on "the pocket part"
The Yale Law Journal has released a new online companion site called "The Pocket Part". It is named after late-stage additions to legal publications which include updates in the law and additional commentary released after the beginning of the publishing process. It publishes short versions of the journal's articles, short responses, and brief comments. The Pocket Part strikes me as an original and different medium for online scholarly communication, and I thought I'd bring my blog back from the depths of oblivion to write up my thoughts.
Professor Balkin has spoken highly of the Pocket Part already: "If The Pocket Part catches on, I predict it will change the way we think about law reviews and what one can do with them." Prof. Balkin thinks the Pocket Part is a "participatory medium that permits a continuous conversation and that is organized around scholarly work of the highest quality." He contrasts it with traditional scholarship which he calls a "one-to-many" medium - the effort and ideas are created and developed by one person, and are read by many people. While scholarship does overlap, in that authors cite each other, there's a big difference between a true conversation and cross-citations.
I don't think that Prof. Balkin's characterization is entirely accurate. I think the Pocket Part is a new and original level of the scholarship process, but I don't think it's a discussion forum, and I'm skeptical about its long term value and success.
Let me provide some context. There is currently a three tiered system of discussion of legal scholarship:
1. The top tier of the current system is the true one-to-many tier - the actual hard copy published articles. These represent a lot of individual effort and self-expression. Articles in this tier are part of a larger discussion process, but only in the sense that all of legal scholarship is interactive. The articles are foremost about the speaker and only secondarily about the exchange.
2. The second tier is the academic blogging community, which is a mixed bag of thoroughly written articles (such as many of the posts on the Yale ACS blog) and short comments on current articles and events. This middle tier has elements of both one-to-many and of many-to-many communications - there's a certain amount of individual preparation and idea formulation, and a large amount of exchange and inter-post feedback.
3. The third tier is personal conversation, which isn't a form of media but is an important element of the legal scholarship process. Conversation is almost pure exchange, in the sense that a true minimum amount of planning and forethought go into what is expressed by each individual (especially when I converse), because it is designed to get immediately to the point in order to get feedback from the listeners.
I would place 'The Pocket Part' between Tier 1 and Tier 2. The format is ostensibly that of a blog - it publishes an RSS feed, and it updates regularly. But there's a very clear structure and hierarchy to the site. There's the main article, which is described as being an "op-ed" length version of the Journal article; then there are two 'Responses' by established authority figures (in the October issue, a D.C. Circuit judge and a respected senior Yale professor); finally, there is a "Discussion" section, which is where student journal editors and others can leave their feedback.
The Pocket Part refers to the main article as "op-ed length", but the analogy does not stop there. Both the responses and the comments will be miniature op-eds expressing the opinion of the writer. They will more closely resemble Tier 1 communications than Tier 2 or 3. The authors will likely expend more effort in the development of their writings, and will perhaps direct them more to the expression of their own ideas than responding to others.
There are two elements to Tiers 2 and 3 that set them apart from Tier 1. The first is that there is no real quality or quantity barrier to contributing - you can say as much as you want, and you can put as much or as little effort into what you say as you want. The second is that there is a perception that you're not being professionally evaluated on what you write (though blogs are changing in this context - note the recent discussion surrounding Dan Devine).
The response section of the Pocket Part does not meet either of these. I don't know how the decisions are made, but I expect that they want exactly two 'responses', that there is a high barrier to get to be a responder, and that the authors of the response expect their responses to fully enter the landscape of academic detabe on the issue - after all, they give a suggested citation format at the bottom.
The comments section is a little better. There is at least no obvious quantity regulation. But they are (largely) written by student journal members. These students know that their comments may be read by their professors, future employers, the current YLJ board, and others who they really, really want to impress. This places an inescapable burden of accountability on the submissions, which leads to a high quality requirement and a high effort of writing and editing for each post.
Because of these differences, I'm hesitant to believe that this medium will lead to a real "discussion". It's difficult to really interact with another student's comments, because the cost requirements of each post impose a burden of time on already heavy schedules. The posts that are worth writing are likely the individual expressions - as I said before, miniature op-eds. These are the ones in which the student has enough personally invested to be willing to risk criticism and the other potential negative repercussions of posting.
This is not the online equivalent of Tier 3. It's instead a new level of Tier 1 communications, of individual contributions which require less effort than writing entire papers. This can make a dramatic change to the scholarship landscape, and it can add a lot of speakers to the landscape (which is perhaps Prof. Balkin's point). But it's fundamentally not a discussion, and I don't think that it can have the interactive, exchange-based value of discussions. I don't think this structure can lead to a great collective understanding of the issues in the articles.
I could be entirely wrong. Perhaps the student members of the journal can create a landscape where anyone can post a 2-line comment without a second thought. This could then be the environment I want - the interactive, collaborative discussion, the online Tier 3. But I think the external realities of the offline environment of the Journal and of the law school will keep this from happening.
Professor Balkin has spoken highly of the Pocket Part already: "If The Pocket Part catches on, I predict it will change the way we think about law reviews and what one can do with them." Prof. Balkin thinks the Pocket Part is a "participatory medium that permits a continuous conversation and that is organized around scholarly work of the highest quality." He contrasts it with traditional scholarship which he calls a "one-to-many" medium - the effort and ideas are created and developed by one person, and are read by many people. While scholarship does overlap, in that authors cite each other, there's a big difference between a true conversation and cross-citations.
I don't think that Prof. Balkin's characterization is entirely accurate. I think the Pocket Part is a new and original level of the scholarship process, but I don't think it's a discussion forum, and I'm skeptical about its long term value and success.
Let me provide some context. There is currently a three tiered system of discussion of legal scholarship:
1. The top tier of the current system is the true one-to-many tier - the actual hard copy published articles. These represent a lot of individual effort and self-expression. Articles in this tier are part of a larger discussion process, but only in the sense that all of legal scholarship is interactive. The articles are foremost about the speaker and only secondarily about the exchange.
2. The second tier is the academic blogging community, which is a mixed bag of thoroughly written articles (such as many of the posts on the Yale ACS blog) and short comments on current articles and events. This middle tier has elements of both one-to-many and of many-to-many communications - there's a certain amount of individual preparation and idea formulation, and a large amount of exchange and inter-post feedback.
3. The third tier is personal conversation, which isn't a form of media but is an important element of the legal scholarship process. Conversation is almost pure exchange, in the sense that a true minimum amount of planning and forethought go into what is expressed by each individual (especially when I converse), because it is designed to get immediately to the point in order to get feedback from the listeners.
I would place 'The Pocket Part' between Tier 1 and Tier 2. The format is ostensibly that of a blog - it publishes an RSS feed, and it updates regularly. But there's a very clear structure and hierarchy to the site. There's the main article, which is described as being an "op-ed" length version of the Journal article; then there are two 'Responses' by established authority figures (in the October issue, a D.C. Circuit judge and a respected senior Yale professor); finally, there is a "Discussion" section, which is where student journal editors and others can leave their feedback.
The Pocket Part refers to the main article as "op-ed length", but the analogy does not stop there. Both the responses and the comments will be miniature op-eds expressing the opinion of the writer. They will more closely resemble Tier 1 communications than Tier 2 or 3. The authors will likely expend more effort in the development of their writings, and will perhaps direct them more to the expression of their own ideas than responding to others.
There are two elements to Tiers 2 and 3 that set them apart from Tier 1. The first is that there is no real quality or quantity barrier to contributing - you can say as much as you want, and you can put as much or as little effort into what you say as you want. The second is that there is a perception that you're not being professionally evaluated on what you write (though blogs are changing in this context - note the recent discussion surrounding Dan Devine).
The response section of the Pocket Part does not meet either of these. I don't know how the decisions are made, but I expect that they want exactly two 'responses', that there is a high barrier to get to be a responder, and that the authors of the response expect their responses to fully enter the landscape of academic detabe on the issue - after all, they give a suggested citation format at the bottom.
The comments section is a little better. There is at least no obvious quantity regulation. But they are (largely) written by student journal members. These students know that their comments may be read by their professors, future employers, the current YLJ board, and others who they really, really want to impress. This places an inescapable burden of accountability on the submissions, which leads to a high quality requirement and a high effort of writing and editing for each post.
Because of these differences, I'm hesitant to believe that this medium will lead to a real "discussion". It's difficult to really interact with another student's comments, because the cost requirements of each post impose a burden of time on already heavy schedules. The posts that are worth writing are likely the individual expressions - as I said before, miniature op-eds. These are the ones in which the student has enough personally invested to be willing to risk criticism and the other potential negative repercussions of posting.
This is not the online equivalent of Tier 3. It's instead a new level of Tier 1 communications, of individual contributions which require less effort than writing entire papers. This can make a dramatic change to the scholarship landscape, and it can add a lot of speakers to the landscape (which is perhaps Prof. Balkin's point). But it's fundamentally not a discussion, and I don't think that it can have the interactive, exchange-based value of discussions. I don't think this structure can lead to a great collective understanding of the issues in the articles.
I could be entirely wrong. Perhaps the student members of the journal can create a landscape where anyone can post a 2-line comment without a second thought. This could then be the environment I want - the interactive, collaborative discussion, the online Tier 3. But I think the external realities of the offline environment of the Journal and of the law school will keep this from happening.
