What is Meant by Freedom?

In 1955, in a neglected article in the Harvard Law Review entitled Freedom—A Suggested Analysis, Lon L. Fuller provided a framework for the basic definition of freedom. More importantly, he tendered a question about the conditions of a free society: “How can the freedom of human beings be affected or advanced by social arrangements, that is, by laws, customs, institutions, or other forms of social order that can be changed or preserved by purposive human actions?” This is the critical question this Article addresses through constructing a comprehensive definition by first, considering etymology and then establishing the various modalities in which freedom operates. These modalities include the space defined by the rule of law and various antithetical non-rule-of-law states, the role of democracy and representative government in disparate levels of society, the importance of rights as trumps on power, and the challenges posed by social justice. Finally, Fuller’s question raises the issue of “laws, customs, institutions [and] other forms of social order,” all of which luminaries such as John Stuart Mill saw as unfortunate, but necessary, evils when considering freedom. Rather than necessary evils, this article will consider the productive role ascribed to law and institutions by Scott Shapiro, who views law as a form of social planning that effectuates choices, thus enhancing freedom

Law and Heidegger's Question Concerning Technology: A Prolegomenon to Future Law Librarianship

Includes bibliographic references.Following World War II, the German philosopher Martin Heidegger offered one of the most potent criticisms of technology and modern life. His nightmare is a world whose essence has been reduced to the functional equivalent of a giant gasoline station, an energy source for modern technology and industry. "This relation of man to the world [is] in principle a technical one . . . [It is] altogether alien to former ages and histories. For Heidegger, the problem is not technology itself, but the technical mode of thinking that has accompanied it." Such a viewpoint of the world is a useful paradigm to consider humanity's relationship to law in the current information environment, which is increasingly technical in Heidegger's sense of the term. Heidegger's warning that a technical approach to thinking about the world obscures its true essence is directly applicable to the effects of current (as well as former) information technologies that provide access to law. While technology enhances accessibility and utility of law, technology also obscures law's fundamental grounding in experience and language, thereby eviscerating its transformative power. The paper explains the nature of Heidegger's criticisms of technology and modern life and examines the appropriateness of their application to the current information environment, especially in light of Heidegger's early affiliation with Nazism and his subsequent denunciation of technologicism and technological thinking. The paper applies Heidegger's criticisms to the modern legal information environment with particular reference to application of technology to subjugate the law to the status of an information resource devoted to various ends. Finally, the paper considers the implications for law librarianship in the current information environment

Identity and Market for Loyalties Theories: The Case for Free Information Flow in Insurgent Iraq

When monopoly control over the flow of information is lost, the unavoidable consequence is destabilization. Information flow through a society can be understood as a market—not a market exchanging cash for goods, but loyalty for identity. Hence the market is called the “Market for Loyalties --so labeled by an economics of information theory first developed by Prof. Monroe Price, of Cardozo Law School, and Director of the Howard M. Squadron Program in Law, Media and Society, to explain government regulation of radio, TV, cable and satellite broadcasting. In post-invasion Iraq, Saddam Hussein lost or monopoly control over the information market, where loyalty and identity were exchanged. The consequence was the plummeting of loyalty that the former régime could command in exchange for its marketed form of identity. The result of the sudden opening of the market is chaotic and violent. New suppliers of identity hawk wares so potent, that the consumer’s loyalty extends to martyrdom in the form of suicide bombing (all for a few moments of temporal fame, and bright prospects of rewards in eternity). The current market for loyalties in Iraq is complicated by an additional characteristic—the impact of tribal structures to limit the number of effective buyers in the marketplace. Tribes function as brokers, restricting, the presence of competing buyers and functioning as resellers of identity in the marketplace. The dilemma for the United States is what to do about the new information market in Iraq—to clamp down and re-exert monopoly control, to stand back, laissez-faire-like, and let the market take its natural course, or to somehow manage the slide to equilibrium by carefully eliminating barriers and engineering the emergence of competitors in the market. This article will first present the theoretical underpinning of the market for loyalties in terms of neoclassical economics, emphasizing the importance of identity in this market. In so doing it will apply the theory to understanding many of the instabilities in Iraq and the Middle East. Second, the article suggests implications of the market for loyalties for U.S. policy. The article concludes that despite consideration of tribal intermediation of the information market, which must and can be addressed, US policy is not to win Iraqi loyalty by promulgating its own particular message of identity, but the creation and maintenance of an open and pluralistic market for loyalties within Iraq’s information environment. In such a market, diverse identities are sufficiently numerous to insulate the market from potential disruption caused by provocative messages hawked by radical and violent groups. In essence, this Article presents an argument for freedom of speech and information flow based upon market for loyalties theory

An Inquiry into Bloom's Taxonomy as a Hierarchy and Means for Teaching Legal Research Skills

Includes bibliographic references.Pedagogy requires both a theory and a consistent method of implementation. While the literature of law librarianship abounds in suggestions and descriptions about how legal research is being taught, it lacks sufficient consideration of pedagogical theory from the field of education. In light of the Carnegie Report, and efforts at comprehensive curriculum reform, the time is ripe for law librarianship to develop a comprehensive and properly grounded pedagogy for legal research instruction. This paper proposes and illustrates adapting Bloom's Taxonomy as a means to identify legal research skills, prioritize objectives, and organize course curricula

Ecological and Holistic Analysis of the Epistemic Value of Law Libraries

We examine the libraries\u27 roles within the epistemic foundation of society.” Our analysis is in response to the omission of Yale Law Dean Gerken of the role of libraries in her recent article about legal education\u27s new focus and to remarks by AALS President Vicki Jackson that suggest an uncertain role for libraries. We have adapted holistic ecological media theory, as developed by Ronald Deibert, to reject a technologically deterministic view of libraries as having no future. We have considered the role of law libraries in the social epistemology or cognitive authority of the legal community, the role of law libraries as knowledge institutions (in multiple facets), the function of technology (including language and media), and geopolitical and physical considerations. We have reviewed our past in terms of reading as a legal profession, considered the development of libraries, and have speculated about the future--all through ecological holistic lenses. We conclude that libraries are not victims to be sacrificed on the altar of technological determinism—they have many features, not only compatible with the current and future information environment, but valuable to the society embedded within it

Little-known and new copyright concerns for the educator

A brief introduction to copyright issues that every instructor and educational technology support person should know about copyright. And important copyright concepts that instructors should share with their students

Law's Box: Law, Jurisprudence and the Information Ecosphere

Includes bibliographic references.For so long as it has been important to know what the law is, the practice of law has been an information profession. Nonetheless, just how the information ecosphere affects legal discourse and thinking has never been systematically studied. Legal scholars study how law attempts to regulate information flow, but they say little about how information limits, shapes, and provides a medium for law to operate. Part I of the paper introduces a holistic approach to medium theory - the idea that methods of communication influence social development and ideology - and applies the theory to the development of legal thinking and institutions. Part II examines select historic and pre-historic cultures that emphasize different media for conducting legal affairs - stone stelae, clay tablets, papyrus, and oral verse. In concluding, the paper relies upon Heidegger's criticism of technological thinking. In the case of modern society, the legal environment and our conception of the past are limited by technological thinking (i.e., the reduction of all things as resources to be mastered and used toward some end). However, the challenge is to see, by studying past information ecospheres, the current boundaries of law's box and then to imagine what may lie beyond them. The UMKC selection committee for the Brenner Faculty Publishing Award unanimously designated the article from law faculty publications for 2005-2006 as the recipient of award

Law’s Box: Law, Jurisprudence and the Information Ecosphere

For so long as it has been important to know “what the law is,” the practice of law has been an information profession. Nonetheless, just how the information ecosphere affects legal discourse and thinking has never been systematically studied. Legal scholars study how law attempts to regulate information flow, but they say little about how information limits, shapes, and provides a medium for law to operate. Part I of the paper introduces a holistic approach to “medium theory”—the idea that methods of communication influence social development and ideology—and applies the theory to the development of legal thinking and institutions. Part II examines select historic and pre-historic cultures that emphasize different media for conducting legal affairs—stone stelae, clay tablets, papyrus, and oral verse. In concluding, the paper relies upon Heidegger’s criticism of “technological thinking.” In the case of modern society, the legal environment and our conception of the past are limited by technological thinking (i.e., the reduction of all things as resources to be mastered and used toward some end). However, the challenge is to see, by studying past information ecospheres, the current boundaries of law’s box and then to imagine what may lie beyond them