SIMON CHESTERMAN, New York University - School of Law, Singapore Programme, NUS Law School
Email: chesterman@nyu.edu
THOMAS M. FRANCK, New York University School of Law
Email: FRANCKT@JURIS.LAW.NYU.EDU
DAVID M. MALONE, International Development Research Centre
Email: dmalone@idrc.ca

A unique new course book demonstrating the interaction of law and politics in United Nations practice.

Law and Practice of the United Nations: Documents and Commentary presents primary materials with expert commentary, demonstrating the interaction between law and practice in the UN organization, and also discusses the possibilities and limitations of multilateral institutions in general. Each chapter begins with a short introductory essay by the authors that describes how the documents that follow illustrate a set of legal, institutional, and political issues relevant to the practice of diplomacy and the development of public international law through the United Nations.

By emphasizing primary materials, the authors enable students to form a realistic idea of the work of international diplomacy, as the negotiation and interpretation of such texts is an important part of what actually takes place at the United Nations and other international organizations. The text presents a wide variety of documents, each of which must be read differently: treaties and resolutions based on political compromises, judicial opinions that are based on legal reasoning, policy documents intended to justify specific actions, and advocacy intended to pursue a national or other interest. Students will develop the ability to read these documents critically, parsing not only the meaning but the politics behind them.

Law and Practice of the United Nations is ideal for courses on the United Nations or International Organizations, taught in both Law and International Relations programs.

JACK LEE SAMMONS, Mercer University School of Law
Email: jlsjr@aol.com

Responding to well known challenges to any attempt to justify any principle for the protection of speech, this Article argues that principled protection of speech is justified because speech, all speech, has as one of its elements a participation in the same self-justifying activity that the aesthetic always is. To demonstrate what he means by "the aesthetic", to show the aesthetic aspect of speech, and to explain why this aspect justifies speech's protection, the Author takes his readers into the "polity of samba," an aesthetic cultural community, in Brazil in the sixties, as it defends its samba speech against the censorship of the "polity of common sense." In doing so, he focuses on the role played by the famous Brazilian composer, Chico Buarque, who, he argues, was the primary voice of the polity of samba. (Links to Buarque's most important musical compositions from this time are provided in footnotes.) From this Brazilian samba experience, and from Buarque, the Author argues, we can learn that expressive speech is always grounded in the ongoing possibility of the aesthetic and is always to be found at the boundaries between the polities in which we live our lives. It is this being at the boundary, and thus capturing our fullness, that makes speech special, that is, distinguishable from our other activities, and justifies the special protection that we offer to it. Showing how surprisingly similar conceptions of speech can be found in the early opinions of Judge Hand and Justice Holmes, the Article goes on to explain how such a justification for speech works in the law. It does so, the Author argues, in a manner similar to the way moral intuitions work in moral decision-making: as non-inferentially justified principles, grounded only in our experience, that operate as prima facie, defeasible, thumbs on the scales in judicial decision-making about speech. The Article then concludes with the Author's appeal to law teachers to nurture a non-instrumental, non-political, samba conception of law, one not reducible to force, as against what he sees as the instrumental and political conception of law lying behind the claims of those who reject any principled protection of speech.

JANA R. MCCREARY, Florida Coastal School of Law
Email: jmccreary@fcsl.edu

This new article, "The Laptop-Free Zone," addresses the hotly debated issue of laptops in law school classroom; those debates are ongoing on countless blogs, on NPR, in national newspapers, and across law school campuses. This article reports and analyzes the data collected through an IRB-approved survey of almost 450 law school students at three different law schools regarding the students' views of laptops and reported distractions caused by laptops. To provide context, the article also addresses the current arguments against laptops, negating those points as being outweighed by the proper and beneficial use of laptops. Additionally, the article provides information to be considered in teaching adults and to different learning styles, namely, global and analytic learners, and how those concerns are matters to consider in the laptop debate.

According to the survey results, students who do not use a laptop are overwhelmingly more likely to be distracted by others' laptops than students who are using their own laptops. In other words, yes, laptops cause distractions, but that primarily affects students who are not using a laptop. Accordingly, based on the learning style information and my survey results, I suggest that laptops not be banned from law school classrooms. Instead, I argue that professors must do their best to teach to all students - to those who feel they learn best by using a laptop as an aid and to those who complain of the distractions caused. I do this by implementing a laptop-free zone, restricting the first or first few rows in my classrooms to no laptops. This creates an area where students who are distracted by neighboring screens and nearby typing are free (as possible without an all-out ban) from those distractions. Further, doing so still respects those students who have learned to use a laptop as an educational tool.

As a surprise to me, the survey also showed that many students make the decision to give up their laptop after experiencing attending a class without one, noting they would not have been willing to go through such an experience by their own decision. However, once they experience not using a laptop in the law school classroom environment, they often change their method of taking notes and report improved learning and classroom experiences. Accordingly, I also suggest that instead of banning laptops, we provide beginning students with only a week or two of a laptop ban at some time during the first semester of school. This compromise will serve the interest of the most students most effectively, respecting them as adults while providing supportive guidance to their own decisions about their learning environment.