Legal Commentary

I'm teaching Business Torts in France this summer at the University of Montpellier, but before I leave I must write the annual supplement for my Mass Media Law casebook (with Franklin & Anderson and, in the next edition, Krotoszynski, Jr.).  If you have been considering the pros and cons of writing a casebook, you should make sure you've factored in the hassle of writing the annual update memo or supplement.  I actually don't mind writing the update memo.  Although it is a time-consuming task, it is very clearly defined and I really feel like I am up on the latest developments in my field when I finish it.  Still, it IS time-consuming.  If you are the junior author on your casebook, you definitely should ask whether your co-author expects you to write the update memo/ supplement annually, or whether it is a task you will share or one you will rotate (which is what we do). 

In my experience, the supplement takes a solid week to put together if you are starting from scratch.  Ideally, you won't start from scratch.  You'll gather important items as you see them throughout the year, and you'll save them in a research folder for just this moment.   Even when I try to keep the research folder updated, however, I am always afraid I might have missed something.  Therefore, I always at least go through the Media Law Reporter for the past year, and I also scan websites and blogs such as rcfp.org, Media Law Profs Blog, and SCOTUS Blog.  I conduct a Westlaw and a Google search, too. 

By the way, if you are a blogger who has to write a casebook supplement, it makes a lot of sense to try to blog on important developments and then just fold your blog posts seamlessly into the supplement. The problem is that many of them won't go seamlessly.  In blogging, the goal is often to develop a distinctive voice and express your opinion.  In casebook writing, my preference is to be a "hidden author."  I try to explain as neutrally as possible what the law (and its significance) actually is, realizing, of course, that complete neutrality is impossible. 

Deciding what should go into an update or supplement is not always easy.  I don't apply the same criteria for inclusion in the casebook as I apply for inclusion in a supplement.  For example, I would rarely include a federal district court case in a casebook, but if a federal district court case generated a lot of controversy in the media in the past year, I might include it in the update.  The reason to err on the side of over-inclusion is to give instructors who use the casebook maximum flexibility to discuss "current" topics.

Increasingly, though, I wonder how many law professors still rely on update memos and supplements to keep up with their fields.  Do online sources of legal information make supplements unnecessary?  Personally, I sometimes feel guilty making students pay for the supplement.  I am capable of supplementing most of my casebooks with free materials gleaned from the Internet, particularly in the areas in which I do my research.  Given the outrageous prices that students must pay for casebooks, I feel guilty about assigning a supplement unless I plan to refer to it repeatedly throughout the course.  Do you always assign the supplement available for any course you teach?  I have a feeling that many professors are beginning to abandon casebook supplements in favor of materials that they gather and distribute.  Am I wrong? 

[By the way, you can expect my next few blog posts to be items I've culled from my supplement.  The best research is research that does double duty!!]