Dear Readers,
For many years, I have posted "spoof" abstracts on April Fools Day. Some months ago, I decided to discontinue this tradition. Many of the posts in prior years were "too successful," actually fooling readers into believing that the author had written the fictional article. I had hope to counter this possibility by linking the posts to the Wikipedia article on April Fools Day, but this failed, as I received many emails complaining that the link was wrong. Some of the spoofed authors wrote me with great concern, because they believed that someone had posted a fake article under their name. Others reported that they had received concerned emails from friends about the odd content of their new article.
The authors were real people, and some of them have been offended by the posts or annoyed by the fall out. And over the course of the last few years, the legal academy has become increasingly politicized, heightening the the offense that some may take to the spoofs.
So, for now, I am discontinuing the April Fools Day tradition. Perhaps it will be revived in happier times.
Lawrence Solum
