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In the Wall Street Journal Online there is an interesting article Law Schools also Ranked by Blogs Now by Amir Efrati. The article discusses alternatives to the U.S. News & World Reports law school rankings.
Posted by Jon Lutz
The New York Times in the recently published article Some Colleges to Drop Out of U.S. News Rankings reported that dozens of liberal arts schools are no longer participating in the U.S. News and World Report college rankings.
The commitment, which some college presidents said was made by a large majority of participants, represents the most significant challenge yet to the rankings, adding colleges like Barnard, Sarah Lawrence and Kenyon to a growing rebellion against the magazine, participants said.
However, Law.com in the article Law Schools Unlikely to Boycott Magazine Rankings reports that a law school boycott is unlikely.
Nancy Rogers, president of the American Association of Law Schools, said that her group was not considering a move similar to that of the Annapolis Group.
"While the AALS believes that any composite rankings system is inherently flawed, the AALS supports the efforts of magazines or other entities to provide information to those interested in pursuing legal education," she said in an e-mail message.
Law schools generally fear the consequences of not participating, Levmore said, especially because the publication could go ahead and include much of the information that is available from the American Bar Association, absent input from the individual schools.
Posted by Jon Lutz
An interesting article, The New Metrics of Scholarly Authority by Michael Jensen, is in the June 15th, 2007 issue of the Chronicle of Higher Education. The article discusses the impact of the Web 3.0 standard on academic publishing.
It's available here.
Posted by Jon Lutz
Over the last 20 years, the government has routinely used the federal Stored Communications Act (SCA) to secretly obtain stored email from email service providers without a warrant. But a ruling yesterday found that the SCA violates the Fourth Amendment.
The government must have a search warrant before it can secretly seize and search emails stored by email service providers, according to a landmark ruling in the 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. The court found that email users have the same reasonable expectation of privacy in their stored email as they do in their telephone calls -- the first circuit court ever to make that finding.
Read the decision in Warshak v. United States
Posted by Trisha Simonds
Trafficking in persons is a modern-day form of slavery, a new type of global slave trade.
Perpetrators prey on the most weak among us, primarily women and children, for profit and gain. They lure victims into involuntary servitude and sexual slavery. Today we are again called by conscience to end the debasement of our fellow men and women. As in the 19th century, committed abolitionists around the world have come together in a global movement to confront this repulsive crime. President George W. Bush has committed the United States Government to lead in combating this serious 21st century challenge, and all nations that are resolved to end human trafficking have a strong partner in the United States.
Secretary Rice
Victims of Trafficking and Violence Protection Act of 2000: Trafficking in Persons Report 2007 is available in HTML format here and in PDF format here.
Posted by Jon Lutz
AudioCaseFiles describes itself as the leader in AudioCaseFiles. From their website:
AudioCaseFiles provides law school students with digital audio recordings of the legal opinions they read to learn the law (patent pending). The company was founded on the principle that auditory delivery will enhance and supplement the law school learning process. We currently have hundreds of popular cases and are in the process of continuing to record the most frequently requested cases. Please check the site frequently.
The Company distinguishes itself from other study guides which detract from the law school learning process by spoon feeding students black letter law by offering content that challenges students to thoughtfully engage in the same analysis that reading requires. However, the key advantage that ACF affords is portability, as students can listen to the cases they are required to read for class while in the car, at the gym, or at home.
The Company also believes that it can save students money by allowing them to selectively download the cases they want and need for only .99 cents. Students are no longer deluged with the useless, irrelevant, and sometimes harmful information coming from study guides and can focus on learning and knowing the important cases emphasized by their professors.
Try it here.
Posted by Jon Lutz
