Law in Contemporary Society

Professor Eben Moglen
Columbia Law School, Spring 2025

For Tuesday 1 April please read chapters 1-5 and 8-10 of A.W.B. Simpson, Cannibalism and the Common Law (1984).

For Thursday 3 April, please read "Cerriere's Answer," from Lawyerland.

Why You Should Vote "Yes" to Make This Class P/F

Written By A Concerned Classmate

Dear Fellow Classmates,

In light of our vote, I want to take a moment to encourage you to reconsider and vote yes on transitioning this course to pass/fail. Below are 10 reasons why this change would benefit not just Eben, but all of us:

(1) First and foremost, Eben has openly shared that his request to transition the grading scale stems from his health challenges. Voting "No" would only add to his burdens, requiring him to take on additional work that could impact his well-being. This is a small act of solidarity that could make a big difference.

(2) Taking this class pass/fail is completely in line with this class’s purpose. We are being challenged to rethink and free ourselves from arbitrary grading systems—why not start here?

(3) We already have pass/fail courses on our transcripts, including LPW I & II and Legal Methods I & II—courses that provide some of the most transferrable skills for legal practice.

(4) Receiving a letter grade in this course would be particularly arbitrary, as it is based on a single paper with minimal feedback rather than a comprehensive assessment of our skills.

(5) If you’re hoping to receive a high letter grade, consider the risk. The grading curve means you have a much higher probability of receiving a less-than-favorable grade. If your goal is to boost your GPA, this course may not be the safest bet.

(6) We have all chosen to use our one elective in 1L on a non-doctrinal, “Law & ____” course. If a hypothetical employer truly cared about seeing a letter grade, they likely would have preferred a Black Letter course instead. You’ve already stepped outside the prestige bubble—why not fully embrace the value of this course for what it is?

(7) The longer Eben has to grade, the longer you’ll wait to get your final grade—which could impact your job search if that’s your concern. A pass/fail designation speeds up the process for everyone.

(8) One pass/fail class will not hurt your job prospects. Firms and employers look at the bigger picture, and this single course won’t define your resume.

(9) We are already stretched thin. This course is not required to graduate, and taking it pass/fail allows your other, more heavily weighted classes to shine.

(10) Please.

Next Steps

To ensure fairness, I propose a recount of the poll *in class on Thursday, April 3,* allowing space for discussion and addressing any concerns. As of me writing this, 36 out of 57 people (63%) have already expressed support. This is an opportunity to stand in solidarity rather than let unnecessary division weaken us (especially in a time such as this).

As a personal anecdote: I once had a screener interview with a Cravath partner, Ben Gruenstein, where most of our conversation was me explaining what Law and Contemporary Society was. We discussed Oliver Wendell Holmes and “The Path of the Law,” and then he started grilling me on my opinions of Holmes. If you’d prefer to avoid this, don’t let this class stand out unnecessarily on your transcript—especially if it could come with a risky grade.

There’s still time to reconsider and come together. Let’s choose solidarity. smile

In Solidarity,

Dayo Adeoye

Taylor Lawson

Ciarra Lee

Ruth Samuel

Elijah Pitt

(If you would like to sign on to this letter, please use the "Edit" function to add your name.)

My office hours Spring 2025 are Tue 3-5pm, Wed 4:30-5:30pm, and Thu 3-5pm (reserved for 1L students). If you cannot make these hours, please email me for an appointment.

On the Radar

M. Gessen. To Obey Trump or Not to Obey, New York Times, February 8, 2025

David French, Donald Trump is Running Riot, New York Times, January 23, 2025.

Aditya Chakrabortty, If we fight racism in silos, we just cant win, The Guardian, April 27, 2023

Tech guru Jaron Lanier: The danger isn't that AI destroys us. It's that it drives us insane, The Guardian, March 23, 2023

Noam Chomsky, Ian Roberts and Jeffrey Watumull, The False Promise of ChatGPT, New York Times, March 8, 2023

A Word on Technology Old and New About the Word

This course is centered in the experience of classroom dialogue. Everything we read and write will be intended to help us understand better what we learn from listening to one another. I say "listening," because in a conversation with so many voices, we're all going to be listening much more than we are talking. So this is an extended exercise in active listening.

It turns out that wiki is a very good medium for active listeners. Below you will find an introduction to this particular wiki, or TWiki, where you can learn as much or as little about how this technology works as you want.

For now, the most important thing is just that any page of the wiki has an edit button, and your work in the course consists of writings that we will collaboratively produce here. You can make new pages, edit existing pages, attach files to any page, add links, leave comments in the comment boxes--whatever in your opinion adds to a richer dialog. During the semester I will assign writing exercises, which will also be posted here. All of everyone's work contributes to a larger and more informative whole, which is what our conversation is informed by, and helps us to understand. This is a law school course, so one cannot prevent altogether the stupidity of grades.

Please begin by registering. I look forward to seeing you at our first meeting.

Introduction to the LawContempSoc Web

The LawContempSoc site is a collaborative class space built on Twiki [twiki.org], a free software wiki system. If this is your first time using a wiki for a long term project, or first time using a wiki at all, you might want to take a minute and look around this site. Every page has a history: all the versions it has accumulated through each person's edits. Use the "History" button at the top of each page to explore that history. When we edit a page, using the "Edit" button, the old version is still part of the history, so editing is additive, not destructive. If you see something on the page that you don't know how to create in a wiki, take a look at the text that produced it using the "Raw" button at the top of each page, and feel free to try anything out in the Sandbox.

All of the Twiki documentation is also right at hand. Follow the TWiki link in the sidebar. There are a number of good tutorials and helpful FAQs there explaining the basics of what a wiki does, how to use Twiki, and how to format text.

From TWiki's point of view, this course, Law in Contemporary Society, is one "web." There are other webs here: the sandbox for trying wiki experiments, for example, and my other courses, etc. You're welcome to look around in those webs too, of course. Below are some useful tools for dealing with this particular web of ours. You can see the list of recent changes, and you can arrange to be notified of changes, either by email or by RSS feed. I would strongly recommend that you sign up for one or another form of notification; if not, it is your responsibility to keep abreast of the changes yourself.