Starting next week, I’m going to be dividing some of my blogging time as I try out co-blogging over at SCOTUSblog. SCOTUSblog is bolstering its commentary and analysis role, and as a part of that I’m going to be blogging over there occasionally about various aspects of the Court’s criminal law docket (and especially the Fourth Amendment and consitutional criminal procedure cases). My initial plan is to either cross-post those contributions at the VC or at least link to them to alert readers here. Of course, as with many blogging developments, this is an experiment. My previous forays into solo blogging and another group blog didn’t last very long, so we’ll see how this one goes, too. But I’m excited about the opportunity: SCOTUSblog has been one of my daily reads for years, and I think it has a unique and important niche in the legal blogging world.
Lior says:
SCOTUSBlog does not allow comments any more, so cross-posting would allow comment threads. Of course this assumes you appreciate our responses.
February 15, 2010, 12:03 amAlan Jeffries says:
SCOTUS blog is probably more legitimate as a straight up news blog (rather than a commentary blog) than is this blog, and Orin has shown in fits and starts that he is a partisan conservative (see his post about libs and conservatives switching positions on the very night of the election of ’08) so pretend as he may, he is a wolf in sheep’s clothing masquerading as a scholar sans partisan agenda (yes, I have liberal friends, and the like, yeah, I know, I’ve heard it before). But the agenda has always been clear, and just because he’s posting on a mostly news oriented website, nobody should be fooled. Yeah yeah, i know, i’m going to get a cacaphony of commentary “Orin is fair” ad nausem, but I know pepole (and work w/ them…and indeed, like them very much) like Orin in real life who try to play it close to the vest when their political orientation is worn on their sleeve, if tried to be hidden. Failure.
February 15, 2010, 1:18 amkrs says:
As if to provide a counterpoint to Lior’s suggestion that comments have value… “Alan Jeffries” swoops in.
Regardless of what one thinks one knows about Prof. Kerr’s political views, he’s one of the best 4th Amendment scholars out there and a very clear writer, so I’m happy to see that he’ll have an extra incentive to write about the Supreme Court’s 4th Amendment cases this year. Those who know “the real truth” can continue to see it, I suppose, and can continue to “unmask” it in the comments here.
Thanks to Carly Fiorina, the expression “wolf in sheep’s clothing” is permanently ruined for me.
February 15, 2010, 1:34 amOrin Kerr says:
Alan Jeffries,
I’m disappointed. In your previous comments, you have called both Ilya and Randy “naked partisans,”, Jonathan Adler a “shill” and a “conservative fool,”, and David Bernstein “amateurish”.
Don’t I deserve something a little more creative than just being just well, “partisan”? Can I at least be a “dangerous partisan,” or a “rebel partisan,” or something kinda cool and mysterious like that?
February 15, 2010, 1:49 amU.Va. Grad says:
Orin, Alan Jeffries is clearly paying you a compliment. You’re a professional, non-foolish, apparently clothed partisan!
February 15, 2010, 2:13 amShelbyC says:
You know what you need to do if you want to be called a naked partisan :-)
February 15, 2010, 10:40 amd says:
I knew SCOTUSblog is/was advertising a summer intern position but you’re totally stealing the job from a 2L or 3L who could really use the experience.
(just kidding)
February 15, 2010, 11:04 amkrs says:
As long as we’re speculating about the secret motivations of conspirators, I’ll say that this is obviously OK’s way of angling for some role in the TV series they’re putting together about Tom Goldstein. OK is, obviously, jealous of Randy Barnett’s experience working with Marina Sirtis. Anyone who disagrees with me is just blinded to the truth by their own biases. The signs have been there all along.
February 15, 2010, 12:03 pmtroll_dc2 says:
Alan Jeffries:
I probably would disagree with Orin about 75 percent of the time if we were to sit down and just talk. But he runs his part of VC like a classroom, and one of the side benefits is that he tends to bring out the best in the commenters (or at least most of them). In fact, if he were to abandon VC and everything else in favor of his own one-man blog, I probably would camp there permanently (and venture out only to harass Josh Blackman). Even when he discloses his views and I do not agree with him, I am impressed by his ability and willingness to explain himself and to encourage other people to test him. I do not find it rewarding just to read material that I already agree with or already have thought about.
So let Orin be a “partisan conservative.” I just don’t care, and I suspect that most of the people who read his posts don’t either.
February 15, 2010, 12:09 pmpublic_defender says:
This is good news. Criminal law was a weakness of Scotusblog. As to Kerr’s bias, I do think he has a moderate pro-government bias, but, alas, so does most of the judiciary. As Stephen Colbert might say, “modern legal reality has a moderate pro-government bias.”
I hope that Kerr encourages Scotusblog to permit some heavily moderated comments. Perhaps invitation-only comments might work. The information is on the blog is very useful, but it wod often be even more useful with comments from knowledgable readers (and when it comes to SCOTUS, I don’t include myself in that group).
February 15, 2010, 1:21 pmBZ says:
It seems that some of these comments assume that SCOTUSblog (which is a wonderful site) is objective, or at least non-partisan. I haven’t found this to be true in either political or jurisprudential terms. For example, a recent exchange between me and Lyle Denniston indicated that Denniston (for whom I have the utmost respect) was slanting his commentary based on his normative perception of where the Court was going. That’s perfectly fine analysis, but this was in reportage. He was fine with that in an e-mail exchange, but there the slant diminished what the Court had actually done in that case in a way which may have misled. But bottom line: it’s a blog, not a newspaper. A blog is to reporting as a painting is to a photo — the essence is not to be a perfect mirror. There is no requirement, even in a “news” blog, of the same level of “detached objectivity” which used to be taught at Medill or other journalism schools.
I applaud Prof. Kerr for venturing into the other end of the pool, and encourage him to branch out beyond 4th Amdt comments.
February 15, 2010, 1:50 pmtroll_dc2 says:
He’s been doing that. See his post on the Oren-Moslem student incident at UCI.
February 15, 2010, 2:01 pmpublic_defender says:
BZ, I think the main bias at Scotusblog is the practitioner’s bias. They regularly practice in that court, so they sometimes have to hold back what they really think/know is going on. I say this as an observation, not a condemnation. They add greatly to our knowledge of the Court. But their admirable restraint as practitioners is one more reason they should experiment with heavily moderated comments.
February 15, 2010, 2:18 pmSupremecourtjester says:
Then Happy Precedents’ Day to you.
February 15, 2010, 2:34 pmBZ says:
@Public_Def:
Oh, I agree with you on those counts. But I point out that there is probably no single “practitioner’s bias.” As anyone who has participated in a high-level Supreme Court moot knows, different practitioners have different biases. In one recently, for example, we mooted a former U.S. Solicitor, and the questions for two hours were on basically one procedural point, all of which came from former government officials. That was an important point and deserved much work, but the opinion ultimately turned on a different point, which was only grazed in passing at the practitioners’ moot (it had been addressed in the briefs). What we “think/know is going on” is important, but not infallible. It’s like old-style Kremlinologists: we try to see where the Justices will come down by seeing where they line up on the podium in old photos.
There are instances in which practitioners’ biases will line up without regard to political ideology (see, e.g., the legal briefs (not the media comments) in Citizens United). After several arguments with which I have been involved, for example, groups of practitioners repaired to local watering holes for decompression; left, right, it didn’t matter.
But not always. See, e.g., Crawford v Marion County.
And my essential point — that blogging is not pure reportage — equates with your comment.
February 15, 2010, 2:48 pmJay says:
BZ–I think what Public Def is saying (and I agree) is that SCOTUSBlog’s “practitioner’s bias” makes it ultrasensitive to doing/saying anything that might offend the court, or seem somehow indecorous. Absent the actual breaking news, the blog usually strikes me as somewhat stilted and boring to read (does anyone know why it covers even the most minor Guantanamo developments, including those in DDC and the DC Circuit?).
February 15, 2010, 5:28 pmI’m pretty sure their stated justification for cutting off comments a few years ago was that they’d gotten out of hand, or readers weren’t behaving themselves responsibly, when all I’d noticed was the occasional troll or off-topic rant; nothing out of the ordinary for a current events blog. Tom Goldstein also had a hand-wringing post a few months ago where he worried that the court would think the blog was a covert attempt to influence them, and so promised to start listing Akin Gump’s cases separately from the rest as to likelihood of granting.