Summary of Feb. 18 ABA Conference on Public Understanding of the Courts in the Age of New Media

A summary of the ABA Conference on Public Understanding of the Courts in the Age of New Media, held 18 February 2011 at The University of Arizona School of Law’s Rehnquist Center, has been posted by Tim Eigo, Esq., of Arizona Attorney magazine.

The summary includes a selection of Twitter tweets about the conference, marked by hashtags #barmedia and #newmediaconf.

HT @christinemartin.

Survey on New Media / Social Media in Courts

An invitation has been issued to U.S. state court professionals to participate in an online survey about new media / social media and the courts. The survey is being administered by the Conference of Court Public Information Officers (CCPIO), in partnership with the Scripps School of Journalism at Ohio University and the National Center for State Courts.

According to the survey announcement, survey results will be posted here in August 2010.

The survey is part of the CCPIO New Media Project, “a year-long national research project to systematically examine new media and analyze their potential effects on the courts and media coverage of the court.” Click here for a description this project, and click here for the project’s Website.

HT Jim McMillan at Court Technology Bulletin.

Reidenberg on Social Network Use by Judges, Lawyers, Jurors, & Witnesses

In a presentation at Harvard’s Berkman Center for Internet & Society on 1 February 2010, Professor Joel R. Reidenberg of Fordham University Law School discusses how “the transparency of personal information available online erode[s] the rule of law.”

Click here for Dean John Palfrey’s post about the presentation.

Professor Reidenberg’s examples include:

• The wide public availability via the Internet of mortgages, Article 9 financing statements, and other legal documents respecting secured property;
• Social networking and judges: Legal ethics issues raised by judges’ friending on social networks lawyers, potential litigants, and potential witnesses who may appear before the judges; see, e.g.,:
• The case of a judge in Staten Island, New York;
• Florida Judicial Ethics Advisory Committee Opinion No. 2009-20.
• Legal ethics problems raised by lawyers’ friending on social networks persons who may become witnesses in cases in which the lawyer represents a party;
• Googling jurors:
• Jurors who use networked technology to obtain unauthorized information about their case (see, e.g., Ken Strutin’s overview); and
• Lawyers using networked technology to obtain information about potential jurors outside of the formal voir dire process.

His proposed remedy encompasses both norms and technology. Respecting norms, he proposes establishing “a norm of data misuse,” similar to the U.S. Driver’s Privacy Protection Act of 1994, and “limited purpose knowledge” of data, under which the use of data in its original context, consistent with the original intent and purposes of that data, and knowledge of that data in that context, are designated as “proper use,” whereas uses or knowledge of those data in other contexts or for other purposes constitutes “improper use.”

Respecting technology, Professor Reidenberg proposes “reengineer[ing] practical obscurity back into the network,” by adding to online data, metadata that specify the original context, intent, and purpose of the data, and that could enable automated enforcement of the norm described above.

The lively discussion following Professor Reidenberg’s presentation may also be of interest.