On The Record - Columbus School of Law

A P P R E C I A T I N G E R U D I T I O Ndeserved reputation as one of the nation’sforemost experts on legal externships.The list goes on. Need to keep upwith the latest in the complex field ofbioethics law? Informed legal professionalsseek out the work of ProfessorGeorge Smith, who has publishedwidely on the subject and with great prescienceregarding evolving societaltrends. Those seeking a better understandingof the principles of tax law canbone up on the papers of ProfessorRoger Colinvaux, one of the newestmembers of the faculty. As former legislationcounsel to Congress' JointCommittee on Taxation, he authoredmany of Congress' recent changes tolaws affecting tax-exempt organizations.Nearly every member of theColumbus School of Law faculty hascarved a distinct scholarly niche for himselfor herself. More often than not, theirscholarship is met with eager publishersand the respect and admiration of theiracademic colleagues.Reading Up on Each OtherOne wit has called it “Napster forNerds.” Catchy, but not a particularlyaccurate description of the SocialScience Research Network, a Web sitestarted in 1994 that permits academicprofessionals from more than a dozendifferent disciplines to post onlinepapers, articles, book reviews and otherworks of scholarship for their peers toread, consider and learn from.SSRN “is devoted to the rapidworldwide dissemination of social scienceresearch,” according to its Web site.The repository for the work of law professors,the Legal Scholarship Network,is a subset of the main site.As of this writing, 66 papers fromColumbus School of Law faculty membershave been accepted for postingto the Legal Scholarship ResearchNetwork site by its administrators. Theircollective body of work may be searchedby topic, by last name, and by law journalor law school.CUA professors have an impressivebody of work hanging out in cyberspacefor the world to see. The firstProfessor William Kaplin is universallyrecognized as arguably the preeminentauthority on the body of lawthat regulates higher education. Nowin its fourth edition, his seminal text,The Law of Higher Education, sits onthe bookshelf of nearly every collegeor graduate school administratorwho needs to stay current with thelatest developments.Kaplin’s exacting scholarship isso highly regarded by StetsonUniversity’s College of Law and itsCenter for Excellence in HigherEducation Law and Policy that he hasbeen paid the ultimate compliment:the two schools have announced thejoint establishment of the WilliamKaplin Award for Excellence inHigher Education Law and PolicyScholarship. This new national awardwill be presented annually to onescholar on the basis of his or her publishedwork in the field.article submission from the ColumbusSchool of Law was posted in 1998, andthe subjects addressed since then covera wide range of topics, from bioethics,to tax policy, the history of contemporaryjurisprudence, how war affectsinternational trade, federal preemptionof state tort claims, free speech theory,a revisiting of Miranda, and dozens ofother subjects at the cutting-edge oflegal thinking.Among other benefits, the SSRNWeb site also serves as a fountain ofeternal youth for academic papers, keepingthe awareness of good work fresh inthe eyes of contemporaries, no matterwhen it was published. Professor MarinScordato, for example, published “FreeSpeech Rationales after September11th: The First Amendment in Post-World Trade Center America” (with coauthorPaula Monopoli) in the StanfordLaw & Policy Review in 2002. The articlebreathed new life when it was cited inthe most recent edition of the Yale LawJournal by Matthew C. Stephenson inhis article “The Price of Public Action:Constitutional Doctrine and the JudicialManipulation of Legislative EnactmentCosts.”In a bow to the eternal human cravingfor lists, SSRN has taken a page fromAmazon.com in its approach to information.Just as the giant online retailer publishesTop 10 lists that track consumerdemand for many of the products it sells,such as books, movies and CDs, so toodoes the academic publishing site offerTop 10 lists of the most viewed anddownloaded papers.At a glance, law professors nationwidecan use SSRN to get an accuratepicture of what subjects are currently hotand who is writing about them. A paperposted to the site might typically bedownloaded two or three dozen times,most often by professors teaching orresearching the same subject.Professor Heidi Mandanis Schoonerhas achieved a special SSRN distinction.It is safe to say that a paper she posted in2001, had it been circulated in print,would have fallen to pieces from overuseby now. Her article, “FunctionalRegulation: The Securitization ofBanking Law,” has been downloaded 491times at last count, a record so far amongCUA law faculty members.A Plan, a Product anda ProcessThe birth of new scholarship—fromthe mind to computer screen to publisher—canhappen in many ways.Every professor starts with a basic idea,but it needs careful honing and massagingbefore it is ready for primetime. No one wants to duplicate someoneelse’s work, of course, and as arule, academic professionals are keenlyaware of the state of research in theirchosen specialties.Some articles are drafted inresponse to a request from a law journalor other publisher. More often,however, the scholarship may beshopped by its author among potentialacademic outlets. The wait to see one’swork in print can be lengthy, sometimesa matter of several months.Generally this is dictated by how oftena journal publishes and how manyother previously accepted articles arestill in the pipeline.Fall–Winter 2008 / C UALAWYER 9