ProfessorBainbridge.com

A blog about law and social enterprise

Law professors Cass Brewer (Georgia State), Deborah Burand (Michigan), Haskell Murray (Regent), Alicia Plerhoples (Georgetown), Dana Brakman Reiser (Brooklyn), and a handful of practicing attorneys have joined social enterprise lawyer Kyle Westaway (who is also Lecturer on Law at Harvard Law School) at his SocEntLaw blog.  The blog covers issues and events related to social entrepreneurship and social enterprise law. 

Overlawyered takes the Boeing

Congratulations to long-time friend of the blog Walter Olson:

I’m delighted to announce that Overlawyered, a freestanding blog since I founded it in 1999, has now affiliated itself with the Cato Institute, at whose Center for Constitutional Studies I’m a senior fellow. Cato already publishes several blogs and its prowess in technical support, marketing, and press outreach are certain to help the blog reach new readers, look sharper, keep more current with blog technology, and be even more a part of the conversation about law and legal reform.

He's got details.

Pejman Yousefzadeh

An old friend of the blog, Pejman Yousefzadeh, has a new website/blog. be sure to check it out.

Blog Buds on the ABA Top 100 Blogs List

In addition to yours truly, a number of my blog pals were selected to the ABA's top 100 blogs for 2012. Kudos to:

Delaware Corporate & Commercial Litigation Blog: delawarelitigation.com

Because of its perceived friendliness to corporations, the Delaware Court of Chancery is where much corporate litigation goes down, and Wilmington-based attorney Francis Pileggi is a dedicated reporter of its findings. His excellent case summaries and explanations of Delaware law make this one to follow.

California Corporate & Securities Law: calcorporatelaw.com

Allen Matkins partner Keith Paul Bishop in Irvine, Calif., posts every weekday about the latest in corporate and securities law for California and Nevada. “A real joy to read as compared to other dull and dry academic presentations in this practice area!” —Alan Parness of Cadwalader, Wickersham & Taft in Manhattan

Overlawyered: overlawyered.com

“Overlawyered.com blogs about the American legal system that too often turns litigation into a weapon against guilty and innocent alike, erodes individual responsibility, rewards sharp practice, enriches its participants at the public’s expense, and resists even modest efforts at reform and accountability.” —Michael Schearer, a student at the University of the District of Columbia’s David A. Clarke School of Law

The Volokh Conspiracy: volokh.com

The layout, lineup of writers and libertarian leanings have stayed the same, as well as the blog’s focus on constitutional law issues in the news (although there is a little more about legal education in the past year). Which is to say, it’s still a great blog, and there’s no other one with contributors so engaged with each other that they’ll spontaneously post dueling updates on a topic within the same day—or maybe within the same hour.

Congrats to my friends at The Volokh Conspiracy

The Volokh Conspiracy has been named to the ABA Law Blog Hall of Fame:

The Volokh Conspiracy: The layout, lineup of writers and libertarian leanings have stayed the same, as well as the blog’s focus on constitutional law issues in the news (although there is a little more about legal education in the past year). Which is to say, it’s still a great blog, and there’s no other one with contributors so engaged with each other that they’ll spontaneously post dueling updates on a topic within the same day—or maybe within the same hour.

ProfessorBainbridge.com again named to ABA top 100 blawg list

I'm delighted to once again have been named to the ABA's top 100 law and lawyer blogs. I'm especially gratified by Francis Pileggi's kind remarks, which the ABA quoted in the announcement:

“Professor Bainbridge is often cited by the Delaware courts in their opinions due to their recognition of his expertise in corporate law. In addition to citations to his books and articles, the court also has cited to his blog posts. [UCLA prof Stephen Bainbridge’s] blog is required reading for those who want the most current insights on corporate law developments from one of the foremost corporate law scholars in the country. His perceptive posts on culture and current events are also enjoyable.” —Francis Pileggi, Delaware Corporate & Commercial Litigation Blog

This is the 5th time in the 6-year history of the award that I've made the list.

Brooks on Conservative Bloggers

David Brooks broadly categorizes some interesting young conservative bloggers, some of whom I already read and others of whom I plan to add to my reading list.

Law professor blog mottos

Some of them are pretty funny. 

Why I have two hit counters

It's not because I'm preoccupied with my stats or obsessed with climbing the rankings in Paul Caron's quarterly survey of law professor blogs. (Both of those things are true, of course, they're just not the reason for this specific decision.) As James Joyner observed recently, Sitemeter has been acting up for a while now:

I’ve been using SiteMeter since the earliest days* of OTB, going back to February 4, 2003. There have been some glitches from time to time over the years but, for the most part, it’s done a good job of tracking visits in real time.  It’s been down for three days now and, given that their website hasn’t been updated in years—they’re still “sponsored” by the old Truth Laid Bear site, which hasn’t been in operation in forever—I’m wondering if there’s anyone there doing maintenance anymore.

... SiteMeter has always had three advantages that kept it on my site. First, because I’ve used it since the beginning, it give me a steady state measure. Second, because it was so ubiquitous in those early days, it gives me a means of comparing performance to other blogs. Third, it lets me know who’s on my site and sending people to my site in real time.  Google Analytics, by contrast, tells me who was on the site yesterday.

In addition to the problems James notes, Sitemeter has been very glitchy lately. Sometimes the counter widget shows two counters. Sometimes the widget code wipes out the entire sidebar.

Like James, I'm pretty dissatisfied with Sitemeter right now. But also like James, at least for right now, I've used Sitemeter since the biog started and the three advantages he cites apply to my site as well. (it's sort of a path dependency story, kind of.)  But I'm going to experiment with Statcounter and maybe Google Analytics to see if I can get more stable and accurate stats, because if Sitemeter keeps resting on its laurels, there may come a time when those advantages no longer justify using it. (After all, sometimes following a path gets so costly not even strong path dependency can justify continuing to follow it.)

Solar Power Breakthrough Reported at UCLA

The LA Times carries an article today on a new solar film being developed at UCLA: (excerpt)

One of the holy grails of solar cell technology may have been found, with researchers at UCLA announcing they have created a new organic polymer that produces electricity, is nearly transparent and is more durable and malleable than silicon. The applications are mind-boggling. Windows that produce electricity. Buildings wrapped in transparent solar cells. Laptops and phones – or even cars or planes – whose outer coverings act as chargers. It might even be sprayed on as a liquid. The promise of cheap and easy-to-apply site-generated solar electricity might now be a lot closer to reality. Of course, the idea of solar films and solar plastics is not new. The breakthrough to making a transparent film, however, came with isolating only one band of light in the spectrum.

“[A solar film] harvests light and turns it into electricity. In our case, we harvest only the infrared part,” says Professor Yang Yang at UCLA’s California Nanosystems Institute, who has headed up the research on the new photovoltaic polymer. Absorbing only the infrared light, he explains, means the material doesn’t have to be dark or black or blue, like most silicon photovoltaic panels. It can be clear. “We have developed a material that absorbs infrared and is all transparent to the visible light.”...

 

via uclafacultyassociation.blogspot.com

Very cool. Makes one proud to be a Bruin.

ProfessorBainbridge.com's updated comment policy

Is available here.

Updated comment policy

Here.

Blog ranking

Paul Caron has posted his periodic ranking of law blogs. Although my blog has had a public site meter for a while, PB.com isn't included in the rankings. FWIW, during 2011, we had 646,397 visitors, which would have ranked 15th, and 1,046,349 page views, which would have ranked 14th.

Just keep on blogging

Dave Hoffman explains why he keeps at it after ten years:

I doubt that blogging has made me a better scholar. I don’t think my blog posts have made a bit of difference in public debates.  (It might have, but the effect is incidental and contingent, not by design.) I certainly don’t think that Concurring Opinions has built a deep virtual community (cf. Volokh) to play with.  (Maybe we should?)  When I look around, I can think of only a few examples of law professors whose blogging has moved the needle.  Then again, the same is true of long-form scholarship!  Blogging is a cheap form of self-expression, and it’s nice to own my own printing press. It is as simple as that.

I think blogging has made me a more visible scholar, but am agnostic as to whether it's made me better.

I think my blogging impacted at least one debate; namely, Harriet Miers. Matt Bodie, for example, kindly observed that I "was of material importance in making the conservative case against her." My blogging about the STOCK Act is the other case where I think I had an impact, since it got me in touch with key staffers. But that's about it.

I don't have a deep virtual community. I've stopped trying to build one. Indeed, my current attitude is summed up by the moment in the 1980 Presidential campaign when Ronald Reagan declared "I paid for this microphone." This is not a public forum. I pay for it. If you want a microphone, pay for one of your own.

At bottom, however, I completely agree with Hoffman's last point. When I was growing up, I wanted to be an author. I love writing and blogging has been a fun way of scratching that itch.

Big changes at Business Law Prof blog

Steve Bradford, Eric Chaffee, Josh Fershee, Anne Tucker, and Stefan Padfield will no longer be blogging at Business Law Prof starting next week. Since that's pretty much the entire masthead, who will be blogging there going forward? And why is the whole masthead quitting at once? Did Law Blog head honcho Paul Caron purge the incumbents? Did they quit en masse? Enquiring minds want to know, to coin a phrase.