Academic Symposia – Is Blogging the Future?

Today I will be participating in an “online symposium” hosted here by the New York University Journal of Law and Liberty (my opening statement is here). Four leading scholars (or three depending on whether I can call myself “leading”), will blog about Hamdan v. Rumsfeld, a case involving a challenge to the legality of President Bush’s military commissions (which I discussed here). The case is important in its own right, but the format of our discussion is important as well. Why bother going to symposiums when you can just blog? We’ll see how things go, but I think it is an interesting idea.

As for more traditional symposia, I’ve recently posted two symposium essays to SSRN. The first, entitled The Third Wave: The Alien Tort Statute and the War on Terrorism, is coming out in the Emory International Law Review. The second, Structural Conflicts in the Interpretation of Customary International Law, is forthcoming in the Santa Clara Law Review. Both of these essays are quite short by law review standards so I hope some of our non-academic readers will take a look. If that is still too long, then it sounds like the online symposia format is for you!