LINK: Oh, the 90s...

LAW STUDENT V. LAW PROFESSOR BLOGS: Orin Kerr asks why all the law student blogs disappeared. Some of the answers in the comments are worthwhile (some are not). My speculation: good law students who write good blogs move on to clerk for high-level judges, and so are professionally prevented from writing in their usual manner. This is, as I recall, what happened to (among others) Will Baude at Crescat Sententia and Heidi Bond of Letters of Marque; I'm sure there were others.

WORKING HABITS: The best advice I have ever been given, with respect to research, came from one of my undergrad professors, in the context of studying for the final exam. He did not believe in cramming, which wouldn't have helped for his exams, anyway. Instead, he encouraged us to spend the night before the exam taking a walk. During the walk, he said, we should think about what we learned in class, how it made sense, and how it fit together. It's still the case, lo these many years later, that this works: when my writing difficulties are brought on by organization (as opposed to substance), the best solution is still to go take a walk until I have it all figured out.

QUOTE FOR THE DAY, B16 EDITION: There are about half a dozen people I'd like to hear react to this quote:

The Holocaust, he added must be “a warning against oblivion, negation or reductionism because violence against even one human being is violence against all.”

The implications seem... inhospitable... to certain conceptions of politics.

QUOTE FOR THE DAY: Carrie Brownstein:

Starting in the early '00s, I began volunteering at Portland's Rock n' Roll Camp For Girls, where the girls write their own songs -- the camp focuses on personal expression over technical proficiency. The culmination, naturally, is a lot of great songwriting, sloppily played. Imagine getting a present wrapped in duct tape and you get the idea. But, while a lot of great bands get on stages before they're "ready" -- and they should -- the notion of readiness itself is ridiculous when it comes to music. Who wants to only ever witness grace? And how would we know gracefulness if the opposite didn't also take our breath away?

ALL GOOD POLITICAL THEORISTS: And those interested in political theory more generally, should be at Jacob Levy's blog this week. He's hosting a symposium on Nancy Rosenblum's new book On the Side of Angels: An Appreciation of Parties and Partisanship. An obligation to the Ethics Colloquium here has limited my time in following it all, but it begins here with Levy's introduction, and proceeds up through the rest of the blog. The list of contributors is impressive, and the topic of the book looks good--I'll be popping up in the comments later on in the week, I hope.

Along with the symposium, it's also worth spending time with his post asking Of What Is Political Theory a Subset? It's unusual to think of oneself as "at home" in a political science department, through some combination of the direction taken by political science as a whole and the uncertainty of what exactly it is that political theorists are supposed to do. The strongest pull for most is to philosophy, which has the kind of rigor (if you're analytic) or flexibility (if you're continental) to which theorists sometimes seem to aspire. Among the grad students here at Duke, I'd say the strongest pull is to English or Literature (in part because the interests of the Literature and English programs have strong political theory dimensions), though I know people for whom the answer would be History or other possibilities.

I'm with Levy in his commitment, which is to say that the departmental affiliation of political theorists is no accident: theory always turns back to questions concerning how the world already is. Some of these questions are best given to those who do more empirical work, but many of them belong to the theorists. As any good social scientist will tell you (it's important to take them seriously when they say this, because they often do not follow through), all the data in the world is useless without good theory--and the theory needs to come first.

There's more to say about it, but I'm left with one question: why should we think of political theory as a subset of anything? One can ask the question, in a productive way, of what literatures, approaches, figures a political theorist most needs to engage. To ask "of what is political theory a subset?" frames the question in a way it can respond directly to the post-Rawls contention that political theory is a subset of moral philosophy or ethics, but it also presumes that the hierarchy involved is the correct way to think of these things: it's not clear to me that's right.

SHIPBUILDING: An entry from the "college" mix, the entry for the second half of freshman year. Within the last several weeks, I've finally warmed up to Elvis Costello, who, I think, is frequently misunderstood (or I misunderstood him) as essentially a punk rocker with eccentric tastes. Better to understand him as a songwriter on the old Brill Building model who happens to sing his own songs.

"Shipbuilding" requires no apologies, genre or otherwise: it's just a fine song. The entire song goes between usual chord structures and unexpected combinations: Costello's a big fan of the half-step move between chords which, properly employed, pushes against the conventions of pop songwriting. As this version makes clear, that's because it's not a pop song at all (I do not care for how jazzed-up this one is, actually): but the melody is flexible, it takes its time, and it is a joy to play on guitar. So:



(Also, this song is supposedly about the Falklands War. Supposedly.)

FAMILY BRAGGING: My cousin gets quite the favorable mention in this Washington Post article on home energy audits.

Best thing I read on the internets yesterday here:

12:18: Basically, all dichotomies are false. Freedom AND security. Free markets AND big government. America is everyone’s friend. Facebook us Kenya!

LINK: A fine complain about the kids and their music from Norm. Actually, it's more a complaint about the conditions of shopping.

SUBMITTED FOR YOUR CONSIDERATION: Essence of Decision is Rashomon for political scientists.

CUSTOM AND STATUTE, CONTINUED: Helen replies:

As for which force is stronger, law or custom, I'm not sure either side has a conclusive case. It takes a lot of political capital to overturn a custom that has become thoroughly entrenched, and, when a custom becomes prevalent enough, it can make accompanying legislative reforms inevitable. Or seem inevitable, which is just as good if what you need are the votes of people who don't care one way or another about an issue but want to side with the winning team.

At this point, we're operation one level of abstraction too high. As her commenter notes, a lot of the analysis depends on what kind of cases one has in mind. Apart from some idea of what's in the background (perhaps I should read this Scott book), it's hard to sort out the claim.

I will mention there does seem to be a conceptual slippage, or at least the possibility of one. Let me outline it by saying something more emphatic here: legislation or statute as a source of law, within the last 100 years, has absolutely overtaken custom as a source of law everywhere. Some of the reasons for this make sense: it's very difficult, even with a well-established custom, to have any idea what it means, where its boundaries are, how it fits in with other customs and other sources of law. Statutes have this problem, too, but a clear (most of the time) process by which they become amended or superseded, and the means of interpretation, however controversial, are at least known and discussed. In the US, despite the vestiges of common law in our jurisprudence, the primary source of law is legislation; England, which lacks the judicial review that keeps the US close to the common law tradition, has seen a proliferation of law as legislation.

Now, Helen may be referring to custom not so much as a source of legal change as political change. If so, it's not clear that one would want to use the language of "custom" to describe a slow, rather than rapid, process of change (or one would want to differentiate it from the legal questions involved).

MAYBE 1000 YEARS AGO. NOW, NOT SO MUCH. Helen, quoting:

Once a practice was established it could be considered a custom, and a custom, steadily exercised, was nearly as good as a right in law. The process was, however, nearly imperceptible under ordinary circumstances so as not to provoke an open confrontation.

Several qualifications are in order:

1. "Nearly as good" does a lot of work. Custom, in international law and elsewhere, is frequently a source of law co-eval with statute (assuming, for argument's sake, that we're thinking of the minority of the world that follows a common law, rather than civil law, system; this is also no longer true in most common law countries, and hasn't been for some time), but even amongst custom's strongest defenders, it is generally admitted that statutes abrogate customs more quickly and more fully than customs abrogate statutes.

2. It's nearly imperceptible unless one derogates from the custom, which happens all the time.

3. Not sure what she's quoting, but it may be reading custom as usus. So far as I'm aware, no one thinks this: either opinio juris matters just as much as usus, or one follows Blackstone et al in establishing conditions for a custom to be considered valid and binding.

ONE, TWO:

i. from Alan Jacobs, A Theology of Reading:

As John Milbank has convincingly argued, this difference [between philia and agape as the basis of love] may require a fundamental reconfiguration of the whole notion of virtue. It is not just that Christians will sometimes practice different virtues than Aristotelians, or that they will practice the same virtues in different ways, but that the very notion of virtue itself (arete) may not be commensurable with a properly Christian theological anthropology. Milbank's central point is that the sovereign Christian virtue is charity--and idea certainly essential to my argument--and that charity is simply not configurable according to any definition of arete.


ii. from Jaroslav Pelikan, Whose Bible Is It?:

To invoke a Kierkegaardesque figure of speech, the beauty of the language of the Bible can be like a set of dentist's instruments neatly laid out on a table and hanging on a wall, intriguing in their technological complexity and with their stainless steel highly polished--until they set to work on the job for which they were originally designed. Then all of a sudden my reaction changes from "How shiny and beautiful they all are!" to "Get that damned thing out of my mouth!" Once I begin to read it anew, perhaps in the freshness of a new translation, it stops speaking in clichés and begins to address me directly. Many people who want nothing to do with organized religion claim to be able to read the Bible at home for themselves. But it is difficult to resist the suspicion that in fact many of them do not read it very much. For if they did, the "sticker shock" of what it actually says would lead them to find most of what it says even more strange than the world of synagogue and church.

LINK: In discussing one of my fellowship applications with a friend (the essay subject was just war), he asked if I was going to cover any contemporary uses of just war thinking. My answer: "We're conservatives. We don't even pretend like we can talk about things until they're at least 100 years old."

All of this to say, does is strike anyone else as odd that we've gone through a succession of TV shows in the last few years which are, by general consensus, art in their own right, and that these shows are inevitably named "the best thing ever on TV?" Does it strike anyone as odd when conservatives do it? T.S. Eliot must be rolling over in his grave.

LINK: I like this sort of thing

SIGN OF THE APOCALYPSE: Of Montreal's "A Sentence of Sorts in Kongsvinger" was definitely just in a Comcast commercial.

QUOTE FOR THE DAY: Former Michigan basketball star Rumeal Robinson, speaking the truth:

How do you compete against Duke? How do they get those players? Have you been to Durham? Who wants to go there?

DEPT OF PERFECTLY NORMAL METAPHORS MADE UNCOMFORTABLE: Who else? Joe Biden:

“The proof of the pudding is in the eating,” Mr. Biden said in an interview Wednesday. “The Bush-Cheney relationship hasn’t tasted very good. Not a single person you can name for me” — at this point, he leaned forward in his chair, jabbed his finger in the air and punctuated his words sharply. “Look at me, now — a single one can tell you that the pudding has tasted good. Not one. Name me one serious person, liberal, conservative, Democrat, Republican.”

LINK: I want to get someone's opinion on whether or not this is a proper use of technology, so I'll link to the post. On the one hand: massively rude. On the other: encourages people from substituting online friendships for real ones (and limits one's use of facebook).

LINK: For those interested in that sort of thing, the blog Reformation 21 will spend this year blogging Calvin's Institutes. I'm a bit behind right now, but will be joining in (out of personal interest and at the behest of a friend). Should be interesting.

LINK: Hugo Schwyzer discusses a variation on the teacher-student relation:

I’ve written over and over again about the dangers of older men, younger women relationships — particularly when the woman involved is in her early twenties or younger. I’ve written too, from painful experience, independent research, and acquired wisdom of the importance of observing excellent boundaries between professors and students. Luke’s email is an important reminder that those boundaries ought not to exist solely to protect vulnerable women from predatory older men. It is also an important reminder that young men can get crushes on female professors or authority figures. With our narrow assumptions about the nature of the erotic, we sometimes assume, usually because of some specious argument derived from pop evolutionary psychology, that older men are “naturally’ attracted to younger women. But since that same “argument from nature” doesn’t apply nearly as well when the sexes are reversed, we ignore the obvious potential for older women and younger men to find each other attractive, and we ignore the reality that this particular brand of age-disparate relationship can be just as problematic.

LINK: Rod Dreher's discusses David Brooks on Richard John Neuhaus's Born Toward Dying. As it so happens, I discussed this with some friends today. One of them pointed towards a very interesting passage; after Neuahus' near-death experience with cancer, he has what he considers to be an angelic visitation. The angels tell him "Everything is ready now." Here is how Neuhaus analyzes that:

“Everything is ready now.” I would be thinking about that incessantly during the months of convalescence. My theological mind would immediately go to work on it. They were angels, of course. Angelos simply means “messenger.” There were no white robes or wings or anything of that sort. As I said, I did not see them in any ordinary sense. But there was a message; therefore there were messengers. Clearly, the message was that I could go somewhere with them. Not that I must go or should go, but simply that they were ready if I was. Go where? To God, or so it seemed. I understood that they were ready to get me ready to see God. It was obvious enough to me that I was not prepared, in my present physical and spiritual condition, for the beatific vision, for seeing God face to face. They were ready to get me ready. This comports with the doctrine of purgatory, that there is a process of purging and preparation to get us ready to meet God. I should say that their presence was entirely friendly. There was nothing sweet or cloying, and there was no urgency about it. It was as though they just wanted to let me know. The decision was mine as to when or whether I would take them up on the offer.

What's really fascinating about this (much more than the question, which Rod focuses on, of whether the visitation is really angelic) is how "everything is ready now" becomes "everything is ready to be made ready; either now, or whenever you want." Bonhoeffer has a riff in The Cost of Discipleship on how one responds to calls that may be appropriate by way of response--I'll look into it later.

QUOTE FOR THE DAY (I WILL EVENTUALLY CLIMB OUT FROM UNDER THIS PILE OF FELLOWSHIP APPLICATIONS EDITION):

Neighbourliness is not a quality in other people, it is simply their claim on ourselves. Every moment and every situation challenges us to action and obedience. We have literally no time to sit down and ask ourselves whether so-and-so is our neighbour or not. We must get into action and obey--we must behave like a neighbour to him. But perhaps this shocks you. Perhaps you still think you ought to think out beforehand what you ought to do. To that there is only one answer. You can only know and think about it by actually doing it...

-Bonhoeffer, The Cost of Discipleship

ADDITIONAL ITEMS FOR THE READING LIST: Provided by Jacob Levy. I knew Dennis a bit when he was at Duke, so I'm glad to see his book on the list.

LINK: IL Reporter has a link to a new essay by Michael Walzer called "On Porportionality." More thoughts later.

SIGN OF THE APOCALYPSE? Or exactly what you'd expect? Ryan Gosling's band is pretty good.

WOULDN'T IT BE NICE:

LINK: A long and very interesting article on Hannah Arendt in the New Yorker.

One connection from the article that I think should be made more explicit. First:

Arendt’s experience at the Eichmann trial bolstered the belief that defines her political philosophy: that there must be a rigorous separation between love, which we can experience only privately, and respect, which we earn in and require for our public lives. If it is true that, as Arendt once observed, “in the works of a great writer we can almost always find a consistent metaphor peculiar to him alone in which his whole work seems to come to a focus,” then her thought is certainly focussed on the image of distance or separation. A dignified individual existence, she believes, requires distance from others, the “interspace” that she described in the Hamburg speech. Compassion is dangerous, in her view, because “not unlike love,” it “abolishes the distance, the in-between which always exists in human intercourse.” What preserves that distance, on the other hand, is pride—the pride of equals that she finds exemplified in the political realm, the “public space.”

Where one should read distance or separation as metaphors for control, and love--which really does reach out across individuals--as dangerous. Also:

At times, Arendt’s love of the public and the political, and her fear of the private and the psychological, becomes almost neurotically intense. As she wrote to McCarthy, “the inner turmoil of the self, its shapelessness,” must be kept under strict quarantine: “It is no less indecent, unfit to appear, than our digestive apparatus, or else our inner organs, which also are hidden from visibility by the skin.”

Though it's presented in the article as a consequence, it seems like the important antecedent condition, thus Arendt's consistent metaphor.

I trust James will tell me where the article goes wrong in presenting Arendt. It certainly did pique my interest, however.

EPIGRAM FOR A DISSERTATION III:

Coherence is not necessarily good, and one must question its cost. Better sometimes to remain confused.
-Iris Murdoch, Metaphysics

(from Alan Jacobs' A Theology of Reading)

I'll have more to say about this and some related considerations on just war later, but for now, I want to flag this sentiment:

This doesn't make the theory useless by any stretch, but it's useful primarily because it provides a broad framework of restraint: If you're thinking about questions of justice, you're less likely to commit an injustice, even if no perfect consensus exists on the distinction between a licit campaign and an illicit one.

It's not clear to me that this is true, in the way Ross might want to claim it is: in part, because he's speaking only of jus in bello justice considerations, but jus ad bellum thinking complicates justice (in the minds of many); in part because his conception of justice (and mine) have a heavy objective component, but as a fact of politics it's by no means clear that there is; and there is an underlying assumption that double effect (which Ross doesn't mention but clearly has in mind) tends towards restraint and not license (that may be true, but it needs to be argued for, not asserted).