Benjamin Cardozo wrote:  ”[t]he law never is, but is always about to be.”    So, yesterday with excitement, we introduced Spindle  to students at Cardozo Law School, in New York.  Still in private alpha, Spindle will be a resource to students enrolled in Professor Peter Tillers‘ evidence course.  We are looking forward to their feedback and their contributions as we move closer to a broader launch later in the year.

Spindle benefits from and incorporates into our organizational system the contributions from our community of researchers (or Spindlers).   Spindlers may add authorities (e.g., cases, rules of evidence and procedure, regulations and statutes) in support of rules and can comment on authorities and branches (topics, rules and references).  While a chief editor often will initiate and develop the structure and oversee the expansion on the site of a section of the law (or what we call a “module”), Spindlers are expected to nurture a module’s growth with more and more law.

Spindle encourages its researchers to vouch for the authorities they contribute or that they review.  As Spindle defines it, vouching means that the researcher agrees that the specific case, statute, procedural or evidentiary rule, etc., is an authority for the branch it is intended to support and that the information (citation, parenthetical, procedural posture, etc.,) listed in Spindle is correct.   If the information is correct, the Spindler simply clicks a button and the authority is marked as vouched.  (If the information is incomplete, it’s easy to correct and then vouch).

Vouching tells Spindlers that the authority has been approved by other researchers.  It doesn’t and shouldn’t obviate the need to read the case, of course, but it’s a good indication for a researcher that the citation is right.  Researchers can see how many people have vouched for the authority and, ultimately, it will be possible to identify other information.  After one Spindler vouches, half a gold seal appears above the authority.  A second Spindler vouches, and the gold seal is completed  .

Researchers can also see if the citation has been edited since it was vouched.  The vouching gold seal turns silver if a Spindler edits the authority’s citation or edits the branch that the authority supported.  Some of the luster of the original vouch comes off, until a Spindler vouches for the revised citation, at which point half the seal turns gold again (and, after a second vouch, the seal turns entirely gold).  We recently debated the value of silver seals and concluded that there’s value in showing that an authority has been vouched for even if it was subsequently edited. For example, we expect that a researcher will find it useful to see that a case was originally vouched for once, or even a number of times, even if it was subsequently edited, rather than wiping away any sign of those prior vouches once the citation has been edited.

When a Spindler vouches for an authority, a gold letter “U”   pops up next to the vouch icon. The vouch icon appears on everyone’s screen, the “U” solely on the researcher’s.  The purpose is to let the researcher keep track of the authorities she’s read and vouched for, much as one might expect someone to mark (or, at least, I would mark) with a tick or an asterisk a case name on a list of cases on a legal pad that the researcher has reviewed.  Like the vouching seal, the “U” turns silver if the authority is edited.

Finally, vouching facilitates the contribution of authorities that a researcher may not have read. For instance, if someone reads the U.S. Supreme Court case, Dura Pharmaceuticals, Inc. v. Broudo, 544 U.S. 336 (2005), which, among other things, states that ”[t]he securities statutes seek to maintain public confidence in the marketplace.  See United States v. O’Hagan, 521 U. S. 642, 658 (1997),” id. at 345, she can enter both Dura and O’Hagan as authorities for a rule about the securities statutes’ role in maintaining public confidence.  The Spindler should vouch for Dura (having read it) but not for O’Hagan (unless and until she has read that too).  Still, if Justice Breyer, who delivered the Dura decision for the Supreme Court, cites O’Hagan — or any other reliable source cites a decision — we think it is worth contributing it to Spindle. Subsequent researchers will vouch for it.

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We are delighted to announce that Professor Marcia Gelpe of William Mitchell College of Law will be the chief editor of our module on the Clean Air Act.  Professor Gelpe has been affiliated with William Mitchell for nearly thirty years as professor, associate dean and, now, emerita professor of law.   She also holds an appointment as a Professor Emeritus at the Netanya Academic College in Israel and served for many years as their Director of the Center for Environmental Law (for which she organized numerous national academic conferences on Israeli environmental law) and has participated in various national commissions concerning the environment, pollution and air and water policy.  Prior to beginning her teaching career, Professor Gelpe worked as an attorney at the Office of General Counsel of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.   In addition, she was a member of the Minnesota Pollution Control Agency Board for seven years.  Professor Gelpe’s work on the Clean Air Act should be released on Spindle in the coming months.