Signalé à la fois par le SOCIAL SCIENCE RESEARCH NETWORK, LEGAL EDUCATION ABSTRACTS, Vol. 3, No. 31 : November 2, 2006 [1], et par le SOCIAL SCIENCE RESEARCH NETWORK, LEGAL WRITING ABSTRACTS, Vol. 1, No. 6 : November 8, 2006 [2], cet article traitant de phénomènes chers à Emmanuel Barthe. Il s’agit ni plus ni moins ici de traiter de l’impact de la notion de "référence neutre" sur l’accès ouvert et égal au Droit.

"Cite Unseen : How Neutral Citation and America’s Law Schools Can Cure Our Strange Devotion to Bibliographical Orthodoxy and the Constriction of Open and Equal Access to the Law"

Contact : IAN GALLACHER, Syracuse University - College of Law : Auth-Page : http://ssrn.com/author=514079

Full Text : http://ssrn.com/abstract=922714

ABSTRACT : This article looks at the phenomenon of legal citation and its unintended consequences. After considering the reasons for the American legal system’s devotion to precisely accurate and detailed citations and the history of American legal citation, the article looks at the effect the bibliographical orthodoxy promoted by the two leading citation manuals ? The Bluebook and the ALWD Manual ? has on open access to the law.

In particular, the article looks at how the required common law citation format prescribed by both of these manuals helps to consolidate the market position of West and LexisNexis, the duopoly of legal publishing in this country. After considering the inadequacy of some present-day open access legal information sites, and exploring why it is that market pressures make it unlikely that a viable commercial competitor to the West/Lexis duopoly will emerge, the article concludes that the best approach to ensuring that the law remain free and open to all is through the use of a neutral citation format to describe case law and the formation of a consortium of American law schools to publish the law on the internet.

On remarquera aussi, dans le même numéro du SOCIAL SCIENCE RESEARCH NETWORK, LEGAL EDUCATION ABSTRACTS, Vol. 3, No. 31 : November 2, 2006, cet article qu pourrait intéresser tous les enseignants de droit :

"Scholarship Advice for New Law Professors in the Electronic Age"

Contact : NANCY LEVIT, University of Missouri at Kansas City (UMKC) - School of Law

Auth-Page : http://ssrn.com/author=589402

Full Text : http://ssrn.com/abstract=939007

ABSTRACT : The article suggests that the legal academy is in a time of transition between promotion and tenure rules based on traditional methods of publication and contemporary electronic and interdisciplinary possibilities for publication. While a number of articles contain recommendations for newer law professors about the process of scholarship, most of those articles are between five and twenty years old and do not address publishing in the age of blogs, expedited reviews, electronic submissions, and open-access databases.

The substance and length of what law professors write, the formats in which they do so, and the fora in which they publish are evolving. This article breaks new ground in offering advice for those who have recently joined the academy on how to comply with promotion and tenure guidelines while taking advantage of publishing opportunities in the electronic age. Although it gives special emphasis to newer faculty and to issues raised by modern technology, the article is not limited to those sorts of issue. Professors who have been writing for years may find some useful nuggets about citation practices regarding blogs, the impact of recent law review limits on article length, electronic methods of browsing journals and articles in other disciplines, access to government documents, and posting on open-access archives.

Et enfin, toujours dans ce même numéro du SOCIAL SCIENCE RESEARCH NETWORK, LEGAL EDUCATION ABSTRACTS, Vol. 3, No. 31 : November 2, 2006, cet article retournant au sujet précédent sur l’impact de l’open access sur le marché de l’information juridique.

"Redefining Open Access for the Legal Information Market" Law Library Journal, Vol. 98, pp. 619-637, 2006

Contact : JAMES G. MILLES, University at Buffalo - Law School

Auth-Page : http://ssrn.com/author=68266

Full Text : http://ssrn.com/abstract=940789

ABSTRACT : The open access movement in legal scholarship, inasmuch as it is driven within the law library community over concerns about the rising cost of legal information, fails to address - and in fact diverts resources from - the real problem facing law libraries today : the soaring costs of nonscholarly, commercially published, practitioner-oriented legal publications. The current system of legal scholarly publishing - in student-edited journals and without meaningful peer review - does not face the pressures to increase prices common in the science and health disciplines. One solution to this problem is for law schools to redirect some of their resources - intellectual capital, reputation, and student labor - to publishing legal information for practitioners rather than legal scholars.

Notes :

[1] Editors : HANNAH R. ARTERIAN, Dean and Professor of Law, Syracuse University, College of Law et JEREMY R. PAUL, Thomas F. Gallivan, Jr. Professor of Real Property, Law and Associate Dean for Research, University of Connecticut - School of Law

[2] Editors : JENNIFER JOLLY-RYAN, Professor of Legal Writing, Northern Kentucky, University - Salmon P. Chase College of Law et LAWRENCE D. ROSENTHAL, Associate Professor of Legal Writing, Salmon P. Chase College of Law - Northern Kentucky University