My former student and current federal district court law clerk Josh Blackman has managed to get himself appointed to the exalted newly created position of official liveblogger of the Federalist Society National Lawyers Convention, which is taking place this Thursday through Sunday. Interested VC readers who can’t come in person may want to check out the liveblogging at Josh’s blog here. Among other things, Josh will probably liveblog the panel on federalism at which I will be speaking tommorrow, and a later panel that includes co-conspirator Randy Barnett.
This issue is well outside my areas of expertise. But commenters who know more about it than I do are welcome to debate the question of whether livebloggers should be considered members of the media, and if so whether they have the same legal rights as MSM reporters do.
Brian G. says:
I agree that livebloggers should be considered members of the media. I would argue that for many events, they provide a better service. For example, I followed the World Series of Poker final table this weekend through Twitter and two live blogs. The information was much better and more interesting than the edited and condensed news stories the next day.
In this case however, the real question is why is a Federalist Sociery member is clerking for the Federal Court?
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November 11, 2009, 11:25 pmJosh Blackman says:
Ilya, thanks for the link. If you would like to receive instant updates, please follow me on Twitter at http://twitter.com/joshbtweets or subscribe to the RSS Feed.
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November 12, 2009, 7:31 amtroll_dc2 says:
Josh is going to be sending information on public issues to the public at large; in fact, he has been given a special status to be able to do that. In his case, I cannot conjure up a plausible reason as to why he would not be considered a member of the media for all legal purposes. The First Amendment is not limited to specific media; rather, it protects a process and an outlet.
Perhaps bloggers who focus more on their own views than on telling the world what is going on should not be considered media members for all legal purposes (but they too would have First Amendment rights of some sort).
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November 12, 2009, 8:44 amJoe says:
C-SPAN is broadcasting some of the Federalist convention live this morning.
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November 12, 2009, 9:48 amDavidwhitewolf says:
Indeed, and it was quite feisty (as far as legal panels go). Getting ready for work (I’m on the West Coast) while listening live to a high-minded legal debate on property redistribution with Richard Epstein at one end of the table and the SEIU president (spit, spit) at the other end was pretty cool. I’ll have to check out the liveblogging at the office. Er, I mean, on my lunch break.
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November 12, 2009, 1:54 pmProfessor Chaos says:
The question isn’t why a Federalist Society member is clerking for a federal court; that’s perfectly unremarkable. The question is how a federal clerk has sufficient free time to liveblog the convention; I thought those guys were busy, you know, keeping the federal courts running.
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November 12, 2009, 5:01 pm