The Internet, Legal Information, and Civic Engagement
A Dialogue with Bernard Hibbitts, University of Pittsburgh Law School and Wendy Bay Lewis,
lawyer and founder of Civicmind.com
Q: How is the Internet changing how young people learn? how
adults learn?
Bernard Hibbitts: The Internet is an extremely attractive and increasingly
accessible resource for young people and adults alike. Now they can access tremendous
amounts of information from home or school without ever going to a library. Along with
opportunity comes danger, however. Here I'm concerned not so much with the
"dangers" associated with the Internet in the popular press—pornography,
molestation, etc.—but with the more subtle perceptions that the Internet helps to
engender: (1) that "all the information you need" is on the Internet, or (2)
that all online material is of equal quality. Neither of these are true. The amount of
information on the Net is vast, but most of the cultural content of American and Western
society still lives offline in libraries, museums and other repositories. And the quality
of Internet-based information is not uniform: some is very good, some is very bad.
Individuals using the Internet—just like young people using print or listening to others—need to keep their critical faculties engaged, asking "who is presenting this
information", "where does it come from", and "what purpose is it
serving"?
In addition to affecting what we learn, the Internet is also affecting the way in which we
learn and the expectations we bring to the enterprise of learning. The Web is not a
mono-medium, as text-only print tends to be. Rather, it is a multimedium, with text,
images, sound and more. This quality enables learning to become much richer than it has
been, as least in terms of the forms that can be used to communicate and understand a
message. But if learning can and does become "enriched" in this way, there is a
concomitant possibility that we will come to expect all learning to be like this, to the
detriment, perhaps, of a great deal of less-overtly engaging but still
critically-important print information. In this context I wonder whether the Internet
revolution will result in a "net" information gain (as vast amounts of new
information are made available to the first time), or an information loss (as old material
is either ignored or downplayed). It's happened before—after all, how many medieval
manuscripts have you read lately?
Q: Young adults today are criticized for their lack of
political participation or political interest, including low voting levels. Does the
Internet offer young adults a new tool for civic engagement or political particpation?
Could you cite any examples?
Wendy Bay Lewis: Young people are ready to be politically engaged, but they are
more discriminating than previous generations about the time and the place they choose to
be involved. For example, they are not inclined to vote unless they see a direct
connection between a particular issue—about which they feel strongly, such as the
environment—and a candidate or a ballot initiative. Similarly, they are more likely to
be engaged through community involvement on their doorstep than national issues where they
believe money plays too big a role.
The Internet offers a new tool for civic engagement if young people choose to make it so,
since this technology really belongs to them. For example, it's no surprise that there is
a proliferation of web sites that track candidates' positions on various issues, since the
newest generation of voters demands more accountabilty from individuals elected to office
than from political parties, to which older generations were more loyal.
Bernard Hibbitts: The Internet opens doors to participation in at least two ways.
First, it makes it much easier for young people to get information on the political
process in general, and on candidates in particular. In this year's Presidential election,
for instance, both candidates have extensive Web sites that give visitors more detailed
information about their positions on the issues than individuals would usually get from
print brochures or television ads. Second, the Internet makes it easier to identify and
work in communities of interest united around a single subject. Young people can easily
find out about and contact organizations doing important work at the local, regional,
national and even international level. Alternatively, they can get in touch with other
like-minded individuals across the country and around the world and put together their own
groups and associations. The combinations that the Internet makes possible in this way go
far beyond what has been practicable to this point.
Q. How has the availability of legal information on the Web
changed in the past year or two? How/why are lawyers needed to help the public understand,
interpret and/or apply legal information on the Web?
Bernard Hibbitts: A few years ago there were only a few large-scale providers of
legal information on the Web. Cornell's Legal Information Institute was the major academic
provider, and FindLaw the major commercial provider. Now there are many more corporations
and organizations posting masses of legal material online. In one respect this is good, as
this process is making more information more available to more people. In another respect
it's bad, however, as it is becoming harder and harder to many people who are not
necessarily highly skilled in online legal research to find what they want in the wash of
site listings and search engine returns. The plethora of providers also presents another
problem: how does one know whether the information provided is good and trustworthy?
Perhaps this is where lawyers come in. In the age of the Internet we may no longer be the
primary custodians of legal information, but we still have a major role to play as primary
legal information filters. And when we filter we do, I think, have a special
responsibility to present the law as a set of standards and values in service to the
community—more than just a commodity to be hawked on the Net in the midst of ads for
cars, sports equipment and who knows what. If lawyers do not stand up the dignity of law,
who will?
Wendy Bay Lewis: The proliferation of web sites about law and the legal system is a
reflection of a modern democracy. A perfect example would be the recent lawsuits against
Big Tobacco and the gun industry. When citizens could not effect change in the legislative
or executive branches, they took their cases to court. We need to reconfigure most civics
and government classes to place greater emphasis on the legal system so that students
understand that litigiousness is an important element of a strong democracy.
Q. In a recent ABA/Close Up Foundation survey of high school
students, teenagers cited the Internet as their second most important source for seeking
information about law and legal topics (right behind newspapers, which ranked first). Does
this finding trouble you? Please you? What are the implications for public education about
the law?
Bernard Hibbitts: The basic fact that teenagers are using the Internet to seek
out legal information online is encouraging. But I must admit to being a little concerned
about *how much* use they're making of the Net to do legal research, and about *how*
they're using it for that purpose. As I mentioned earlier, while the Net is very
convenient, and while it gives access to a lot of legal information not available (or not
conveniently available) in print, it cannot be used as a substitute for research in
printed sources. There is still a great deal of law that has not been posted online yet—most federal court decisions earlier than the mid-1990s, for example, not to mention
almost all of the academic analysis of law by legal scholars (more of these things are of
course available on WESTLAW and LEXIS, the major database providers, but most teenagers
don't have access to those very expensive subscription services). So any serious research
for school or for other purposes that is limited just to what's on the Net is not going to
be very satisfactory.
Going beyond this, however, I'm concerned that teenagers (and many members of virtually
all other age groups!) don't as yet "interrogate" Internet-based legal
information (or political information, or social information, etc.) to the extent they
should. Just because legal "information" is online doesn't mean it's right, or
even that it's up-to-date. Just as good students don't believe everything they read, they
should look at what they see online with a critical eye. And they should be willing to
*dig* in online sources, just as they *dig* in print sources. When you look at a book to
see if it has relevant information, you don't just look at its cover, read its back-page
"blurb" or even view its table of contents. You leaf through it, look at its
index and make an effort to see what's inside. Teenagers and others should practice the
same inquisitive habits online. I can't tell you how many times we've received mail at
JURIST saying, for example, "I want information on gun laws", or "I'm
looking for information on the Supreme Court." Our visitors would find these things
easily if they scanned our section headings, reviewed our site map, and/or ran a search of
our index. Ultimately, the Web can be the most help to those who at least try to help
themselves first.
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