Mike at Crime and Federalism wrote back in July about How the Legal Blogosphere Has Changed:
The modern legal blogosphere sucks because it’s been overrun by legal marketers, and because people who might be able to engage in actually-interesting conversations are too busy sucking up to their e-friends and e-colleagues.
Mike’s been doing this a long time. (When I had my first blog (2004?), Crime and Federalism was already well established. Mike called me up and invited me to guest blog. It never worked out—I stopped blogging then after about five posts because I knew this blogging thing would never catch on.)
I can’t speak to whether the modern legal blogosphere sucks more than the ancient legal blogosphere. There has to be more marketing noise now than there was then, but I suspect that, in absolute numbers, there are also more excellent writers having interesting conversations now than there were then. And absolute numbers are what matter—if there are enough quality legal blogs to fill all of your available time, it doesn’t matter how much junk you’re ignoring.
Here are three notable blogs, new this year, that consistently provide excellent writing and analysis on matters related to criminal law:
- South Bend, Indiana criminal-defense lawyer (and philosophical anarchist, single taxer, and Quaker) John Kindley started People v. State in April. John reads widely, and has a decided philosophical bent. He attacks diverse topics like johns snitching on prostitutes, public defenders for all, and intellectual property.
- Toledo criminal-defense lawyer Jeff Gamso started writing Gamso—For the Defense on May 18th. Jeff writes really realy well (and not just “really really well for a former English professor”) about the death penalty, prosecutorial misconduct, drug dogs and fingerprints, waterboarding, and other stuff that fascinates criminal-defense lawyers.
- Eleven days after Jeff’s debut, Washingon, D.C. criminal-defense lawyer Matt Kaiser’s eponymous The Kaiser Blog went live. (If you’ve already subscribed, doublecheck your feed—my reader didn’t show posts for about a month till I resubscribed.) Matt is clearly a very smart guy (I don’t say that lightly) who writes link-rich analyses of issues in (mostly) federal criminal law.
Do yourself a favor: check out John’s, Jeff’s, and Matt’s blogs. If you like their work, subscribe. Maybe even nominate them for the Blawg 100. Then do them a favor: leave a comment. The greatest compensation these bloggers can hope to receive from a reader is a thoughtful comment on a post.
