Internet and the State:
Social and Political Regulation
Fall 2002
University of Miami School of Law
Tue & Th 11:00-12:20
Room F408
Prof. Michael Froomkin
Class Policies
This document last modified Aug. 13, 2002.
There is no casebook for this class. Course materials will generally
be available in the Distribution Center. Some - but not all - will also
be linked from the web syllabus.
General Information
Getting Started
Please do two things before the first class
-
Acquire the first set of materials from the Distribution Center. Read the
"General Information" and the first assignment.
- Join the class mailing list. The easiest way is to click
here.
We will be trying an experiment this year that will use web-based tools rather than email for
substantive discussions. The mailing list will be used primarily for
announcements and administrative matters, and as a fallback to the web
site. It's important that you join this list. But as the semster
gets going I hope we'll make increasing use of the cyber.umlaw.net web site. Class Style
The larger the class, the harder it
is to have the free-wheeling seminar style I like best. As a result unless
class shrinks substantially, I will lecture a little. I hope that most of
the class will proceed by discussion most of the time. Most of the
technical material is in the first few classes, so I'll be doing more
lecturing and explaining at the start than I hope would ordinarily be
needed.. I tend to lead discussions with a lot of questions. Some of
them are leading questions, some of them are misleading questions, but
oftentimes they are just plain questions as I am curious as to your views,
or I have no idea what the answer is either.
How to contact me.
I urge you to contact me
if you have questions, comments, or suggestions about the class. I cannot
stress strongly enough how important it is to come and see me (or phone
me) early in the semester if you think you need help understanding
something. If you are doing the reading but still feel lost or confused,
don't wait until the last three weeks of class. I can help. But not at
the last minute. You can call me at 284-4285. Most days, I am in
and out of the office. If you get my voice mail, leave a number and state
when is the best time to call back.
You can come by my office, Rm. 382,
any time, but since I'm in and out erratically, I advise you to call ahead
and make an appointment I sometimes get busy and may have to ask you to
come back later.
My office hour is tentatively scheduled for Tuesday
1:30 to 2:30pm (watch this space for changes). No appointment is required
to see me then; I'm also available at other times by
appointment.
Probably the easiest way to contact me is to send me
e-mail at froomkin@law.miami.edu. Include a
telephone number if you prefer a more human response.
Course Requirements
Attendance.
I used to be a total softie about attendance. People took unfair
advantage. So now I overcompensate and play hardball. I will take
attendance as and when it suits me, which tends to mean just about every
class. If you miss a class I don't want to hear your excuses unless it
involves a hospital (for you or yours) or worse. Take it up with the Dean
of Students who takes a much softer approach than I do. You get two free
passes -- miss more than two classes without an excuse that the Dean of
Students office directs me to accept and I reserve the right hold it
against you in some way relating to class participation credit. The more
classes you miss, the more I may hold it against you. If you are
consistently absent I will contact the Dean of Students office and ask
them to drop you from the class. But so long as you skip no more
than two classes without an excuse I guarantee you will not suffer any
deduction from class participation credit, so there's no need to even
bother with excuses for the rare and inevitable absence. Please make
every effort to come on time. If you can't make it on time, it's still
better to come late than not at all. Taping. No classes may
be taped without my specific permission, which will not be given for
reasons other than verified medical emergencies, or to students with
particular disabilities. Tapes make me nervous. So do ID
cards.
Grading
-
Exam. Grades will be based primarily on an open book
final exam. Please do not contact me to discuss exam conflicts as this
undermines the blind grading system. Contact the Dean
of Students office for all exam conflict issues.
-
Class participation. Extraordinarily good class participation ("two
stars") will raise your final grade by one level (e.g. from a B+ to an
A); good class participation ("one star") will raise your grade by one
level if you are close to the line between two grades; very poor class
participation will lower your grade by one level if you are close to the
line between two grades ("minus one star" -- this, I am happy to say, is
rare); outrageously bad class participation (i.e. disruptive or offensive
behavior) will lower your grade one level. Very poor attendance may contribute
to a diagnosis of very poor class participation. [For your information,
I have now given a "minus two stars" twice in my teaching
career. In one case the student missed *a lot* of classes. In
the other the student was repeatedly rude and abusive to peers.] In
general,
you will find it to your advantage to volunteer, and not to your advantage
to pretend to be prepared when I call on you. You will find it highly
costly to disrupt class by talking or acting in a manner that disturbs
your neighbors (my pet peeve). Unless it's your day to be a "natural
resource" you may pass if called on as long as you I urge you not to pass
-- admit you are not prepared, and we will just take it from there. Please
note that participation in the class mailing lists counts towards class
participation credit (both positive and negative).
-
Mechanics of Grading. Consistent with the law school's rules,
I grade all exams "blind" -- I see only the blind grading number, not your
name. I do not curve grades in this class; the chips fall where they
may: in theory there could be all A's, or none, although reality tends
to fall between these extremes. After I turn in the exam grades to
the Registrar's office, the Registrar's office produces a list of names
and blind grading numbers so I can factor in class participation.
However, I ask my secretary not to show me this list, and instead I am
given a list of blind grading numbers sorted by the class participation
grades (one star or two stars) I have already given to my secretary.
I then compute the final grade. I make it a point to not know the
names that go with an exam until after the final grade has been turned
into the Registrar's office. Once grades are turned into the Registrar's
office, the law school's rules prohibit me from changing a grade for ANY
reason other than clerical error. These are rare.
-
Your chance to be a natural resource. A small number of students
will be selected in advance to serve as "resources" for each class (the
exact number depends on class size). The resources must, as
a group, take responsibility for doing all the optional reading, although
each person in the group does not have to do all of it personally (i.e.
you have to get together and work out who will do what). I will
probably also ask you to take an active part in any online
discussion of the issues raised by the reading. Your performance
as "resource person" will be a part, but by no means all, of your class
participation. Early in the semester I will hand out a list of class dates
and resource person responsibilities. You are welcome to trade dates among
yourself if the dates I assign you happen to be inconvenient, but you must
inform me of the trades before the start of the relevant class. Failure
to attend class when you are a resource person without a serious medical
problem or the equivalent will be deeply prejudicial to class performance
grade. Alas, this has happened in the past...
Disabilities. This class, like most law
school classes, is heavily oriented toward reading a large quantity of
difficult material in a small amount of time. If you are aware that you
have a learning disability, or if you just think that it takes you twice
as long to learn things by reading as other people, please talk to the
Disabilities Issues Coordinator, Assistant Dean Marnie Lennon who can tell
you about resources here that you may find valuable. All discussions will
be totally confidential. Any student who believe (s)he suffers from acute
"stage fright" and underperforms in public should see me early in the semester
to see if we can work out special arrangements in which you e-mail some
answers rather than giving them orally.
The Slashdot Experiment.
I will be experminting this semester with new online communications tools.
I'm counting on you to help me test these tools by participating online
-- and I'll reward quality participants with class participation credit.
Please try to think of the web tools as an extension of class: anything
relating to the substance or procedure of the class is welcome, but irrelevant
things are not. The usual rules of civility apply to posts just as they
would to class. And, I give class participation credit for thoughtful,
relevant, pithy, participation on the list, just as I do for similar contributions
in class. Please note that quality is more important than quantity,
although quality in quantity is the best of all.
Paper Writing
There is no paper option for this course. If you have a burning desire
to write a paper come talk to me about indepenent writing credit.
If you are interested in writing a paper please turn in a two page
memo (on paper or in the body -- not an attachment -- of an email)
on your proposed paper topic, listing the issues you intend to address
and (perhaps) your first guess as to what you will say about them. I need
this memo no later than our fourth class. Based on this memo I will either
approve the topic or propose modifications. I will expect you to turn in
a rough draft at a date to be agreed some time around midterm, and I will
return the rough draft with comments as soon as I can, on a first-come,
first-served basis. You will not be graded on your rough draft -- the comments
are entirely for your benefit with no strings attached. The
final
draft is due the last day of classes unless we agree otherwise. In
addition to giving me a hard copy of your paper, please turn in a floppy
disk containing the full project to my secretary, Rosalia Lliraldi, who
sits near room 382 in the library.
I advise you to consult Eugene Volokh, Writing
A Student Article for a wealth of useful tips on picking a topic and
writing the paper. I've also got a few idiosyncratic writing
tips that I hold very dear.
How to subscribe to the mailing list
It's easy: just click here,
but if you are using an account other than the one to which you want the
mail sent, be sure to make that clear in the body of your email.
Answers to frequently asked questions:
How long should I be spending on homework each
week?
A long time. This stuff is not easy and there is quite a lot of it. The
average law school class ratio is 3-5 hours of reading for each class hour.
I aim to stay within these norms, but to err is human. I'm told I
get awfully human sometimes.
Where can I look things up if I'm confused?
The World Wide Web is a good place to look for information, although there's
always reason to doubt the accuracy of what you find. If you are confused
about something - or if you find something that sorts out your confusion
- please send a note to the class mailing list. I'll be watching the list
and will try to answer questions posted there. If you are too shy to post
to the list, you can email anonymously, or you can send me a note and I'll
strip off your name before replying to the list. Please note in your email
that you wish your identity kept out of any public response.
Should I buy a commercial outline or hornbook?
If you hear of a good one for this stuff, please let me know.
Will this be on the exam?
Anything we discuss in class, on the e-mail mailing list (so long as it's
relevant to the class, of course), or that appears in the assigned portions
of the syllabus, or any additional photocopied readings that I assign or
hand out is fair game for the exam, unless I specifically say otherwise.
What can I do to get a better grade on the
exam?
The number one most common error on law school exams is a failure to read
the question carefully. Students tend to prepare by subject, e.g. "the
Erie doctrine". When they see a question with the word "Erie" in it, they
take it as a cue to write down everything they remember about the Erie
doctrine and the Erie line of cases regardless of its relevance to the
question. This is rarely a good move, if only because you waste time you
could have spent writing something relevant, and it's usually a particularly
BAD move on open-book exam, where the premium is on analysis and application,
not rote memory. Read the question. Try to figure out what the point of
it is. Stick to the point in your answer. My questions are rarely as simple
as "tell me everything you remember about the Erie doctrine". And I do
not give partial credit for correct but irrelevant information. (I do sometimes
give partial credit for correct but misplaced analysis of a complex problem
caused by a "wrong turn" at an earlier stage of the analysis, but that's
a different scenario.) Having said all that, you should of course make
full use of relevant cases, citing them by name. Cases are important. But
so are other things.
The number two most common error on law school exams consists of misunderstanding
the nature of legal writing. Good legal writing is clear, precise, and
well-organized. It is written in plain, simple English, with as few long
words as possible. (Yes, many judges do not write well.) There is no point
in trying to be clever or funny. At all costs avoid using fancy words if
you are not absolutely certain what they mean. You are being graded on
substance, not style. Resist the temptation to use slang ("Get real!" and
"Strike three!" are unfortunate examples from past exams). Resist the temptation
to use legal or Latin terms if a simple English word will do. Don't quote
rules at length (they are being given to you as part of the exam). But
do be sure to cite rules and cases where relevant, and to explain the relevance.
A related, and also frequent, error on law school exams is a failure
to be sufficiently specific. Legal writing is a form of technical writing.
It thrives on precision and often on detail. I suggest that you always
avoid the passive voice because it allows you to neglect to specify the
identity of the actor in your sentence. It's far better to use a boring
writing style "Subject, verb, predicate" over and over again than to be
confusing or to leave out something important.
A third, surprisingly frequent, error is forgetting the point of view
you are supposed to take in answering a question. Some questions ask you
to be the judge; others ask you to be the advocate for a party; still others
may require that you step back from the fray and adopt a policy perspective.
There are differences between these roles. For example, a judge is quite
likely to be concerned about judicial economy. A litigant is only going
to urge a course of action that furthers judicial economy if it furthers
her interests; otherwise, a litigant is going to try to explain to the
court why a particular outcome is just even though it is not the most efficient.
On the other hand, just because you are a litigant does not mean that you
ignore authority contrary to your position. The best arguments are those
that take full account of the strongest possible argument on the other
side and demolish it; the worst arguments are those that sound like the
author never heard of the other side ... and if there is authority for
the other side, the author of the weak argument may be facing Rule 11 sanctions.
If a question asks for an argument, make one; if it asks for both sides,
make two arguments and be sure you label which is which.
My grades have been disappointing. What can
I do to improve?
The first thing to do is to make an appointment with the professors who
gave you the disappointing grades in order to discuss the exam. Although
your professor cannot change the grade, you should find out what went wrong
so that you can avoid making similar mistakes in the future.
I never did much writing in college, where
I can I get writing help now?
If you have reason to believe that you need additional help, feel free
to talk to me. Also, you should watch for announcements about the U.M.
Writing Center. Note, however, that the kind of help you are likely to
be offered from me will probably mean extra work for you, such as writing
additional practice essays.
What can I do to help me become a better lawyer?
One of the best things you can do is become well-informed about the world
around you. Subscribe to a national newspaper such as the
New York Times . The "technology" section is particularly good for
this course.
How do I keep up with breaking news regarding the Internet?
Good question. It's not easy. I suggest reading some of the sources listed
at the end of the course
outline.
Initial 2002 version: Aug. 13, 2002
Added info on cyber.umlaw.net: Aug.
21, 2002