A Frolic of Her Own

Liberal blawgs?

Daniel Solove's observation that more conservative than liberal bloggers link to Concurring Opinions (a group blog composed of mostly moderate liberals) has set off an unusually acrimonious discussion.  Let me suggest that the reaon liberal law blogs don't link to Concurring Opinions isn't that liberals are intolerant of dissent or don't care about ideas.  In fact, the issue is simpler: there just aren't that many liberal law blogs to begin with.  A quick scan of Concurring Opinions's own census of blogging law professors reveals that the #1 and #4 law schools for prof-bloggers are, respectively, Chicago and George Mason.  Ave Maria has almost as many bloggers as Yale.  (I recognize, of course, that not everyone at Chicago or even Ave Maria is necessarily a right-wing conservative, but many of these bloggers do seem to be right-leaning.)

Of course, this all leads back to another question: why are there more conservative law bloggers than liberals?  Part of it, I would guess, is that - sorry, David Horowitz - law schools just aren't that liberal.  Sure, large majorities of most law faculties may identify themselves as Democrats.  I continue to believe, however, that law remains a basically conservative profession.  True, hard-core constitution-in-exile types may not find legal academia a completely hospitable environment, but that doesn't mean that the decorous moderate-liberals who overwhelmingly populate law faculties would look any more kindly on someone equally far to the left.  Law and law schools are always going to be grooming people to enter the power structure (yes, there was once a notion that law could be used a tool of radical activism, but try finding a currently respected professor who believes such a thing).  These days, that power structure is conservative. 

There are a number of blogs written from a liberal point of view that engage in policy debates and toss around ideas in much the same manner as the Volokh Conspiracy.  (To name just a few I've recently started reading: majikthise, Legal Fiction (which, despite its title, is not really a blawg), and Mark Kleiman.)  These blogs just don't happen to be written by law professors.  I would nonetheless advise those conservatives who claim to be interested in reading liberal blogs with substantive intellectual content to check them out.

Year-end movies

Over the long weekend I saw both Munich and Brokeback Mountain, both of which were pretty well-acted and absorbing, though I've become so hyper-attuned to Steven Spielberg's penchant for gloppy sentimentality that even a small dollop of it does a lot to kill my enjoyment of a movie.  Neither film, however, has shaken my belief that 1) it is a rare, rare movie that can justify a running time of more than two hours; 2) perhaps film directors and Supreme Court justices should all be required to attend some kind of short-is-beautiful seminar.

The evils of blogfare

Has anyone ever noticed that, for someone who blames welfare for everything from terrorism to chad to why black women won't date him, Mickey Kaus does not really have the world's most demanding job?  Take, for example, last Friday, December 16 - a day when some of us working stiffs were scurrying around defending corporate America's right not to produce documents, while valiantly spending our few spare hours working on a law review article and, um, attending to other responsibilities.  Now consider, by contrast, the Kaus-man's activities last Friday. I picture him getting up sometime around noon, going outside in his pajamas to get the mail, noting the presence of a holiday card from a mildly embarrassing Democrat, and thinking, "That's it! That's my 32-word blog entry for the day!" - leaving him the whole weekend to get back to whatever it is middle-aged would-be roués do in the copious hours when they're not blogging.

Of course, plenty of bloggers who have day jobs (and, no, test-driving cars doesn't count) regularly write as much in a day as Kaus does in a week. But let's not judge Kaus's work ethic solely by the crude measure of output!  There's also the fact that, when it comes to story ideas, the Kausinator never has to look very far afield.  If the day's mail or the contents of his own brain don't suffice to fill some column inches, then there's always astute political analysis to be found on the Golfchannel.com message boards.  And why even bother to gather facts when it's always safe - and easy! - to assume that everyone in America shares your prejudices? Of course, when all else fails, you can always turn to the staple activity of those who've been infected by a culture of dependency - rail against the people who've cut off your free handouts!

It's clear that some toughness is called for, before Mickey starts slacking on exercise, going overboard on the booze, and suffering the other pernicious effects of a something-for-nothing existence.  Perhaps Slate could announce that, if Mickey fails to produce a new book within, oh, eighteen months, he'll have to find a real job?  Or maybe a market-based approach might work - Slate could, say, pay people to write blogs only if people will pay to read them.  Come to think of it, didn't Times Select already try something like that?

The lion and the witch, as such

Generally, I find myself on the liberal, "language evolves" side of grammar and usage controversies, but ever since my first week of law school I've found myself irritated by the constant use of the phrase "as such" to mean something on the order of "therefore" or "as a result."  Not only is this usage officially wrong (though for a qualified defense, see here), but - among lawyers, anyway - it's a cliché, and a somewhat pretentious one.  That is, people seem to reach for "as such" rather than the more pedestrian "therefore" when they want to add a note of lawyerly pomposity to whatever they're writing.  As a result, I tend to associate the phrase with the dense, self-important prose and various other ills of bad legal writing.

At any rate, the phrase is ubiquitous enough as it is, so I was rather dismayed to hear the hated usage of "as such" in The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe last weekend, uttered by none other than the thoroughly conservative and proper Mrs. MacReady.  (I am sure this is the screenwriter's doing, not C.S. Lewis's; lipstick-hating prude Lewis may have been, but I doubt he ever used "as such" in any sense other than its traditional one.)  Since lawyers are sort of the Mrs. MacReadys in the Narnia of life, I can't imagine this will do anything to stem the "as such" tide in briefs and law review articles.

A couple of links

The past week has been all about me, multicolored Post-its, and 3,000 documents in need of some "high-level review," so my blog-reading hours have been limited.  Nonetheless, this is one of the funnier things I've seen all week, and this is, um, one of the more distressing.