Biddleblog

Starting this Sunday, the Penn Cinema Studies Department is honoring one of the most celebrated and influential filmmakers of this era: Frederick Wiseman. 

Originally trained as a lawyer, Wiseman left began shooting documentaries in the early 1960s.  Wiseman's directorial style, which includes no apparent interaction with the director and no interviews, is often considered part of the "direct cinema" or "cinema verite" movement, which aims to provide a more intimate, confessional relationship between subject and audience.  Wiseman was one of the first American filmmakers to employ this style, along with fellow documentarians the Maysles Brothers.

In addition to his considerable gifts to technique, Wiseman is also acclaimed for his subject matter.  In movies like High School (showing Sunday night at the Bridge), Juvenile Court, and Welfare, Wiseman analyzes core institutions of American society and their effects on the individual.  His most heralded film, 1967's Titicut Follies is widely regarded as a searing expose of the treatment of patients in the State Prison for the Criminally Insance in Bridgewater, Massachussetts.  Controversial from the day it was released, Tititcut Follies was actually not widely seen until 1992, because Massachussetts courts had determined that the film was an invasion of the inmates' privacy.

The two day-event will include a viewing of Wiseman's High School and Titicut Follies, as well as a public interview with the filmmaker on Monday night.  I was glad to see posters for the event displayed around the law school, because Wiseman's work would resonate with anyone interested in public policy, social justice, and the law.  In many ways, the good work coming out of Professor Austin's Visual Legal Advocacy program is indebted to the documentaries Wiseman put almost 40 years before.  I have only seen a part of one of his documentaries--Juvenile Court, which assumes a fly-on-the-wall perspective on juvenile justice in 1970s  Memphis--so I am eager to learn more about the important director.  If you have the time, I encourage you to attend at least one of the movies, if not the conversation.

Details about the event can be found here.  You can find out more about Wiseman here.

In addition to teaching and serving as a reference librarian for the law school, my outside interests include ethics and religion. So, when Experiments in Ethics (Harvard University Press, 2008) appeared on the library's "New Book Truck," it lept into my hands as I decided to bring it to the attention of our interdisciplinary legal community.

Kwame Anthony Appiah is the Lawrance S. Rockefeller University Professor of Philosophy and Director of the Center for Human Values at Princeton University. This book is an outgrowth of his 2005 Mary Flexner Lectures at Bryn Mawr College.

Appiah's field is experimental philosophy, which attempts to link classical philosophy ("What is the good life?" "How should we live?") with the burgeoning moral sciences: experimental and cognitive psychology, behavioral economics, evolutionary anthropology and sociology ("Why do we feel and act as we do?"). Frequently the two areas are in conflict: ethicists claiming that moral judgments should be independent of the sciences and scientists claiming that science undermines the authority of moral reasons. Appiah claims that dialogue, not antagonism, should be the basis for productive discussions between both camps. He argues that experimental philosophy is as old as philosophy itself and has always embraced the sciences.

Experiments in Ethics is deceptively breezy in its appeal to the general public as well as to the specialist. It has inviting chapters like "Introduction: The Waterless Moat," "The Case Against Character," "The Case Against Intuition," "The Varieties of Moral Experience," and "The Ends of Ethics." While the amateur is tempted to enter into the debate and to question his own common sense, the specialist can see at once that Appiah is at home with the whole history of philosophy and the latest developments in science.

What has all this to do with law? Cass Sunstein, the well known law professor at the University of Chicago, has written about Experiments in Ethics: "This dazzlingly written book argues for reconnecting moral philosophy with the sciences, both natural and social--and demonstrates that the reconnection, while in a sense overdue, reconnects philosophy with its ancient interest in empirical issues. Appiah's important argument promises to transform more than one field. It is not only wise and subtle: it is also inspiring."

Here's a scenario with which you might be familiar.  You're working on a paper, and you know that the trend of what Americans think about some aspect of your topic is likely to be helpful in making your point. It could be anything from views on the legalization of marijuana, to the importance of the separation of church and state, to the legalization of abortion, to which candidate various groups will support for national office. There seems to be no limit when it comes to opinion polling. How do you get the data you need for your paper?  What are the options?

Generally, people using public opinion surveys look for one of three things:

1. An individual question that appears in one survey or that appears in several surveys over time (enabling a trend or time-series study). The sought-for elements are the question text (with potential or actual responses) and the frequencies for each response. This aggregate data is also called "marginals" or "toplines." This is the "Yes 40%, No 30%, Don't know 15%, Braindead 5%, Other 10%" information.
2. All the questions appearing in one survey. The safest way to retrieve a questionnaire's questions is to start from a known question in, say, iPOLL*, and search on that question's survey organization plus beginning and ending dates. iPOLL*, the Odum Institute* question database, and the Gallup Brain* offer a shortcut that might omit some of those modular questions recycled among concurrent surveys -- for each question retrieved, the database presents a hyperlink that assembles the questions. 
3. The raw data, or individual respondents' responses to each question, also known as microdata [where marginals are aggregate data]. Seldom if ever would you want microdata, even if you were to say, "I want the data for these questions." In most cases, what you really want are marginals, or frequency of response. Generally, you will need microdata only when you ask as a follow-up question: "I need to know how many Hawaiians hated Ronald Reagan" or "Do poor, uneducated city dwellers approve of school vouchers?" The trigger in these cases is the detail, the subgroups. Other potential microdata uses would involve relations among more than one question: "How many people who like mustard on their pretzels would pay $500 for an Eagles ticket?" Generally, unless you have viewed the survey's questions or codebook, it's likely not worth your time, or the time of the person who's going to help you with using SPSS or SAS, to re-process the raw data.

*It's safe to assume that more than 90 percent of you are interested in either 1. or 2. above. iPOLL, the Odum Institute and the Gallup Brain are the three places most people go for question-level info:

iPOLL (Roper Center), Penn Library Web
Authoritative, includes archived Gallup, Roper, and other pollster questions back to the 1930s.  The Roper Center archives ABC News and New York Times media polls as well as Kaiser Family Foundation polls, Los Angeles Times polls, National Opinion Research Center polls, and Wall Street Journal polls; the jewels in the Roper collection are the Roper polls (including the famous "Bowling Alone" surveys), their Japanese and Latin American polls, and the Gallup Organization polls.  The LexisNexis version of iPOLL, RPOLL, has identical content, but searching and question formatting are not so good.  iPOLL draws from survey organization and survey sponsor press releases, survey reports, data documentation, and lots of other sources.  I recommend it most highly.

Odum Institute Public Opinion Poll Question Database, Penn Library Web
A fine small-scale competitor to iPOLL, covering the Harris Polls and the Network of State Polls (e.g., the Pennsylvania Poll, the California Poll).  In the "Search" dropdown, choose "Question Text."

Gallup Brain, searchable via Sharon Black, Annenberg School Library
Gallup charges a pretty penny for access to their full archive question database.  You will not get access by going through http://www.gallup.com either.  As all the old Gallup polls and the main series of recent Gallup surveys appear in iPOLL, you can often get what you need without accessing the Gallup Brain.

There are other places to go for polling data.  If you want to explore on your own, feel free to browse the University Library's Research Guide on Public Opinion Polls.  However, there are numerous specialized and local polling entities which do not appear in the guide.  I would be happy to do my best to help you find and begin to use any of this data

Governmental web sites are usually one of the first places people go for official government information. Few of us, however, know that government blogs exist as a possible source of information. It may surprise many to learn that the federal government maintains a web page entitled "Blogs from the U.S. Government," which lists active and archived government blogs.

While governments have been slow to embrace Web 2.0 technology, it has nevertheless begun to do so. According to Webcontent.gov, "Blogs put a human face on government. They can make government more 'open' by allowing more interaction between government and its citizens." Bill Gates, Microsoft founder, is quoted on webcontent.gov as saying: "It's all about openness. People see blogs as a reflection of an open communicative culture that isn't afraid to be self-critical." Since 57 million adult Americans read blogs (according to a 2006 Pew Internet & American Life Project report called Bloggers: A Portrait of the Internet's New Storytellers (PDF)) government blogs serve as a more dynamic way to engage or further a dialogue between citizens and governmental officials.

A perusal of "Blogs from the U.S. Government" reveals a variety of blogs ranging from "Peace Corps Volunteer Journals," concerning the experiences of Peace Corp workers, to the State Department's "Dipnote," which "offers the public an alternative source to mainstream media for U.S. foreign policy information and the opportunity to discuss important foreign policy issues with senior State Department officials." Of particular interests to many of us at this moment is the Congressional Budget Office Director's Blog, which among several objectives, attempts to remedy misunderstandings of CBO data or testimony.

There are those who will seriously question the veracity, value and reliability of information found on government blogs, as indeed should be the case. Regardless, government blogs remain a potential resource which may provide invaluable information and insight.

For further reading about government blogs, I recommend Professor David C. Wyld's report entitled The Blogging Revolution: Government in the Age of Web 2.0 (PDF).

I recently helped a student use an item in our Rare Books Collection to verify a citation that a professor had recorded for a forthcoming law review article.  One of the references she wanted to check was the original publication date of the volume.  When we looked on the back side of the title page, we discovered the following statement:

(You can click on the image to make it larger.)

Needless to say, my researcher was a little confused--this lengthy narrative looks almost nothing like the modern convention for declaring copyright: that ubiquitous symbol, ©.

It may be hard to believe, but the copyright symbol was not formally adopted until 1979, when copyright laws were overhauled.  Before then, owners of works had to petition the Copyright Office to copyright their works. 

 What looks to modern eyes like an arcane, roundabout way of stating something very simple was actually a necessary explanation that the author of a work had been granted copyright by the Copyright Office. 

An old professor of mine in college once quipped that Charles Darwin was a great thinker but "he needed an editor."  19th Century prose has often been described as florid and verbose.  Copyright notices of that era are no exception, suggesting that even something this routine could take on a dramatic flair.

 

Fascinated by the law and politics of stem cell research? Interested in exploring how public opinion on gay marriage relates to the recent Proposition 8 challenge in the federal district court in San Francisco? If you are considering  writing a seminar or independent study paper on a topic relating to religion and the law, there are a wide array of topics that fall under this heading.  The Pew Forum for Religion and Public Life, hosted by the Pew Foundation, offers a great variety of resources to supplement your legal research.

Some of the topics include the religious dimensions in bioethics, gay marriage, and public schools. The Pew Forum website offers short articles, research reports, population surveys, books, and datasets. It is a great resource for starting your research on a variety of topics in law and religion.

The death penalty page, for instance, features the official statements of various religious groups on the death penalty.  In addition, this page includes reports reconsidering the death penalty in the United States, and poll results demonstrating support for the death penalty by a majority of Americans.  Some other interesting items found on the Pew Website include surveys on discrimination against Muslims, international restrictions on the practice of religion, and the conflict between religion and evolution.

 

 

By Emily Jane Schreiber, Biddle Research Associate

Here's an overview of what's available on the shelves and online for the visual arts enthusiast at Penn Law.

At Biddle, you'll find treatises--like the seminal three-volume Art Law: The Guide for Collectors, Investors, Dealers and Artists or Law, Ethics and the Visual Art  -- as well as casebooks, practitioner guides and works on copyright and droit de suite, museum law, international art trade and loan agreements, and cultural heritage law. The Fisher Fine Arts Library offers a number of titles for the legal scholar, on subjects such as art business and dealing, art crime, public works, and censorship. Stay up to date on art world developments with the library's collection of periodicals. Recent articles of interest include a discussion of the lawsuits and scandal surrounding Warhol's posthumous Brillo boxes in ARTnews and highlights from the 2011 ALI/ABA Legal Issues in Museum Administration conference in the Art Newspaper.  Fisher Fine Arts is also a great place to study or you can take a break from your books to stop by the Arthur Ross Gallery on the main floor and catch a show for free.  "An American Odyssey:  The Warner Collection of American Art" is currently on view. 

If you're interested in cultural heritage and the law (or are just a nerd for museums, like me), it's well worth the trip to the Penn Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology's library. The collection of law books is small, but varied and interesting. Thinking About the Elgin Marbles: Critical Essays on Cultural Property, Art and Law, is one title that caught my eye. You'll also find books and resources on museum law and relevant publications, such Museum Anthropology, a journal of the Council for Museum Anthropology (a recent issue contained multiple articles on NAGPRA, the North American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act). 

On the web, art law blogs abound and here is the cream of the crop:

o The Art Law Blog, written by Donn Zaretsky of John Silberman Associates.

o Clancco, by artist, lawyer and Associate Director of Volunteer Lawyers for the Arts, Sergio Muñoz Sarmiento.

o The Cardozo School of Law Art Law Society's blog.

o Spencer's Art Law Journal, written by Ronald D. Spencer of Carter Ledyard & Milburn LLP, published several times per year on artnet.

Law journals related to the arts, such as the UCLA Entertainment Law Review and the Columbia Journal for Law and the Arts, are available to students through Lexis, Westlaw or HeinOnline. WestlawNext additionally allows you to sort for and browse through intellectual Property journals and their most recent articles, or you can navigate right to the journal of your choice. If you're working on a cross-disciplinary project, remember that you can access e-journals and article databases organized by subject (including art and art history) via Penn Libraries.

Looking for even more information? Check out a comprehensive list of art law resources compiled by the Georgetown Law Library.

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