Ten Years of JURIST

My colleague Bernie Hibbitts has been producing JURIST for ten years.  To mark the anniversary, JURIST and Pitt Law are co-producing a free, day-long conference on Thursday, March 29 in Pittsburgh:

The rights of Guantanamo detainees. The trial and execution of Saddam Hussein. The constitutionality of NSA surveillance. Immigration reform.

These are some of the legal issues that shape public policy debate and define our world. They are the stories that eventually will form history. But even as they unfold, they are being reported in new ways that bear little resemblance to legal reporting as it was practiced just a decade ago. Technology and the Internet have ushered in a new era of information accessibility and immediacy for millions of people around the world, presenting both new opportunities and challenges for understanding the legal issues that affect our lives.

JURIST (jurist.law.pitt.edu) has been one of the key architects of this new legal reporting, changing how legal news is presented and understood every day.

In celebration of JURIST’s 10th anniversary, the University of Pittsburgh School of Law joins JURIST in presenting a provocative conference exploring issues at the intersections of law, war, rights and social justice that have figured prominently in JURIST’s coverage in recent years, while also taking an insightful look at how the media have been reporting legal news and how the Internet and technology are changing the conversation.

Join us for a day of lively, informative exchange among leading lawyers, legal scholars, journalists, and technologists from across the United States. The conference features four all-star panels, with experts such as Jonathan Freiman, counsel to Jose Padilla; David M. Crane, former chief prosecutor for the UN war crimes court in West Africa; Edward A. Adams, editor of the ABA Journal; FindLaw founder Tim Stanley; and the featured keynote speaker, Emmy Award-winning former CNN Supreme Court and legal affairs correspondent Charles Bierbauer.

All sessions will take place in the Teplitz Moot Courtroom at the University of Pittsburgh School of Law. The conference is free and open to the public, but we ask that you register in advance. Lunch will be provided for all registered attendees.

This conference has been approved by the Pennsylvania Continuing Legal Education Board for four (4) hours of substantive credit. The cost for registrants applying for CLE credit is $30 payable at the door.

That blurb, from the conference website, doesn’t include the fact that the list of speakers includes such luminaries and friends of the blogosphere as Jim Chen (Dean of the Louis D. Brandeis School of Law at the University of Louisville, and dean of the Jurisdynamics network), Nancy Rapoport (soon to join the faculty at UNLV), and John Palfrey, executive director of the Berkman Center.

Conference site:  http://www.law.pitt.edu/juristconference/index.htm