The Illustrated Law Journal
February 28th, 2011 by nclarkThis is a summary of a project I discussed at the 2011 Students for Free Culture Unconference. I’d like to thank SFC for putting the conference together, and for inviting me to publish this post on their blog.
No society that kept its laws secret could ever be called free. No government that hid its regulations from the regulated could ever stand in our tradition. Law controls. But it does so justly only when visibly. And law is visible only when its terms are knowable and controllable by those it regulates. . . .
-Lawrence Lessig, Introduction to Richard Stallman’s Free Software, Free Society.
More must be done to increase the availability, and the visibility, of justice.
Whatever more
is, I decided to be one of the people doing it. That decision is behind both my application to the David A. Clarke School of Law (DCSL) and my insistence on the creation of an Illustrated Law Journal (ILJ) while there. My passion for the idea of collecting, editing, and publishing visual illustrations of laws and legal concepts stems from the beliefs articulated in the following stanza from DCSL founders Edgar and Jean Camper Cahn’s Credo, This I Believe, that informs DCSL’s mission.
And I believe the day will come when the monopoly over law and legal knowledge -- the lawyers' monopoly the law schools' monopoly -- will be broken When men and women and yes, even children will know that which is expected of them and that which they can expect of others: to refrain from harm to honor their word to respect the dreams of others and the right of others to dream in their own way This I believe
The opportunity to know what is expected of you, and what you should expect of others should not require a law degree. We can make the text of laws more freely available to people distributionally, but until those laws are also available conceptually, there’s room for injustice in impenetrably worded, opaque laws.
What is it?
A periodic online and print journal – each issue covering a single legal topic – that will help jurists understand their work, and interested laypeople understand the laws that affect them.
What sorts of things will go in?
It could be anything that clearly illustrates a law or legal concept. Some of the things I expect we’ll publish are venn diagrams, flow charts, cartoons, and street sign type images.
What does the Journal Need? (non-exhaustive)
- A website where the editorial process can take place.
- Illustrations and ideas for illustrations of laws and legal concepts.
- While we do have several ideas for topic areas, we’d love to have more, especially from non-jurists
Where can I learn more and contribute?
The ILJ has a google group here, documents here and an Identi.ca group at !ILJ.
Tags: Education, illustration, justice, law, sfcnyc
This entry was posted
on Monday, February 28th, 2011 at 6:36 pm and is filed under Access to Information, Blog, Conferences, Education.
You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.
You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
2 Responses to “The Illustrated Law Journal”
-
Students for Free Culture conference | Free, Easy and Others Says:
March 2nd, 2011 at 12:35 pm[...] Nicholas makes law more understandable [...]
-
Reflections from Jan-Christoph Borchardt | SFC NYC Says:
March 3rd, 2011 at 7:01 pm[...] Nicholas makes law more understandable [...]
Leave a Reply