I write this post for two reasons. First, I derive enormous satisfaction from referring to myself in the third-person as “Professor.”
But second, and more importantly, my guest stint here on PrawfsBlawg has garnered me an intense amount of flaming from the PrawfsBlawg readership. I feel I must respond.
My most controversial post yet, clearly, was America is the Best Place to be a Law Professor.
One might have thought the label “thesis of the day” at the beginning of the post conveyed my personal level of subscription to the opinions expressed therein. Moreover, one might have thought the image of an American flag literally waiving over the post warned of some tongue-in-cheek narrative ahead (clothing what, I thought, was an interesting question to ponder about how jurisdiction affects our scholarly lives).
In that post, I made the following comment about judge-made law in the United States: “Meritocracy triumphs.” My declaration made some uncomfortable.
“That is a hilarious line, I hope intentionally so.” one person commented.
Hmmm. Well, I was told by one close confident of mine1 that this statement was “such transparent absurdity, no warning label need be affixed.”2 Nonetheless, I’m going to stand by my statement. Get into the law library and read for yourself. Over four million cases. Another 200,000 every year. Not one wrong yet.
I think it is important for me to point out that many of the negative comments to this post were made by people who are, quite obviously, foreign. Let me just say that I did not intend to offend our overseas colleagues. To be quite candid, I was not even aware that our internets worked in other countries. I know better now. But if someone can tell me how to post to the America-only internet, I have do have some additional things to say …
Let me put it this way: If PrawfsBlawg readers don’t learn how to take my dry sense of humor, then I will never tell you about my plan to amend the constitution to throw out all case law so that we can start the 2010s precedent-free. And that goes double for my support of making territorial expansion America’s number one priority in the years ahead. (Hint: I think we can take Greenland. Based on what I’ve seen on the Discovery Channel, it’s very poorly defended.)
So let’s move on to just one other of my many trouble-stirring entries. My Weekend Trivia Challenge asked readers which law-review article was the most cited in history, at least according to a 1996 study, which was the most recent I could find.
A reader, identifying him or herself only as “Captain Obvious,” flamed me thusly:
Why did you just publish 12-year old news? Wh[y] not update the article? Then you’d have something original and relevant.
Here’s my reply:
It was a trivia question. Not a news item.
Yours truly,
Admiral Obvious
Before I go, let me just note one more thing. I googled it, and I am apparently the first person to string together the three-word phrase “flamed me thusly.”
Go me.
That’s so awesome, I think I’ll use it as my new WEP encryption key. So any PrawfsBlawg readers who want to park themselves outside my house and use my wireless to download terabytes worth of copyrighted songs without getting an RIAA subpoena at their front door, have at it.
____________________________________ 1 Me.
2 I like how my friend, instead of saying “is necessary,” says “need be affixed.” It sounds so centuries-ago, wig-on-head lawyerly. I really need to work on adding more of that into my speech.
Posted by Eric E. Johnson on May 23, 2008 at 11:50 AM
Comments
Nice footnoting…lol
Posted by: John | May 24, 2008 4:41:47 PM
1. Bad link to your prior post.
2. Why obviously foreign? I get that your post was deliberately provincial but to think that the opposite of provincial is foreign is, well, provincial.
3. You don’t have to be humorless to be critical of the logic underlying a joke, see my review of the Bluebook.
Posted by: Bart | May 23, 2008 2:44:37 PM