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Textbook Example of Why Blogs Beat Textbooks

For the past week, Paul L. Caron's TaxProf Blog has provided a textbook example of how blogs have changed the nature of legal scholarship and current awareness. On Aug. 22, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit issued what Caron and others have called a "blockbuster" ruling. In Murphy v. Internal Revenue Service, it held that the 16th Amendment bars the government from taxing nonphysical compensatory damages as income.

Caron, tax professor at the University of Cincinnati College of Law, was on it right away, summarizing the opinion and publishing the initial thoughts of another law professor, UCLA's Steve Bank. In the week since, Caron has continued to provide in-depth coverage of the fall-out from the opinion, using his blog to pull together news reports, blog commentary and scholarly analysis. Consider these follow-up posts:

• Aug. 23: MSM Commentary on Murphy.
• Aug. 23: Blogosphere Commentary on Murphy.
• Aug. 23: Tax Prof Commentary on Murphy.
• Aug. 24: Tax Protester Cases After Murphy.
• Aug. 24: MSM Finally Picks up Murphy Story.
• Aug. 24: Lederman on Murphy: Are All Non-Income Based Taxes Unconstitutional?
• Aug. 25: More Blogosphere Reactions to Murphy.
• Aug. 25: Geier: Murphy and the Role of Basis in the Tax Law.
• Aug. 25: Murphy: Wrong on Law, Right on Policy?
• Aug. 28: Seto: Bank of America As an Alternative to Originalism in Murphy.
• Aug. 29: Podcast on Implications of Murphy.
• Aug. 30: Shales on Murphy.

Caron has been pivotal in proving the case for blogs as legal scholarship. He is editor-in-chief of the Law Professor Blogs network and was a key organizer of this year's Bloggership conference. This week, he has shown himself to be his own best evidence.

Posted by Robert J. Ambrogi on August 30, 2006 at 01:59 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)