My Three Picks of the Week
No. 7: This one is mainly about the LAW. From the Critical Legal Studies Movement at Harvard to the brilliant mind of Antonin Scalia, and from there on to Joe Biden and John Cleese...
Important comment by Law Professor Rebecca Roiphe on the critical legal studies movement that emerged at Harvard Law school in the 1970s. It suggests that both left and right activists are doing the law a disservice. As she notes in one passage of her illuminating essay: “In the recent past, law schools and the profession as a whole have had an unfortunate tendency to portray the law as nothing more than an instrument of power. And the profession is now experiencing buyer’s remorse in seeing how similar that doctrine is to Trump’s vision.”
At the same time, there were such giants teaching at Harvard as the constitutional theorist John Hart Ely. Ely was critical of using the law to do away with democratic self-government, a movement that in my view has to accept some of the responsibility for the crisis of democratic government we are seeing today. Here are two important quotes by Ely. Here is the first: “We may grant until we’re blue in the face that legislatures aren’t wholly democratic, but that isn’t going to make courts more democratic than legislatures.” The second quote goes like this: “"The Constitution may follow the flag, but is it really supposed to keep up with the New York Review of Books?"
The Art of Intellectual Exchange or the Difference between Pontificating and Proper Thinking. This involves great rhetoric by Antonin Scalia on one of the West’s great constitutions, and the difference between a Bill of Rights and a sound legal structure to govern a country.
To this I add the attempt by Joe Biden (as the then chair of the Senat’s Judiciary Committee) to prove that Antonin Scalia was a beyond-the-pale reactionary. The attempt was a failure, one of a series of failures that however didn’t prevent the man from rising to the top of American politics. The example suggests that arrogance or intellectual mediocrity does not disqualify you for a top job in politics. Perhaps you even stand a better chance if you combine the two.
John Cleese on Stupidity. This one speaks for itself, and is a nice complement to Biden’s interrogation of Scalia. Did I forget to mention that in 1968 Joe Biden gained a law degree at Syracuse University. No wonder he would have loved to be taught by Professor Scalia.
ENJOY — HAPPY WEEKEND!