Verbatim Transcript?

During my Advanced Legal Research class this morning, we were talking about the Congressional Record and the fact that members of Congress are allowed to edit and add to their remarks before they are published. One of the students mentioned that she had read a story in the New York Times over the weekend which described lobbyists for Genentech who managed to get statements they had written "printed in the Congressional Record under the names of different members of Congress. ... Genentech ... estimates that 42 House members picked up some of its talking points--22 Republicans and 20 Democrats ..." This is why, "[i]n the official record of the historic House debate on overhauling health care, the speeches of many lawmakers echo with similarities." According to the Times,

Members of Congress submit statements for publication in the Congressional Record all the time, often with a decorous request to 'revise and extend my remarks.' It is unusual for so many revisions and extensions to match up word for word. It is even more unusual to find clear evidence that the statements originated with lobbyists.

... The statements were not intended to change the bill, which was not open for much amendment during the debate. They were meant to show bipartisan support for certain provisions, even though the vote on passage generally followed party lines.

Some members of Congress used the language provided by the lobbyists verbatim, while others "tweaked" the language to fit their personal style. It is interesting to note that some of these Representatives had received campaign contributions from Genentech, which also had hosted fundraisers for them.

This seems like a particularly egregious example of the influence that lobbyists have in the legislative process. I'm happy to report that my students found the story somewhat shocking, coming as it did so recently after we'd discussed the legislative process. The story underscored why it is so difficult to make any meaningful institutional change in this country.

Second Life Advisors at Penn State

The Wired Campus feature of the Chronicle of Higher Education dated November 9, 2009 carries a story about Penn State requiring faculty advisors to appear in Second Life to advise students. Penn State has had a campus presence in the virtual world of Second Life for some time, and decided to offer advising there, in addition (according to a comment at the online article) to office hours, e-mail, phone and Skype. Faculty advisors are required to offer a minimum of two hours a week in Second Life and are given training in the online game. They are allowed to choose their own avatar names. It was not clear from the article how fanciful the avatar faculty may be. Second Life avatars do not, of course, have to reflect the gender, height, weight or ethnicity of the person behind the electronic face. But they may also appear as giant rabbits, may sport wings, or become more exotic still. Clothing, of course, can also be negotiable, but one supposes that is still somewhat bound by standards of propriety for advisors during office hours. Many law librarians are Second Lifers. It's a fun way to interact. The Chronicle article reports that faculty members do enjoy their time once they get used to Second Life.

The picture is my own avatar from Second Life, Boptunia Woodget. I am not spending much time there these days, but she is still there, in suspended animation.

Kindle's Read-aloud Function Not Accessible for Blind Users : Maybe Kindle Is Not the Answer!

The Boston Globe included a story yesterday about the University of Wisconsin-Madison and Syracuse University in New York stating that they would not consider roll-outs of Kindle e-readers until Amazon addresses problems with accessibility for blind users. Both schools bought some Kindles this fall on trial, but were appalled to discover that the Kindle's read-aloud feature would almost certainly require assistance from a sighted companion. The National Federation of the Blind released a statement about the two universities' decisions, based on their nondiscrimination policies. The most disappointing aspect is that:

Amazon spokesman Drew Herdener said many visually impaired customers have asked Amazon to make the Kindle easier to navigate. The company is working on it, he said.

According to the National Federation of the Blind, there are about 1.3 million legally blind people in the U.S. Many more people have other disabilities such as dyslexia that make it difficult to read.

The Kindle could be promising for the visually impaired because of its read-aloud feature, which utters text in a robotic-sounding voice. For blind students in particular, the Kindle could be an improvement over existing studying techniques -- such as using audio books or scanning books page by page into a computer so character-recognition software can translate it for a text-to-speech program.

But activating the Kindle's audio feature probably requires a sighted helper, because the step involves manipulating buttons and navigating choices in menus that appear on the Kindle's screen.

The federation says the device should be able to speak the menu choices as well.

(from the Globe article) This statement from Amazon does not seem to have any urgency about it. If you go to the National Federation of the Blind website above, you may note that they do have a handheld Kurzweil reader for print material, which is interesting and must be very helpful. It seems to be in test mode, still, but the website says it will cost about the same as many flat screen televisions. It will be able:

• The Reader reads most printed documents, address labels, package information, and instructions with ease. It offers readers a choice of hearing a full page, or just a few lines for identification purposes.

• The Reader can store thousands of printed pages with easily obtainable extra memory and users can transfer files to their desktops and laptop computers or Braille notetakers.

• The Reader reads documents from computers or other devices.

• The Reader has a headphone jack so users don't have to disturb others in close proximity.

• The Reader costs about the same as many flat screen televisions today, yet has the power to revolutionize a person's life.

• Sales will be handled by K-NFB Reading Technology, Inc., and its dealer network. To locate your local dealer, call (877) 547-1500 or visit http://www.knfbreader.com/.

The read-aloud feature of the Kindle was initially disabled at the insistence of the Author's Guild which saw it as potentially eating into their profitable second-market for audio books. But the robotic voice which reads for Kindle is no challenge for the professional actors who usually read the audio books, and the Author's Guild eventually caved under intense public pressure.

Librarians and activists for the visually impaired, were very disappointed, though to discover that such users would have great difficulty in managing a Kindle reader alone. I have to say that libraries and educational organizations that want to supply some kind of reader for blind and vision-impaired students or other users, might really do better to consider supplying or subsidizing the new Kurzweil hand held reader instead!

One thing that folks who have not dealt with blind "readers" who listen to books may not realize is that these folks "speed listen." Just as an experienced visual reader reads much faster than a new reader, people who listen to their reading material get so they can speed listen. My mother did recording of textbooks on request for the University of Kentucky visually impaired students for a number of years. And this is one of the things that she learned about the ways her tapes were used. Imagine if you had to listen to an entire casebook read aloud at the usual speed -- it would take FOREVER! So of course, the student learns to speed listen. I don't know if the Kindle has a function for speed listening. I suspect that the Kurzweil reader DOES, because that is the population it deals with. Just one more tiny detail that a visually impaired "reader" would care passionately about in the "reader" they would choose. Besides, who would choose a robotic voice if they didn't have to?

Book Thieves, Rare Books, the Desire of the Book

The Boston Globe Idea section today has an interview with author Allison Hoover Bartlett about her recent book, The Man Who Loved Books Too Much: The True Story of a Thief, a Detective, and a World of Literary Obsession (Riverhead), about John Charles Gilkey. Gilkey stole rare books from dealers and bookstores around the country. While serving several prison terms, he took classes to improve his understanding of literature and help him recognize rare books and manuscripts.

He might never have been caught but for the diligence of Ken Sanders. A ponytailed Utah bookseller whose shop was a countercultural hangout, Sanders found a new calling as an amateur detective when he volunteered to serve as security chair for the Antiquarian Booksellers Association of America. As Sanders uncovered the patterns of thievery that eventually led him to Gilkey, he became as absorbed in the the hunt for his nemesis as he would have been in pursuit of a rare 17th century withcraft tome, or a signed copy of “Finnegan’s Wake.” (snip)

Bartlett will appear in Boston at the Antiquarian Book Fair at Hynes Convention Center on Nov. 15. She spoke with us by phone from her home in San Francisco.

IDEAS: You’ve said you love reading but don’t share the collecting impulse yourself. Why do people dedicate their lives to hunting down rare books?

BARTLETT: The collector has this very deep appreciation for the book as a physical object that’s mixed with that other love that the rest of us have. And it seems to be almost something you’re born with. With lots of the collectors I met, it seemed like it’s an unidentified genetic trait. Because a lot of them grew up around collectors, their parents were collectors or their uncle was, and it just seems to be almost innate, like a musical ear.

IDEAS: For many collectors, you write, the goal is “to stumble upon a book whose scarcity or beauty or history or provenance is even more seductive than the story printed between its covers.” (snip)

IDEAS: Like legitimate collectors, Gilkey’s motivated by a passion for books. What drove him to steal?

BARTLETT: I think that in many ways Gilkey is a loner, an outsider... He wanted the world to see him as a cultured erudite gentleman who revered literature. But there’s a lot of anger alongside that also; I think he’s frustrated that he’s not yet seen that way. And he has gone to prison repeatedly, I think five or six times at least for this. And what happens when he gets caught and goes to prison is, he wants revenge…. like OK, now I’m getting even, now I’m getting the book collection I deserve.

IDEAS: You write that “for Gilkey . . . having not paid for books... adds even more to their allure.”

That little, telling piece out of the larger interview really grabbed my attention. The combination of the passion for collection, the passion for rare books, manuscripts, incunabulae, etc, and the self-justification that leads to theft.... Oh, my! And there are more people out there like this than I had guessed. Ken Sanders has nabbed more people than just Gilkey. If you travel to the International League of Antiquarian Booksellers' news site here, you find a rather long and unwieldy page. But if you use control F, and search for "Ken Sanders," you will find a number of fascinating investigations he has carried out. I believe the "news," is fairly current -- September - October, 2009, as far as I can tell. The links out from the story about Sanders, though, are broken, sadly. However, Sanders is a fascinating character, not only a rare books dealer, but a rare books detective. Law enforcement agencies rarely are able to spend much time or manpower on rare book thefts, however valuable. And someone who recognizes the item and understands the world is a uniquely valuable investigator. Somebody who pursues the investigation with bulldog tenacity is even more valuable!

The rare book world, after all, is where Sanders has spent his life since he began collecting as a teenager.

There is another world, too, in which Sanders has grown adept at manoeuvring, a world filled with shadowy figures and deceit. In this world, Sanders is not merely a rare books dealer, but a rare books detective. As chair of the security committee for the Antiquarian Booksellers' Association of America (ABAA), Sanders spends between ten and fifteen hours a week poring over reports of theft and fraud, sending alerts to ABAA members and, as the situation warrants, conducting his own investigations. His tenure as security chair for the ABAA-a volunteer position-began in 1999 and has coincided with the rapid growth of Internet commerce and of its spawn, electronic fraud, to which the bookselling community has been especially susceptible.

Book dealers who have been defrauded know to turn to Sanders, as law enforcement agencies like the FBI and Interpol almost never take an interest in the jurisdictional complexity of tracking down rare-book thieves. Using a stolen credit card number and just enough literary knowledge, a typical thief can convince an unsuspecting dealer to ship a valuable first edition across several time zones. Rare books are small, easily portable, not overtly suspicious and, thanks to Internet auction sites like eBay, easily converted into cash. No one keeps track of total losses, but the most notorious thieves working the trade have made off with as much as $100,000 US each in books-taking care never to "spend" more than about $5,000 at a time so as to avoid rousing suspicion.

Reports of theft and fraud have shaken up the rare book trade, to the chagrin of many. "It's been a trusting, gentle business for most of its existence," says Sanders, "a handshake kind of business." Rooted deep within the culture of bookselling is a certain reticence, an essential genteelness that Sanders, with his hard-charging efforts, seems to have endangered. Booksellers seem dismissive of any talk about theft and scams and consider it a serious impediment to business. Steven Temple, security chair for the International League of Antiquarian Booksellers, doesn't think that theft is necessarily increasing at all, only that it is now more commonly reported.

Sanders' investigations, however, have undeniably led to results. He has shut down gangs in Belgrade operating with stolen credit card numbers and eBay accounts-though not before they managed to scam dealers of about $40,000 in rare books. Sanders has also disrupted gangs of credit-card fraudsters based in Nigeria and Ghana, baiting them by accepting orders and then shutting down their stolen card numbers. Sanders takes pleasure in asking for another card, and then another, until the fraudsters realize he's on to their schemes.

Last year Sanders helped nab book thief John Charles Gilkey, who may have stolen as much as $100,000 in books. For months Gilkey-who was "brazen as hell," says Sanders-placed orders with booksellers over the phone, often chatting up dealers before using a stolen credit card to make the purchase. Before the charge could be disputed, Gilkey would call back to mention that a cousin or nephew was conveniently in town and able to drop by the bookshop. Then he or his accomplice-identified afterwards as his father-would leave with the book in hand. Gilkey later switched methods and asked booksellers to send books by overnight mail to hotels, where he had reserved a room with a different stolen credit card.

When Gilkey attempted to scam Ken Lopez, president of the ABAA, Lopez and Sanders worked with police in San Jose to set up a sting. Lopez, a Massachusetts-based dealer, let Gilkey go through with an order for a first edition of John Steinbeck's The Grapes of Wrath. Though the asking price was $6,500, Gilkey actually talked Lopez down to a price of $5,850. He also asked Lopez to send the book overnight to the upscale Westin Hotel in Palo Alto. When Gilkey, dressed in rumpled slacks and a baseball cap, arrived to pick up the package, police were on the scene to apprehend him. After posting a $15,000 bail, Gilkey disappeared, eluding authorities for weeks until he was eventually caught in another sting. He is now serving a three-year sentence in California.

Why does Sanders pursue these white-collar criminals so relentlessly? "I have an innate sense of fairness," he says. His daughter Melissa agrees: "He takes [theft] so personally, not only when it happens to our store, but to our colleagues."

(from the International League of Antiquarian Booksellers' news website). There is a lot more there, including information on a far more dangerous-sounding thief, "...David George Holt, aka Frederik Buwe, aka Professor Karl Fisher. Holt, a sixty-two-year-old Illinois native turned globetrotter, actually has many more aliases, all allegedly used in email and Internet scams that have plagued book dealers since the mid-1990s." Holt has apparently threatened Sanders, leaving messages on the voice mail. He is a strong suspect in the murder of New York bookseller Svetlana Aronov. Holt certainly stole about $100,000 in U.S. Savings bonds from his grandmother, and abandoned his wife and five children in the suburbs of Milwaukee to flee to New Zealand in 1991. He has stolen thousands of dollars worth of rare books, apparently from booksellers, rather than libraries. He is wanted on charges of securities fraud as well. The nastiness of this particular book thief is rather out of the ordinary. Most book thieves tend to be more like the book collectors they prey upon; scholarly, bookish, literate, though, on both the cases of Holt and of Gilkey, they certainly have a streak of sociopathic egotism that makes it seem just fine to them to crush others under foot as long as they get their way. I enjoyed the survey review written by Julia Keller of the Chicago Tribune, partly because it recalled past books about the mania of book collecting (Nicholas A. Basbanes' A Gentle Madness: Bibliophiles, Bibliomanes, and the Eternal Passion for Books (1995), which also includes the story of Stephen Blumberg
, a truly large scale book thief. Blumberg, unlike the thieves mentioned earlier, preyed largely on university libraries and museums. The report I read totaled the final count at "-more than 20,000 rare books and 10,000 manuscripts from 140 or more universities in 45 states and Canada. (One report said they were taken from 327 libraries and museums." (Conservation Online's Abbey Newsletter, vol. 15, no. 7, Nov., 1991, quoting the OCLC Newsletter, July/Aug. 199 1, p. 10).

And here is the Desire of the Book part... What draws these thieves, or for that matter, the rare book collectors, sellers, and curators? What is it that makes these thieves decide to steal a book, when books cannot be fenced, as Julia Keller, the Chicago Trib reviewer so succinctly puts it? This is not a matter of making money, merely. The author of the Man Who Loved Books Too Much...

Bartlett spends a great deal of time interviewing Gilkey, both in and out of prison, recording his equivocation and his loneliness and his pathetic self-denial. "The Man Who Loved Books Too Much" ends up underlining an important sociological truth: For all of our excitement about new media and innovative forms of storytelling, when it comes to signifying high culture, books still rule. Books are symbols of erudition and sophistication. If you want people to think you're intelligent, you install bookshelves in your home and you fill them up. Gilkey, Bartlett notes, was obsessed with "the image of an English gentleman with a grand library." He wants books because, he tells her, " 'There's that sense of admiration you're gonna get from other people.' "

This, I guess, is why you still see all the photographs of law professors and lawyers taken in front of shelves of law books. They may not use the sets of reporters any more. They may not even own the set at the firm... but they want the photo taken in front of the National Reporter set, because of what it signifies: scholarliness, wisdom, lawyerliness.

The image is courtesy of the City College of San Francisco English Major website at http://fog.ccsf.cc.ca.us/~cgreger/Images/Scribe.jpg

"Google Mistrial"

This editorial, published in today's Boston Globe, caught my eye because my husband is currently serving on a federal grand juror here in New York, where cell phones and other electronic devices are banned from the courthouse. The editorial discusses the growing phenomenon of "tweeting, texting, and obsessive e-mail checking" which now threatens the jury system. "Increasingly, courts have had to warn jurors that blogging or searching the Web during trial jeopardizes the very foundations of the judicial system." The author, Renee Loth, cites examples from trials in Florida, Arkansas, and Massachusetts that were compromised by jurors Googling the defendant, checking definitions of legal terms, "unearthing evidence that had been explicitly excluded," and sending Twitter messages from the courtroom. Loth says that the "problem is widespread enough that legal experts have coined the term 'Google mistrials.' No verdict has yet been overturned for texting-while-deliberating, but the retrials themselves are costly and gum up the wheels of justice." Loth points out that the Internet has made everyone an expert (think about the proliferation of medical information that has changed the relationship between doctor and patient), and people are used to seeking out information on their own. However, there is a downside to seeking out information on our own. "'The rise of digital technology has devalued expertise across the board,' observed journalist Mat[t] Bai ... Such a cultural shift has dire implications for a trial system that relies on testimony from expert witnesses" and on jurors who are expected to weigh only the evidence that is presented to them in court. Of course, nothing but her conscience prevents a juror from going home at night and researching the defendant's prior criminal history or even reading in the newspaper or online about the very case she is trying.

Maine's Gay Marriage Repealed in Voter Referendum

Time online reports on Maine's voters repealing gay marriage in that state. GLAD.org, the organization that has engineered most of the gay marriage legal and political efforts across New England and beyond has more information at their website.

I consider gay marriage to be a civil right issue. Consider for a moment what would have happened in 1964 if the deep south had been allowed to have voter referendums on whether they would support the Voting Rights and, and other civil rights legislation, including perhaps, the 14th Amendment.... Alabama, Mississippi, Georgia, Florida, Texas, Arkansas, Louisiana, North and South Carolina, ... all the states of the old Confederacy -- AT LEAST, would have repealed those pieces of legislation and the Constitution. Possibly, many states in the North, as well, would have repealed some pieces of civil rights laws.

Would we have mixed marriage? Would we have integrated schools or even buses where people of color may ride in the front of the bus? Would black people be welcome in restaurants or be able to drink from water fountains where whites drink, even now? Would the Reverend Martin Luther King even have found a toe hold for any of his work in that world? I do not think so!

If you allow the majority to rule in the matter of civil rights, the minority will NEVER be granted their rights.

And that is why you DO NOT have voter referendums on civil rights matters.

And that is why we SHOULD NOT have voter referendums on the matter of gay marriage.

It is a matter of civil rights.

Extraordinary Rendition Decision Places Executive Branch Above the Law

The New York Law Journal, in an excellent (and free!) article discusses an en banc decision by the Second Circuit Court of Appeals about the extraordinary rendition of a Canadian citizen in 2002. Mark Fass writes

The 7-4 majority held that the Canadian, Maher Arar, failed to state a claim under the Torture Victim Protection Act and that his remaining claims did not satisfy the test for "implied" constitutional causes of action under the 1971 U.S. Supreme Court decision in Bivens v. Six Unknown Named Agents of Federal Bureau of Narcotics, 403 U.S. 388.

"Applying our understanding of Supreme Court precedent, we decline to create, on our own, a new cause of action against officers and employees of the federal government," Chief Judge Dennis G. Jacobs wrote in his 59-page majority opinion.

"Rather, we conclude that, when a case presents the intractable 'special factors' apparent here. . . it is for the Executive in the first instance to decide how to implement extraordinary rendition, and for the elected members of Congress—and not for us as judges—to decide whether an individual may seek compensation from government officers and employees directly, or from the government, for a constitutional violation."

In a statement yesterday, David Cole, the Georgetown University Law Center professor who argued Mr. Arar's appeal in cooperation with the Center for Constitutional Rights, said the ruling "effectively places executive officials above the law."

"This decision says that U.S. officials can intentionally send a man to be tortured abroad, bar him from any access to the courts while doing so, and then avoid any legal accountability thereafter," he said. "It effectively places executive officials above the law, even when accused of a conscious conspiracy to torture."

The facts of the case were laid out in great detail in the New Yorker story in February 14, 2005, 'Outsourcing Torture, the secret history of America's "extraordinary rendition" program,' by Jane Mayer. The case is officially styled Arar v. Ashcroft, and the documents are posted at Center for Constitutional Rights here, along with a description of the case and links to videos from CNN, CSpan, YouTube, audio from NPR and links to articles from the New York Times. There is also a nice timeline which simplifies the story, which can be confusing in the more emotionally fraught full stories.

The decision from the Court of Appeals is posted here as a single PDF document, but there is a majority opinion, and then a series of separate opinions and dissents totally 124 pages, according to the New York Law Journal. Be sure to watch for Guido Calabresi's dissent:

"In its utter subservience to the executive branch, its distortion of Bivens doctrine, its unrealistic pleading standards, its misunderstanding of the [Torture Victim Protection Act] and of §1983, as well as in its persistent choice of broad dicta where narrow analysis would have sufficed, the majority opinion goes seriously astray," Judge Calabresi wrote. "It does so, moreover, with the result that a person—whom we must assume (a) was totally innocent and (b) was made to suffer excruciatingly (c) through the misguided deeds of individuals acting under color of federal law—is effectively left without a U.S. remedy." (snip)

"[B]ecause I believe that when the history of this distinguished court is written, today's majority decision will be viewed with dismay, I add a few words of my own, 'more in sorrow than in anger,'" he wrote, quoting Act I, Scene 2, of "Hamlet."

"[The majority] has engaged in what properly can be described as extraordinary judicial activism. It has violated long-standing canons of restraint that properly must guide courts when they face complex and searing questions that involve potentially fundamental constitutional rights. It has reached out to decide an issue that should not have been resolved at this stage of Arar's case."

Mr. Arar released a statement through the Center for Constitutional Rights.

"After seven years of pain and hard struggle it was my hope that the court system would listen to my plea and act as an independent body from the executive branch," Mr. Arar said. "Unfortunately, this recent decision and decisions taken on other similar cases, prove that the court system in the United States has become more or less a tool that the executive branch can easily manipulate through unfounded allegations and fear mongering. If anything, this decision is a loss to all Americans and to the rule of law."

(quote from the New York Law Journal article). Check here for the press release from the Center for Constitutional Rights, which is representing Mr. Arar.

Image of Mr. Arar is from the BBC News website reporting here on the U.S. court rejecting Mr. Arar's claim.

Professor Warren Takes on the Credit Industry

I had the pleasure of serving as the library liaison to Professor Elizabeth Warren when I worked at the University of Pennsylvania Law School. She has since moved on to Harvard Law School, where she specializes in commercial law and bankruptcy law. Her treatises on bankruptcy have been very influential, drawing as they do on empirical methods to paint vivid portraits of real people caught in the web of debt. Threee of the best known are As We Forgive Our Debtors: Bankruptcy and Consumer Credit in America, The Fragile Middle Class: Americans in Debt, and The Two-Income Trap: Why Middle-Class Mothers and Fathers Are Going Broke. Through her scholarship, she has helped to change the image of debtors, sometimes characterized as wastrels and spendthrifts, to that of victims of predatory lending practices. During the current debate over health care reform, one of the themes has been the number of people who have declared bankruptcy because of medical debt caused by lack of health insurance. Professor Warren has been instrumental in bringing this issue to the forefront of the debate.

She is the subject of an entertaining article in today's Boston Globe. Professor Warren came from a family that struggled after a series of financial reversals. Both of her parents worked, but things were always difficult for them. This experience helps her to empathize with other families that are struggling despite hard work. She has proposed a new federal agency, the Consumer Financial Protection Agency, which is the subject of a bill, H.R. 3126, that was introduced on July 8 by Representative Barney Frank. It passed the House Financial Services Committee on October 29, but faces opposition in the full House and Senate. If approved, the new agency would regulate consumer financial products, and is vehemently opposed by business groups. Some in the business community accuse Professor Warren of positioning herself to be the director of the agency if it comes into being, but she feels any such discussion is "premature." In the meantime, she continues to teach and to serve as TARP overseer.

Kindle Review

A cogent review of the Kindle reader was published in today's Inside Higher Education. Written by Alex Golub, who teaches at the University of Hawaii at Manoa, the review discusses whether Kindle is appropriate for use by academics. He concludes that Kindle's current design is best suited to pleasure reading and not to reading of academic texts--"the Kindle makes moving back and forth between endnotes, body text, and bibliographic material a tremendous pain--a key concern for scholars who read by moving through the main text of a book and its scholarly apparatus simultaneously." It is also difficult, if not impossible, to mark up the text on the Kindle, something that many academics do while reading print texts. Golub concludes that Kindle and its competitors "are not ready for prime time yet, [but] they are stil great places to outsource our pleasure reading and reference libraries. And soon they might be good for even more." I like the tone of this review--it is evenhanded and balanced.

Helping Our Students Bridge the Gap: Expert Legal Researchers

I have spent a couple decades by now teaching legal research. I started with the optimistic idea that I could just pour the information into students' heads. Well, not quite that naive, but nearly. Early on, we lectured, and then gave our students worksheets, and reading assignments to introduce them to the various research tools. But over the years, I began to feel that the lecture was really not doing much, and the worksheets were where the learning (if any) was happening. I thought back to my own days as a library school student. The bibliography classes were hugely time- consuming, but we really learned how to understand all those different tools, how to teach ourselves new resources in the future, and how to evaluate and choose them, too. I thought, that is what I think the law students really need. Nearly anything I teach them NOW will be different by the time they graduate. So, I went to work on creating a bunch of worksheets that showed the law students how to look under the hood at various types of legal research tools.

Then, I spent the next decade or so scaling them back... Ahem. Those bibliography classes WERE very time-consuming after all. I do read all the comments on my student evaluations, and take them very seriously. I was practically killing my students. So, after continual tinkering, I have seriously stream-lined the worksheets, but the core of the class is basically the same... For most of the classes, the students have a worksheet to complete beforehand. They have a reading assignment that will help them understand what is going on, if the resources are strange. Then, the class is mostly spent discussing what they found and how they found it, and what they thought about what their experience was. I don't really care WHAT they find, so much as HOW they find it, and there are a LOT of different ways to find things. The discussion is the whole thing. What they liked, and didn't like. What worked and what didn't .... And why do they think it didn't.

I did not really have words to explain this until I was reading a book for a reading group I signed up for at our Teaching Center. Metacognition is one word that explains part of what is going on in my class. Metacognition is thinking about knowing. And it seems to be one step toward deeper understanding of any subject... to think about what you know, and how you know it -- the process of learning. It's a hot topic in cognitive psychology applied to learning theory. The book I'm reading is Why Don't Students Like School: A cognitive scientist answers questions about how the mind works and what it means for the classroom, by Daniel T. Willingham (San Francisco: Jossey-Bass) 2009. (WDSLS)

In WDSLS, Willingham makes a number of points useful to classroom teachers at all levels, from kindergarten through college and post-graduate levels. The book is easy to read, and moderately entertaining, and the points are easy to pull out of the text, laid out in special fonts and boxes. There are entertaining illustrations and puzzles to help make his points. But I did not really catch fire, feeling that I saw a strong connection between this book and my own thinking about the problems of teaching legal research, until about two thirds of the way through.

Suddenly, at page 104, Willingham is talking about the difference between experts and novices:

... transfer [of previous learning to new situations] is so difficult because novices tend to focus on surface features [that is the surface difference between problems] and are not very good at seeing the abstract, functional relationships among problems that are key to solving them [that is, seeing the abstract similarities that make problems analogous, so one can transfer the solution of a previous problem to the new problem]. Well that is what experts are great at. They have representations of problems and situations in their long-term memories and those representations are abstract. That's why experts are able to ignore unimportant details and home in on useful information; thinking functionally makes it obvious what's important. That's also why they show good transfer to new problems. New problems differ in surface structure, but experts recognize the deep, abstract structure. That's also why their judgments usually are sensible, even if they are not quite right.

This is what lawyers and librarians mean when they say, "You get a feel for the shape of the law." They mean that after you do enough legal research, you begin to see the underlying similarities that let you solve the research problem by recognizing the abstract, functional relationship to previous research problems you have solved, which may look on the surface like very different problems. And you can very quickly guess where the answer will lie, and look for it much more efficiently. But it has never been something I could articulate for students any more clearly than the little quip about knowing the shape of the law.

And I now have a way to articulate for my students what I am trying to do with the classroom discussions. If they will discuss and argue about what they find, not to show me or get my approval, but to explain to themselves and help themselves see what they know and how they came to know it, they will be stepping much farther along the path toward making themselves into experts. They will be taking the time they spent on the worksheets and supercharging it, by making it into a much richer experience.