Ideological Incompetence and Homeland "Security"

Slate magazine's Bruce Reed on the Michael Brown/FEMA/DHS fiasco:

Ironically, Bush made homeland security a campaign issue in 2002 by turning Democrats against their own bill because he insisted on civil service reforms to make it easier for the agency to fire incompetent workers. Bush forgot to mention his plan to hire incompetent bosses.

The Washington Post reported yesterday:

Five of eight top Federal Emergency Management Agency officials came to their posts with virtually no experience in handling disasters and now lead an agency whose ranks of seasoned crisis managers have thinned dramatically since the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.

FEMA's top three leaders -- Director Michael D. Brown, Chief of Staff Patrick J. Rhode and Deputy Chief of Staff Brooks D. Altshuler -- arrived with ties to President Bush's 2000 campaign or to the White House advance operation, according to the agency. Two other senior operational jobs are filled by a former Republican lieutenant governor of Nebraska and a U.S. Chamber of Commerce official who was once a political operative.

One of the many things that frightens and angers me about Hurricane Katrina is how we now see that the Bush administration has absolutely no plans for recovering from a disaster. Instead, the entire focus of the Homeland Security effort, the Patriot Act, and everything else has been on an impossible effort to prevent every risk. We have placed all our eggs in the basket of prevention, when it should be obvious that no system of prevention is perfect--and we have relied on the hope that perfection is possible.

Sometime, somebody is going to succed in bombing a subway, or releasing toxic gas, or smuggling a gun into a school, or something. More people will die, and there will be economic repercussions, but ultimately it will be a small disaster. Meanwhile, we have seen the destruction of a vast area of the Gulf Coast, the loss of hundreds, if not thousands, of lives, and complete bewilderment and incompetence on the part of the federal government. One thing is predictable, though--the next attack will lead to calls for further restrictions on civil liberties and more surveillance and oppression.

What we're witnessing is a vicious circle where the fears and the worst instincts of the political right feed off of each other. The exclusive focus on prevention both leads to, and provides support for, authoritarian control and the restriction of civil liberties--because we can't afford any risk. Broadening the focus to include serious plans for recovery from disaster, on the other hand, would require two things that appear to be impossible for this administration: admitting fallibility (from a president who, in the televised debates, could not think of a single mistake he had made in his first term), and recognizing a role for government in solving problems--an admission that is impossible for a President who famously claimed that "government is the problem."

More on Elsevier and the Arms Trade

The current issue of the British medical journal The Lancet has an editorial on the issue of Reed Elsevier's involvement in the international arms trade and the DSEi (Defence Systems and Equipment international) trade show. Note that Elsevier is The Lancet's current publisher.

DSEi takes place in association with the UK's Ministry of Defence. Over 1000 companies will exhibit their weapons and related systems at the arms fair in London's Docklands. In their promotional literature, our owners emphasise the “selling process” at DSEi, which is cited as a “key event for the total supply chain” of arms. At the last DSEi, held in 2003, this “selling process” included technologies such as cluster bombs, which are widely deplored by UN agencies and human rights organisations.

It would be grossly naive for The Lancet to argue that nations do not need responsible and well-managed defence industries as a means to protect themselves from security threats. Without security, health systems would be neither stable nor sustainable. But it would be equally naive to argue that the legality of a weapon somehow absolves a country, manufacturer, or even an exhibitions company from a judgment about the weapon's use, sale, or promotion....

Reed Elsevier's response is that the sale of military equipment is legal, government supported, and tightly regulated. However, The Lancet's collaborations in child survival and health-systems strengthening, for example, risk being tainted by Reed Elsevier's promotion of the “selling process” of arms. The arms industry draws vital investment away from the health budgets of low-income nations. In 2004, 59% of arms sales were to developing countries, at a total cost to their economies of US$22 billion....

Reed Elsevier has provided enormous material support to The Lancet during the past decade. It has never wavered in backing the journal's editorial independence, as proven by the publication of this leader comment. We cannot believe that Reed Elsevier wishes to jeopardise that commitment by its presence in a business that so self-evidently damages its reputation as a health-science publisher.

The Lancet's editors and the journal's International Advisory Board were unaware of Reed Elsevier's involvement with DSEi until a few weeks ago. We are deeply troubled by this connection to the arms trade. On behalf of our readers and contributors, we respectfully ask Reed Elsevier to divest itself of all business interests that threaten human, and especially civilian, health and well-being.

House of Butter notes that a group of Australian law librarians has sent a letter to Reed Elsevier in London urging that the company cease its involvement in organizing arms fairs. (Lengthy excerpt follows.)

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HOB thanks and congratulates Gayle Davies in the library at the DPP in NSW (Australia) for bringing this to our attention and actively challenging Reed Elsevier the parent company of Lexis Nexis to respond.

HOB learns that Reed Elsevier, in addition to its ownership of Lexis-Nexis, has amongst its other companies two subsidiary events companies, Reed Exhibitions and Spearhead Exhibitions, which organize arms fairs around the world, including the DSEi Arms Fair, which is to be held in London this month.

In response to this Davies has drafted a letter to the Chairman of Reed Elsevier (see below)
with a copy to the Chief Executive of Lexis-Nexis Australia, that she circulating to lawyers and librarian colleagues in NSW who use Lexis-Nexis publications.

At the moment she only has around twenty signatures, and she is hoping to get enough to fax it to arrive in London by September 11th .

She has also forwarded the letter to a number of other organisations such as the World Criminal Justice Library Network, and the International Federation of Library Associations for further support.

If you believe that your supplier of legal materials, Lexis Nexis and other subsidiary Reed Elsevier organisations should not have companies within the same network that concern themselves with the world of arms manufacturing and distribution please support Ms Davies ( and all other sane thinkers) by copying and pasting this petition, signing it and emailing back to her at

GDavies@odpp.nsw.gov.au

It goes without saying that HOB fully endorses the following letter and we hope that you will also add your voice and distribute this letter to your colleagues.

Following are some links from activist websites and blogs about the DSEI arms fair in London this month.

We note that London's mayor Ken Livingston has stated his opposition to the event.

Red Pepper
Disarm DSEi
The Campaign Against The Arms Trade


The letter / petition follows


Mr Jan Hommen,
Chairman,
Reed Elsevier PLC,
1-3 Strand,
London WC2N 5JR
England.
Fax: +44 (0) 20 7166 5799

cc: Mr Max Piper,
Chief Executive Officer,
Lexis-Nexis Australia
Tower 2, 475-495 Victoria Avenue
Chatswood, NSW 2067, Australia
Tel: +61 2 9422 2700
Fax: +61 2 9422 2701



Dear Mr Hommen,

We are a group of lawyers and law librarians, who are customers of your subsidiary company, Lexis-Nexis. Many of us have used Lexis-Nexis publications since we were at university. We rely on them now for our daily work. Lexis-Nexis publications are used in our Courts, and are highly visible on Benches and Bar Tables.

We are also aware of Elsevier's considerable reputation in publishing in medicine and other sciences.

We are therefore extremely distressed to learn that another of Reed Elsevier's subsidiaries, Spearhead Exhibitions, is in the business of organizing arms fairs, and is staging the Defence Systems and Equipment International Exhibition in London this month.

While we are not suggesting that there is anything illegal in this association, we believe it to be totally incompatible with Reed Elsevier's core business of publishing for the legal and medical professions. The very phrase "arms fair" is abhorrent: first, because there is nothing "fair" about the arms trade, and second, because the word "fair" implies that it will be a festive occasion - an insult to the children who are killed and maimed every day by land-mines deliberately designed to look like toys and butterflies http://www.unicef.org/graca/mines.htm

As we have seen in Sarajevo, East Timor, and Iraq, libraries are often the targets, and always among the victims, in any armed conflict situation.

By promoting arms, Reed Elsevier via Spearhead Exhibitions is supporting a superfluous industry : if the arms industry ceased production today, there would still be enough weapons of all kinds available to wipe out the entire human race several times over. Yet the events of September 11, 2001, and London on July 7th 2005, show that the United States, and Britain, despite being the two largest arms manufacturers and exporters in the world, were completely unprepared for terrorist attacks which used inexpensive small-scale technologies to devastating effect.

Government outlays for military purposes play a large role in driving fiscal deficits and in raising global interest rates, leading to increased debt, capital shortage, and cut-backs to social and civil infrastructure, all ofwhich result in the exacerbation of social and ethnic tensions, violent crime, fundamentalism, instability and conflict. The current situation in New Orleans provides a stark illustration of what happens to civil society when funding is diverted from social infrastructure to the arms industry, using the pretext of invented wars (on drugs, on terror, on Iraq........) as the justification.

The secrecy and lack of transparency of inter-state arms transfers carry the potential for corruption (see for example this BBC item on the Scott Report on British arms deals with Iraq in the 1980s
http://news.bbc.co.uk/onthisday/hi/dates/stories/february/15/newsid_2544000
/2544355.stm and large numbers of legally traded weapons ending up on the black market, where they are used in terrorist and criminal activities, such as drug trafficking and people trafficking.

"Arms fairs" glamorize weaponry and other aspects of military technology, creating a governmental mentality which gives them priority over socially useful institutions such as courts, legal services, and libraries. Even in a developed country like Australia, many government law libraries are being closed down because Federal and State governments cannot or will not fund them adequately - resulting in substantial loss of business for Lexis-Nexis and other publishers. Furthermore, such an association must surely damage Lexis-Nexis' reputation as an impartial conduit for legal information and knowledge. It could lose its respected legal writers and authorities, as well as shareholders, who may not care to be associated with a conglomerate which also peddles death and destruction.

We urge you to uphold in practice the ethical standards to which you have subscribed in writing. In order for your support of the UN Global Compact to have any credibility at all, your company must stop organising arms fairs such as DSEi and Helitech Latin America.

We therefore urge you to stop Reed Elsevier's involvement in all arms fairs.



Yours sincerely,

A Little Perspective is All We Need

On Fridays, I like to put in something a little different sometimes. How is this for a bit more perspective? In 1054 AD, a supernova exploded, creating this beautiful Crab Nebula. From Earth, with space telescopes, we can take a photo like this, enhanced with color. From the Crab Nebula, I don't imagine we could even see Earth. Our Sol would be an undistinguished medium yellow star in the middle reaches of the galaxy spiral, so maybe we couldn't even pick out Sol. With time and distance, it all looks so beautiful... this lovely thing was born in unimaginable fury. I have been stressing big time about New Orleans, politics, and now Jim has me going about Reed Elsevier. Gee. I think I need a vacation to the Crab Nebula. This image is courtesy of , the European Southern Observatory's photograph of the Crab Nebula in Taurus.

Reed Elsevier and the International Arms Trade

This is absolutely the first I've ever heard of this (via idiolect.org.uk):

Reed Elsevier [parent company of LexisNexis] is an academic publisher, which also has a subsidary company, Spearhead Exhibitions, which hosts DSEi - the world's largest arms fair. You can see what I've written to Reed Elsevier, and what they've written back, elsewhere on this blog (one, two, three, four).

I believe that the DSEi arms fairs are immoral, geopolitically reckless, sometimes illegal (e.g.) and improperly regulated (e.g.). Beyond this, I resent that a publisher which profits from the hard (and publicly funded) work of academics uses those profits to support the sale to undemocratic & repressive governments of such things as depleted uranium shells, cluster bombs, missile technology and small arms. The arms fairs Spearhead organises (yes, DSEi isn't the only one) are a measly amount of Elsevier's business, but it is a part that makes academics complicit in the deaths of civilians, in torture and in political repression around the world.

What can academics do to pressure Elsevier to drop this part of their business? What should we do? Here's some possibilities. Feedback very welcome - which of these, if any, are reasonable, feasible and might be effective?

1. Write to the Chairman of Elsevier, Jan Hommen, and ask him to reconsider his position: Jan Hommen, Reed Elsevier PLC, 1-3 Strand, London WC2N 5JR.

2. Contact your union, and/or support any motions which express disaproval of Reed Elsevier.

3. If you are member of a scientific society which produces a journal, find out who the publisher is. If it is Elsevier, find out when the contract renewal date is, and the procedure for society members to influence the decision of who that contract goes to.

4. If you write journal papers, bear in the mind the publisher when submitting papers. Obviously you aren't going to withhold submitting a paper just because the journal is Elsevier, but if you are faced with a choice of journals, one of which is Elsevier, you could cross that journal off your list first?

5. For your papers published in Elsevier journals, insert a line in the acknowledgements along the lines of "The author(s) note with disappointment the involvement of Elsevier with the international trade in arms"

6. When reviewing papers bear in mind the publisher of the journal. Put those for the Elsevier journals to the bottom of the pile.

Any more?

John Quiggin at Crooked Timber adds: "Even the legal aspects of this trade are deplorable, given the excessive readiness of governments and would-be governments to resort to armed force, but the boundary between legal and illegal arms trade is pretty porous. For example, there’s evidence that the arms fairs organised by Elsevier subsidiary Spearhead are venues for the illegal trade in landmines. Tom has a number of suggestions for possible responses."

Practical Skills

Students complain to me from time to time that they are not gaining many practical skills in law school. They have successfully completed criminal law and criminal procedure, but don't think they would know how to defend a DUI. They don't feel competent to draft a will or a contract. They are halfway through law school and are afraid that they won't graduate from law school ready to set up their own practice.

I remember feeling the same way when I first got out of law school. I always practiced in a small firm, so I was able to start by handling simpler matters and work my way up. More experienced lawyers in the firm advised and mentored me. I can't imagine trying to practice on my own with the skills I picked up in law school.

I usually show these students some practice and CLE materials that will help them with the practical basics. I recommend that, while they are still students, they join the bar associations of the states where they intend to practice. Lately I have been recommending some of the blogs written by practicing attorneys. Many of our students plan to practice in sparsely populated areas where there aren't many lawyers. Maybe blogs can help them establish virtual support networks where real mentors are unavailable.

Today Promote the Progress, a blawg on intellectual property and technology law, had a posting about law professors assigning blawgs as part of the course curriculum. That got me wondering whether reading blogs written by attorneys who practice in a related area would help the students connect their coursework with its practical applications. Is this something law professors should strive for?

Even though academic law librarians usually only teach research to first year law students or in a low-credit electives for second- and third-year students, we worry a great deal about whether they leave our classes with all the research skills they will need for summer jobs or their first professional positions after law school. We invite speakers and do surveys and write articles about how students don't have the practical research skills they need when they go out into the real world.

With the exception of legal writing, I don't think that I have ever heard similar criticisms of any other law school course – at least within academia. (I have read some passionate criticisms of the law school curriculum on blogs by practicing attorneys.)

Are there other specific subject areas about which law schools are criticized for not giving students the practical skills they will need to succeed as soon as they graduate and pass the bar? Do law school professors seek input from practicing lawyers on how the professors can better prepare their students for practice? Should they?

Do substantive law professors care what lawyers think? If not, why not? Should they care more about whether students will be ready to practice law when they graduate? Should law librarians care less? Why do we hold ourselves to a higher standard? What accounts for the different expectations about legal research?

I don't have any answers. I just wonder about these things.

LawHelp.org Resources for Low-Income People Affected by Hurricane Katrina

Law Librarian Blog has a posting about the Hurricane Katrina Relief Resources page available at LawHelp.org. The page includes legal resources and information on nonprofit legal services providers in Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana, Mississippi, and Texas, as well as some general relief resources.

LawHelp.org was created by Pro Bono Net and eight partnering legal aid organizations as a resource for people living on low-incomes and the legal organizations that serve them. It provides referrals to local legal aid and public interest law offices, basic information about legal rights, self-help information, court information, links to social service agencies, and more for each state.

Legal Information for Everyone

Legal information is not just for lawyers, law professors, and law students anymore. Public law librarians, including librarians at state law schools, serve not just law-trained library users but also members of the public.

We are fortunate at the SIU School of Law to have a Self-Help Legal Center that makes simple legal forms and instructions available without charge through its website and by telephone order. This clinic also sponsors self help classes on divorce, taught by volunteer attorneys, to help people complete the forms and to answer questions about filing, court procedure, and hearings. The presence of the Self-Help Legal Center also justifies a good-sized collection of do-it-yourself law books, which make helping a pro se patron much easier.

For law librarians who do not have the benefit of a resident self-help clinic or a self-help law book collection, there are a number of good self-help resources on the web. Here are some of the best:

The ABA's Public Resources page has information on consumer legal issues and a variety of other legal topics; links to legal research sites; educational materials; Practical Law guides to everyday law; and general publications about the law and the legal system.

The Ohio State Bar Association makes its 200 page book, The Law & You available for free on the web.

The Consumer Action Website of the Federal Citizen Information Center has tips and information on consumer topics, a sample complaint letter, contact information for help in filing a consumer complaint, the Consumer Action Handbook , and other resources.

The California Department of Consumer Affairs has legal guides on a wide variety of consumer issues.

The Illinois Attorney General has many publications on consumer and citizen issues.

The Arizona Supreme Court has a comprehensive Self Service Guide for Divorce Cases.

The Northwest Women's Law Center Self Help Program has packets of family law and other law materials.

The Connecticut Judicial Branch's Self Help web page has publications, answers to frequently asked questions, forms and other information to assist citizens navigating the court system.

The Maryland State Law Library has reference guides for non-lawyers on a number of legal issues.

Although all of these sites are available to anyone with access to the internet, many of the people who need the materials do not have access to the internet, so they still rely on public libraries and law libraries for access to legal information.

Katrina and Community

One of the side effects of Hurricane Katrina is that we are now witnessing a forced experiment in the role of the law school as both a physical place and a physical community.  From the AALS listing of law schools accepting displaced students, it appears that every law school in the United States is offering to do its part for the Tulane and Loyola students in diaspora.  Some schools have accepted dozens of visiting students; here at Buffalo I’ve met two Tulane students so far, and I imagine more will be coming.  Other schools are also offering space for librarians, faculty, and administrators.  On the other hand, Inside Higher Ed reports today that Loyola-New Orleans law school has announced that Loyola is relocating for the fall semester to the University of Houston Law Center.  According to Inside Higher Ed, “several hundred of Loyola’s 800 law students are expected to start the fall semester in Houston soon, where they will be taught by a cadre of at least 20 Loyola professors.”

Obviously the disaster presents huge challenges to every institution intending to recover over the next several months.  Dean Brian Bromberger at Loyola, and the entire University of Houston Law Center community, are showing great wisdom and generosity in this heroic effort to maintain the sense of Loyola’s first year students as a class, and I’m sure this will help enormously in Loyola law school’s recovery and survival.  Tulane has a much harder challenge in maintaining that sense of unity with their students dispersed across the country.  

Perhaps we in the other law schools can help.  Can we use distance education technology to help students, faculty, and administrators from both Tulane and Loyola keep in touch?  Associate Dean Joseph E. Kennedy at UNC-Chapel Hill has proposed a seminar on disaster relief that could be offered by law schools across the country.  I have suggested that CODEC, the CALI-sponsored Consortium for Distance Education, could help coordinate these efforts.  Could we also help by hooking up our foster-students with the technology to keep in touch with their fellow students in student organizations, journals, and the like?

Teaching Students to Use the Books

(Note: I did not know that Betsy had posted an entry about print vs. electronic information until I was ready to post this.)

When lawyers, judges, firm or court librarians speak to a group of academic law librarians, they almost always say that they want us to teach students to use "the books".

Potential employers tell Deans and Career Services offices that they can't afford LexisNexis or Westlaw, or that students aren't allowed to use them unless they have a client to bill, so students need to be able to do research in books.

Of course, the need to teach students to do research in a variety of formats is apparent to academic law librarians. The problem is one of the "leading a horse to water" variety. No matter what we do to teach them, too many students don't learn to do legal research in print until they are actually required to do so on the job.

Sometimes students manage to block completely any memory of non-electronic research. Years ago a student came into the law school library from his summer job and asked whether there was a way to find cases in print. Not how to do it, but if it was even possible. And every summer a couple of bright, helpful students come to a member of the legal research faculty and suggest that we ought to warn the students that they won't always have unlimited access to Westlaw and LexisNexis. (We do just that on many occasions.)

This is not a rant about students. I think that the fact students are unable to retain this information year after year speaks to our failure, not theirs. What's that old saying about doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results? So, what have we tried that doesn't work, and what can we do that might work better?

One of the popular strategies for "forcing" students to learn to do legal research in print is withholding their Westlaw and LexisNexis passwords – or only allowing very limited access – during all or part of their first semester. In my opinion, that tactic has had exactly the opposite of its intended effect. It makes full access seem like such a prize that once students achieve it they never go back if they can avoid it.

Until this year, we followed the model of giving first-year students limited access to Westlaw and LexisNexis during the first semester, and requiring the students to complete their first semester exercises in print resources only. This year we are integrating formats and teaching about types of materials (cases, statutes, etc.), how they are organized, and the different ways to access them.

Will our new approach work? At this point, three weeks into the semester, it's hard to say. The students seem to be receptive. I think that having to reorganize lesson plans and explain things in a new way is improving my teaching. Format independence also seems to make it easier to compare what we are teaching to something the students already know. I guess the test will be how comfortable the students are with "the books" on their jobs next summer.

Beyond Paper Vs. Electronic

Lightning moves through our brains in stable patterns: zzzt for speech recognition; zzzzat for reading. Our brains work by electrical impulses moving across synapses, triggering chemical reactions. But the patterns are different for differnt types of communication transfers. We have known for some time that people process information differently when they hear it, for instance, than when they read it.

I am betting that if we start looking, we will see a similar difference between processing patterns for information received electronically versus via print. I don't know this for a fact. The print does appear on a screen. But I believe that we are dealing with at least some aspects of the information differently when it's on a computer than when it's in a book. And I think a lot of librarians and lawyers have been noticing the same thing. There are a couple articles by partners from two different law firms, criticizing a sole reliance on electronic research: The Corruption of Legal Research, 46 For the Defense 39 (2004) by Scott P. Stolley tells of examples of new associates failing to complete research assignments because they relied on electronic resources. Stolley found the materials himself using print resources in less than a half hour, and now requires his new associates to go to print first and use computers only secondarily. In This is What I'm Thinking: A Dialogue Between Partner and Associate... From the Partner, 25 Litigation 8, (1998), Mark Herrmann tells his new associates not to begin research with a computerized search unless he explicitly requests it. He does believe that a computer search is necessary to finish the research.

I have an uneasy suspicion that the publishers are planning to push libraries into converting more and more of the collection into electronic formats over the next few years. And I think that would be a huge mistake. For a lot of reasons... partly from my point of view as the erstwhile owner of the information, I really am reluctant to transfer to a licensee, especially at the same doggoned price! But I also think it will forever change legal research. Not necessarily for the better. There are things about electronic research that I love. But there are things about print research that I will miss very much. I think we have a better idea of the context of ideas in print, and that this is especially key for codes. I think we think more deeply and broadly when we read in print -- but I sure don't know why. I just know that I see that over and over in the papers I get from students, and even in the work I do myself. We go slower when we work with print, and faster online. Fast is very good for some things. But fast is not good for thinking.

Think about it.