Legal Commentary

Many thanks to Dan for allowing me to stay on an extra week; a nasty bug plus the start of classes necessitated a rather extended absence from blogging during the last week of August. 

I've always been rather fascinated with exactly how (and why) we as prawfs decide to write about certain topics over others.  We all have our quiverfulls of potential topics--how is it that we select one out of the mix?  Sometimes, it is based on a need to put a "placeholder" in a particular subject matter; sometimes by the need to finish up a series of articles on a particular legal issue.  There are many logical reasons why we might choose to point our pens in one direction rather than another.  But what about the reasons that aren't so logical?  Those topics for which we burn with passion, which we feel compelled to address without delay?  

Sometimes there isn't a difference between topics which are logically ideal to address at a certain point in our careers and those in which we are passionately interested.  When I was picking a dissertation topic, I was told to select a subject matter about which I could comfortably write for the next ten years or so--and even after 7 years of active research on the impact of capital trials and executions on murder victims' family members, I still am greatly excited by that same issue.  One might speak of attachments to research topics along the lines of human love affairs.  Marriage to a topic is not unlike marriage to a person; long-term attachment permits awareness of both the challenges of not taking a topic for granted and the pleasures of gaining new appreciation for a subject after coming at it again and again from different perspectives.  As I am now approaching this research in an entirely new status--as a book topic--I am grateful for this continued intellectual engagement.  But one need not be monogamous in a research relationship.  I recently felt the need to begin a new relationship--not exactly an "affair"--with a new and very different topic.  Although it is also under the "law and emotion" umbrella, my research on social constructions of infertile women is in an entirely new direction, and my passion for that topic burns with something like the intensity of first love.  I've been told by a few that starting off in a new direction may not be the best step to take when building a tenure portfolio.  I, however, was impatient and chomping at the bit to get started, and felt that it was unthinkable to put off writing on this subject matter for two years or so, which should be enough time to complete another two articles on related issues, forming the foundation of a more substantial body of work.

Articles are the life blood of law prawfs--something that, together with teaching, makes the prawf job so very meaningful.  Ideally we write because we must, with the imperative coming not from a tenure clock but from some internal instinct.  Thoughts?