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Law in the Internet Society
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Law Library Requiem-- By RickeyOrr - 24 Jan 2025Damnatio MemoriaeThroughout time, the winners of wars, conquests, and invasions have rewritten history to paint themselves in a more favorable light. In some instances, these “victors” have gone as far as burning and destroying everything from the civilization they took over. This is known as iconoclasm, or more often today, the whitewashing of history. From 500 to 1500 AD, Europe fell into a “Dark Age”. The Dark Ages were a period during which no significant writings, discoveries, or inventions occurred. Thus, human civilization became dormant. However, in 711, the Moors, a population from North Africa, invaded the Iberian Peninsula (Modern Day Spain). They ruled this region until 1492. Over the next 700 to 800 years, The Moors developed algebra, the number zero, our modern numeral system, introduced chess and saffron to the region, and established numerous universities. In 1492, King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella seeking to reclaim the Iberian Peninsula waged war against The Moors. They not only expelled The Moors from Spain but burned all evidence of their rule through the destruction of their architecture, the burning of their libraries and writings, and the repainting of their portraits. This process of erasure is known as damnatio memoriae or condemnation of memory for religious, power, or political reasons. It occurred during the Roman Empire, the 800s, the Reformation, and the French Revolution. In each of these periods, there was a deliberate and well-executed censoring of the memory of disagreeable predecessors or those who came before.Columbia Law School's LibraryOn October 18, 2022, the former dean of Columbia Law School, Gillian Lester, announced to law students over email that Columbia Law School’s Alia Tutor Law Library had received a gift of $17.5 million dollars from alum Alia Tutor. Beginning May 2024, Columbia law students no longer had access to their library. Whereas, Columbia law students normally do not have access to Jerome Greene Hall during the summer, the lack of access to the library continued into the 2024-2025 school year. This proved to be a nuisance to many law students as there was now less study space in Jerome Greene Hall and access to books and other resources were limited. According to architecture and design firm Perkins Eastman, they were hired by the university to renovate the reading areas and book stacks. Additionally, the firm will also create new private rooms and rooms for seminar classes within the law library. However, when looking at the firm’s digital markups, all one sees is long empty tables and bookshelves that are only three shelves high. Before the renovations occurred, the law library had numerous book stacks that felt endless. My question for Perkins Eastman is “Where are all these pre-existing books going?” Where do they fit with the “reimagined” law library? Moreover, Columbia Law School already has classrooms across numerous buildings. Is it necessary to erase space for books to create more classrooms? It also takes recognizing whether a renovation this huge is fair to the current law students who are paying tuition. Personally, not having the law library for a whole academic year is a huge let down. It is harder to find a place to study and now when someone wants to read a book, they must request that book through the school.In the past, a law student could go to the shelf themselves and pick it up. This adds a surveillance aspect into the law school and into what law students chose to read. In the past, when a student wanted a book, as long as they knew where it was, ideally no one would know what books they were reading. However, now that Columbia law students no longer have access to their law library, they must request books for pickup. Therefore, the school can now see what books students are reading and can also keep track of who requests which books. The freedom of choice in choosing what to read no longer belongs to students. This also creates problems for law students who choose to read books that the law school does not agree with. Once a law student puts their request in, the school has the ability to make a note and even flag their uni or ID number if they happen to request a book that goes against the university’s wishes or agenda. On Perkins Eastman website, they have examples of twenty previous libraries they have worked on and renovated. The digital markups from many of these projects, however, feature very little books. The dictionary, Merriam-Webster, defines a library as “a place in which literary, musical, artistic, or reference materials (such as books, manuscripts, recordings, or films) are kept for use but not for sale”. If you create a space that is lacking in physical books and reference materials, then what you are creating is not a library. As Professor Moglen said in his “Law in the Internet Society” class, what law students are actually receiving is “An Instagram backdrop in a first class lounge in a second choice airport in a third rate city”.The Erasure of the Law LibraryCurrently Columbia law students do not have a law library to access or call their own. What came before was a law library with endless stacks of books, available for law students to use at numerous hours of the day. According to the artist renderings and the renovation updates, what comes after will be less physical books and more community spaces. One must ask themselves, “Why did the people in power of Columbia Law School find it necessary to destroy a usable, good law library and replace it with something paling in comparison?” What was their perceived gain from destroying the current law library? Some of the motivations given on the school's website are to increase study space, add more classrooms, and to increase the number of computer screens. Either way, this decision has left Columbia’s law students without a library for the 2024-2025 academic year and without all the physical books that once held space within that library.You are entitled to restrict access to your paper if you want to. But we all derive immense benefit from reading one another's work, and I hope you won't feel the need unless the subject matter is personal and its disclosure would be harmful or undesirable. To restrict access to your paper simply delete the "#" character on the next two lines:
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