Good points, Bill. I think I can say that I agree with your logic on this one!

Ah, great question. The lawyer in me (of course) says he's both a model and a warning. Certainly he was engaged in social issues, and certainly he made history matter to people outside the academy. I would encourage all humanities scholars to look to him for a model in this sense.

On the other hand, his engagement was normative in a way that I think historians especially ought to be careful of. It became easy for some to simply dismiss him and his work as biased, and therefore untrustworthy, due to his explicit "left-wing" views.

While I have issues with the potential existence of a true neutrality or objective perspective, and prefer people explain up front where they are coming from, I do think that explicitly advancing an agenda through one's work as an historian is potentially problematic, although making judgments about history based on historical evidence is indeed what historians ought to do.

When I speak of "engagement" with contemporary society, I don't particularly mean in a normative or prescriptive fashion. Rather, I was thinking of connecting history and historical events with modern issues, to help illuminate how we got where we are, how others have dealt with similar situations in the past, and so on, with the goal of giving people more tools to make better decisions about contemporary problems.

Good points, Peter.

In law school, perhaps in contrast to other professional schools, there was a strong resistance to "too much" theory, and a bias for instructors who had practiced professionally for at least some amount of time. Strangely, though, this did not translate into a focus on practical and professional training -- teaching still stayed in the "theoretical" realm (i.e., mostly discussions of appellate court decisions, which is not where most lawyers are going to be spending their practical time) and very little on client issues, for example, or preparing motions, or drafting contracts, or similar pursuits.

In the humanities, in contrast, there is no pretense of connection to "practical" concerns. Or, rather, practical concerns are theoretical concerns, since being good at academic issues is what gets you hired! I'd love to see more connection between humanities education and business or other professional pursuits, but there isn't so much of that as yet, as far as I can tell.

Good point. The dispute is hardly new (either to me or the world), but it certainly generates a good deal of controversy nonetheless. So I appreciate it when participants in the debate take a different approach and get outside of the old debate a bit!

All Things Considered on NPR just ran a story on Louis Menand and his book. Hear it at:

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?stor...

Good ideas from both of you. Certainly people I know--online or otherwise--are excellent sources, especially in areas I regularly pay attention too (Twitter excels at this, of course). But that tends to be fairly random, too, so it isn't always as useful when looking into specific topics, or topics I don't follow as regularly.

As to the source issue--I normally look to blogs more for opinion and analysis anyway. They are good for sparking ideas and new directions,

Thanks for your thoughts!

Agreed. I was always a little frustrated by PDF, though, because it never quite fit my netbook's screen correctly -- so I'm pretty thrilled by this new download format.

Google Books has made working with older books a fundamentally different -- and more flexible -- experience.

cloud supporter,

There are indeed potential technical solutions. Many libraries try to capture journal publications by their institutions in repositories to keep an archive outside of the journal alone. The U.S. government has even gotten into this by requiring NIH-funded research to be stored on their system (PubMed) as well as on the systems of private publishers. The Wayback Machine at archive.org is also a good resource.

Still, paper had the benefit of built in massive mirroring: once published, it was difficult to impossible to obliterate a publication (whether that was case law or not). Electronic publication does not have that same in-built defense (although data still tends to stick around electronically anyway).

I'm not sure a gov't solution is best, or even if we need a solution at all -- but it is unsettling to see the biggest repositories of case law quietly remove a case with no trace remaining on their systems at all.

Love the graphic!

Here's a free (via FindLaw) link to the (classic!) case you mentioned, for anyone interested:

http://laws.findlaw.com/us/248/215.html

Perhaps the courts could explicitly require signing over certain rights when filing briefs?

That might get around the need to actually change copyright law at the macro level. I might well be in favor of such changes, but it's harder - I think - than having filers agree to allow public access when filing their briefs.

I am in complete agreement that asserting rights in briefs, etc. seems generally pointless. But, like you, it does bother me to see companies profiting from the work of others without reimbursement. (It doesn't bother me much to give away access to such work without charge, though).

Many interesting possible implications!