Beyond Hype

1
Beyond Hype Fallacies

• Mapping the paradigm shift in legal teaching.
• Subtech 2004
• Daniel Boyer, McGill University
• Canada

2
Who am I?

• Wainwright Librarian,
• McGill Law Library.
• acquire legal materials
• Senior Boulton Teaching Fellow,
• McGill Law Faculty.
• teach the use of these materials

3
Substantive technologies impact both

• The culture of the Legal learning environment
• The form and content of Legal materials.

4
Impacts on the culture of a student at law

• Abrogation of jurisdictions
• Greater chance of a contextual loss
• Possible erosion of analytical skills
• A constant feeling of urgency
• A sense of empowerment.

5
Impacts on Legal Materials

• Databases structured for specific jurisdictions
• Legal monographs published in ever greater
  numbers
• Formerly complex searches enabled by imaginative
  taxonomies
• Rescinded bond between publisher, library
  reader.

6
Some Fallacies

• A system of precedent is unnecessary when there
  are very few accessible cases, it will be
  unworkable when there are too many.
• from Katsh, Ethan The Electronic Media and
  the Transformation of Law, New York Oxford
  University Press, 1989 p.44.
• Postman, Neil Technopoly The Surrender of
  Culture to Technology, New York Vintage,
  1993
• Ellul, Jacques The Technological Bluff, Grand
  Rapids Eerdmans, 1990

7
Been there, done that!

• What about prodigies of memory such as Pico
  Mirandola ... polyhistorians who carry around
  in their heads a load of books for a hundred
  camels?
• ...
• It is merit enough that they supply abundant raw
  material, even if it has to be processed later on
  by the judgment of others.
• from Kant, Immanuel Anthropology from a
  Pragmatic Point of View, The Hague Niijhoff,
  1974, p 58.

8
We should foster

• A greater emphasis on characterization of legal
  problems in our LRW programmes
• Links among the Library, the Faculty and other
  potential stakeholders.
• Increased access to Legal materials by leveraging
• the benefits of digital convergence and
  divergence.