[I am happy to share this guest post from Professor Seth Barrett Tillman, which addresses some discourse on legal academia, including a recent post by Will Baude.]
There has been a lot of discussion on social media and blogs recently about what constitutes good behaviour for academics, and as I have occasionally found myself caught up in the academic fray (mostly something I would rather not do), I thought I would offer my thoughts on it and some closely related issues.
1. Email.
For the academic community to function, we must speak freely to each other; that is, to communicate with each other without fear of sanctions. I have occasionally sent, or offered to send, copies of my manuscripts or published papers to other scholars in law and other fields. I often make such offers to people I have cited or who have written on one of the topics discussed in my papers. Usually I receive one of two responses: Proforma Many people reply:Thank you so much and I am sure I will benefit from reading your paper when I have time.“Or you might get something like this:”Really, no more email correspondence from now on, I’ll keep abreast of developments in the literature.The advantages of these two responses are directness, clarity, and guidance, which leaves no doubt as to the desirability of future contact. yes In the former; no The latter.
But in other cases, there was no response at all, which is puzzling. Would you contact that person again? So, in a year or two or three years, I might write another paper and send a second, third, or fourth email to the person who didn’t reply. At that point, I Proforma You won’t get a response. But it’s possible that you won’t get a response. In that case, you might get a (pleasant) response like this:
Professor A: Dear Professor Tillman, Thank you so much for your letter. I am currently writing/lecturing on this subject, so your article is timely and I will be sure to quote/discuss your new perspective (not that I agree though!). I also noticed that you have written to me several times before. That was my mistake. Maybe your email ended up in my spam folder or I didn’t recognize your name and accidentally ignored your email. I will never do that again.
This has happened to me many times and has led to fruitful interactions, intellectual exchanges, and sometimes friendships.
In other cases, a different kind of response will be returned.
Professor B: Mr. Tillman, I received your most recent email and the few emails prior to that. I decided not to respond to your previous emails. However, you are still contacting me. You should have taken the hint, but seeing as you didn’t, I say stop now.
In the situation where the email recipient doesn’t reply, you can let Professor A or Professor B set the standard for good (academic) behavior. You can value autonomy, privacy, and peace of mind. If so, the initial non-reply is grounds for the sender to refrain from future contact. Or, you can let Professor A set the standard. In that situation, the non-reply means nothing because it lacks clarity and directness. This leaves open the possibility that future contact would be welcome. And sometimes it is.
So what to do?
Our job, academia, exists to generate ideas, Many Professor B-type individual discovers One Professor A: The latter strategy allows for the exchange of ideas even if there is a risk of unwelcome or even unpleasant contacts, which, I might add, are unpleasant for both the receiver and the sender. In other words, I don’t think we should let the most vulnerable personalities among us dictate the ground rules for intellectual contact.
2. A reaction against authority.
I have had the good fortune to occasionally pitch some novel ideas. Pitching new ideas can be difficult. Here’s one such example: What to do about anti-authority? Developing an anti-authority stance carries the risk of presenting evidence in a biased way in order to defend your ideas against criticism. Even if you don’t do so, it’s quite possible that some readers will suspect that you did. That’s why I’ve always actively sought responses to be published alongside my articles, either by contacting those who responded myself (usually multiple potential responders) or by having them contact the journals in which my publications have appeared. for example,., Lawson (2005); Levinson (2006); Brühl (2007); Cult (2007); Calabrese (2008); Blomquist (2009); Prakash (2009); Shepherd (2009); Bailey (2010); Peabody (2010); Teachout (2012, 2014, 2016); References, Examples., Hoffer (2014); Kalt (2014); Melton (2014); Stern (2014); Baude (2016). In one of these interactions, I had reason to believe I had information the respondent did not know, so I sent it to him and left it up to him to decide how (or if) he would use that information and how he would present it.
This approach has many advantages, but also some disadvantages. Advantages include: beginningIt frees up your allotted journal space and allows you to present the idea as a standalone idea. Number 2That way, it’s up to the other person how to most effectively shoot down your idea, and you can address those points in your reply if necessary. Third,The exchange itself makes both publications attractive to readers, because the exchange is some,indication that serious ideas are being asked, and that the ideas,and counterarguments are well presented. FourthBy asking a third party for a response, you will often win friends, especially if they are junior researchers who will be happy to receive additional publications. The downside is that you will have a few less-informed readers who will not be perplexed by your novel idea, will assume you have a monopoly on expertise, and will never know that your response exists. They will then assume that obvious counterarguments were ignored or deliberately hidden from them. (Of course, they know all about the supposedly hidden ones.) Here again, I don’t think we researchers should live in fear of the most fallible and most skeptical people among us, or we will lose the advantages I outlined above. See above, beginning Through Fourth.
3. Change your mind.
It is good that issues that are considered settled are revisited from time to time. Moreover, people should have the opportunity to change their minds. Surely it is fair to ask what kind of thinking someone has if they have never changed their mind or expressed doubts about the opinions they have held. When people change their minds, especially in public, they are criticized for doing so. Rather than punishing people for risking their reputations, we should praise their courage.
Recently, Professor Calabresi changed his mind. In 2008, he thought I was wrong about one of my novel ideas about the language of “offices” and “officers” in the Constitution. Recently, he took the opposite view. Professor Bode moved in the opposite direction regarding my novel idea about the language of “offices” and “officers” in the Constitution. In 2016, he expressed admiration. Recently, he took a different position. I understood their 2008 and 2016 views, but I really don’t understand why they changed from their previous positions. But that’s my problem, not theirs. They’ve started a new conversation. They work on their own schedule. They don’t owe me any further elaboration on why they changed their opinion. Maybe they’re each so sure they’re right. Have They did not provide a well-founded, fully fleshed-out explanation for their change in position, and perhaps they thought I did not understand their thinking. new What is the reason for the change of mind? If so, they have no reason to go back on these issues.
In any case, Calabresi in 2008 and Baude in 2016, and Calabresi and Baude in the more recent Trump-related voting access lawsuits (2023 and 2024), spelled my name correctly and cited my materials correctly. So, I’m not going to complain. I hope that one day they’ll come back to these issues, but that’s just a hope. And if they don’t, they and I have plenty of other things to do.
4. What academics should not do on social media
Many legal scholars whose behavior on social media does not meet the standards of decency. They use hyperbolic language to publicly denounce ideas, causes, individuals, and organizations. The problem here is not a lack of public reason (although that is a problem). of The problem is not the injuries, deserved or not, suffered by those targeted by the tweets, or the social media mobs that accompany them (although these are problems, at least when the injuries are not entirely deserved). Rather, the problem is the model these academics are setting for their students, and for their own students.
The legal scholars who engage in these practices enjoy tenure. They are members of a protected class that enjoys the institutional credibility and privileges that accrue to them in the special protection given to universities in feudal times. Our students have no such benefits. And employers, public and private, now monitor the social media footprints of both job applicants and current employees. If students emulate the unwholesome behavior of these scholars, they may find themselves unemployed or unemployable. These scholars are trading their students’ futures for the thrill of exhilarating irony.
That’s social media anyway. Academic writing is probably a different story; maybe the standards are different. Still, if your paper systematically describes other people’s work as “terrible” or “weird” or “crazy” or similar words, you Raising the water level of sanityWilliam Board and Michael Stokes Poulsen, TSection 3 Sweeping and Power172 U. Pa. L. Rev. 605 (2024).
