Parsing the Plagiary Scandals in History and Law

[Excerpt] “In 2002 the history of History was scandal. The narrative started when a Pulitzer Prize winning professor was caught foisting bogus Vietnam War exploits as background for classroom discussion. His fantasy lapse prefaced a more serious irregularity—the author of the Bancroft Prize book award was accused of falsifying key research documents. The award was rescinded. The year reached a crescendo with two plagiarism cases “that shook the history profession to its core.” Stephen Ambrose and Doris Kearns Goodwin were “crossover” celebrities: esteemed academics—Pulitzer winners—with careers embellished by a public intellectual reputation. The media nurtured a Greek Tragedy —two superstars entangled in the labyrinth of the worst case academic curse—accusations that they copied without attribution. Their careers dangled on the idiosyncratic slope of paraphrasing with its reefs of echoes, mirroring, recycling, borrowing, etc. As the Ambrose-Kearns Goodwin imbroglio ignited critique from the History community, a sequel engulfed Harvard Law School. Alan Dershowitz, Charles Ogletree, and Laurence Tribe were implicated in plagiarism allegations; the latter two ensnared on the paraphrase slope. The New York Times headline anticipated a new media frenzy: When Plagiarism’s Shadow Falls on Admired Scholars. Questioned after the first two incidents, the President of Harvard said: “If you had a third one then I would have said, ‘Okay, you get to say this is a special thing, a focused problem at the Law School.’” There was no follow up comment after the Tribe accusation. The occurrence of similar plagiarism packages in two disciplines within an overlapping time frame justifies an inquiry. The following case studies of six accusation narratives identify a congeries of shared issues, subsuming a crossfire of contention over definition, culpability, and sanction. While the survey connects core History-Law commonalities, each case is defined by its own distinctive cluster of signifiers. The primary source for the explication of each signifier cluster is the media of newspaper, trade journal, television, and internet. The media presence is the Article’s motif—each case study summarizes a media construct of a slice of the plagiarism debate. By author’s decree the debate is restricted to “pure” plagiarism: the appropriation of another’s text without attribution. The survey is conducted according to chronological order, beginning with History. Ward Churchill’s sui generis smutch from plagiarism continues to agitate media coverage. His argument that a dismissal by the University of Colorado for academic misconduct would constitute a cover for a First Amendment protected essay on 9/11 adds more challenge to the plagiary abyss. This Article concludes with up-to-date coverage of the Churchill narrative.

Law and the Balance of Power. By Stewart Macaulay

I dagens samhälle blir vi allt mer beroende av internet. Myndigheter försöker med hjälp av e-delegationen införa e-förvaltning. E-deltagande är en del av e-förvaltningen som innebär att medborgare får chans att lämna sina synpunkter elektroniskt via någon form av verktyg på internet. Tidigare studier visar på att det oftast är en medelålders, föreningsaktiv och välutbildad man som deltar i planeringfrågorna. Unga, lågutbildade och kvinnor deltar däremot mindre frekvent vid rådande deltagarmöjligheter. Denna kandidatuppsats har därför fått frågeställningarna: Hur påverkas medborgarnas delaktighet i planeringsprocessen av e-deltagande? Samt: Vilka möjligheter och hinder skapar e-deltagande när det gäller inflytande i planeringsfrågor? Studien grundar sig på tidigare skriven litteratur samt en fallstudie av två fall i Nacka kommun: Henriksdal och Fisksätra. Tjänstemän på Nacka kommun har intervjuats för att syftet med projektet ska klargöras samt att få en inblick i hur dialogformer fungerar i en expansiv kommun. Resultatet visade på ett ökat intresse för planeringsfrågor i de två fallen samt att det finns möjligheter för inflytande genom dialogen då den publiceras på hemsidan tillgänglig för allmänheten. Kommunen måste dock inte följa de konkreta förslag som inkommit utan måste göra avvägningar mellan allmänna och enskilda intressen. Slutsatsen grundar sig i att inflytande i planeringen är bra, men att det kan vara ett sken av inflytande i den kommunala planeringen eftersom frågorna som ställs till medborgare inte går ut på om något ska byggas, utan snarare vad.

The Waste Land of Law School Fiction

Reviews of: The Paper Chase by John Osborn; The Letter of the Law by Katherine Roome; The Socratic Method by Michael Levi

The Postmodern Infiltration of Legal Scholarship

For legal scholars it is the best of times. We are inundated by an eclectic range of writing that pushes the envelope from analysis and synthesis to the upper reaches of theory. Mainstream topics face fierce competition from fresh ideological visions, a variety of genres, and spirited criticism of the status quo. Young professors have access to a burgeoning variety of journals to circulate their ideas and advice while the mass media covets them as public intellectuals. There is a less sanguine mood; an increasingly vocal group of scholars complain that it is the worst of times and refer to the above paragraph as a proffer of proof. Eclecticism translates to postmodern relativism in law review drama that compares, unfavorably, male aloofness with the female nurturing instincts of emotional logic or presents highly charged agony experiences about birthing trauma. Yale publishes photography as art-commentary and ramblings on popular culture. Law professors as storytellers use stream of consciousness to circulate autobiographical tales of the racism and sexism of the callous, liberal, white male hierarchy. Instead of problem solving or providing counsel to judges and practitioners, law professors write for the approval of their new peers in the humanities. Professors Kahn and White reside in the last category. Ignoring the fracas and obsessed with self, professors gleefully keep churning out the unconnected fluff and more journals surface to absorb it, while critics seethe with frustration. Criticism has been enriched with two new insights - and challenges. James Boyd White of Michigan Law School seeks salvation in the use of the literary imagination to transform and elevate our vision of law. Paul W. Kahn of Yale Law School proffers an even more dramatic solution: stop the presses - scholar heal thyself