarship, both materially and symbolically.  More below the jump.Read More »The Rise of the Research Dean

Sharing, YouTube, and the Law School Community

An inside-baseball kerfuffle erupted among law professors late last week over swapnotes.com, which is a file-trading site for law school course notes, outlines, and exams.  The kerfuffle wouldn’t be worth a post if I couldn’t link it to Viacom v. YouTube and broader questions of information, copyright and community.  So here goes.  More below the jump.Read More »Sharing, YouTube, and the Law School Community