Academic Legal Writing - Eugene Volokh [186]
I also briefly point to what I call the potential “anticooperative effect” of criminal law and tort law generally: the tendency of some kinds of government coercion, even when they are in the abstract morally proper, to deter citizens from cooperating with the authorities. I freely admit that the precise magnitude of this effect is hard to gauge, but I argue that the effect must be considered, both as to duty-to-rescue/report laws and as to other laws, such as prostitution laws, illegal immigration laws, and bans on carrying concealed weapons (see pp. ___–___).
Finally, I hope this discussion may be pedagogically helpful. Students often miss these sorts of indirect practical effects, and discussing the anticooperative effect in this context might help train students to analyze criminal law policy questions more comprehensively.
I would love to hear any reactions you might have to this piece.
Sincerely Yours,
[Signature]
I. FINDING WHAT TO WRITE ABOUT (THE CLAIM)
2. ... in cases you've read for class, or in class discussions
* From a graduate of a roughly #50-ranked law school, who is now clerking for a federal district judge: “I wrote my note on university liability for failure to prevent rampage killings on campus. We read Tarasoff in my first year torts class, and I found the idea of liability for failing to predict someone else's actions really fascinating. I would advise students to find something they're really interested in, and figure out a way to use a recent event (like the [Virginia Tech] shooting) as an excuse to discuss their interests.... [T]he judge told me the note played a factor in her decision to hire me.”
† A quote from a lawyer, who also writes: “I took a Privacy Law course ... back in 1997 and at that time the ‘big hot issue’ was whether websites should be collecting information about children who sign up to play online games, etc.—so in that class, about 5 or 10 people all said they were going to write about that narrow topic. Needless to say, I went running in the opposite direction, and picked a topic that almost nobody was writing about at the time—the online databases of sex offenders, and the privacy consequences. That ended up being a published note in the American Criminal Law Review and when I last looked several years ago, it was cited by the Ninth Circuit.
“Also took a copyright law seminar .... It seemed like the majority of the seminar participants were writing about infringement, so again I ran in the opposite direction, and instead wrote about licensing, including a proposal for various forms of compulsory licensing in circumstances where the copyright holder did not otherwise want any use made of his works. Not only did I get an A, but also I submitted it to the Burkan Memorial competition, won a modest cash prize, and ended up having the paper published in the Journal of the Copyright Society, and it was even excerpted into a copyright law casebook.”
3. ... in casebook questions
4. ... in issues left over or created by recent Supreme Court cases
5. ... in your work as a research assistant
* From a graduate of a roughly #75-ranked law school: “I got the idea for my law review article, which was about proposals to reform the so-called ‘bilateral regime’ governing international air travel, based on information I learned while working as a research assistant for one of my professors. The subject was tangential to what I was researching for him (European Union aviation regulations), but I really wanted to explore the topic further and it tied in well with my law journal's focus. I asked my professor for permission to recycle