While intramural battles continue to be fought among legal academics over whether somebody slipped lawprof  Brian Leiter secret IP info to out commenters at  The Faculty Lounge who supported lawprof Paul Campos, the question bubbling to the surface is whether law professors, either the tenured flavor or the budding scholars, have any business being anonymous on the internet.



At PrawfsBlawg, Howard Wasserman questioned whether it was illegal, unethical or merely wrong for a blogger to disclose a commenter’s IP address so that an anonymous (meant to include pseudonymous as well) commenter’s identity would be revealed to his “enemy.”  This, in turn, devolved into a discussion about whether academics had any justification to comment anonymously at all.

The arguments lined up nicely in two connected comments:

Why would a law professor, tenured or not, want or need anonymity to discuss or even speculate about the law? Whatever valid purposes anonymity may sometimes (hardly always) serve, that seems like an illegitimate one to me.

Posted by: Paul Horwitz | Mar 9, 2013 9:05:02 PM

Why, Paul, because when I put my name to something it’s always well thought out (sometimes after years of research, discussion, analysis, drafting, and writing), and the comments sections (as opposed to posts) of blogs are places for quick opinions given with minimal research. The question for me is why anyone would want the computer record to forever be linked to the normal hiccups that are a natural part of conversations. To demand rigorous research for each comment would shut down the type of conversational debate that I believe blogs are best for. It’s one thing to say something off the cuff in oral conversation, where one corrects and laughs it off and moves on with only those gathered in a room remembering the imprecision, and another to have an almost eternal computer error of minor analytical glitches.

Posted by: AnonProf | Mar 9, 2013 10:06:50 PM

As amusing as the naked lawprof mudwrestling between Leiter and Campos may be, this scares me far more than the nastiness. 

The idea that the underlying  fear of anonymous academics putting one’s name to one’s thoughts is justified by the potential that they may write something, “an almost eternal computer error of minor analytical glitches,” for which they’ll be permanently tainted is deeply disturbing.  Are scholars that afraid of making a mistake? Are they, unlike the rest of us, so bitchy to each other that no one will forgive a “minor analytical glitch”?  Are they so delicate that it would kill them to admit error?

No one forces you to comment with “quick opinions given with minimal research.”  Scholars, like everyone else, know how to equivocate when offering their views, leaving themselves sufficient wiggle room to not be held to a view later.  But why are they so fearful of expressing a thought without footnotes?

This problem arises in the context of lawprofs arguing that they are fully capable of teaching students to practice law, and not merely theoreticians without a clue how to get to the courthouse without a map.  Lawyers are compelled to speak off the cuff constantly, whether objecting to a question, crossing a witness or, more relatedly, arguing an application in the midst of trial that requires them to persuade a judge that they law is on their side. It’s what we do.

Does this scholarly fear reflect a crack in the thin veneer of academic propriety, that while they use dulcet tones when ripping each other apart, it hides an anger, hatred and inability to forgive that destroys their soul?  Or perhaps their fragile self-esteem? 

If the rationale for academic anonymity was that some lawprofs want to speak plainly, say something that exceeds the allowed tone of criticism that enables them to attend the next faculty tea without rancor, then they would just be cowards.  The internet has no shortage of cowards, and there is no reason to suspect that they don’t exist among the legion of scholars. Indeed, it’s likely they have more than their share.

But that they fear being outed as a fool, as stupid, as (dare I say it) wrong, is a different problem.  Is it that they feel constrained to be perfect, or at least willing to bare up to scrutiny only after they’ve pondered, researched, edited, reviewed, and run it past a few of their closest scholarly friends, before they are willing to be held publicly responsible for anything they put in writing?  Or are their academic peers so competitive, ready to pounce on any flaw and brand a scholar a fraud?

These are the men and women in whom we repose sufficient trust to shape the minds and futures of the legal profession, and yet this reveals a deep problem within their own ranks, that they can’t “say something off the cuff” in a blog comment “where one corrects and laughs it off and moves on.”

If this is real, and the fear is as palpable as this suggests, then there is a far deeper problem in legal academia than reflected in the war between Leiter and Campos.  The veneer of propriety (where rude and vulgar lawyers like me are unwanted) hides such deep fear, than legal academia is rotting in ways that we never realized. 

Scholars need to either toughen up and take the hit when they’re criticized, or admit they can be wrong. On the other hand, scholars need to lighten up and allow others to offer thoughts not backed by “rigorous research” so they can bat around ideas without fear of permanent taint.  Either way, the legal academy needs to cut the phony lovefest and start behaving like big boys and girls, who are sometimes wrong and can take a punch.

And if they can’t deal with their own fears and insecurities, how can they be trusted to train the next generation of lawyers who won’t have the benefit of standing up in court with a paper bag over their heads?