Blawg Review

It's not just a blog carnival; it's the law! ~ a fool in the forest

BlawgWorld 2007 Free Here

BlawgWorld 2007 compiles 77 exemplary posts from law blogs, and presents them in an easy-to-navigate e-book pdf format you can download here for free.

Seventy-seven blogs are featured in this year's BlawgWorld 2007, including this week's host of Blawg Review #119, Above the Law.

Confirming what we've known for quite a while -- that some of the most well-regarded law bloggers host Blawg Review -- here's a list of our previous hosts that are included in BlawgWorld 2007, with links to their respective issues of Blawg Review.

Congratulations to all whose blogs were selected for BlawgWorld 2007 from among the many others deserving recognition. Balkinization, Concurring Opinions, and The Volokh Conspiracy are just a few of the other well-regarded aw blogs we'd like to see included. Will next year's edition of BlawgWorld 2008 showcase 100 of the best law blogs? Don't be surprised!

Editor Sara Skiff and Publisher Neil Squillante and the entire eBook Team at TechnoLawyer have put together an outstanding presentation of law blogs in an interesting new eBlook format described in this video, making BlawgWorld 2007 accessible to many lawyers who might not yet be reading or writing blogs. The new eBook format makes it really easy to navigate this sampling of the blawgosphere to get a feel for what's all the excitement about law blogs. Well done, I say, but check it out for yourself.

Download BlawgWorld 2007 here now. It's free!!!

Now, go read this week's Blawg Review #119 by the incomparable David Lat at Above the Law: A Legal Tabloid.

Funny Blawg Review

Blawg Review #118 is hosted this week at Blawgletter, a law blog by a business trial lawyer with a sense of humor. True to form, it's a laugh riot with links to funny YouTube videos, including this one of Will Ferrell as Wade Blasingame, Attorney At Law.



For more legal humor, check out Blawgletter, and be sure not to miss next week's Blawg Review #119, by David Lat at Above the Law.

Friends Don't Let Friends



Austin Criminal Defense Lawyer Jamie Spencer, drunk with euphoria from publishing his first Blawg Review, has offered to host another issue next year -- this time on his Austin DWI Lawyer blog.

Before we let him have a second date, let's see how many law bloggers link to this week's Blawg Review #117.

Poetic Justice

Blawg Review #116 at Corporate Blawg UK attracted this comment:
Your blawg review, Sir, is truly sublime
And indeed your blog is a favourite of mine
Your insight on blogging in this English Isle
Is the best and the stylish I’ve read for a while
I am sure we are honoured, those of us few
Who appear in the 116 blawg review
by Tessa Shepperson at The Landlord Law Blog in England.

It's Not A Rumor

It's true. ALM, publisher of The American Lawyer, Corporate Counsel, The National Law Journal and 30 other national and regional publications, will be sold to London-based Incisive Media for $630 million, according to an announcement by the two companies.

But there's probably no truth to the rumor (a rumour if you're hearing it in England) that the announcement was scheduled for this week to piggyback on all the buzz in the blawgosphere about the increasing number of British law bloggers hosting Blawg Review, one of the Law.com Affiliate Blogs.

Our Country Right Or Left

As reported by David Kopel on The Volokh Conspiracy, a special July 4 issue of the Boulder Weekly asks what the Founders would think about various modern issues. Followers of Blawg Review from its early days will remember the special hosted on Thomas Jefferson's Blog, which took a similar look at the modern-day legal blogosphere through the eyes of a lawyer, statesman and founding father. Thomas Jefferson drafted the Declaration of Independence, and died fifty years later, on July 4, 1826.

With the Indpendence Day holiday falling midweek, we've taken a bit of a different approach this year, inviting our common law friends and best allies in the whole world, the British, to do the honours this week.

Happy 4th! -- and what's a "holiday" anyway?
holiday n. I've always wondered about this word and was enlightened by one of my trustworthy contributors. A holiday for a person in the UK is any time taken off work. For Americans, a vacation is time taken off specifically for yourself and a holiday is time that everyone gets off and they're paid for (Christmas, New Year, Easter, etc.). What Americans call holidays, we call public holidays. In actual fact we call all of them except Christmas and Easter "bank holidays". Scotland and England have bank holidays on different dates, presumably to stop the Scots and English meeting up and fighting in popular seaside towns.
As our way of marking this important holiday, we'd like to collect here a few thoughts, from the left and the right and everywhere in between, gleaned from law blogs this July 4th.

George M. Wallace asks, "Have you anything to declare?"

Bruce MacEwen reminds us that his law blog "Adam Smith, Esq." is relentlessly nonpartisan and nonideological, at least in the political realm, and posts a 4th of July Meditation urging all of us who blog to use these bully pulpits contribute to the public discourse on issues that affect our firms, our headquarter cities, or simply the well-being of our nation.

Ann Althouse posts what is described as her most right wing photograph and, as always, comments ensue.

Jack Balkin analyses the relative power of conservative and liberal blogs.

Milbarge describes the tradition of pardoning the culinary icon of another venerated American holiday.

Seth Freilich posts Keith Olbermann's Special Comment on President Bush's commutation of the sentence of Scooter Libby on the eve of Independence Day.

KipEsquire notes that, today, the clash between unbridled majoritarianism and restrained, respectful libertarianism — the ultimate "war for independence" — wages on.

Norman Gregory Fernandez posts something for us all to remember this Independence Day.

Anthony Cerminaro notes that ten score and eleven years ago our forefathers brought forth on this continent, a new nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.

Jeralyn Merritt hosts an Open Thread: On Patriotism and Liberty.

Glenn Reynolds posts, on Independence Day, ways to help American troops overseas.

Bridget Crawford posts Declarations of Independence.

These law librarians have really done their research of 4th of July celebrations, and point us to an excellent presidential mashup of the Star Spangled Banner they found at JibJab.

Craig Williams wonders, what with July 4th landing in the muddle of his work week, if he should just call it a long weekend.

David Giacalone reminds us to go 4th and celebrate!

Kenneth Anderson says, "It's sometimes hard for friends of mine who are card-carrying post-national cosmopolitans from Europe or elsewhere to understand that it's not considered weird in the US for progressive lefty types, especially with kids, to attend, and for that matter organize, these kinds of neighborhood parades, and stand around on the street waving flags and red, white and blue. We had a flag out one July 4 when a friend was visiting from Europe; so did lots of the neighbors - he asked whether those houses who had put out flags were Republicans and those that hadn't were Democrats, red state versus blue state - and was very surprised when I told him I doubted there was any correlation on our street at all."

The British Invasion

The British Invasion was an influx of rock and roll, beat and pop performers from the United Kingdom (mostly England) who became popular in the United States, Australia, Canada and elsewhere. The classic British Invasion period was 1964 to 1967, but the term may also be applied to later "waves" of UK artists that had significant impact on entertainment markets outside of Britain.
Like these musicians before them, Barristers and Solicitors from the UK are being heard around the world, and they're bringing a unique sense of British style and humour to the blawgosphere.

This week's Blawg Review #115 at Nearly Legal follows the lead of Justin Patten's Human Law blog and presages a seemingly continuous stream of bloggage from across the pond that is influencing legal thinking everywhere on the worldwide web.

Yes, indeed, the British are coming!

Stay tuned for Blawg Review #116 on Corporate Blawg UK.

Happy Canada Day


Happy 140th birthday, Canada. We'd like to wish our Canadian brothers and sisters in law a very happy Canada Day. "It's like July 4, without the revolutionary overtones," says expat Cory Doctorow.

Canadian law student Ryan Austin at Lawyerlike, and law librarian Connie Crosby, planted the flag on Blawg Review, but to date not one Canadian lawyer has accepted the challenge to host an issue.

These are some of the Canadian law bloggers we think would be great hosts of Blawg Review:

If you'd like to recommend any other Canadian law bloggers, please send their links to the Editor of Blawg Review, and we'll add them to the list.