Law - The Federal Trade Commission published a recommendation that companies who promote their product through word-of-mouth marketing must disclose these relationships. The recommendation applies explicitly to blogging, meaning that bloggers must disclose the fact that they are being paid to promote or review a product whenever that is the case.PayPer Post and ReviewMe are websites that link advertisers up with bloggers that want to earn money for writing about their products. In light of the FTC recommendation, PayPerPost and Review Me. Bloggers are now required to disclose the fact that they are being paid for their endorsement. But beyond these two sites, there is a much larger industry of “Buzz Advertising” which takes place through informal emails and payments between bloggers. The letter of the FTC recommendation includes these informal payments as well, meaning that even under the table reviews must be disclosed. But considering that to date no blogger has been prosecuted for violating the FTC’s recommendation, it isn’t yet clear how strict the FTC is going to be or the punishments that will be imposed.

How to stay out of trouble

NEVER claim that you are an objective, unbiased source if you are being paid to provide information.
ALWAYS make it easy for your readers to distinguish between advertising and editorial content.
CONSIDER that even though the FTC’s paid review disclosure recommendation doesn’t appear to apply to links, meaning that webmasters aren’t required to “NoFollow” the paid links they give as of now, scholars at the University of Chicago Law School are currently discussing this as a future development for e-commerce law.

Is Deep Linking Legal

One of the biggest advantages that blogging has over traditional media is the convention to include links in an article which connect the reader directly with the source. The links could direct the reader to a file, a different page on the same site or to a new site altogether. Despite the generally helpful nature of linking and the internet’s open platform, however, linking is not free from US government regulation.

Lawyer and Attorney Theme

Virginia Divorce Lawyers Goal My goal is to help others easily share their legal knowledge in an appealing style. While my primary site is focused on Virginia divorce lawyers, any law firm can easily utilize this blog to create their own standalone website or use it simply for blogging purposes. Please feel free to contact me with any questions or issues. Also, comments are certainly appreciated; hopefully positive (wink)! However in all sincerity please do add your feedback regarding the law theme therefore and I will attempt to make improvements that are desired. Thank you and all others who visit and utilize this legal theme.

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Idea of the day: using e-books to learn about learning

Amazon.com tells me that the Kindle is the hottest holiday gift this holiday season. And not long ago, several law professors had a lively discussion of law e-textbooks on a prominent law blog. It seems that, ready or not, widespread use of e-textbooks are just around the corner.To be sure, traditional paper textbooks will not disappear immediately, but e-textbooks will surely gain more popularity as prices for e-readers fall, technologies become perfected, and more publishers make textbooks available electronically.I must admit that I am not yet enamored by e-readers, and do not own one. I prefer the texture, the weight, the craftsmanship of real books. I love certain publishers just because I like the designs of their paperbacks, and a beautiful book cover always sends a little shiver of pleasure down my spine. To think that a new generation of children will be weaned on a screen and never know the loveliness of paper makes me a bit sad.

Nonetheless, lately I have gotten more excited about the prospect of e-textbooks when I realized that e-readers might be used — indeed, is probably already being used to track the reading habits of its readers and to generate data and trends.To average adult readers reading for pleasure, the idea that their reading habits may be meticulously tracked by a machine might seem like an enormous invasion of privacy. But collecting such data may be indispensable to educators who are trying to understand effective learning behavior.Most of the data that we collect about education measures the output of the learning process. We test student knowledge in standardized, nationwide or state-wide exams that are given periodically, and then analyze the test scores generated by these exams to determine how well the learning process has succeeded. But e-readers and similar devices can generate enormous amount of data about the learning process itself.

What type of data might be collected? The possibilities are virtually endless. The e-device might track how much time a student spends per day reading, what he reads, the speed at which he reads, the amount of time he spends reading particular pages, etc. If, as I believe would inevitably happen, such devices would come equipped with quizzes and problem sets and exams, students can also be tracked based on how long they spend doing a particular problems and, of course, their score.There is a bonanza of information that researchers could use to study learning behavior. But the tracking could be used not only for academic purposes, but also as a way for schools and teachers to ensure that students are completing their homework. Many employers already do a form of this type of tracking by, for example, requiring their employees to take an on-line training program that consists of powerpoint slides with periodical questions to ensure that the content of the slides are being read and understood.

There are a few well-known problems in education that researchers have long puzzled over. Take, for example, the problem of the racial achievement gap. Why do children of different races perform differently in standardized exams even when one accounts for other factors, such as socio-economic background? Elsewhere in this blog, I have argued that we have an unhealthy focus on race, and that other, even wider achievement gaps should trouble us more. But it is undeniable that the racial achievement gaps exist. Learning more about children’s learning habits might give us insights into this and other puzzles.Of course, understanding how students learn is not the only or even the most important goal. Through better understanding of how people learn, educators can figure out ways to improve the way students learn and the way teachers teach.Does all of this sound Big Brother-esque? Perhaps. But like it or not, retailers, advertisers, and website developers already do very similar things in order to understand and track consumer behavior. Information about the amount of time a shopper spends on a webpage, the types of links that he clicks, the search criteria that brought him there, are all meticulously tracked and then fed into sophisticated programs. It is time that our educators take advantage of these tools, for the sake of our students.

Why learning should be less fun

In his speech addressing the nation today, President Obama mentioned, once again, the well-known fact that that the math and science scores of U.S. students lag behind the students of many other industrialized countries, including China, Finland, and Singapore. The weak scores have long been the worry for American educators. They are partly what the Race to the Top funding is supposed to address.So far, many prominent voices in education have assumed that the reason for the lag is some essential problem with American schools. Some, such as the Secretary of Education Arne Duncan, point to the lack of “good math and science teachers” and calls for higher teacher salaries to attract more and better teachers in those areas. Others, like Paul Peterson at Education Next , believe that technological innovation “is our best and final hope for saving high-quality math and science education.” Peterson hopes that online education could compete with traditional models of teaching and educate better students.

But few people seem to be asking a rather obvious question: if U.S. students are lagging behind other countries, how do these other countries teach their children? Do China, Finland, Estonia, Sinagpore, Japan, etc. have more talented teachers? Do they have more effective teaching methods arrived at via a more decentralized teaching market? In future posts, I would like to explore the school systems of these other countries. But this post will be a more personal one. Having experienced one of these other education systems first-hand, I can tell you that neither of those propositions was true.I went to an elementary school on the outskirts of Beijing that was considered very mediocre. Some of my teachers were compassionate and interesting. Most failed to make an impression on me. A couple were downright horrible. Corporal punishment was normal behavior. So was verbal denigration of students.

School was not fun. Hours were long — in elementary school we arrived in class around 8:30 am and usually stayed until 6 or 7 pm (with a 1.5 hour break for lunch in between). High school hours were even longer. We went to school 6 days a week, and usually had a couple of hours of homework each day, which mostly consisted of math and verbal drills and problem sets. I did not like school very much.And yet… I learned. Lots and lots of math and science. By 7th grade my classmates and I were solving complex quadratic equations with multiple variables. By 7th grade, we were learning biology, chemistry, and physics, all in the same year. All 3 science courses were mandatory courses to be taken concurrently for the six years of middle and high school.

So imagine my surprise when I came to the States and discovered that children in 7th grade were still reviewing how to add and subtract fractions. Imagine my surprise to learn that students only enrolled in one science class each grade, alternating among biology, physics, and chemistry, that school let out at 2:30, that homework was nearly nonexistent.Needless to say, for the next three or four year or so, I sailed through my math and science classes with excellent grades. My Chinese education, as much as I disliked it at the time, gave someone like me, by no means a math or science genius, a huge boost. This is something that many immigrant children I know experienced.

Why did the Chinese school teach me so much more? Did I learn because I loved school, because my teachers were fascinating, because I had tools unavailable to my American peers? No, no, and no. I learned because of the excruciatingly long hours, the constant drills, the obviously high expectations, the pressures from the teachers and from my own parents.School in China was not expected to be fun, and no one pretended that it was. Learning certain subjects, especially math and science, was work. Work that was sometimes grueling. Work that required discipline, just like learning a musical instrument or becoming good at a sport.

Some children find such discipline easy. Those children are often high achievers from a very young age. But for most, including me, discipline was difficult and required external motivation. It sometimes required fear, including fear of being punished. As a whole, my Chinese school, for all its shortcomings, was very effective at instilling this discipline.Even for someone as young as me, it was clear that the emphasis of my American public schools was not on discipline. It was on something like “creativity,” or “individuality.” Much of it was focused on “fun.” This was reflected in the short hours of school, in the light volume of homework, on the long summers, on the gentle and easy-going way in which teacher treated us, on such filler classes such as “study hall.”

No doubt, certain students thrive in the more fluid and flexible American system, which allows for those at the top to develop their talent more spectacularly than the stratified Chinese system could ever allow. Time spent outside of school could be used to accomplish some amazing things, just take a look at the spectacular entries each year for the Westinghouse competition. But as a society, our concerns are not merely with the success of the top students, but also the average students whose lagging scores trouble us so much.

Do I believe that American schools should adopt all of the tactics of my Chinese school? Not at all. Even the Chinese schools themselves have reformed and eliminated many of the harsh authoritarian measures. But I do believe that to improve the math and science scores, American schools do not necessarily need better teachers or more innovative methods. It needs more of a culture of discipline. It needs, for instance, longer school days, and more teacher authority.Most of all, it needs the realization, from students, parents, teachers, and administrators, that mastering basic academic skills, just like athletic drills or music practice, is often not fun. Perhaps we put too much emphasis on looking for ways to make it so. Perhaps we should instead look for ways to effectively teach our students the discipline they need to learn.

Religious speech in school: religion or speech?

My previous post discusses the tension between the Establishment Clause and the Free-Exercise Clause in the First Amendment. In the school context, much of the tension centers on what public school educators can or cannot do. But a couple of recent cases involving religious speech demonstrate that the tension exists for students as well.Unlike with teachers, who are state employees, student religious speech normally does not trigger the Establishment Clause concern that the state is endorsing an official religion. Nonetheless, in recent years, controversies and lawsuits have sprung up around the country concerning whether schools may prevent students from reciting prayers, singing religious hymns, or offering other expressions of religion at school-sponsored events. In nearly all of these cases, courts have upheld the powers of the schools to regulate student conduct.Some of the cases seem almost comically petty. A Wisconsin student who planned to sing a hymn at graduation was told, for example, that she would have to use “he,” “him,” or “his,” instead of “God” in the lyrics. A New Jersey school district banned religious music entirely at the school holiday concert, a decision challenged by parents but upheld by the 3rd circuit.

A pair of cases about graduation speeches have received a lot of media attention, and both were recently denied cert by the Supreme Court. In McComb v. Crehan, a Las Vegas high school valedictorian sought to use her valedictory speech to discuss how her christian faith helped her to succeed in school. The school nixed portions of her draft speech as “proselytizing.” Brittany McComb decided to deliver the speech anyway, and the school turned off her microphone at graduation. McComb then brought suit against the school district, alleging a violation of her First Amendment rights.A district court in Nevada denied the school’s motion to dismiss the case based on the pleadings, essentially ruling that McComb could go forward on her suit. But the 9th Circuit reversed and upheld the school’s actions.In a similar case, Colorado valedictorian Erica Corder also veered from her prepared text into proselytization of her Christian faith. She actually succeeded in delivering the entire speech. But the school principal refused to grant her diploma until she wrote a letter acknowledging that the speech was her personal view. Corder’s suit against the school district, therefore, dealt not only with unlawfully censored speech but also unlawfully compelled speech. The suit has been similarly dismissed by the 10th Circuit.

Although the two circuit courts reached the same results, they rested their reasoning on different grounds: one primarily on religion, and the other primarily on speech. This highlights a problem with student religious speech in school — should it be analyzed under the Establishment Clause rubric, or the Free Speech Clause?In the 9th Circuit, the issue was analyzed as one of religion, perhaps in part because there is clear caselaw that students have no right to proselytize in a school-sponsored event. Neither party disputed that the school officials had the power to control and censor student speech in such a setting. The main issues were factual: whether the student speech was in fact proselytizing and whether the school official retained primary control over the graduation speech.

The 10th Circuit, however, did not have such clear precedents, and instead rested its ruling on an analysis of prior Supreme Court student free-speech cases. In doing so, the 10th Circuit ruling nearly completely ignores the “religion” aspect of the case and treats the student’s religious speech as any other types of speech.Although the 10th Circuit arrives at the same conclusion as the 9th Circuit, such an approach has its risks. Student speech cases typically rely on a kind of in loco parentis authority that the school has to regulate behavior of the students in order to satisfy educational and disciplinary goals. In its opinion, the 10th Circuit strained to explain what type of “educational” goals the school achieved by censoring religious speech.

The fact of the matter is, a school’s decision to censor religious speech is not the same as its decision to censor sexual, or lewd, or incendiary speech. It should not rest on a discretionary judgment about the consequences of the speech, but should stem from a legitimate concern that such speech may be seen as endorsed by the school in violation of the Establishment Clause.Thus, prohibiting this type of speech, at least in a school-sponsored event where schools retain primary control of the content, is not optional and a judgment call, it is constitutionally required. Religious speech in school is not just speech, it is religion.

Faith in the Law

On February 25, I lost a case before the U.S. Supreme Court. I had lost at the district court level as well, but a victory in the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals had lifted my hopes. What’s more, a ruling in my favor seemed a natural extension of the Supreme Court’s 2002 decision upholding Cleveland’s school voucher program in Zelman v. Simmons-Harris. Alas, it was not to be.

The road to my lawsuit, Locke v. Davey, began more than four years ago, when the state of Washington revoked my “Promise Scholarship.” The scholarship was available to students from low- and middle-income families who finished in the top 10 percent of their graduating classes and enrolled at a college in Washington State. Only in October of my freshman year at Northwest College did I learn that my decision to major in church ministry ran afoul of the state constitution’s ban on public support for religious instruction.

I believed that the state’s exclusion of theology majors from the Promise Scholarship program was wrong, both as a matter of constitutional law, which guarantees the free exercise of religion, and as a matter of social policy, which ought to promote freedom and equality and prevent religious discrimination. Accordingly, I decided to take a principled stand against what I considered a grave injustice. I kept my major, thus forfeiting my scholarship.

I soon contacted the American Center for Law and Justice, a public-interest law firm that specializes in religious liberties litigation. With their pro bono representation, I sued several Washington officials, among them Governor Gary Locke, arguing that the state’s exclusion of theology majors from the Promise Scholarship program violated my rights to free speech, free exercise of religion, and equal protection under the laws.

The scholarship money was never my primary motivation in the suit. At less than $3,000, the funds were a relatively small portion of the total cost of a college education. Much more important was my desire to fight injustice, to force the state to end its discrimination against theology majors, and to secure state aid for thousands of students like myself.

I was 19 then, largely ignorant of the law and without appreciation for the importance of the constitutional questions raised in my case. I certainly never imagined my case would be heard by the Supreme Court. As my legal drama unfolded, though, it began to have a profound impact on my own education and career goals. My focus shifted from the ministry to law. After graduating from college in 2003, I began my first year at Harvard Law School. To some, it might seem as if ministry and law could not be more removed from one another or even that it would be impossible to be both a good lawyer and a faithful Christian.

To me, nothing could be further from the truth. Indeed, the very same motivations that led me toward the ministry-a desire to live out my faith in a practical way, to help others, and to make a positive contribution to society-now lead me toward the law.

As it turned out, I did not attain my goals in filing suit; Washington and other states are free to bar theology majors from all forms of state financial aid as a result of the Supreme Court’s decision. The decision is a tremendous disappointment, on a personal level and because a great injustice has been done. Still, I have no regrets. Despite my loss, the fight for religious freedom and equal access to education will continue, and I am only strengthened in my resolve to further those goals.

India's top ten law colleges

1 NLSIU, Bangalore(Est: 1988)

Post Bag No. 7201, Nagarbhavi, Bangalore-560072
Tel: 080-23213160
Website:www.nls.ac.in
E-mail:registrar@nls.ac.in
Seats: 80
Cut-off: Entrance test.

2 NALSAR, Hyderabad(Est: 1998)

3-4, 761, Barkatpura, Hyderabad-500027
Tel: 040-27567955
Website:www.nalsaruniv.org
Seats: 80
Cut-off: Entrance test

3 NLIU, Bhopal (Est: 1997)

Bhadbhada Road, Barkheri Kalan, Bhopal-462002
Tel: 0755-2696965
Website:www.nliu.edu
Seats: 80
Cut-off: Entrance test

4 Symbiosis Law College, Pune (Est: 1977)

Senapati Bapat Road, Pune-411004
Tel: 020-25655114
Website:www.symlaw.ac.in
Seats: 200
Cut-off: Entrance exam

5 Faculty of Law, DU, Delhi (Est: 1924)

Delhi-110007
Tel: 011-27667483
Website:www.du.ac.in
E-mail:lawfaculty@vsnl.net
Seats: 1,500
Cut-off: Entrance test

6 ILS Law College, Pune (Est: 1924)

Law College Road, Pune-411004
Tel: 020-25656775
Website:www.ilslaw.edu
Seats: 240 for a three-year course and 400 for a five-year course
Cut-off: Merit

7 Faculty of Law, BHU, Banaras (Est: 1916)

Varanasi-221005
Tel: 0542-2369018
Website:www.bhu.ac.in
Seats: 275
Cut-off: Entrance test

8 Amity Law School, Delhi (Est: 1999)

Yasho Bhawan, Okhla Road, Delhi-110025
Tel: 011-26325901
Website:www.amity.edu
Seats: 80
Cut-off: 60 per cent

9 University Law College, Bangalore University, Bangalore (Est: 1948)

Palace Road, Bangalore-560001
Tel:080-22262137
Seats: 80
Cut-off: 85 per cent

10 NUJS, Kolkata

The WB National University of Juridical Sciences
Dr. Ambedkar Bhavan
12, LB Block, Sector III, Salt Lake City
Kolkata - 700098
Tel :(+91)33-2335 0534
E-mail:nujs@vsnl.com , nujs@cal3.vsnl.net.in
Web Site:http://www.nujs.edu/
Cut-off: Entrance test (CLAT)