Legal Commentary

We held the panel on the Duke lacrosse controversy yesterday at SEALS. I thought it went very well, an excellent, vibrant discussion. We managed to hit almost all the points and issues I wanted to hit, although not necessarily in any expected order; in fact, we got knocked out of expected order after the first answer. We also had a nice crowd of about 40 people, not bad when you are competing against golf, tennis, and the Atlantic Ocean. I am having trouble uploading the audio file (I think it is too large a file--if anyone has suggestions or instructions, please comment), but will get it posted as soon as I can.

Some random thoughts that I take from this. First, we did this as a moderated conversation or dialogue among the speakers, with no individual or planned presentations. I echo Steve's sentiment in favor of this type of program rather than seriatim presentations of papers that people have not read. That is especially true at a conference such as SEALS, which has so much going on. And if the idea is to generate a meaningful conversation, it is much easier to do that if you have a full hour-and-a-half of interactive engagement, rather than 20 minutes at the end of the panel.

Second, the one major thing we did not get to discuss are the two pending lawsuits against Duke and Durham and its officials (ironically, since these lawsuits are what started me down this road in the first place) and the idea of using civil litigation to gain compensation and remedy of misconduct within the criminal justice system. But I spoke with an audience member afterwards about doing a follow-up at next SEALS, focusing on these post hoc remedial issues and whatever develops with them in the next year.

Third, and entirely unrelated: Having successfully recorded a large-room discussion, including people who were not miced and who were not right by the recorded, and assuming I can get the MP3 file uploaded to a blog, I am convinced that my solution will be to ban laptops rom the classroom, record the class, and make the file available on the course blog. Anyone who wants or needs to transcribe the class for her notes can listen to the audio. Meanwhile, their full attention is on the class discussion as it occurs. I saw this suggestion made by a commenter on one of the many recent blog and e-mail discussions on this (I cannot remember which one) and immediately liked it because it can be pitched as the equivalent of a deposition or day of trial--you cannot sit at a computer and transcribe things as they go; you have to be engaged in the conversation and taking short, quick notes, knowing that you will get a transcript and/or a recording in a couple of days.