Back when there were merely scores of other law blogs, a jury blogger could turn her computer off over Thanksgiving weekend, confident that the best stories would still need coverage on Monday.
Now there are hundreds of law blogs at least, and that means two things. First, great jury stories get covered fast and well by other people. The new Tenth Circuit case on jury bias? It's at Juries. The Georgia juror who tried a little do-it-yourself CSI? Picked up in the American Society of Trial Consultants' new news feed. (There's no permalink to individual stories yet; scroll down to November 25.) The truly stunning story of the convicted defendant's mom who went undercover with one juror after another until she found one who told her he lied to get on the jury? Terrific coverage by Gideon at A Public Defender, a nuanced take from Scott Greenfield at Simple Justice, and a prompt post and follow-up at Juries again.
Second, it's an even greater honor to make the ABA Journal's Blawg 100 list in 2008 than it was in 2007. As was true last year, you can't list 100 without leaving many wonderful blogs off the list, so the Blawg 100 is best thought of as one set of recommendations, not as a "best" selection. Still, it's a set of recommendations that described Deliberations as "a smart, captivating blog," and so I don't mind saying it completely made my day.
As it did last year, the ABA Journal combines the Blawg 100 announcement with a voting period, where visitors can vote for their favorite blogs. The voting brings readers to the ABA Journal's site, which they deserve; and it helps readers discover new blogs on the list, which those blogs deserve. So it's worth a minute, and if you happened to vote for Deliberations while you're there, well, I'd be honored. I'm in the "niche" category, where I'm certain to lose in a landslide, since some of the most respected blogs anywhere on the web are there -- like SCOTUSblog, Patently-O, Walter Olson's Overlawyered, and Drug and Device Law.
