August 20, 2006

Another sign of hasty writing in ACLU v. NSA.

Judge Anna Diggs Taylor ends her opinion with a quote from Earl Warren, whom she refers to as "Justice Warren." How can you forget to call him Chief Justice?

14 comments:

The Drill SGT said...

Particularly if in your political circles the alternate usage is Saint Warren.

JohnF said...

Some years ago, when I was involved in hiring for my firm, we were stunned at the general failure of Yale law graduates to be able to write coherent research memos. Not every Yale graduate, but many. Unlike our associates from other good schools, these Yalies just didn't seem to get the notion of marshalling authorities and making legal arguments.

I noticed that Judge Taylor is also a Yale graduate.

Just thought I'd expand the insult a bit here.

Ann Althouse said...

She's a Yale grad from way back. I don't think it's got much connection with education at Yale in the current era.

JohnF said...

Ann, I'm from way back too! I should have said this was the 70's. We thought it had to do with Yale's elimination of grades; employers were in essence told, "look, this student got into Yale Law; that's all you need to know."

I remember an old tax professor of mine, Wally Blum, would comment on that subject how ironic it was that it always seemed the same folks who thought that students shouldn't be graded endlessly complained that meat was not sold in markets in transparent containers.

(And yes, before anyone says it, he did know the difference between educating and marketing.)

Judge Taylor seems to have graduated from Yale Law in the 1950's, so my original post was probably irrelevant on several levels.

But there definitely was that strangeness in the 70's about Yale graduates.

The Commercial Traveller said...

Hey Ann, have you ever heard of this judge before or read any of her other decisions? I wonder if this kind of shoddy work is characteristic of her decisions in general or if this is an aberration caused by her obvious lack of objectivity.

Sloanasaurus said...

Maybe the judge is out of her mind or tired of the law and the order is actually attributable to an overzealous law clerk.

The Drill SGT said...

Mark.

you forgot another Carter:

Alcee Lamar Hastings (born September 5, 1936) is a member of the United States House of Representatives since representing the 23rd District of Florida (map). A Representative since 1993 and a Democrat, Hastings was a lawyer and judge of the circuit court of Broward County, Florida, and United States District Court judge for the Southern District of Florida (1979 to 1989).

In 1989, Hastings was impeached by the U.S. House of Representatives for corruption and perjury. The Democratic-controlled Senate convicted Judge Hastings of accepting a $150,000 bribe in 1981 in exchange for a lenient sentence and committing numerous acts of perjury at his own trial. He became only the sixth Judge in the history of impeachment in the United States to be removed from office by the United States Senate.

mkfreeberg said...

Linked.

Nice work!

The Frito Pundito said...

Another example!:

"Both men were appointed by Richard Nixon, who, like George W. Bush, ran for office saying he wanted to appoint strict constructionists to the bench. Yet while Justice Burger remained conservative, Justice Blackmun went on to write the opinion legalizing abortion in Roe v. Wade and, eventually, to vote consistently with the liberal justices." -- Ann Althouse, New York Times, 11/01/05

(italics mine)

Gee, HOW could she have forgotten to write CHIEF Justice Berger?

Robert Green said...

every so often, partisan hackery gets in the way of good judgement, frito pundito. but, given the exceptionally low quality of thought in this comment section (beyond the usual right wing "we must march in lockstep to our leader" sycophancy), i thought i might highlight for the idiots: ann has spent precious space on the op-ed page of the NYTimes making a point that is so self-evidently stupid that even she doesn't believe it. it doesn't matter--she will advance someone's agenda (mostly those in power on the right) at the expense of obvious hypocricy, rational thought, or well-reasoned argument. she doesn't care--none of you who read her blog seem to care either.

of course, the very fact she wrote this post is sign not of hasty writing (though of course a short blog post is literally that) but of subterfuge. she can't engage in a real argument so ad hominem it is.

Charles Giacometti said...

I think the real question here is why the New York Times would even publish anything written by Professor Althouse. I think they are bending over backward to prove they will publish pro-Bush voices, but the pickings are really thin. They have to go to the extremes of the blogging world and pick someone of dubious intellectual ability. The tempest-in-a-teapot over "Chief Justice" versus "Justice" reveals that Professor Althouse is projecting her insecurities all over Judge Taylor.

Ann Althouse said...

That's a good catch on that other op-ed of mine. It is an editing error and should have been corrected.

Seitz said...

I hate to be the spelling police, but this word is misspelled on blogs more often than it's spelled correctly. Honestly, folks, the word is "Hypocrisy" or "Hypocrite".

As in: "Professor Althouse's dedication of an entire post to the criticism of a mistake that she has been guilty of in the past is the ultimate in hypocrisy."

Ann Althouse said...

hansydney: I don't know. This is the kind of mistake that bothers me a lot, that I seek to avoid or correct in my own work, and that I deeply regret.