It occurred to me that I post an awful lot of New York intelligentsia-type articles. I say that because I can’t help but mention Ronald Dworkin’s recent article “Judge Roberts on Trial” from the New York Review of Books, and Malcolm Gladwell’s article in the New Yorker, “Getting In.”
Obviously the two articles were not written to be read in tandem or in light of each other, but since I read one right after the other, I can’t help but make some connections. Dworkin vents his frustration at the Roberts nomination a dollar short and a day late, exposing Roberts’ clever confirmation hearing gambit of claiming repect for the rule of law as a smokescreen for his insidious conservatism. Respectful bastard!
Gladwell analyses the Ivy-worship of American society. Interestingly, he finds the holistic approach to evaluating students - personal essay, letters of recommendation, interviews and demographic data - found its provenance as a means to an end as Harvard struggled to maintain its luxury brand status by excluding Jews.
What do the two have in common? Both play off delicate systems of identity and expectation which society has constructed to evoke a desired condition without having to deal directly with the details. Senators, for instance, want to nominate a jurist who shares their judicial philosophy; i.e. would decide cases the same way they would. They will not pose such an indecorous question directly nor would any candidate worthy of the Supreme Court stoop to answer it, rather they attempt to tease out this very fact from legalese such as ‘originalism’ and ‘constructionism’. More simply, they want a conservative justice or a liberal justice and care very little about the judicial philosophy he invokes to rationalize his decisions as long as he arrives at the right answer.
Similarly, we feel a sense of identity is conferred along with a degree from a Harvard or Yale. We feel these graduates are somehow destined for success and where they went tells us how smart they are, no need to find out for ourselves.
What a society thinks, and what a society wants to think it thinks, are often very different things. When they fail to resolve, some adjusting is in order. We are, of course, a heterogenous group and even when we think we agree we are often masking or subverting our secondary disagreements for the sake of the larger cause.
Fascinating articles, regardless of whether or not you agree with what I’ve just said or it made any sense whatsoever. I humbly submit them for your perusal.
Ronald Dworkin, Judge Roberts on Trial“
Malcolm Gladwell, “Getting In.”
Update: This article from the WSJ on Harriet Meirs is both hilarious and pertinent - “Obscure Texas Case Offers Peek Into Role Of Court Nominee“.
