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84 Wash. U. L. Rev. 1105 (2006)
Is Blogging Scholarship - Why Do You Want to Know

handle is hein.journals/walq84 and id is 1121 raw text is: IS BLOGGING SCHOLARSHIP? WHY DO YOU WANT TO KNOW? JAMES LINDGREN* Is blogging scholarship? Kate Litvak writes that scholarship is anything that satisfies your salary committee.' Doug Berman argues that blogs are 2 just another medium of communication, and Larry Solum explains how blogs are signs of larger forces at work.3 I would answer the question of whether blogging is scholarship by asking another question: Why do you want to know? In other words, to what purpose will you use a classification of blogging as scholarship or not scholarship? Categories are used to order the messy reality of academic life because they serve some purpose. Without knowing what purpose we expect scholarship to fill, it is hard to determine whether blogging is a form of scholarship. BLOGGING AS TRADITIONAL SCHOLARSHIP Most law blogs do not publish much, if any, scholarship in the traditional sense: serious, printed, edited medium- or long-form works on topics that are central to a typical field of legal scholarship. Indeed, only a few blogs regularly publish the sorts of pieces that would be published in a traditional law review. But there are exceptions: Larry Solum, for example, often publishes short essays on his Legal Theory Blog that are serious and analytical enough to be published in a typical law review. BLOGGING AS AN EFFECTIVE SUBSTITUTE FOR TRADITIONAL SCHOLARSHIP Although few bloggers post essays that would be appropriate without any changes for a traditional law review, we often blog on recent developments in the field or in our own scholarship, using arguments and evidence that could be adapted fairly easily to a law review article or * Professor of Law, Northwestern University School of Law. Blog: The Volokh Conspiracy, http://volokh.com. 1. Kate Litvak, Blog as a Bugged Water Cooler, 84 WASH. U. L. REV. 1061 (2006). 2. Douglas A. Berman, Scholarship in Action: The Power, Possibilities, and Piflulls tbr Law Professor Blogs, 84 WASH. U. L. REV. 1043 (2006). 3. Lawrence B. Solum, Blogging and the Transformation of/Legal Scholarship, 84 WASH. U. L. REV. 1071 (2006). 1105

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