Legal Scholarship: No. 2

Are "blawgs" -- law blogs -- legal scholarship? Can they be? There was very recently a panel discussion about legal scholarship at my law school. One discussant mentioned blawgs. But there was no discussion of the scholarly standing ofblawgs. (The talk was almost entirely about law journals.) In the blogosphere there is considerable discussion about the scholarly status of blawgs. See, e.g., Blogs: Scholarship (with links) at ProfessorBainbridge.com (a blawg).

It is a fair guess that bloggers have a more favorable opinion of blawgs than non-bloggers do.

It is true that the panel discussion at my law school lasted only ca. 90 minutes. Hence, there was not much time to talk. Nonetheless, the decision to talk almost exclusively about law journal articles and not at all about blogs is some evidence of the scholarly standing (or non-standing) of blawgs.

But blawgs are a recent development. Views about them will change. But precisely how they will change, I do not know -- and, at the moment, I won't venture to guess.