For decades, legal footnotes have been the deserving target of both ample criticism and self-mockery. Apart from their complaints as to footnotes’ mere existence, most critics draw a bead on the ballooning of footnote content. Some journal editors, aspiring to respond to this sound theme, hopefully inform their authors of a preference for “light footnoting.” But where does an author begin to trim, and what editor has the audacity to slash what the author (or her research assistant) has so laboriously compiled below the line? Changing our footnote habits is about benefits and costs. To gain the former, we must ante up. If criticism began the round of bidding, this article modestly raises the stakes, suggesting a rule of reason that might govern the author’s, the editor’s, and the reader’s expectations for footnotes. A gamble, perhaps, but one that might be worth taking.
Source: LSN Law & Rhetoric Vol. 2 No. 90, 12/18/2009
Six years ago, African Heads of State and Government came up with a jointly crafted and broadly supported agenda for advancing the basic values of democracy and good governance which together constitute the key requirements for the sustainable economic growth and development of their countries. The continental agenda, designated as the ‘African Peer Review Mechanism (APRM)’, has grown from strength to strength.
This Report candidly elucidates the challenges Nigeria faces, including managing its diversity in nation-building, reducing the country’s over-dependence on oil and providing public services to its 140 million inhabitants. The Report also recognises the sound initiatives that have been taken with a view to addressing these challenges. Notably, the Federal Character principle and the Council of State initiative, which are enshrined in the country’s constitution, are already yielding tangible results in nation-building. Nigeria has also made commendable efforts in tackling corruption through the establishment of institutions such as the Economic and Financial Crime Commission (EFCC). The Report has highlighted the remarkable leadership shown by President Yar’Adua in not only adhering to the constitutional requirements to declare his assets and liabilities before the Code of Conduct Bureau, but also going beyond the call of duty and making his declaration public. It is hoped that this example will be emulated at all levels of the public service and among ordinary citizens, for the betterment of the country.
We are convinced that the APRM will play a significant role in promoting courageous reforms that are needed to bring about changes in the political and economic environments of our countries, and in the living conditions of our populations. It is gratifying to note that, to date, 29 members of the African Union are currently participating in the APRM.
Christopher Hodges, Stefan Vogenauer and Magdalena Tubilacka have published the following article on SSRN: Costs and Funding of Civil Litigation: A Comparative Study.
Costs and Funding of Civil Litigation: A Comparative Study
Abstract: The paper analyzes changes in the constitution, law and legal culture in Venezuela under the presidency of Hugo Chavez. In this period the main function of the constitution has been to express the political project of those in power. The 1999 constitution reflected a mixed project of democracy and socialism. Beginning in 2002 the government strengthened its socialist-authoritarian nature. This produced the need to change the constitution, as it was attempted in 2007. This attempted was defeated and the government introduced the changes trough legislation, profiting its tight control of the National Assembly. In 2009 the government won a referendum suppressing the limits for reelection of the President of the Republic, a part of the refused reform of 2007. The constitution and the legal system have become instruments for the actual implantation of a socialist regime in the country. All the branches of public power are controlled by Chavez and all contributed to his socialist project. The paper describes the way the legislation has been dominated by the executive branch and how the judges have become part of the political apparatus of the state.
The number one best-selling product on Amazon.com this holiday season is the Kindle. Visit sony.com and you’ll see a big push for the Sony Reader. The same is true with Barnes & Noble and the new Nook.
As a book junkie, I confess I don’t understand what the fuss is all about. E-readers are expensive, the screens are small and drab, and the interfaces are clunky and slow. I’m not saying “don’t buy a Kindle” — I understand the convenience of putting a lot of books on a small, light device. The e-books are cheaper than their print brethren, and yes, it is kind of cool to be able to say you have a library in the palm of your hand. But books can be obtained FREE at the library, most people who aren’t students don’t carry more than one book around, and books are ridiculously easy to use.
More importantly, where is the fun in a one-dimensional informational gadget? Hasn’t the smart phone taught the e-reader makers that we want to be able to surf the Web, send texts and emails, listen to music, watch videos, and make phone calls all in one device?
Well, maybe it has. The major magazine publishers have recently piped up to unveil a prototype for a digital magazine concept that ideally works on a tablet-like computer. TechCrunch has excellent coverage of the prototype in a recent post, a video from which is below.
It will be interesting to see if the e-magazine concept takes off the way the e-book concept seems to have done. One aspect of this digital magazine prototype that I find inherently more interesting is the way the content is re-imagined for the digital medium. This concept isn’t just re-distributing the same print magazine like the e-readers are doing, it’s adding interactivity and inter-connectivity.
Another possible game changer is the much-rumored Apple tablet computer, which is speculated to be smaller and lighter than current tablet PC’s. Supposedly set for a 2010 release, the Apple tablet may become the iPhone of e-readers–in other words a “must-have” type of portable device that can not only run applications and play music, but can also display e-books and e-magazines, dynamically and in full color. As a September 2009 Gizmodo post points out:
Some [Gizmodo's writer has] talked to believe the initial content will be mere translations of text to tablet form. But while the idea of print on the Tablet is enticing, it’s nothing the Kindle or any E-Ink device couldn’t do. The eventual goal is to have publishers create hybridized content that draws from audio, video and interactive graphics in books, magazines and newspapers, where paper layouts would be static. And with release dates for Microsoft’s Courier set to be quite far away and Kindle stuck with relatively static E-Ink, it appears that Apple is moving towards a pole position in distribution of this next-generation print content. First, it’ll get its feet wet with more basic repurposing of the stuff found on dead trees today.
It seems likely, then, that with Apple’s tablet, and Microsoft’s similar device the “Courier” on the way, current e-readers are probably just the first wave before a much larger and more interesting tablet computer invasion.
UPDATE [12/15/2009] : It’s worth mentioning that there is a wave of color e-readers on the way, too. Qualcomm’s Mirasol-equipped e-readers, featuring a mirroring amplification display system that can split ambient light into colors, are scheduled for production in 2010. (An interesting twist is a potential video game controller add-on — perfect for study breaks.) Pixtronix is developing an energy-efficient color pixel technology with the PerfectLight Display, which could find its way onto other e-readers. Meanwhile, Liquavista, a spin-off from electronics giant Philips, will use oil, water, and electricity in a technique known as electrowetting to produce color e-reader displays that use little power. All of these technologies take advantage of ambient light to make text more readable and less energy-consuming than LCD screens commonly found on computers and smart phones today, and unlike the current E-ink readers, allow for color and video.
Google Scholar has three people. Not just on the legal portion of Google Scholar, there are three people total on the entire project.
And one of these three people is less than a full self. That’s Google’s Rick Klau who recently gave a fascinating guest lecture to our advanced legal research class. Rick told us that he became involved with the legal project by using his “20% time.”
[Update and correction: Rick is not one of the 3 who make up the core team - he explains it best himself, in the comment to this post.]
Rick explained to us that Google is not investing a lot of people-time in the project and the case analysis will be accomplished by what Google does best — automated searching and links. Most certainly Google is not about to hire thousands of editors (like Wexisberg have all done) to carefully craft case summaries and headnotes. As Rick said, “Google is being Googly” with its underlying search and PageRank tools.
Who was SLOJ designed for? Rick said he had his mom in mind — as a member of the public who does not have access to Wexisberg.
And the public has found its way to the site. Before Rick’s talk we gave our class an assignment and one question was to find a certain case on a free website. We gave this assignment after SLOJ launched and made the press (including a round of discussion on the law school’s internal “law-talk” listserv) — and every student turned to Google Scholar to answer this question!
Following Rick’s talk, and despite all the disclaimers and comments that Google is not competing with Wexisberg, one student sent us this comment about SLOJ:
First, thank you so much for arranging this talk! I was hoping it was someone from google. It seems that they have a very specific market to target and they are trying to stick to it. As skeptical as he seemed about attorneys using it, though, I think it will be exceedingly helpful. At the very least, it will be a good, free starting point which can then be used in West/Lexis.
I think she’s right! Google is impressive and what just a very few engineers have done is amazing. And they aren’t done either; I am sure of that.
Oseo is a Korean legal database. Although it charges for its content, Oseo also provides some free content, including links to legal forms, legal news, law libraries, databases of case law and statutes, and legal guides. All information is available exclusively in Korean.
The Green Party of England and Wales is proposing that the UN establish a Global Human Rights Index (GloHRI), which would measure and rank each country according to its conformity with international human rights standards.
Using an objective points system, GloHRI would measure every country, based on its compliance with a check-list of agreed human rights norms, such as whether or not it has the death penalty, detention without trial, freedom of the media, the right to protest, equal rights for women and minorities and so on.
This simple, accessible index would enable objective comparisons between the human rights records of different countries, and permit the identification of whether each individual country’s human rights record was, year-on-year, improving or deteriorating.
Published annually, GloHRI would document where each state upholds or violates human rights; providing an incentive for all nations to improve their human rights record and ranking.
Executive Summary
In 2008, Americans consumed information for about 1.3 trillion hours, an average of almost 12 hours per day. Consumption totaled 3.6 zettabytes and 10,845 trillion words, corresponding to 100,500 words and 34 gigabytes for an average person on an average day. A zettabyte is 10 to the 21st power bytes, a million million gigabytes. These estimates are from an analysis of more than 20 different sources of information, from very old (newspapers and books) to very new (portable computer games, satellite radio, and Internet video). Information at work is not included.
We defined “information” as flows of data delivered to people and we measured the bytes, words, and hours of consumer information. Video sources (moving pictures) dominate bytes of information, with 1.3 zettabytes from television and approximately 2 zettabytes of computer games. If hours or words are used as the measurement, information sources are more widely distributed, with substantial amounts from radio, Internet browsing, and others. All of our results are estimates.
Previous studies of information have reported much lower quantities. Two previous How Much Information? studies, by Peter Lyman and Hal Varian in 2000 and 2003, analyzed the quantity of original content created, rather than what was consumed. A more recent study measured consumption, but estimated that only .3 zettabytes were consumed worldwide in 2007.
Hours of information consumption grew at 2.6 percent per year from 1980 to 2008, due to a combination of population growth and increasing hours per capita, from 7.4 to 11.8. More surprising is that information consumption in bytes increased at only 5.4 percent per year. Yet the capacity to process data has been driven by Moore’s Law, rising at least 30 percent per year. One reason for the slow growth in bytes is that color TV changed little over that period. High-definition TV is increasing the number of bytes in TV programs, but slowly.
The traditional media of radio and TV still dominate our consumption per day, with a total of 60 percent of the hours. In total, more than three-quarters of U.S. households’ information time is spent with non-computer sources.
Despite this, computers have had major effects on some aspects of information consumption. In the past, information consumption was overwhelmingly passive, with telephone being the only interactive medium. Thanks to computers, a full third of words and more than half of bytes are now received interactively.Reading, which was in decline due to the growth of television, tripled from 1980 to 2008, because it is the overwhelmingly preferred way to receive words on the Internet.
