Slate articles on Guantanamo

Slate magazine has an article by Georgetown law Professor and Gitmo lawyer Neal Katyal, On the Ground at Guantanamo, about the trial of his client Salim Hamdan at Gitmo following the Supreme Court decision in that prisoner's case. A passionately written critique of the military tribunals.

That article is paired with another by Dahlia Lithwik, titled It was the Best of Habeas, It was the Worst of Habeas about the new cases being argued in the Supreme Court on the Gitmo prisoners' rights.

Something Special for Chanukah

Tonight marks the beginning of Chanukah, the eight-day Jewish festival that marks the triumph of light over darkness. Chanukah tends to be overshadowed by Christmas, and it is in fact a minor holiday on the Jewish calendar. However, it is a joyous holiday, one that is particularly enjoyed by children because they receive presents (in some families, one every night) and eat such treats as potato latkes, doughnuts, and chocolate Chanukah gelt.

This morning, one of my colleagues, Professor Ralph Stein, shared with the faculty this account of the first night of Chanukah at the Nuremberg trials in 1945. It was written by Professor John Barrett of St. John's University School of Law, who is a leading scholar on the life of Justice Robert H. Jackson, Supreme Court Justice and chief prosecutor at the Nuremberg trials.

Justice Jackson delivered his opening statement on November 21, 1945, and "described what the evidence would show." In the early days of the trial, the United States presented a great deal of evidence, Nazi documents that had been seized, translated, and organized by the Allies. As Professor Barrett states, "the evidence was summarized in trial briefs that Jackson's senior assistants read before the [International Military Tribunal], the defendants and...the world press corps." On the eighth day of the trial, November 29, 1945, the prosecution announced that it would present motion picture evidence, a documentary film on the concentration camps. General Dwight D. Eisenhower had ordered the film to be made so that the judges would understand what the words "concentration camp" meant and also so that they would understand the full extent of the horrors that the Nazi regime had perpetrated. The filming was directed by Lt. Col. George C. Stevens, one of the great Hollywood directors. One hour of the film was shown at the trial. It showed conditions in the camps, including graphic shots of the survivors surrounded by corpses. Observers watched the defendants to see what effect the film would have on them, and even Hermann Goering "looked subdued, his face sagging."

Professor Barrett points out the coincidence that "in 1945, November 29th on the Gregorian calendar was also, on the Jewish calendar, the 25th day of Kislev, the third month. It thus marked the first night of Chanukah, a holiday celebrating Jewish survival. In the Nuremberg trial process, most participants were non-Jews. Many probably did not reflect on the coincidence, and frankly on the stark juxtaposition, of the showing of the concentration camp film evidence concluding as the sun set and Chanukah thus began."

I am grateful to Professor Stein for sharing this article with me, and hope you will enjoy reading it as much as I did.

More on blogs

The article I mentioned earlier today at National Law Journal includes a quote likening bloggers today to pamphleteers or leafletters of the Revolution era. Thus, the story of the anonymous blogger criticizing his township in New Jersey caught my attention. The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF, at www.eff.org) reports that they are defending the blogger whose identity has been subpoenaed from his ISP. The township is using the subpoena to intimidate the blogger, and is trampling on the blogger's first amendment free speech rights, according to the EFF's motion to quash.

What if the British governors had been able to subpoena the identity of the pamphleteers who published inflammatory tracts rallying colonials to the Revolution? Hmm. We have certainly seen examples of blogs coming back to bite the bloggers. Is this anonymity essential to free speech on the Internet? How does this intersect with the international nature of the Web? Gonna be an interesting decade!

Terrific new article on LLRX about Deep Web Searching

Follow the link in the title to this post to LLRX.com for a wonderful article with lots of links by Marcus Zillman. He surveys and organizes for our convenience the various tools designed to locate PDFs, documents, PowerPoints and other documents that aren't searched by ordinary search engines. These often are information rich, but are difficult to locate -- the so-called Deep Web or Invisible Web. Very helpful, and brings my lists up to date! (Thanks to Sabrina Pafici and her Be Spacific blog for alerting me to this article. I highly recommend subscribing to Be Spacific! See it in the Blogroll list on this page)

Blogs the basis for motion to change venue

Click on the title to this post to read an article in the National Law Journal (at www.law.com) The article by Peter Page is about a motion in a racially charged murder case in Tennessee (US v. Boyd). The defense attorney has argued that blogs have so exaggerated and distorted the facts of the case that he wants it moved to another part of the state. May be the first time blogs have been cited as the reason for a change of venue, polluting the minds of local jurors.

Tip of the hat to my colleague Andy Beckerman-Rodau for alerting me to this article. You can read more about the issues at the Knoxvillenews.com paper site here, in an article by Jamie Satterfield.

Licensing as it ought to be! Kudos to BNA

I just read through our BNA license for their online service. I realize that many other libraries have gone with this long before mine. But I want to sing their praises for a license that ought to be a model for online subscriptions. They address all my concerns about paying the same amount (or more!) for online subscriptions as print, and getting less. In most recent license agreements, you cannot lend, you cannot make back-up or archival copies, and if you drop the subscription, you have a wisp of air – not an out-of-date, but still useable print volume on the shelf. These are all reasons I’ve been really disappointed in licenses for online materials – up til now!

The license is for one year – not tying us to a multi-year license is an important difference. We are also not obliged to maintain the print subscriptions that we are now duplicating online. That means I can still maneuver if my budget gets slashed, raided or just much tighter than I expect. I don’t expect that to happen this year, but I am much more willing to sign a license that does not bind me either continue a subscription for multiple years, or to maintain a list of print based on a snapshot in time. If my prof who uses X leaves or retires, I can drop it, and replace it with whatever the new prof needs. I have to say, the generosity and fairness of the BNA license certainly buys a deal of customer loyalty from me. If I had to choose this year between dropping a BNA title and somebody else’s, I’d avoid dropping BNA if I could!

The license and pricing are clear. I see how much I am paying and things are neatly itemized. This is another pet peeve of mine with some other vendors’ licenses. And the bill is once a year, and did I say the license is only for one year? Boy, I like that! I also love that they allow me to cancel existing subscriptions within 60 days of the agreement. That gives me time to see how faculty like the online, and if they are willing to move from print to online. I really think they have thought about how users interact with this, and how libraries work. (Has somebody out there worked with BNA? They have really listened to librarians!)

The platform access allows my users to get their BNA materials through a variety of points. They can use BNA’s own platform, Westlaw or Lexis. Users include all full time, part time and visiting faculty, plus library staff and current students, AND walk-ins to the library.

What really thrills me, is their copyright exceptions! We can digitally copy and have an archival/back-up copy. We can use a portion of the material to create digital course packs, and electronic reserve. We may cache to speed and simplify use locally. We can do scholarly sharing and ILL with the same limits we have on print materials. This is the kind of license I have been waiting for! This license for electronic material really meets the level or rights I have always had in print materials. I think it’s fair – protecting BNA’s interests while giving the library the same level of ownership in the materials that we have had in print. Thank you, BNA!

Sign the ABA Petition to Pakistans' Musharraf

Follow the link in the title to this post to read, and sign on to the ABA's message to Pervez Musharraf, calling on him to restore the rule of law in Pakistan. In part, the message reads:

The American Bar Association calls on President Pervez Musharraf to:

Restore the Constitution of Pakistan;
Reinstate Pakistan's Supreme Court justices; and,
Free those lawyers and civil leaders who have been wrongly jailed.

The courageous men and women of Pakistan, led by their legal community, remind citizens of all nations that justice and the rule of law are both precious and fragile.

The suspension of Pakistan's institutions of justice is a threat to the rule of law in all nations. We, the lawyers of America, stand with you.

Reading skills

The Institute for the Future of the Book http://www.futureofthebook.org/blog/ has an interesting set of discussions on the NEA announcement of declining reading skills. I have mixed feelings about such reports--they have an elistist feel (that free time should be spent reading alone instead of night clubbing with friends), but working in urban centers, I have to admit that I get many young people who do not know 1) what an encyclopedia is, 2) what a periodical index is, 3) what a table of contents is, 4) what an index is, and 5) what a title page is.

New Podcast: The Shadow and James Show

On a completely unrelated note, I wanted to announce my new podcast, The Shadow and James Show. This is a "couplecast" featuring me and Kristina Lively, and we talk once a week about whatever strikes our fancy: food, movies, music, travel, life in Buffalo. I hope you'll stop by, and enjoy!

Marginalia

My Merriam-Webster defines it as "1: marginal notes (as in a book) 2: nonessential items." To my delight, I ran across a scholarly study of marginalia, Used Books: Marking readers in renaissance England, William H. Sherman (U. of Penn Press, Dec., 2007). The catalog comments:

...indispensable, offering and demanding a complete revision of standard notions of reading in favor of a much more capacious concept of the 'use' of books before the modern era... (Stephen Orgel, Stanford University)

In a recent sale catalog, one bookseller apologized for the condition of sixteenth-century volume as 'rather soiled by use.' When the book was displayed the next year, the exhibition catalog described it as 'well and piously used [with] marginal notations in an Elizabethan hand [that] bring to life an early and earnest owner:' and the book's buyer, for his part, considered it to be 'enlivened by the marginal notes and comments.' For this collector, as for an increasing number of cultural historians and historians of the books, a marked-up copy was more interesting than one in pristine condition.

This attitude views the notes, doodles and jokes written in books by past readers as a sort of archeological trove illustrating both the life of the book and the life of the readers. I had known that scholars in older times often wrote in the margins arguing with the author of the book. I don't think I had run across anybody so delighting in excavating these marks.

They illustrate the catalog with "manucules," the drawings of hands with a pointing finger that we have all seen used to draw attention to a point or place. They also have a rather forlorn and disrespected label from a library that originally stated, "Marking of books is Forbidden." It has been variously changed to "Making of books...," "Making funny jokes is forbidden," and "making funny jokes in books is not forbidden -- as is irony."

Poking around on the web, I find earlier books on marginalia, Marginalia: Readers writing in books, by H.J. Jackson; and Romantic Readers: The evidence of marginalia, by the same author. In my catalog, besides the first Jackson book, I find, Marginalia by H. P. Lovecraft, collected by August Derleth and Donald Wandrei, and several poetry books with that title. So, I guess people have been studying it right along for a while. I just loved the Penn catalog's presentation of the book.

I have often enjoyed graffiti that runs along, replying and building on earlier defacements. And I will confess to following those silly page directions one finds in K-12 math books for some reason (go to p. 11, then on page 11, another direction leading finally to some really profound thought like math is sooo boring). But I don't like to find marks in library books, or even used textbooks because they are usually so asinine. But the idea of excavating even asinine comments for meaning is fascinating. Wikipedia notes, in its article on marginalia that there is a specialized term for scholarly notes in the margins, "scholia." They note that marginal notes can add value to a book,if done by somebody either celebrity or scholarly, or detract from the value if done by somebody who fits in neither category. And they supply a link to the wonderful pages by the library at Cambridge University where they catalog and demonstrate various damage to books, titled "Marginalia and other crimes."