Blawg Review #1

Welcome to the inaugural issue of Blawg Review. With future hosts lining up so fast (the weekly hosting spots are taken through October 17), this may be the only installment in quite a while that I'll be privileged enough to host.

What follows are links to every submission I received from those who sent in recommendations. The only exception is if I received two submissions for the same weblog. I also chose some posts myself.

A Few Personal Favorites

Here are three of my favorite recent blawg posts:

Denise Howell at Between Lawyers announces in CC'd that after some back-and-forth with her co-bloggers, they've decided to apply a Creative Commons license to their new weblog. It's the back-and-forth that's especially interesting. You'll learn a lot about the pros and cons of Creative Commons licensing.

In "When I was 1-0," Bryan Gates of I respectfully dissent tells one of those war stories that lawyers love to tell, only with a twist. The typical lawyer's war story features the storyteller in the role of the conquering hero. Not so in Gates' post.

Bruce MacEwen of Adam Smith, Esq. provides more information than some may ever want to know about the billable hour in "Savvy Blawger's Query #2: The Future of the Billable Hour." As is true of the first post in MacEwen's "savvy blawger's query," it features commentary from an all-star lineup of blawgers.

Six Posts about Current Events

Prof. Rick Duncan of Red State Lawblog declares himself to be the "adverse possessor" of his own body before describing what he wants to happen to it in "My Living Will (Sort Of)." Here's a snippet: "I wish all doubts about my medical condition and care to be decided in favor of life and in favor of the hope or possibility (no matter how slight) of improvement."

Jeremy Richey of Jeremy Richey's Blawg reports in "SIU and CLS Update: Complaint Filed" that Southern Illinois University revoked a student organization's recognized status because the organization required its participants to affirm a particular set of religious beliefs. The student organization responded by filing suit to protect its First Amendment rights. Jeremy himself is a member of the organization, which is being represented by the Center for Law and Religious Freedom.

In an untitled post, Joshua Micah Marshall at Talking Points Memo criticizes the recent statement by Sen. John Cornyn (R-TX) implying that "a slow build-up of outrage against activist judges may be the root cause of the recent rash of murders and assaults against members of the judiciary around the country." Other top-notch commentary on the same topic can be found at Althouse and Instapundit.

Jeremy Moore of Jurispundit says, "No State For You." Moore's post discusses a First Circuit ruling denying the PLO’s attempt to claim foreign sovereign immunity in a suit brought against it pursuant to the Anti-Terrorism Act. The court ruled that neither the PLO nor Palestinian Authority was a “state” that could be protected by foreign sovereign immunity.

Kevin Heller at Tech Law Advisor predicts Wal-Mart will win its cybersquatting dispute with AlwaysLowPrices.com. As described in the title of Kevin's post, "Always Low Prices fails Cybersquatting 101."

Sean Sirrine of Objective Justice says, "Tom DeLay, Go Home." According to Sirrine, "I would expect that even those that disagree with me politically would have a hard time swallowing the garbage that DeLay is throwing around these days."

Six Posts about the Business and Practice of Law

At Wordlab, Abnu provides some marketing advice for lawyers and links to a hilarious parody of advertising by personal injury lawyers in "The Trouble With Lawyers And Advertising."

Scheherazade Fowler, whose most recent weblogging venture is called Scheherazade Fowler, Attorney, asks introspectively, "Why Hire Me?" Of her new firm, she says, "I will treat clients well. I don't think of myself as someone with magical powers, solving problems that my clients don't understand."

Chadwick C. Busk at The Fine Print: Musings of a Contracts Lawyer offers A Primer on Drafting Software License Agreements. It will be extraordinary helpful to some. Others might not want to read it after lunch, when they're apt to be feeling sleepy.

Melody Wirz at PHOSITA writes about women in intellectual property law: "In order to serve the widest range of clients, diversity is a must . . . If you change the mix to allow different cultures, different genders, different ages, different views of all sorts, you get 100 different solutions from which to choose."

Stephen M. Nipper at Nipper's Invent Blog says, "Quit flying solo." Money quote: "Your success in life is more dependent upon the team you build around you (both at home and outside the home) than on your own passion."

Are you a trial lawyer? Even if you don't want to admit it, head over to my Illinois Trial Practice Weblog for a tip: "Depositions: Don't Ignore Form Objections."

Five Posts Containing Some Serious Legal Research or Analysis

George Lenard at George's Employment Blog reports about Smith v. City of Jackson in "Supreme Court: disparate impact theory available under age act (ADEA)." Lenard's post contains a detailed analysis of a case in which "the Court held that under some circumstances an employer may be liable for age discrimination without proof of intent, under the disparate impact theory of discrimination."

Ruth Laura Edlund at The Dark Goddess of Replevin Speaks asks, "Can a goddess perform marriage ceremonies?" Recently, she was asked to do just that. Her analysis is based upon the law of the state of Washington.

Colin Samuels at Infamy or Praise reports on a possible shift in legal thinking at the FCC concerning the Scarcity Doctrine, often cited as a basis for FCC authority to regulate broadcast media. In "Scarce Authority," Samuels argues that neither scarcity nor pervasiveness has any place in a discussion of regulating cable or satellite television, as these media are high-bandwidth (i.e., not scarce) and "opt-in" (i.e., not pervasive).

The Mommy Blawger, author of The Mommy Blawg, posts "Breastfeeding Legislative Updates," which includes news from Scotland, Kansas, Massachusetts, and Texas. Later this week at The Mommy Blawg: a Midwifery Legislative Update.

Evan Brown at InternetCases.com reports that "Noncommercial use of BOSLEY MEDICAL trademark as domain name does not constitute infringement." Brown's post summarizes a Ninth Circuit decision affirming the district court's determination that the registration by defendant of the domain name bosleymedical.com does not constitute infringement of plaintiff's BOSLEY MEDICAL trademark. The court also remanded the case for further proceedings on another issue. To find out what issue, you'll have to read the post.

Six Posts I Couldn't Easily Classify

Dr. Kevin Pho at Kevin M.D. offers "A malpractice trial where a physician misdiagnosed gall bladder disease for irritable bowel syndrome." The doctor on trial allegedly misdiagnosed a problem by relying on his "clinical acumen." According to Dr. Pho, "What lawyers fail to understand is that diagnosis is easy in retrospect." He concludes, "It would have possibly saved the patient, and kept the physician out of the courtroom, had he just ordered an ultrasound instead of relying on the history and physical. Chalk up another point for defensive medicine." [Ed.'s note: I discovered this post on last week's edition of Grand Rounds. This week's edition will appear tomorrow, hosted by GruntDoc.]

Who'd be so bold as to honor a lawyer who recently pled guilty to income tax evasion? Answer: Mike Cernovich of Crime & Federalism, who so honors J. Tony Serra in "A Legal Hero."

Russ and Mike of Barely Legal chime in with "Song Lyrics in Legal Outline Form." Their first effort? You won't have any trouble memorizing it for the exam: the Ghostbusters theme song.

Does the founding of a new legal weblog require a celebration? I'm withholding judgment, but the celebration at TechnoLawyer Blog is pretty good. Sara Skiff offers "Let's Celebrate with a Dennis Kennedy TechnoFeature on Tablet PCs," a post featuring a republication of Dennis Kennedy's great article about Tablet PCs.

Todd Chatman at ambivalent imbroglio provides some "Crimlaw Clicks" in a roundup of his favorite criminal-law weblogs. He also has some thoughts on why the legal community awards BigLaw attorneys for their pro bono work, but gives little to no corresponding recognition to the public attorneys who do the same work day in and day out.

Professor Shaun Martin at California Appellate Report posts about United States v. Grunning (9th Cir. - March 31, 2005). Don't let the title of the post fool you: the post is actually an exploration as to why one Judge Fernandez might be so drawn to the word "recrudescent."

Five More Posts from Law Students

The following posts are ones that were slated for yesterday's Law School Roundup until I decided to include them here. The Weekly Law School Roundup (sample here) has been a weekly feature at Notes from the (Legal) Underground for more than a year. If you've never had the joyous experience of reading it, please return on Sunday to check it out.

Carey Cuprisin of Glorfindel of Gondolin has some ideas about "the right reason to bitch about law school exams." In Cuprisin's view, law school can fairly be criticized for failing to teach an important skill (the one I thought law students were paying for): how to apply legal rules to a new set of facts.

Matt Schuh of Matt Schuh Online had a strange experience: when a newspaper printed a report that "Matt Schuh" had died in an accident, panicked friends began to call his cell phone. "I was given a glimpse into how at least one group of people would react to such an occurrence," says Matt in "Final Thoughts on 'Still Alive.'"

Both Dave! at Preaching to the Perverted ("Bird's Eye Dave") and the anonymous author of mellow-drama ("Extreme Closeup") extol the virtues of Google Maps in similar posts.

Jay Williams of Law School, Life, and a Three-Legged Cat has some thoughts about "The Death of an Icon." Is it Johnnie Cochran? No, it's the Cookie Monster, who's having to cut back on cookies "to encourage kids to eat healthier in the never-ending quest to curb childhood obesity."

A Few Concluding Words

I hope the bloggers among you will be so kind as to pass the word about Blawg Review #1 along to your blog readers. Thanks in advance. I'd also like to thank those of you who supported this new project by adding the Blawg Review weblog to their blogrolls. And thanks to Kevin Heller, my co-contributing editor, and to (and especially) Blawg Review's anonymous Editor 'n' Chef, who has done almost all of the work in getting Blawg Review off the ground.

The host next week for Blawg Review #2 is Ronald Coleman, who writes about intellectual property and other topics at Likelihood of Confusion. Blawg Review will have further information about next week's host, as well as instructions for getting your blawg posts reviewed in upcoming issues.

Comments

[Editor 'n' Chef]

The Weekly Law School Roundup (sample here) has been a weekly feature at Notes from the (Legal) Underground for more than a year. If you've never had the joyous experience of reading it, please return on Sunday to check it out.

Indeed, for many law students the Weekly Law School Roundup at Legal Underground is more regular than church on Sunday. In fact, it is Evan's outstanding weekly roundup of law student blogs that makes him a natural to host this first issue of Blawg Review. Well done, Evan.

While his Weekly Law School Roundup will continue to be a regular Sunday read of many law students, they now have the added fun of submitting their own choice posts to Blawg Review for self-gratification, while they wait hopefully for the favorable glance of Evan Schaeffer to focus on them at Legal Underground some Sunday. Hell could freeze over.

[Evan]

Indeed, for many law students the Weekly Law School Roundup at Legal Underground is more regular than church on Sunday.

I read stuff like that and think, "This weblog has definitely jumped the shark." Perhaps it's time to hang up the 'ole keyboard and get back to what I do best: . . . well, I'm not sure what that is exactly. After all, I'm nothing but a pathetic, used-up old weblog author.

Meanwhile, I am fairly confident that no one will ever read the Weekly Law School Roundup again, just to spite me.