gay porn teen porn teen porn sexy women horse sex free sex videos free sex videos ]]> http://www.scotusblog.com/2005/03/how-bitter-will-the-next-s-ct-nomination-be/#comment-6287 Centerfield Thu, 03 Mar 2005 22:47:16 +0000 http://www.scotusblog.com/wp/uncategorized/how-bitter-will-the-next-s-ct-nomination-be/#comment-6287 <strong>Nil nisi bonum</strong> Without trying to plunge Centerfield's readers into a mire of legal subtlety, I would like to call attention to a situation that began to emerge twenty-four hours ago. Tom Goldstein, the proprietor of Goldstein & Howe, mentor to dozens of... Nil nisi bonum

Ramesh Ponnuru and Tom Goldstein continue to duke it out over whether Larry Tribe presented a fictional account of his argument in the Richmond Newspapers case. There’s even a n…

Even before the Chief Justice retires, newspapers and the blogosphere are focused on the question of the upcoming confirmation wars. (I won’t link here to all of the news reports and commentaries; Howard Bashman has comprehensively linked to the releva…

Jonah Goldberg, a fellow not easy to croggle, is “simply amazed that Ramesh [Ponnuru’]s smackdown on Larry Tribe . . . hasn’t gotten more play. I just read it over the weekend and I’ve been waiting for the blowback. Basically,

My own take is that it doesn’t work very well; the editorializing becomes a bit of a distraction. Fun distraction for readers, but probably not one that furthers the blog’s mission.

TG responds: I agree with this by and large. Hence the fact that I very rarely do it — I really can’t count 5 times in the blog’s history. In this case, I decided that it was best to create a separate blog for it because the further things I have to say clearly are my own personal views.

His email reveals he’s at Covington, and his firm biography reveals he went to Harvard law: http://www.cov.com/lawyers/dremes/biography.html.
Was Remes a student of Tribe, or does he otherwise know him? Google reveals Remes recently filed an amicus brief on behalf of Tribe’s side of a case: http://www.goldsteinhowe.com/blog/archive/2003_01_05_SCOTUSblog.cfm#87231553.

It may be Remes has no connection to Tribe, and in posting he’s acting simply as a lawyer concerned about Tribe being (in his mind) unfairly attacked. If so, that’s great.

Of course, if Remes has some sort of connection to Tribe, it should have been disclosed up front, just as Tom properly disclosed his conection, as it would tend to suggest Remes is acting as some sort of proxy for Tribe, who so far hasn’t issued the rebuttal to Ponnuru’s article he promised, although perhaps he is planning to do it in the form of a letter to the editor of the National Review. Some clarification, either way, seems in order.

TG responds: I disagree with this suggestion, although as with all the other posts I’ve read I respect it enough to put it up. It seems to me that there is a never-ending loop to this in which, for example, Brent Cooper is asked to disclose his contacts with people. If someone decides they want to provide context for their remarks, that’s fine. As I suggested in response to an earlier comment, I think people should take with a grain of salt the merits of comments when they don’t know the background of the author. But it doesn’t seem to me that there is merit to the idea that there is some sort of obligation to make a broader disclosure. Just my 2 cents.

LAURENCE TRIBE’S FRIENDS [Ramesh Ponnuru]

Actually, Jonah, there has been at least one attempt to defend Professor Tribe. It’s by Tom Goldstein, who notes in a partial disclosure that he “regularly work[s] with Larry Tribe on Supreme Court litigation.” His defense adopts several strategies to sidestep the issue of scholarly misconduct:

1) Mischaracterize what I wrote. Goldstein says that my criticism of Tribe is merely that he “very strongly implied” in 2003 that he had made a bold Ninth Amendment argument in a 1980 case when he didn’t. That’s part of the criticism in my article. But it’s not the entirety of it. And it’s important to note that it’s not the case that Tribe wrote one stray sentence or paragraph that strongly implied something false. The whole Tribe article makes no sense except as an attempt to portray his record in the 1980 case as different than it was. For example, since Tribe didn’t make anything close to the bold Ninth Amendment argument he later claimed to have made, there is ample reason to doubt Tribe’s 2003 account of having withstood pressure from powerful figures to back away from that argument.

2) Mischaracterize what Tribe wrote. That 2003 “essay . . . is actually about the death of Tribe’s father—a subject that Ponnuru essentially back-handedly mocks.” First of all, Tribe’s essay was not simply “about the death of Tribe’s father” and did not purport to be. It was about how that death gave Tribe the courage to be bold before the Supreme Court. I take it that Goldstein chooses the locution “essentially back-handedly mocks” since he can’t quote any examples of my actually front-handedly mocking the topic of Tribe’s father’s death. I did not mock that topic in any way. (Goldstein’s decision not to link to my article was strategically wise.) I didn’t, for example, suggest that Tribe’s treatment of it was “over the top,” as Goldstein does. I do, at one point, say that the “incident” which my article concerns—Tribe’s publication of an essay that seems to falsify his record—was “weird.”

3) Speculate about my motives. Goldstein believes that I am trying to damage Tribe in advance of a confirmation battle over Chief Justice Rehnquist’s replacement. I’m supposed to be under the impression that if Tribe’s credibility is damaged, there will be no other liberal law professors to write op-eds and testify against whoever Bush nominates. That’s nuts. I did the story because I thought it was an interesting story. Its timing reflects when I learned about the story.

My article stuck very closely to Tribe’s own words and to the record of the Supreme Court case involved. When I had to characterize, e.g., legal briefs, I tried to do so in as restrained and sober a way as possible, allowing for evidence that went against my thesis. (There was a very little bit of that.) I did not speculate about Tribe’s own motives. I did not do a lot of editorializing. I did not, for example, call Tribe slippery and dishonest. I am willing to say that, however, about one of his defenders.

TG responds: I may be alone in this, but I think this kind of vituperative response — e.g., slippery and dishonest — is illustrative of the mindset that my original post described. I thought Ponnuru’s original story was, as I said, silly — and I think his reply is silly too. That’s not my ducking the substance of these three points, the answers to which I think are pretty straightforward. I imagine (again, I haven’t talked to him about it) that Tribe thinks the piece in terms of his father’s death; Ponnuru thinks it’s about how that death gave Tribe the courage to be bold in the S. Ct. I think Ponnuru back-handedly mocks the death of Tribe’s father (through the use of scare quotes); Ponnuru thinks that’s insupportable. These are all judgments readers can make for themselves by reading the pieces, as I said in my post (which I don’t think anyone actually believes was intended to hide Ponnuru’s article, a piece that had been out for several days but had almost exclusively been mentioned in the conservative blogosphere). I leave it to those who’ve read both pieces to make whatever judgments they want.

But I don’t really see much of an answer to my basic point — that this enterprise is silly, a real stretch. Ponnuru implicitly denies that he was motivated by a desire to undermine Tribe pre-confirmation. So be it. My personal opinion of his level-headedness was higher before this posting on the Corner, but others can judge for themselves. (The hyperbole does run a little wild with the idea that my post suggested that Tribe was the only person who would oppose Bush’s nominees.)

I know that others delink these pieces in their minds from the looming confirmation battle. I don’t personally. Tribe does have a singular place in the S. Ct. confirmation process.

Now, Ponnuru’s post and David Remes’s response in his comment did inspire me to take a look at the substance of Ponnuru’s claim — bottom line, it appears that Ponnuru is (actually, to my surprise given the vehemence of his post) just wrong — and I’ll add an update to my original post on that score when time permits later tonight.

TG responds: I think this gets closer to my point, but maybe by proving it. I don’t think that the original post really conveyed that the commentator was speaking to my supposed liberal bias and relationship to Professor Tribe through something other than personal knowledge. My point was that the merit of a comment should be measured by the extent to which the reader is confident about what the reader knows. I’m not sure about the court@court.gov example. That was a post that equally disagreed with what I had written, and it wasn’t trying to suggest to the reader that the author knew some fact about me personally.

This comment says that I have a different political point of view than Ramesh. That I think is entirely fair and accurate. But I imagine that I fall into a place in the blogosphere that is underrepresented among authors of not being particularly partisan. It’s certainly true that I donated money to Kerry rather than Bush. So did millions of moderate people, just like millions of moderates who gave to Bush rather than Kerry.

The remainder of this comment seems pretty overstated. I won’t repeat it because it will then just come across as the use of scare quotes. I never said anything that approaches what’s described above regarding all attacks on liberal academics. I wrote in my post, and continue to believe — with some who agree and others who don’t — that these particular attacks on Tribe — the newest as something that seems profoundly silly — are targeted at him because of the prospect of a confirmation fight.