Remember when Larry Lessig signed away his copyright in an article to a law review and vowed never to do it again (Never Again)? He has since been throwing his weight behind efforts to make legal scholarship open to all -- including a brand-new project that Science Commons announced today: the Open Access Law Program:

Professor Lessig is the first signatory on the Open Access Law Author Pledge, where law professors can agree to support open access principles. This support includes encouraging journals to become open access and promising to publish only in journals that are open access.

Through its Open Access Law Program, Science Commons will work with law schools, authors, libraries and journals to encourage open access to legal journals and articles, and plans to expand the Program into other areas of law publishing. Although the program’s initial focus is on legal publishing in the United States, Science Commons is also supporting international efforts to make legal material freely available to all.

Update: Ernie Miller responds: "[Why] not simply have the journals that do sign publish the works directly, if the authors have similarly signed, into an Open Access Repository at the end of the limited exclusive license, rather than leave it up to the authors? And why no call on OAL Journals to proselytize Creative Commons to its authors?"