If you combine a journalist's fear of offering a personal opinion with her even greater fear of boring the reader, the result can be legal writing that is too constrained, while at the same time fixates on the details of the human drama at the expense of explaining the legal dispute. By contrast, legal blogging is wonderfully technical and detailed, but also largely accessible and opinionated. In the blogosphere, the taboo on opinionated legal writing has been lifted. Even better, law professors, who can be exceedingly cautious in print, sometimes become slightly drunk on the Internet's thin air. Whereas legal thinkers once limited their most serious scholarship to law review articles, occasionally nipping out into the dangerous world to write an op-ed, now many of them offer off-the-cuff observations about everything from partial birth abortion bans to their favorite CDs, several times daily. The blogosphere thrives precisely because it exists at the interstices of the ivory tower and pop culture. As a result, it's the most fertile ground for cutting-edge law talk.
Thanks to Ian Best (3L Epiphany) for reporting this.
[cross-posted on Slaw]
