Professor Chad Marzen of FSU's Business School has posted "Law, Popular Legal Culture, and the Case of Kansas, 1854-1856" (forthcoming Wyoming Law Review) on ssrn. His abstract is as follows:
In the wake of the movie Lincoln and the 150th anniversary of events such as the Emancipation Proclamation and the Battle of Gettysburg, more attention and discussion in 2013 is likely to be directed to the causes, effects, and legacy of the Civil War, in law and social impact. This article contends that there is one historical time and moment which should not be overlooked – the Kansas-Nebraska Act of 1854 and period of time with events relating to Kansas from approximately 1854-1856 which preceded the onset of the Civil War.
This Article applies Professor Friedman’s framework of popular legal culture to appeals for emigration to Kansas made by abolitionists and Northeasterners in response to the passage of the Kansas-Nebraska Act in 1854. Instruments of popular culture, including circulars, handbooks, music, poetry, speeches, and especially newspaper heavily influenced migration to Kansas from 1854 to 1856 as a direct response to the notion of popular sovereignty embraced by the Kansas-Nebraska Act.
This article concludes that by engaging in a close reading of Kansas rhetoric from 1854-1856 in the instruments of popular culture which responded to the Kansas-Nebraska Act, the significant change in tone helps to explain how popular culture and the response to the legislation led to the growing polarization between North and South prior to the onset of the Civil War.
I think Marzen is exactly correct to urge that we pay significant attention to how people tried to implement constitutional ideas — in this case popular sovereignty. While much of my attention of late has been on how people outside of the courts appealed to constitutional ideas to mobilize support for slavery (and here), in the years leading into Civil War people on all sides of the dispute over slavery appealed to the Constitution and law — and tried to remake it.
The image is from Gettysburg, where a lot of people interpreted the Constitution — in radically different ways.
Al, I enjoy this Blog and especially your thoughtful posts. I'd like to hear a denied from Filler with respect to Campos' allegations. In fact, I wonder why the co owners of this blog have not already demanded that denial or a resignation.
"In fact, I wonder why the co owners of this blog have not already demanded that denial or a resignation."
Jeff, I really, really hesitate to turn every post on this blog into something about Campos, but I assume the reasoning is something like the following:
1) For anyone who knows anything about Campos, his credibility is very, very low.
2) Even if the "charges" were true, it would be, at best, a difference of opinion as to whether there was any moral wrongdoing.
3) The "legal" claims are, at best, highly doubtful. (See, for example, the opinion of Orin Kerr, in a comment at Prawfsblog.)
Given that, I don't see how there is much to do but let Campos throw a fit and then go calm down, and the idea that people should demand Filler's "resignation" seems a bit hysterical.
"Difference of opinion as to whether there was any moral wrongdoing?" Care to explain how revealing people's e-mail and IP addresses to a third party so that third party can send harassing e-mails to people who disagreed with him can be considered morally upright?
This isn't about Campos–the people being harassed aren't Campos. The people whose credibility is in question is Leiter and the administrators of this website, and a quick Google will tell you all you need to know about Leiter's history on the internet.
Personally, I'm not really calling for Filler's resignation, but I would like an apology and a privacy policy that would state that TFL will not release that information in future.
" Care to explain how revealing people's e-mail and IP addresses to a third party so that third party can send harassing e-mails to people who disagreed with him can be considered morally upright?"
Sure- when you write obnoxious and stupid things about someone, you shouldn't expect that they won't try to find out who did it, nor expect that those who can find out won't tell. That seems obvious, and I see nothing wrong in the action, and even something good. Some doubt this, but in truth, I see absolutely no merit in their position.
What "obnoxious and stupid things" are you referring to? Disagreeing with Brian Leiter anywhere on the internet? Because that's what the people being harassed had allegedly done.
The administrators of this website chose to permit anonymous or pseudonymous comments. By revealing the information to a third party, the administrators breached an ethical obligation, particularly when that information was revealed to allow Leiter to send harassing e-mails to people who disagreed with him.
Prof. Brophy,
I'm not sure you're aware of this, but my comment was deleted and I'm not sure on what grounds. I'm actually one of your regular readers, and an infrequent commenter (e.g., on you historic photo guessing games).
My comment merely pointed out that a person under the name Matt was also unusually active in at least one comment section talking about Dr. Leiter more than two years ago, raising the specter of "sockpuppetry."
It really can't be that my tone was uncivil considering what hasn't been removed, including the content written by Matt. I've also never written any comment before on Dr. Leiter on ANY website. I just don't get it.
Thanks.
Anon at 2:54 — if you are one of the ones allegedly outed by this blog and harassed by Prof. Leiter, perhaps you can link us to whatever post you made, so the reader can judge for ourselves whether yours was an appropriate post or not. My personal view is that such an outing may or may not be appropriate, depending on the nature of the post.
Ganger (Brian Leiter) –
We know your personal view is that outing may be appropriate.
Again – As much as you're trying to change the topic, the point of all of this isn't what the posts actually said – the point of this is whether you (Brian Leiter) were given the email address and IP information of posters by blog administrators of The Faculty Lounge, or whether you yourself have previously-undisclosed administrator access.
Does any of this have to do with Kansas-Nebraska?
Nope, I'm not one of them, as far as I know. In any case, I'm not sure why you should get to judge. Unless the comments contained a realistic threat of violence, or something very similar, I can't really see a basis for this website to reveal information to any third party. I particularly can't see any basis for giving the information to Brian Leiter, of all people.
Brian Leiter:
"I did pursue the identity, successfully, of one of [Campos'] cyber-friends ("dybbuk") who Campos conveniently neglects to mention had the habit of bullying, insulting and defaming junior faculty and students (including one of mine), and I did succeed in getting his worst bit of libel deleted and he has now fallen silent."
Just for the record, 'dybbuk' doesn't seem to be terribly silent, Brian:
http://outsidethelawschoolscam.blogspot.com/2013/03/brian-leiter-professor-of-law.html
And, as has already been established, the "libel" is still out there, and more people are reading it than ever.
Nobody's Fooled — I would like to take this opportunity to state unequivocably that I did not receive any IP addresses or email addresses from anyone on this blog, nor do I have administrator access.
But then again, I am not Prof. Leiter. I would add that I think Prof. Leiter's post about the lawyer who wrote a snarky email to him was out of line, but there is not an allegation that Prof. Filler had anything to do with that.
Sorry to disappoint you and your crack team of detectives.
Can people pursuing personal or professional vendettas please make these pursuits elswhere? There are plenty of forums for people to post accusations and make personal attacks. A thread about the Kansas-Nebraska Act is not the right place for it.
In the meantime, you're just destroying whatever extremely limited credibility your side has in whatever the heck this dispute is about. No one cares about this except you. Since the illegality seems so clear-cut, why not just file your suit and leave TFL's comment sections? You can start your own blog about the progress of your suit and then fill us in on the verdict.
If the editors of this blog wonder whether your regular readership would support deleting off-topic comments, I give my support to such an action (including deleting this very off-topic post).
Finally, thank you for the link to Marzen's article. Bleeding Kansas is a fascinating and often overlooked prelude to the Civil War.
I don't know, your user name itself seems to provide a fairly good reason for ensuring that commenters on any post on this website know about its privacy practices (because people who post anonymously generally don't want to be harassed), at least until those practices have been clarified.
Those with glass houses…
Terry Malloy – could you point me to Lawyer's Guns & Money's & Inside the Law School Scam's privacy policies? Because I can't find them on those two websites. I will take a lack of response as an admission that 1) those sites do not have a privacy policy, and 2) Paul Campos is illegally selling nuclear technology to Iran.
I'm sorry, I just found the LG&M comments policy. I am not making this up, this is really on the LG&M website:
Q: What’s your comments policy?
A: Arbitrary random drunkenness. Does that count as a policy?
Wow.
I have no idea who Matt is but I am sure he is not Al, to whom I addressed a very simple question, because the answers are way beneath Al. So let's take a look:
"1) For anyone who knows anything about Campos, his credibility is very, very low."[So why not deny this accusations. What kind of logic is this.]
"2) Even if the "charges" were true, it would be, at best, a difference of opinion as to whether there was any moral wrongdoing." [If you allow posting by anonymous I think it can be assumed you will not "out" anonymous. The moral issue stems from not adhering the the poster's assumption that anonymous would remain anonymous.]
"3) The "legal" claims are, at best, highly doubtful. (See, for example, the opinion of Orin Kerr, in a comment at Prawfsblog.)"[I do not know about legal claims and would trust Orin or anyone with expertise on the matter.]
"Given that, I don't see how there is much to do but let Campos throw a fit and then go calm down, and the idea that people should demand Filler's "resignation" seems a bit hysterical." ["Hyterical"?, well maybe for you but I think it stands to reason that someone legitimizing the blog would want to know the values of the person they are supporting.]
Mainly, I am now persuaded that Campos must be correct. Otherwise there seems to be no explanation for the contributors to this blog, including Al, to hunker down.
A. I have no affiliation with LG&M.
B. No one has suggested that LG&M has given third parties information about people who post anonymous comments on their website (because their practices are in line with the reasonable expectation that an anonymous post will be, you know, anonymous). On the other hand, there are fairly strong indications that administrators on this website did give information on anonymous posters to Brian Leiter.
Therefore, I would like some clarification on what posters should expect from this website if they post anonymously, and warning people that, despite appearances, their apparently anonymous comments may not remain that way seems warranted.
Anon at 7:54 and Prof. Harrison — where on this website do you see a statement encouraging or even permitting anonymous or pseudonymous comments? I mean, people do post that way, myself included, but the actual instructions say "name and email address are required." I believe that is what it has always said.
So you wouldn't hold Campos to the same standards you're holding TFL to? Don't you find that odd? Shouldn't you be equally outraged that Campos' blogs do not have privacy policies?
You say the difference is no one has alleged Campos has shared IP and e-mail addresses. J'accuse. Recently Campos and his acolytes have outed several of Leiter's aliases. Using the same leaps of logic and standards of evidence your group is using, I have just presented credible evidence that Campos is sharing IP and e-mail addresses for the purpose of attacking and harrassing Brian Leiter. I can't wait to see dozens of contentious accusatory comments appearing on websites that Campos has some affiliation with.
And we still haven't heard from Campos about his possibly selling nuclear technology to Iran. I am this close to contacting the FBI with this stunning evidence of his possible crimes.
I don't care about what Campos may or may not have done. I have never posted on Campos's website, so his practices are mostly irrelevant to me. Why should I care?
Yes, people have outed several of Leiter's aliases. I'm not entirely sure that's the approach they should have taken, but I will say there is a fairly significant difference between attempting to out otherwise unknown persons who have chosen to remain anonymous in the hopes of harming their career prospects, and revealing the aliases of a well-known tenured personality who has already attempted to out and harass people.
And I'll add that "they did it too" isn't really a defense, particularly when you're talking to someone who isn't, in fact, one of those people.
Simple answer. Just like LG&M, ISLSS and most other blogs, privacy policies are not expected or required. People who are genuinely concerned about maintaining their privacy do not post anonymous comments to a blog that 1) asks for an e-mail address, 2) has no privacy policy, and 3) requires commenters to provide their names.
This is an entirely phony issue being used in the service of some petty fight between Campos and Leiter. If it was such an important issue, why did you and your colleagues wait until Campos started his hysterics on this issue? Why not press for a privacy policy prior to last week to raise this issue? And why not equally press Campos? The same flimsy evidence you have to accuse Filler exists against Campos. And why push this campaign on a thread whose topic is the Kansas-Nebraska Act? Are there no other venues for your noble crusade to protect the anonymity of anonymous commenters?
Honestly, if you don't feel comfortable posting anonymous comments to this website, then by all means, don't. If you feel the editors here have broken the law, then contact your local police department or file suit. Otherwise, stop bothering the rest of us who don't give a damn about this silliness.
People need to stop playing dumb. It's very obvious what happened: Somebody at TFL, almost certainly Dan Filler, gave Brian Leiter access to emails of anonymous commenters, which allowed Leiter to harass those commenters using his Aduren account. Having been nailed for disreputable behavior, Leiter is behaving like a cornered rat, pretending to deny the accusations against him while not really doing so, and splattering the internet with his increasingly transparent sock puppetry.
Meanwhile poor poor pitiful Dan Filler, either out of fear or some misplaced sense of loyalty, refuses to disassociate himself from his ever-more radioactive patron, despite the damage that proximity to Leiter is doing to Filler's career prospects. And the rest of the TFL bloggers are apparently too timid to pull the plug on this sorry spectacle.
The best place to be discussing privacy issues at The Faculty Lounge is quite obviously at TFL.
How about Dan Filler creates a thread about the issue so that everyone can stop posting and stealing all of the thunder from the Kansas-Nebraska issue?
They aren't generally required because most people understand that releasing posters' information to third parties so those third parties can harass them is a fairly obvious ethical breach. Normally, it wouldn't have to be written down. In this case, however, it appears that it is.
It's fairly obvious why I (and presumably others) didn't raise it as an issue before–because I didn't believe it would be necessary. Now that it appears to be necessary, people are pressing for it. It's not really that confusing, is it?
By the way, for someone who "couldn't give a fig about who's right and wrong in this dispute," you seem to be remarkably up-to-date on it, with strong opinions regarding the amount of evidence, the timeline of the dispute, and everything.
"For anyone who knows anything about Campos, his credibility is very, very low."
I have found him quite credible, actually. I have never actually met him, and I mostly know him from his blog. But what made his blog so useful is that he did his homework and was pretty careful about the facts. That's my sense, at least.
Ooooh, Orin.
You're on Leiter's list now.
Good on 'ya for standing up, though.
Maybe the admins of TFL are being quiet because most of their posts only get one or two comments and they like the extra attention and traffic.
Actually, I think it's more just some kind of stealth way to see Dan Filler and Brian Leiter get the bashing they deserve for what they did without having to actually do the bashing themselves. Honestly, have you ever seen this blog allow posts like this before?
Orin —
Some don't find Campos particularly credible because he has a career of being opportunistically contrarian (see, e.g., his stuff on fat, his history of urging the firing of academics for expressing political views — which our co-blogger wrote about here: http://www.volokh.com/posts/1172048647.shtml). As for his stuff on law schools, many view him as a johnny-come-lately, and his caricatured critique of legal academics seemed to involve a bit of projection.
JHA
JHA
Jonathan Adler:
When you say someone lacks credibility, you don't mention the New York Times editorial of Larry Mitchell – your Dean at Case Western – which was widely derided throughout the legal community – except by Brian Leiter, who mildly pointed out hat he failed to explain away the gap in BLS employment numbers and the number of students (but then Leiter has criticized the BLS data.) As Leiter put it, in a rare instance of him not calling someone crazy, "he makes a number of fair points." The rest of the audience spluttered up their coffee. Inter alia, did you help Mitchell write this self immolation?
That Campos was a loud voice in the savaging of Mitchell's quite asininely dishonest piece is hardly likely to dispose you well towards him – but remember, there were many beyond Campos who systematically demolished Mitchell's piece.
Got ad hominem?
Jonathan – does it seem strange to you that Orin would state, without any reservation/tempering/etc.:
"I have found [Campos] quite credible… what made his blog so useful is that he did his homework and was pretty careful about the facts."
When I read that comment late last night I thought it was either someone else unethically using the name "Orin Kerr", or maybe sarcasm if from the real McCoy.
'Concerned Citizen' –
Orin expressed a sentiment here that makes me believe his comment above is legit:
http://insidethelawschoolscam.blogspot.com/2013/02/goodbye-is-too-good-word.html?showComment=1361985471920#c4464212104992426043
More an attempted smear-by-association than ad hominem, IMHO. But still completely non sequiturishly distasteful. (Making up my own words now – hey, it's the intertoobs).
But "Got ad hominem" always brings for me an attempt to visualize a print advertising campaign for "Got Ad Hominem?" (likening it to the celebrity mothers' milk moustache campaign). Haven't come up with anything yet, but I'll keep trying.
Hi anonymous @ 10:14. I was a fairly frequent reader of comments on that website. Kerr posted from time to time. He often had arguments with the facts Campos chose to bring forth and the manner in which he did so.
The post you linked is what one might refer to a eulogizing comment – no one comes to a guy's funeral and kicks the dead man. Instead, they say nice things.
One other thing you might consider (says the anonymous concerned citizen as he reaches for his tinfoil beanie) – how do you know the link you posted was actually Orin Kerr's? After all, anyone could type in any name and website at ITLSS. Only people using logged in gmail or blogger IDs were certain to be themselves, you know. 😉 [*]
[* Actually have no reason to doubt that particular post, although my eulogy comment stands.]
Ad hominem – maybe, but on the other hand Jonathan Adler couched his entire posting in terms of an ad hominem – calling him " opportunistically contrarian" and then suggesting his motivation as involving "projection." It would therefore seem perfectly fair to point to the attacks Adler is likley most upset about and certainly fair to point out his motivation. Adler after all has a rather large mote in his eye too.
Still waiting. . .
Thank you, Prof Harrison. I was about to say the same thing.
Dan –
Did you, or any of the other blog administrators at The Faculty Lounge give Brian Leiter email and/or IP information for anonymous commenters, and/or does Brian Leiter have administrative access at The Faculty Lounge?
What is the privacy policy of The Faculty Lounge?
Thank you in advance for addressing these questions.
Pouca — The point of my post was to explain why Campos gets the reaction he does, even where (as on the issue of law schools) he makes some good points — albeit points that others (Henderson, Tamanaha, etc.) were making before.
See, for instance, this Horwitz post that I think is largely correct:
http://prawfsblawg.blogs.com/prawfsblawg/2011/08/no-longer-anonymous-but-still-not-quite-right.html
I have also criticized Campos before (e.g. for urging that professors ranging get fired for their political views).
I didn't pay much attention to Campos attacks on my Dean. In any event, my Dean can take care of himself.
JHA
Hi Pouca. Isn't that a Paul Horwitz post on prawfsblawg to which you linked? (I don't even think they look alike; why do people mix them up?).
Which post by Horwitz, by the way, Brian Leiter abused by using selective cut/paste editing in one of his (Brian's) own blog posts, to make it seem as if Horwitz's tone in writing about the dismantling of ITLSS was far different than it actually was. Always wondered if Horwitz sent him (BL) a nastygram about that.
Sorry, what was your other question? Oh, yeah, poor you, you see Leiters behind every bush and in particular behind every post you don't happen to like.
You might want to go see someone about that, you know.
It is Horowitz, my mistake – but by the way you sound increasing like Leiter (he also does not admit mistakes) –
You just made a classic Leiter style non-denial denial followed by a suggestion of mental illness. It is like a fingerprint.
Brian – have you discussed your compulsions with anyone – not only do they drive you to sock puppetry – but they also cause you to follow the exact same tropes – how do you think everyone spots you now?
"You just made a classic Leiter style non-denial denial followed by a suggestion of mental illness. It is like a fingerprint."
You're just too easy to troll; it apparently doesn't even have to be close. Did you read the entirety of my comment? Would Brian admit that he had abused Horwitz's writings by selective cut/paste?
Oh – you mention many luminaries of Chicago as co-signers of the letter. Found Judge P on the list. Can't find others. The word many normally implies a number significantly larger than one. Just sayin'.
Is this what you have been looking for?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t4-WdohdaHw
This clip is worth going through from start to finish; who knows, it might be the deciding word on this debate about Campos and Leiter.