'Evaluate Me!': Conflicted Thoughts on Gatekeeping in Legal Scholarship's New Age

20 Pages Posted: 26 Apr 2007

See all articles by Paul Horwitz

Paul Horwitz

University of Alabama School of Law

Abstract

This short contribution to the Connecticut Law Review's new online supplement, CONNtemplations, offers some thoughts on status and gatekeeping in the online age of legal scholarship. Bloggers, SSRN, and online law review supplements like this one have increasingly routed around and weakened, if not undermined, the traditional gatekeepers who certified legal scholars and their scholarship. Is this a good thing?

The paper proceeds by examining this question in light of a pair of opposing views and values. The first is Julius Getman's discussion of the eternal tension between elitism and egalitarianism in the life of the scholar. The second is a pair of comments on the role of blogs and other online media in legal scholarship - a positive and optimistic comment by Larry Solum, and a more pessimistic and critical view presented by Brian Leiter. Ultimately, I tend to agree with Solum's optimistic view: the online age has provided new thinkers and writers with multiple routes around the old gatekeepers, and this development should be welcomed.

At the same time, I suggest candidly that many legal scholars who have benefited from blogs and other online media (including myself) have used those new media to seek certification and enhanced status from the same traditional gatekeepers that we have criticized. In Getman's terms, we have talked egalitarianism and done elitism. The old tension continues. I link this tension to a variety of broader phenomena: the insecurity of the legal academic, the legal academy's increasing fixation with rankings, and the economy of prestige.

Keywords: blogs, legal scholarship, economy of prestige, gatekeeping, online age

Suggested Citation

Horwitz, Paul, 'Evaluate Me!': Conflicted Thoughts on Gatekeeping in Legal Scholarship's New Age. Connecticut Law Review, Vol. 39, 2007, Notre Dame Legal Studies Paper No. 07-34, Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=982401

Paul Horwitz (Contact Author)

University of Alabama School of Law ( email )

P.O. Box 870382
Tuscaloosa, AL 35487
United States

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