The Law, Blogs, and Why Senator Grassley Should Read Our Last Post

Personification of the Faculty of Law; Křižovnické Square, Prague, Czechia, sculpted by Ernst Hähnel

Yesterday’s post (among other things) questioned whether it might be too much to ask that a United States Senator (who has reaffirmed his opposition to a Public Option, but expressed an openness to Health Care Cooperatives) inform himself about a subject via a blog, or more precisely, posts on this blog:

This may be too much to ask, but Senator Grassley (or at least his staff) follows this blog on Twitter– or at least did before this post. But as regards the failed history of health insurance cooperatives in America, the essentially moribund state of those cooperatives which do still exist, and the difficulty of implementing an effective cooperative plan, he might be well served to read these posts by Professors Timothy S. Jost, “Jost on Cooperatives,” and Tim Greaney, “Market Entry by Health Care Cooperatives: Neither Quick nor Easy.”

Although we’ve yet to hear from Senator Grassley in regard to his reading (though last I looked, still following), the role of blogs in the law was nicely summed yesterday by the U.S. Bankruptcy Court, S.D.N.Y., in a decision in the General Motors case. The court cited Professor Stephen Lubben’s blog posts for the proposition that the word “‘interest’ has wholly different meanings as used in various places in the [Bankruptcy] Code.”  In fn. 96 (p. 54), the court directs:

See Postings of Stephen Lubben, Professor at Seton Hall Law School, to Credit Slips,http://www.creditslips.org/creditslips/2009/06/claim-or-interest.html (June 13, 2009, 8:25 PM EST); and http://www.creditslips.org/creditslips/2009/06/claim-or-interest-part-2.html (June 14, 2009, 6:42 PM EST).

Blogs are a fairly recent phenomenon in the law, providing a useful forum for interchanges of ideas. While comments in blogs lack the editing and peer review characteristics of law journals, and probably should be considered judiciously, they may nevertheless be quite useful, especially as food for thought, and may be regarded as simply another kind of secondary authority, whose value simply turns on the rigor of the analysis in the underlying ideas they express.

“Food for thought…whose value simply turns on the rigor of the analysis in the underlying ideas they express.” Well said Your Honor.

Professors Jost and Greaney are preeminent in their field. Senator Grassley?