ACS Blog Bye

The ACS Blog Writing Contest ends January 31st, which means you still have a week to write 250-750 words on “ a legal issue of national significance or interest.” Winners of the contest will be offered a position as “Editor-At-Large” for the blog, which means you'll get to write an article/column every two weeks on a topic of your choice. I did it last semester and enjoyed it except for the small problem that it often required serious work to find good sources and present my topics in the appropriate 501(c)(3) manner. Now, due to being seriously overcommitted, I have given up my position with the blog. But hey, that only means there's more opportunity for you!

I don't think I ever really linked to any of the posts I wrote for the ACS, but I will do so now before they are lost in the mists of time. They were:

• Trial Lawyers and Tort Reform: McJustice v. Public Protection—A sort of overview of different perspectives on what the Bush administration, HMOs, and much of corporate America would like to call “tort reform”; might make a good intro to the topic if you don't already understand it very well (this was republished by a Texas Bar Association, I believe).
• The Battle Over Prescription Drug Importation—Surveyed the states that were already importing drugs from Canada and discussed the reasons the federal government has not officially endorsed the practice.
• Health Care Costs and Drug Companies: Who Profits?—This was a followup to the above piece; was sparked by a great book on the subject.
• Job Security v Homeland Security?—Discussed some ways the Homeland Security Administration has used fear of terrorism to bust federal unions.
• Death and Justice for All?—A look at the incredible rate of state executions in Texas, focused on evidence that the law enforcement agencies in the county that sends the most people to death row are incompetent and untrustworthy.
• In Clarence Thomas' America, Many More People Are Executed—A rather lengthy mini-history of recent death penalty jurisprudence in order to explain why Justice Thomas thinks the court should overrule Penry v. Lynaugh (part of the Clarence Thomas' America series).
• The Peterson Case: Did Juror Removal Manipulate the Verdict?—A look at the rules governing judicial discretion in the removal of jurors after the controversial removals in the Scott Peterson trial.
• A Time To Be Thankful—Three legal things I'm thankful for (obviously I only wrote my small contribution, which mostly quotes other sources of inspiration).
• In re Disney: A not so Magical Spectacle—An overview of the derivative (shareholder) suit against Disney's Board of Directors after the multi-million dollar debacle that was the brief Michael Ovitz tenure as president of the company.

I still think the ACS Blog is a great idea, and that more organizations should do something similar. The ACS Blog went from nothing to a pretty considerable readership in just a few months, which suggests that there's an interest in a form of legal analysis that's somewhere between that found on personal blawgs and what you'll find in journals or books. Writing ACS posts I often felt I was basically just collecting resources on a topic so that people who wanted to know more about that topic would have those resources at their disposal. It was often an attempt at producing a sort of synthesis of topics that had fallen by the wayside or received only scattered attention in other, larger media. Blogs are a great mechanism for shining light in dark places, and the ACS blog does that with many legal issues. However, it ignores or gives scant attention to many others (for various reasons, including its 501(c)(3) status, its ideological preferences, a simple limit on the amount of time and resources it has available, etc.), leaving room for peers to help fill in the gaps.

At any rate, I'm glad I did it, I wish I could continue to do it, but I can't. In addition to cutting this extracurricular, I've also cut my part-time job from 20 hours/week to about 11, so now it should just be class and clinic (oh, and finding a job!) for the next few months. Mountains of reading beckon....

Posted 07:17 AM | 2L