Supreme Court too Politicized, Scholar Gives Up

[housewolf]

From DailKos:

Supreme Court too Politicized, Scholar Gives Up

In a May 27, 2005 article, Legal Times' reporter Tony Mauro reported that leading constitutional law scholar Laurence Tribe has decided not to proceed with the completion and publication of the second volume of his renowned treatise "American Constitutional Law." The article ("Laurence Tribe's Big Surprise")is on-line but registration is required for the full text of the article.

According to the article, Tribe's decision not to complete his treatise has caused shock waves through the small community of constitutional law scholars because Tribe is in their world what Michael Jordan is to basketball. The article says that Justice Breyer casually asked Tribe about the status of the book recently, and Tribe took the opportunity to write Breyer a 12-page letter explaining why he had given up and will not complete the next volume. I haven't read the 12-page letter and I don't know if it has been published yet in its entirety, but the article does quote portions of the letter and explains the reasons for Tribe's decision. The article says:

more...
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2005/6/1/171051/2592

[The Velveteen Ocelot]

1. Laurence Tribe is THE constitutional scholar.

Everybody reads his book in law school (I still have mine, more than 20 years later). If even he can't make any sense of what the Supremes have been up to, then we are in a world of hurt. And if Bush appoints more right-wing nutbags whose motivations are primarily political, it will only get worse.

Does anybody remember the Critical Legal Studies movement that was au courant during the '80s? There were a bunch of legal scholars (Roberto Unger comes to mind) whose thing was deconstructing court decisions, sort of like Derrida did with literature, to prove they were entirely political and totally lacking in any overarching principles. At the time I thought the "Crits" were nuts. Not any more.

[hansberrym]

2. link to letters

http://www.scotusblog.com/movabletype/archives/Tribe-Treatise-Green%20Bag%202005%20low%20res.pdf