THE TRAGEDY OF AN UNEXAMINED LIFE

Ronald Dworkin, Justice for Hedgehogs (Cambridge, Massachusetts, & London, England: Belknap/Harvard U. Press, 2011) ("Cultures have tried to teach a malign and apparently persuasive lie: that the most important metric of a good life is wealth and the luxury and power it brings. The rich think they live better when they are even even richer. In America and many other places they use their wealth politically, to persuade the public to elect or accept leaders who will do that for them. They say that the justice we have imagined is socialism that threatens our freedom. Not everyone is gullible: many people lead contented live without wealth, But many others are persuaded: they vote for low taxes to keep the jackpot full in they too can win it, even though that is a lottery they are almost bound to lose. Nothing better illustrates the tragedy of an unexamined life: there are no winners in this macabre dance of greed and delusion. No respectable or even intelligible theory of value supposes that making and spending money has any value or importance in itself and almost everything people buy with that money lacks any importance aw well. The ridiculous dream of a princely life is kept alive by ethical sleepwalkers. And they in turn keep injustice alive because their self-contempt breeds a politics of contempt for others. Dignity is indivisible." Id. at 422. "You will have gathered from Chapter 1 how I use the important words 'ethics' and 'morality.' An ethical judgment makes a claim about what people should do to live well: what they should aim to be and achieve in their own lives. A moral judgment makes a claim about how people must treat other people. Moral and ethical questions are inescapable dimensions of the inescapable question of what to do. They are inescapably pertinent even though, of course, they are not invariably noticed. Much of what I do makes my own life a better or worse one In many circumstances much of what I do will affect others. What should I therefore do? The answers you give might be negative. You may suppose that it makes no difference how you live your life and that any concern for the lives of other people would be a mistake. But if you have any reasons for those distressing opinions, these must be ethical or moral reasons." Id. at 25. Law students and lawyers should be aware that law schools disciplinary codes (even so-called 'honor codes') and the Rules of Professional Responsibility for lawyers qualify neither as as 'ethics' or 'morality' as Dworkin uses those terms. "Many people do believe, as I do not, that their racial, ethnic, religious, and linguistic connections bestow associational rights and obligations. Perhaps some of these convictions have a genetic foundation; if so they will prove particularly hard to ignore and perhaps pointless to disparage. But the idea of these special rights and obligations has been and remains a powerful source of evil. Throw a dart at a spinning globe, and the odds are good that it will land where tribes or race, religion, or language are killing each other and destroying their communities in the name of some supposed group right or destiny. These hatreds may be as enduring as they are destructive, and we should have no illusions that they will disappear or even ebb from human affairs but I insist that nothing in the arguments of this chapter lends them any moral support." Id. at 324. It is amazing how many students graduate from American law school with little or no exposure to the ideas of this important legal philosopher. For those who do plan to read Justice For Hedgehogs, see Symposium: Justice for Hedgehogs: A Conference on Ronald Dworkin's Forthcoming Book (special issues), Boston University Law Review, 90, no. 2 (April 2010).).

FOOD FOR THOUGHT, OR A FOOTNOTE TO YESTERDAY'S POST

Before the Internet, before laptop computers, smartphones, Kindles, Nooks and Ipads and Ipods, before cable television, videos on demand, DVDs, and YouTube, before Facebook, there was a book and a warning.

Neil Postman, Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business (New York: Elisabeth Sifton Books/Viking, 1985) ("But we had forgotten that alongside Orwell's dark vision, there was another --slightly older, slightly less well known, equally chilling: Aldous Huxley's Brave New World. Contrary to common belief even among the educated, Huxley and Orwell did not prophesy the same thing. Orwell warns that we will be overcome by an externally imposed oppression. But in Huxley's vision, no Big Brother is required to deprive people of their autonomy, maturity and history. As he saw it, people will come to love their oppression, to adore the technologies that undo their capacities to think." "What Orwell feared were those who would ban books. What Huxley feared was that there would be no reason to ban a book, for there would be no one who wanted to read one. Orwell feared those who would deprive us of information. Huxley feared those who would give us so much that we would be reduced to passivity and egoism. Orwell feared that the truth would be concealed from us. Huxley feared the truth would be drowned in a sea of irrelevance. Orwell feared we would become a captive culture. Huxley feared we would become a trivial culture, preoccupied with some equivalent of the feelies, the orgy porgy, and the centrifugal bumblepuppy. As Huxley remarked in Brave New World Revisited, the civil libertarians and rationalists who are ever on the alert to oppose tyranny 'failed to take into account man's almost infinite appetite for distractions.' In 1984, Huxley added, people are controlled by inflicting pain. In Brave New World, they are controlled by inflicting pleasure, In short, Orwell feared that what we hate will ruin us. Huxley feared that what we love will ruin us." "This book is about the possibility that Huxley, not Orwell was right." Id. at vii-viii. 'Each of the media that entered the electronic conversation n the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries followed the lead of the telegraph and the photograph, and amplified their biases. Some, such a film, were by their nature inclined to do so. Others, whose bias was rather toward the amplification of rational speech--like radio--were overwhelmed by the thrust of the new epistemology and came in the end to support it. Together, this ensemble of electronic techniques called into being a new world--a peek-a-boo world, where now this event, now that, pops into view for a moment, then vanishes again. It is a world without much coherence or sense; a world that does not ask us, indeed, does not permit us to do anything; a world that is, like a child's game of peel-a-boo, entirely self-contained. But like peek-a-boo, it is also endlessly entertaining." Id. at 77. Compulsive twitting, endless text-messaging, and constantly updating one's Facebook are, each and every one, essentially peek-a-boo for narcissists. "In searching the literature of education, you will find it said by some that children will learn best when they are interested in what they are learning. You will find it said--Plato and [John] Dewey emphasized this--that reason is best cultivated when it is rooted in robust emotional ground. You will even find some who say that learning is best facilitated by a loving and benign teacher. But no one has ever said or implied that significant learning is effectively, durably and truthfully achieved when education is entertainment. Education philosophers have assumed that becoming acculturated is difficult because it necessarily involves the imposition of restraints. They have argued that there must be a sequence to learning, that perseverance and a certain measure of perspiration are indispensable, that individual pleasures must frequently be submerged in the interests of group cohesion, and that learning to be critical and to think conceptually and rigorously do not come easily to the young but are hard-fought victories. Indeed, Cicero remarked that the purpose of education is to free the student from the tyranny of the present, which cannot be pleasurable for those like the young, who are struggling hard to to do the opposite--that is, accommodate themselves to the present." 'Television offers a delicious and . . . original alternative to all of this. We might say there are three commandments that form the philosophy of the education which television offers. The influence of these commandments is observable in every type of television programming. . . . The commandments are as follows: "Thou shalt have no prerequisites. . . ." "Thous shalt induce no perplexity. . . . "Thou shalt avoid exposition like the ten plagues visited upon Egypt. . . ." Id. at 146-148. In the age of student as customer (and notwithstanding that many American parent will give lip-service to be a 'tiger mom), the commandments have found rabid followers within the education system from preschool through graduate school. "Judges, lawyers and defendants do not regard proverbs or sayings as a relevant response to legal disputes. In this, they are separated from the tribal chief by a media-metaphor. For in a print-based courtroom, where law books, briefs, citations and other written materials define and organize the method of finding the truth, the oral tradition has lost much of its resonance--but not all of it, Testimony is expected to be given orally, on the assumption that the spoken, not the written word is a truer reflection of the state of mind of a witness. Indeed, in many courtrooms jurors are not permitted to take notes, nor are they given written copies of the judge's explanation of the law. Jurors are expected to hear the truth, or its opposite, not to read it. Thus, we may say that there is a clash of resonances in our concept of legal truth. On the one hand, there is a residual belief in the power of speech, and speech alone, to carry the truth; on the other hand, there is a much stronger belief in the authenticity of writing and, in particular, printing, This second belief has little tolerance for poetry, proverbs, sayings, parables or any other expression of oral wisdom The law is what legislators and judges have written. In our culture, lawyers do not have to be wise; they need to be well briefed." Id. at 19-20. Of course, now that the Internet has entered the courtroom, it is not clear that twenty-first-century lawyers need even be well briefed when they are able to use their laptops, smartphones, or whatever to access and search databases (or a more knowledgeable lawyer--perhaps located a continent away.) Postman book, published more than a quarter-century ago, remains relevant . . . if not even more so.).

BOOK OF THE WEEK: WEEK TWELVE, 2011

Tim Wu, The Master Switch: The Rise and Fall of Information Empires (New York: Knopf, 2010) ("It is an underacknowledged truism that, just as you are what you eat, how and what you think depends on what information you are exposed to. How do you hear the voice of political leaders? Whose pain do you feel? And where do your aspirations, your dreams of good living, come from? All of these are products of the information environment." "My effort to consider this process is also an effort to understand the practical realities of free speech, as opposed to its theoretical life. We can sometimes think that the study of the First Amendment is the same as the study of free speech, but in fact it forms just a tiny part of the picture. Americans idealize what Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes called the 'marketplace of ideas,' a space where every member of society is, by right, free to peddle his creed. Yet the shape or even existence of any such marketplace depends far less on our abstract values than on the structure of the communications and culture industries. We sometimes treat the information industries as if they were like any other enterprise, but they are not, for their structure determines who gets heard. It is is in this context that Fred Friendly, onetime CBS News president, made it clear that before any question of free speech comes the question of 'who controls the master switch." Id. at 13. "As [John] Reith would later put it, 'He who prides himself on giving what he thinks the public wants is often creating a fictitious demand for lower standards which he will then satisfy." Id. at 41 ("Mediocrity safely begets mediocrity" behold the true miracle of the modern entertainment industry." Id. at 237. Though not its subject-matter, the book will a pertinent read for those, who like me, are concerned with (a) the anti-intellectuals which is accompanying the rise of the corporate-university) or (b) the constant drift--if not forced-march--of America to a more authoritarian political system.).

ON THE REVOCATION OF MY MEMBERSHIP IN THE SOCIETY OF THOSE WHO HAVE NEVER READ THE FAERIE QUEENE

Aptekar, Jane, Icons of Justice: Iconography and Thematic Imagery in Book V of The Faerie Queene (New York & London: Columbia U. Press, 1969) ("Classical and Christian tradition concurred in the matter of the relationship between force and fraud. From earliest times, the pair were mentioned together as brother evils--but fraud was generally regarded as the elder and worse. Actually, throughout The Faerie Queene, with the regularity of a time-honored cliche, force and fraud--or guile, or sleight--are mentioned in conjunction as twin attributes of the foes of goodness. But since the evils of force and fraud generally come within the field of justice they are naturally enough, most deeply considered during the course of Book V." Id. at 108-109.).

Dunseath, T. K., Spenser’s Allegory of Justice in Book Five of The Faerie Queene (Princeton: Princeton U. Press, 1968).

Spenser, Edmund, The Faerie Queene [1590-1609], edited by Thomas P Roche, Jr with the assistance of C. Patrick O’Donnel. Jr. (London: Penguin Books, 1987) ("That Castle was the strength of all that state,/ Vntill that state by strength was pulled downe,/ And that same citie, so now reuinate,/ Had bene the keye of all that kingdomes crowne;/ Both goodly Castle, and both goodly Towne,/ Till that th'offended heauens list to lowre/ Vpon their blisse, and balefull fortune frowne./ When those gainst states and kingdomes do coniure,/ Who then can think their hedlong ruine to recure." Book V, Canto X, 26.).

LIBRARY HEAVEN

Karen Russell, Swamplandi: A Novel (New York: Knopf, 2011) ("Heaven, Kiwi thought, would be the reading room of a great library. But it would be private. Cozy. You wouldn't have to worry about some squeaky-shoed librarian turning the lights off on you or gauging your literacy by reading the names on your book spines, and there wouldn't be a single other person. The whole place would hum with a library's peace, filtering softly over you like white bars of light . . ." Id. at 222-223.).

WITHOUT COMMENT, LET US ALL SING

THE WORLD TURNED UPSIDE DOWN (1643)

Listen to me and you shall hear, news hath not been this thousand year:
Since Herod, Caesar, and many more, you never heard the like before.
Holy-dayes are despis'd, new fashions are devis'd.
Old Christmas is kicked out of Tow
Yet let's be content, and the times lament, you see the world turn'd upside down.
The wise men did rejoyce to see our Savior Christs Nativity:
The Angels did good tidings bring, the Sheepheards did rejoyce and sing.
Let all honest men, take example by them.
Why should we from good Laws be bound?
Yet let's be content, and the times lament, you see the world turn'd upside down.
Command is given, we must obey, and quite forget old Christmas day:
Kill a thousand men, or a Town regain, we will give thanks and praise amain.
The wine pot shall clinke, we will feast and drinke.
And then strange motions will abound.
Yet let's be content, and the times lament, you see the world turn'd upside down.
Our Lords and Knights, and Gentry too, doe mean old fashions to forgoe:
They set a porter at the gate, that none must enter in thereat.
They count it a sin, when poor people come in.
Hospitality it selfe is drown'd.
Yet let's be content, and the times lament, you see the world turn'd upside down.
The serving men doe sit and whine, and thinke it long ere dinner time:
The Butler's still out of the way, or else my Lady keeps the key,
The poor old cook, in the larder doth look,
Where is no goodnesse to be found,
Yet let's be content, and the times lament, you see the world turn'd upside down.
To conclude, I'le tell you news that's right, Christmas was kil'd at Naseby fight:
Charity was slain at that same time, Jack Tell troth too, a friend of mine,
Likewise then did die, rost beef and shred pie,
Pig, Goose and Capon no quarter found.
Yet let's be content, and the times lament, you see the world turn'd upside down

REALITY CHECK: ONE DAY I WOKE UP, SMELLED THE DAY OLD COFFEE, AND SAID TO MYSELF, "MY GOD! I AM ONE OF THE OLD FARTS NOW. AND, I AM NOT PREPARED"

Susan Jacoby, Never Say Die: The Myth and Marketing of the New Old Age (New York: Pantheon, 2011) ("I am about to present a portrait of advanced old age that some will find too pessimistic and negative. The entire subject of old age is now surrounded by a fog of emotional correctness--a first cousin of political correctness and religious correctness--in which they very world 'old' is seen as an expression of prejudice rather than a factual description of a stage of life. . . . Aging is a particularly stupid euphemism for old, because while we are all aging, we are not all old. On the emotionally correct version of old age, superior wisdom supposedly compensates for any losses--whether of a beloved life partner or of one's own mental and physical powers. Dwelling on the inevitable losses of old age is considered a form of depression, to be treated in every case rather than respected, in some instance, as a realistic response to irremediable trouble, pain, and loss. . . ." Id. at 5-6. "There is also a vast class disparity between the thinking of relatively well-off professionals about retirement and that of people who have spent a lifetime in low-paying, often physically taxing jobs. . . . There are people--many, many people--who need to retire because their bodies can no longer bear the strain of what they do for a living. We cannot 'fix' Social Security by deciding that all people ought to work into their seventies or eighties and if they can't, well, they must have done something wrong to be in such bad shape. One wonders whether people would be so enthusiastic about extending longevity of they remembered that adults in midlife (at least in the United States) are generally expected to work more than forty hours a week." Id. at 20-22. "The myth of young old age, which simultaneously overestimates the earning potential and underestimates the needs of the dependent old old, also poses a major impediment to any serious, reality-based discussion of social justice for both old and young. Healthy old age is costly, and unhealthy old age is even costlier, If, as a society, we see longevity as a good thing, then we're going to have to pay for it, But all we are hearing from public officials . . . is how to pay less to support longer lives. If there really were such a thing as a radically new brand of old age in which everyone can take care of himself or herself, there would be no reason to worry. Society would be off the hook. The boomers--healthy beneficiaries of this wonderful new old age--would surely be able to tote that barge and life that bale until the very end." Id. at 179 "Still, I continue to derive a certain amount of hope from the dose of economic reality that boomers have received over the past three years. Memories of the unbridled economic growth of our formative years . . . have been tempered by the reality of lost homes, lost jobs, and lost health care and by the insecurity of those who are struggling to pay for them--to keep working as long as possible. Only a thoroughgoing fool in his or her fifties or early sixties today can fail to grasp the fact that we are going to need every penny of our Social Security checks, and every bit of coverage from Medicare, to maintain a decent standard of living even if we have substantial saving and even if longevity does not increase significantly in our lifetime. And if we recognize the possibility that we will need public help in our old age, how can we turn a blind eye to the needs of those who must pay the bill? The chief obstacle to renegotiating America's intergenerational contract is not boomer narcissism or shortsightedness but the historical distaste all Americans--in the recent and distant past--for any proposal that they should sacrifice a good deal more of their personal money in the furtherance of public good." Id. at 277-278. Must reading for any American above the age of fourteen. Also see, Ted Fishman, "It Gets Worse," NYT Book Review, Sunday, 2/27/2011. "In her latest jeremiad, [Jacoby] fights to slay the conspiracy of ignorance and greed that she believes conceal a single, and indeed irrefutable, truth: extreme old age can be nasty, brutish and Long." Id. Or, you are born, you live a little and, if you are lucky, you die before your body, your mind, or your money give out.).

CASSANDRA'S WAR

Christa Wolf, Cassandra: A Novel and Four Essays translated from the German by Jan van Heurck (New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 1984) ("You can tell when a war starts, but when does the prewar start? If there are rules about that, we should pass them on. Hand the down inscribed in clay, in stone. What would they say? Among other things they would say: Do not let your own people deceive you." Id. at 66. Examples: "Remember the Maine!" "War to end war." "The Domino Effect." Iraq's "Weapons of Mass Destruction." "Exporting Democracy." From the backcover: "In the tradition of such masterpieces of historical fiction as Mary Renault's The King Must Die, East German writer Christa Wolf movingly retells the story of the fall of Troy--but from the point of view of the woman whose visionary powers earned her contempt and scorn. Written as a result of the author's Greek travels and studies, Cassandra speak to us is a pressing monologue whose inner focal points are patriarchy and war. In the four accompanying pieces, which take the form of travel reports, journal entries, and a letter, Wolf describes the novel's genesis. Incisive and intelligent, the entire volume represents an urgent call to examine the past in order to insure a future.").

A TRAGIC OOPS

Bing West, The Wrong War: Grit, Strategy, and the Way Out of Afghanistan (New York: Random House, 2011) ("In early 2010, Battalion 1-32 turned over their battlespace and returned to the States. The battalion had followed the key counterinsurgency principles. Lt. Col. O'Donnell and Sgt. Maj. Carabello had set the example, traveling constantly, talking to everyone, working hand in hand with the officials. The local police were standoffish, but the askars and Border Police willingly worked with the Americans, Captains like Mike Harrison has spent endless hours sipping tea in shras, supervising millions of dollars in projects, and supporting local officials At the end of his second tour, he wasn't sure what had been accomplished. 'If I had it to do over again,' Harrison said, 'I'd work to uncover the secret agents. We never broke the shadow government. Some people were on our side, and some weren't. Everyone liked our money, but that didn't change attitudes'." Id. at 127. "Our mistake in Afghanistan was to do the work of others for ten years, expecting reciprocity across a cultural and religious divide. Given the huge size of the country, the tribal traditions, and the vast sanctuary of Pakistan, protecting the Pashtun population and expecting then to reject the Taliban in favor of the Kabul government was a strategy too opened-ended. The U.S. military must hand off nation building to the State Department and deemphasize population protection. It is self-defeating to cling to a theory that has enfeebled our warrior ethos and not led to victory. It is time to transition to an advisor corps that can invigorate the Afghan security forces and prevent an Islamist takeover." "We have fought the wrong war with the wrong strategy. Our troops are not a Peace Corps; they are fighters. Let them fight, and let the Taliban fear." Id. at 254.).

BOOK OF THE WEEK: WEEK ELEVEN, 2011

Sari Nusseibehm What Is a Palestinian State Worth? (Cambridge, Massachusetts, & London, England: Harvard U. Press, 2011) ("To reiterate, I believe that there do exist core human values, rooted in the compassionate impulse, which are largely independent of context and thus are universally shared. As it turns out, the two identified in our thought experiment are converse sides of the same coin: freedom is the space necessary to enable human beings to develop in positive ways, and equality is the availability of that space for all" "The universality of these core values applies within societies as well as between them. Yet Palestinians living in Israel or under its occupation are denied both equality and freedom. And, though it may sound paradoxical, the Israelis are not free either: jailers and prisoners inhabit the same jail. The history of our region had bred intense anger and fear on both sides, and these powerful negative emotions strengthen the tendency of both (Jewish) Israelis and Palestinians to view member of the 'opposing' group not as individual human beings with longings similar to their own, but rather as operatives of some larger entity, cogs in some meta-biological machine, If we wish to achieve peace and stability with oppression, it is vital that we focus on the human face--both our own and those of the 'others'--and on the values shared by all." Id. at 122-123. Also see David Shulman, "Israel & Palestine: Breaking the Silence," New York Review of Books, 2/24/11, at 43.).

MENCKEN: "THE MESSIANIC DELUSION IS OUR NATIONAL DISEASE"

Mencken, H. L., Prejudices: First, Second, and Third Series, edited by Marion Elizabeth Rodgers (New York: Library of America, 2010) (From The First Series, "Professor Veblen," reprinted at 34-47: We are best endlessly by quacks--and they are not the less quacks when they happen to be quite honest. In all fields, from politics to pedagogics and from theology to public hygiene, there is a constant emotional obscuration of the true issues, a violent combat of credulities, an inane debasement of scientific curiosity to the level of mob gaping." "The thing to blame, of course, is our lack of an intellectual aristocracy--sound in its information, skeptical in its habit of mind, and, above all, secure in its position and authority. Every other civilized country has such an aristocracy. It is the natural corrective of enthusiasms from below. It is hospitable to ideas, but as adamant against crazes. It stands against the pollution of logic by emotion, the sophistication of evidence to the glory of God. But in America there is nothing of the sort. On the one hand there is the populace--perhaps more powerful here, more capable of putting the idiotic ideas into execution, than anywhere else--and surely more eager to follow platitudinous messiahs. On the other hand there is the ruling plutocracy--ignorant, hostile to inquiry, tyrannical in the exercise of its power, suspicious of ideas of whatever sort. In the middle ground there is little save an indistinct herd of intellectual eunuchs, chiefly professors--often quite as stupid as the plutocracy, and always in great fear of it. When it produces a stray rebel he goes over to the mob; there is no place for him within his own order. This feeble and vacillating class, unorganized and without authority is responsible for what passes as the well-informed opinion of the country--for the sort of opinion that one encounters in the serious periodicals--for what later on leaks down, much diluted, into the few newspapers that are not frankly imbecile. . . . It is, in the main, only half-educated. It lacks experience of the world, assurance, the consciousness of class solidarity and security. Of no definite position in our national life, exposed alike to the clamors of the mob and the discipline of the plutocracy, it gets no public respect and is deficient in self-respect. Thus the better sort of men are not tempted to enter it. It recruits only men of feeble courage, men of small originality. It sublimest flower is the American college president, . . . --a perambulating sycophant and platitudinarian, gaudy mendicant and bounder, engaged all his life, not in the battle of ideas, the pursuit and dissemination of knowledge, but in the courting of rich donkeys and the entertainment of mobs. . . Id. at 46-47. And, now we have 24/7/365 mindless talk radio, unreal 'realty television,' news as entertainment, a failed public education system, a failing private education system, and, of course, the new 'corporate university.' From the Second Series, "The National Letters," reprinted at 153-208: "What I have found, after long and arduous labors, is a state of things that is surely not altogether flattering to the Gelehrten under examination. What I have found, in brief, is that pedagogy turned to general public uses is almost as timid and flatulent as journalism--that the professor, menaced by the timid dogmatism of the plutocracy above him and the incurable suspicious of the mob beneath hm, is almost invariably inclined to seek his own security in a mellifluous inanity--that, far from being a courageous spokesman of ideas and an apostle of their free dissemination, in politics, in the fine arts, in practical ethics, he comes close to being the most prudent and skittish of all men concerned with them--in brief, that he yields to the prevailing correctness of thought In all departments, north, east, south and west, and is, in fact, the chief exponent among us of the democratic doctrine that heresy is not only a mistake, but is also a crime." Id. at 196-197. From The Third Series,"On Being an American," reprinted at 301-333: "It is, for example, one of my firmest and most sacred beliefs, reached after an inquiry extending over a score of years and supported by incessant prayer and meditation, that the government of the United States, in both its legislative arm and its executive arm, is ignorant, incompetent, corrupt, and disgusting--and from this judgment I except no more than twenty living lawmakers and no more than twenty executioners of their laws. It is a belief no less piously cherished that the administration of justice in the Republic is stupid, dishonest, and against all reason and equity--and from this judgment I except no more than thirty judges, including two upon the bench of the Supreme Court of the United States. It is another that the foreign policy of the United States--its habitual manner of dealing with other nations, whether friend or foe--is hypocritical, disingenuous, knavish, and dishonorable--and from this judgment I consent to no exceptions whatever, either recent or long past. And it is my fourth (and, to avoid too depressing a bill, final) conviction that the American people, taking one with another, constitute the most timorous, sniveling, poltroonish, ignominious mob of serfs and goose-steppers ever gathered under one flag in Christendom since the end of the Middle Ages, and that they grow more timorous, more sniveling, more poltroonish, more ignominious every day." Id. at 301-3-22. In reading these essays, one may (and, perhaps, should) disagree with Mencken on specific points. However, he remains relevant, and very much on point, that there is a need for greater cosmopolitanism and skepticism in American thought, that ideas and clear, critical thinking matters. Unfortunately, we live in an age where lip service is given to these notions, and the preference is for the group think of the bureaucrat, including the academic bureaucrat.).

Mencken, H. L., Prejudices: Fourth, Fifth, and Sixth Series, edited by Marion Elizabeth Rodgers (New York: Library of America, 2010) (From the Fourth Series, "Justice Under Democracy," reprinted at 48-58: "But the legal mind is usually tougher than that. It can almost always find justification for doing, as agent of the law, what would be inconceivable privately to a man of honor." Id. at 50. From the Fifth Series, "Miscellaneous Notes," reprinted at 347-359: "On Cynicism: One of the most curious of human delusions lies in the theory that cynics are unhappy men--that cynicism makes for a general biliousness and malaise. It is a false deduction, I believe, from the obvious fact that cynics make other men unhappy. But they are themselves among the most comfortable and serene of mammals; perhaps only bishops, pet dogs and actors are happier. For what a cynic believes, through it may be too dreadful to be put into formal words, at least usually has the merit of being true--and truth is ever a rock, hard and harsh, but solid under the feet. A cynic is chronically in the position of a wedding guest who has known the bride for nine years, and has had her confidence. He is a great deal less happy, theoretically, than the bridegroom. The bridegroom, beautifully barbered and arrayed, is about to launch into the honeymoon. But the cynic looks ahead two weeks, two months, two years. Such, to borrow a phrase from the late Dr. Eliot, are the durable satisfactions of life." Id. at 352-353. And, lastly, from the Sixth Series, "Hymn to the Truth," reprinted at 476-480: "My point is that, despite all this extravagant frenzy for the truth, there is something in the human mind that turns instinctively to fiction, and that even the most gifted journalists succumb to it. A German philosopher, Dr. Hans Vaihinger, has put the thing into a formal theory, and you will find it expounded at length in his book, 'The Philosophy of As If.' It is a sheer impossibility, says Dr. Vaihinger, for human beings to think exclusively in terms of the truth. For one thing, the stock of indubitable truths is too scanty. For another thing, there is the instinctive aversion to them that I have mentioned. All our thinking, according to Vaihinger, is in terms of assumptions, many of them plainly not true. Into our most solemn and serious reflections fictions enter--and three times out of four they quickly crowd out all the facts." Id. at 478.).

With respect to the above two volumes, there is a quotation on the back of the second volume's jackcover which captures their strength and force. "'What amazed me was not what he [i.e., Mencken] said, but how on earth anybody had the courage to say it.' --Richard Wright."

ENVIRONMENTAL ACTIVISTS VERSUS ANIMAL RIGHTS ACTIVISTS

T. C. Boyle, When the Killings Done (New York: Viking, 2011) ("Significant. He might find it significant. Without thinking, he stuffed it in the back pocket f his jeans, and it wasn't until he was getting ready for bed that night that he discovered it there. Idly, he flipped it open, The title--Animal Rights--appeared at the top of the first page. Beneath it was a quote form Arthur Schopenhauer: 'The assumption that animals are without rights and the illusion that our treatment of them has no moral significance is a positively outrageous example of Western crudity and barbarity. Universal compassion is the only guarantee to morality.' There was not author listed, and aside form a copyright symbol at the bottom of the page, no publication data at all." Id. at 130-131. Food for thought. Also see Barbara Kingsolver, "Once on This Island," NYT Book Review, Sunday, 2/20/2011.).

FOOD FOR THOUGHT: WHAT DOES IT MEAN TO BE HUMAN?

Benjamin Hale, The Evolution of Bruno Littlemore: A Novel (New York & Boston: Twelve, 2011) ("Becoming human is a process of equal parts enlightenment and imprinting your brain with taboos." Id. at 121. "Yes, he happens to be a chimp. A chimp dressed in the trappings of human civilization is ordinarily funny to you. That is why we see chimps dressed up in idiotic costumes on TV commercials. It's the stuff of the circus, of vaudeville, of the burlesque, the freak show. Obviously, the reason why you think it so fucking funny to see chimps dressed in human clothes and taught to ludicrously mimic human behavior is because you think of yourselves as having the only proper culture. You define yourselves as the only cultured species, and this has allowed you to believe that your culture has helped you break away from the rest of nature. Therefore, the sight of an ape--so close to you, and yet seemingly so far--dressed up in human clothes and behaving like a human being is utterly incongruous--hence, funny. But what if--what if you see an ape who wears a suit and a tie and walks on two legs, an ape who has made this step into human culture not simply to appease his trainers, who mock and pimp and debase him to provide cheap titillation to the drooling hoi polloi--but of his own free will? Suddenly it's not so funny anymore. Is it? Id. at 218-219. "Isn't it an odd concept, Gwen? Living with domesticated animals for pleasure? I've always thought so. I say 'pleasure' because I'm not talking about the more utilitarian human valuation on animals: dogs to alert us to intruders, cats to mouse, horses to ride, sheep to shear, cows and pig to eat. I'm talking about animals employed exclusively as 'pets.' Animals that human care for simply out of--what, love? Is that the right word? Love? We may weep when they die, do we not? Or entertainment? Think of chihuahuas, shih tzus, Yorkshire terriers" indeed, it seems we deliberately breed dogs for certain traits solely to make us laugh! What a strange thing it is for us to keep animals for primarily emotional reasons. The social contact we seem to have with our pets is that we continue to keep them alive and safe and fed in exchange for the amusement and emotional satisfaction they provide us. . . . But household pets--dogs, cats--these are the animals human beings have selected to take with them as passengers on their insane journey through, over, and against nature. We have such a tortured relationship with other animals that live in our world, Gwen. Even as we ridicule them, we can let ourselves love them. . . . Id. at 253-254. Law students in Animals Rights or Animal Law course would benefit from contemplating the numerous nuanced ideas and arguments contained in this novel. Also see Christopher Beha, "Primal Urges," NYT Book Review, Sunday, 2/6/11.).

SPRING BREAK READINGS FOR LAW STUDENTS

Daniel Akst, We Have Met the Enemy: Self-Control in an Age of Excess (New York: The Penguin Press, 2011) ("When it comes to self-control, speed kills, and technology undermines restraint by making everything happen faster. . . ." "But technology has accelerated our lives irrevocably, and while it's nice to be able to fly across the Atlantic in a few hours or get news of the latest findings in microbiology in a few seconds, this acceleration is bad news on the self-mastery front. The collapse of delay between impulse and action, between offer and decision, inevitably privileges impulse over reflection and now over later. By undermining deliberation, speed, weakens the habit of deferring gratification and leaves no chance for second thoughts. . . ." "The all-around acceleration of life has also made us less willing to invest in such time-consuming (but subsequently rewarding) tasks as learning a foreign language or studying engineering or walking when we might drive. Technology and ever more efficient markets discourage this kind of thing by providing easy alternative and rewarding extreme specialization. When cheap, immediate pleasures (like TV) are readily at hand, longer-term satisfactions requiring patience and diligence become comparatively more expensive--and more likely to be shunned." Id. at 47-48. Law students and lawyers might consider how often they rely on the headnotes to a case rather than the more time-consuming undertaking of actually reading the case. Or, for that matter, how easy it is to fool oneself into thinking that one knows something--or don't need to know something--because one knows how to "google" the right term(s) or question(s), rather having a working mastery of the materials in one's head. Being fluent in a foreign language is quite different from being able to put an English-phrase into google-translator. Yet, today, more and more individuals thing they know stuff when, in fact, they know very little and perhaps know nothing at all. It takes time and patience to come to know most things worth knowing. And fewer and fewer people are inclined, or have the self-discipline, to take the time to come to truly know stuff.).

Lisa Birnbach & Chip Kidd, True Prep: It's a Whole New Old World (New York: Knopf, 2010) ("GETTING YOUR DEGREE IN GETTING YOUR DEGREE. A grand prep tradition is sadly coming to an end. You may remember that son of your parents' friends who was a perpetual student. Each time you heard about him, he was still doing 'fieldwork.' Well, now due to the exigencies of living in a recession, no longer is it possible for a young(ish) man or woman to stay in graduate school forever. Universities don't have those little stipends to hand out. Fellowships subsidized through endowment funds have dried up, and now this: Without demonstrating 'satisfactory progress in the degree program as determined by both the program' and the graduate school, Columbia and other great American universities are terminating students after their eighth or ninth year. This means instead of languishing in the stacks and teaching a couple of classes, you must actually complete you dissertation and distribute it. You can petition, you can whine, and perhaps you can swing a tenth year. Cheers." Id. at 26.).

Dietrich Dorner, The Logic of Failure: Why Things Go Wrong and What We Can Do To Make Them Right, translated from the German by Rita and Robert Kimber (New York: Metropolitan Books, 1989, 1996) ("It appears that, very early on, human beings developed a tendency to deal with problems on an ad hoc basis. The task at hand was to gather firewood, to drive a herd of horses into a canyon, or to build a trap for a mammoth. All these were problems of the moment and usually had no significance beyond themselves. The amount of firewood the members of a Stone Age tribe needed was no more a threat to the forest than their hunting activity was a threat to wildlife populations. Although certain animals species seem t have been overhunted and eradicated in prehistoric times, on the whole our prehistoric ancestors did not have to think beyond the situation itself. The need to see a problem embedded in the context of other problems rarely arose. For us, however, this is the rule, not the exception. Do our habits of thought measure up to the demands of thinking in systems? What errors are we prone to when we have to take side effect and long-term repercussions into account?" Id. at 5-6. "Failure does not strike like a bolt from the blue; it develops gradually according to its own logic. As we watch individuals attempt to solve problems, we will see that complicated situations seem to elicit habits of thought that set failure in motion from the beginning. From that point, the continuing complexity of the task and the growing apprehension of failure encourage methods of decision making that make failure even more likely and then inevitable." "We can learn, however, People court failure in predictable ways. Readers of this book will find many examples of confusion, misperception, shortsightedness, and the like; they will also find that the sources of these failings are often quite simple and can be eliminated without adopting a revolutionary new mode of thought. Having identified and understood these tendencies in ourselves, we will be much better problem solvers. We will be more able to start wisely, to make corrections in midcourse, and, most important, to learn from failures we did not avert. We need only apply the ample power of our minds to understanding and then breaking the logic of failure." Id. at 10. "If neither intelligence nor specialized experience nor motivation differed in the two groups, what did? What accounts for the greater success of the practitioners?" "I think the explanation is 'operative intelligence,' the knowledge that individuals have about the use of their intellectual capabilities and skills. In dealing with complex problems we cannot handle in the same way all the different situations we encounter. Sometimes we must perform detailed analyses; at other times it is better simply to size up a situation. Sometimes we need a comprehensive but rough outline of a situation; at other times we may have to give close attention to details Sometimes we need to define our goals very clearly and analyze carefully, before we act, exactly what it is we want to achieve; at other times it is better simply to go to work and muddle through. Sometimes we need to think more 'holistically,' more in pictures, at other times more analytically. Sometimes we need to sit back and see what develops; at other times we have to move very quickly." "There is no universally applicable rule, no magic wand, that we can apply to every situation and to all the structures we find in the real world. Our job is to think of, and then do, the right things at the right times and in the right way. There may be rules for accomplishing this, but the rules are local--they are to a large extent dictated by specific circumstances. And that means in turn that there are a great many rules." "I think that the differences between the expert and the layman can be found here. We all know the basic rules of thumb. 'Look before you leap.' 'Be clear about your goals.' 'Gather as much information as you can before you act.' 'Learn from your mistakes.' 'Don't act in anger.' 'Ask for advice.' Who would not agree to their usefulness The troublesome thing about them is that they don't always apply. These are situations in which it is better to act than to think. Sometimes we should cut short our information gathering, And so on." "Our practitioners not only knew these rules but applied the right rule at the right times." Id. at 192-193. I suspect that one of the failings of education, including legal education, is that a given discipline teaches its students to think in certain ways (e.g., to think like a lawyer), to approach problems in certain limited ways, etc., such that many students and practitioners lack the ability to pick the right rule for the particular circumstances. That is, notwithstanding how intelligent they are, and notwithstanding that they are aware of all the rules of thumb, they are simply unable to pick and apply 'the right rules at the right times.' The result? Failure or, at least, not the best solution.).

John Kenneth Galbraith, The Affluent Society and Other Writings 1952-1967: American Capitalism; The Great Crash, 1929; The Affluent Society; The New Industrial State, edited by James K. Galbraith (New York: Library of America, 2010) (From American Capitalism: "Measured by its continuing imprint on actions and attitudes, the depression clearly stands with the Civil War as one of the two most important events in American history since the revolution. For the great majority of Americans World War II, by contrast, was an almost casual and pleasant experience. Several million found jobs who had doubted whether they might ever find jobs again. Hundreds of thousands of others escaped the routines of middle-class employments, their boredom with which they had concealed even from themselves. Men and women who had never supposed themselves discharging important tasks with a competence of which they alone had been previously aware. Only a minority experienced the nagging homesickness, the fear, the physical suffering and the mutilation and death which is the less pleasant destiny of the fighting soldier in wartime. Because they were a minority the war left no lasting imprint. The depression which afflicted a great majority of the people did. Id. at 60-61. It will not be September 11, 2001, or the American War in Iraq, or the American War in Afghanistan, which will have the more lasting impression on Americans. It will be, instead, the economic crisis and decline experienced in the first decades of the twenty-first century. "The most distinctive characteristic of the businessman--the thing that most sharply distinguishes him from the lawyer, college professor or, generally speaking, the civil servant--is his capacity for decision. The effective businessman is invariably able to make up his own mind, often on limited evidence, without uncertainty a to his own wisdom. It is a part of this talent not to reflect on past mistakes or even to concede that a mistake has been made." Id. at 146. Of course, in the fourth-quarter of the twentieth-century, law practice became a business and lawyers became essentially businesspeople. In that same period, but especially in the first decade of the next century, more and more universities and colleges increasingly abandoned a education model and adopted a 'business' model (e.g., gutting unprofitable programs, such as foreign languages). As a consequences, even college professors are becoming essentially businesspeople. And, in becoming taking on the characteristics and values of businesspeople, lawyers and college professors are increasing demonstrating a "talent not to reflect on past mistakes or even concede that a mistake has been made." From The Great Crash, 1929: ""But now, as throughout history, financial capacity and political perspicacity are inversely correlated. Long-run salvation by men of business has never been highly regarded if it means disturbance of orderly life and convenience in the present. So inaction will be advocated in the present even though it means deep trouble in the future. Here, at least equally with communism, lies the threat to capitalism. It is what causes men who know that things are going quite wrong to say that things are fundamentally sound." Id. at 343. From The Affluent Society: "In a society where virtuosity in persuasion must keep pace with virtuosity in production, one is tempted to wonder whether the first can ever keep ahead of the second. For while production does not clearly contain within itself the seeds of its own disintegration, persuasion may. On some not distant day, the voice of each individual seller may well be lost in the collective roar of all together. Like injunctions to virtue and warnings of socialism, advertising will beat helplessly on ears that have been conditioned by previous assault to utter immunity. Diminishing returns will have operated to the point where the marginal effect of outlays of every kind of commercial persuasion will have brought the average effect to zero It will be worth no one's while to speak, for since all speak, none can hear. Silence, interrupted perhaps by brief, demoniacal outbursts of salesmanship, will ensue." Id. at 492.).

RE-READING ANOTHER 'STILL-RELEVANT' CLASSIC

Lincoln Steffens, The Shame of the Cities (1904) (Mineola, New York: Dover, 2004) ("But there is hope, not alone despair, in the commercialism of our politics. If our political leaders are to be always a lot of political merchants, they will supply any demand we may create. All we have to do is to establish a steady demand for good government. The bosses have us split up into parties. To him parties are nothing but means to his his corrupt ends. He 'bolts' his party, but we must not; the bribe-giver changes his party, from one election to another, from one county to another, from one city to another, but the honest voter must not. Why? Because if the honest voter cared no more for his party than the politician and the grafter then the honest vote would govern, and that would be bad--for graft. It is idiotic, this devotion to a machine that is used to take our sovereignty from us. If we would leave parties to the politicians, and would vote not for the party, not even for men, but for the city, and the State, and the nation, we should rule parties, and cities, and States, and nation. If we vote in mass on the more promising ticket or, if the two are equally bad, would throw out the party the other party that is in--then, I say, the commercial politician would feel a demand for good government and he would supply it. That process would take a generation or more to compete, for the politicians now really do not know what good government is. But it has taken as long to develop bad government and the politicians know what that is. If it would not 'go,' they would offer something else, and, if the demand were steady, they, being so commercial, would 'deliver the goods'." "But do the people want good government? Tammany says they don't. Are the people honest? Are the people better than Tammany? Are they better than the merchant and politician? Isn't our corrupt government, after all, representative?" Id. at 5-6. "Philadelphia had a bad ring mayor, a man who promoted the graft and caused scandal after scandal. The leaders there, the wisest of political grafter in this country, learned a great lesson from that. As one of them said to me: 'The American people don't mind grafting, but they hate scandals. They don't kick so much on a jiggered pubic contract for a boulevard, but they want the boulevard and no fuss and no dust. We want to give them that. We want to give them what they really want, a quiet Sabbath, safe streets, orderly nights, and homes secure. They let us have the police graft. But this mayor was a hog.. You see he had but one term and he could get his share only on what was made in his term, He not only took a hog's share off what was coming, but he wanted everything to cone in his term. So I'm down on grafting mayors and grafting office holders. I tell you it's good politics to have honest men in office. I mean men that are personally honest'." Id. at 213. Graft, but just don't create a scandal by doing it too quickly. Be subtle, be patient, spread one's grafting out over time. The people will not squawk, as long as you don't disturb their peace of mind and give them what they want.).

RE-READING A 'STILL-RELEVANT' CLASSIC

Jacob A. Riis, How the Other Half Lives: Studies Among the Tenements of New York (1890), with Introduction and Notes by Luc Sante (New York: Penguin, 1997) ("Long ago it was said that 'one half of the world does not know how the other half lives.' That was true then. It did not know because it did not care. The half that was on top cared little for the struggles, and less for the fate of those who were underneath, so long as it was able to hold them there and keep its own seat. There came a time when the discomfort and crowding below were so great, and the consequent upheavals so violent, that it was no longer an easy thing to do and then the upper half fell into inquiring what was the matter. Information on the subject has been accumulating rapidly since, and the whole world has had its hand full answering for its old ignorance." Id. at 5. "One gets a glimpse of the frightful depths to which human nature, perverted by avarice bred of ignorance and rasping poverty, can descend, in the mere suggestion of systematic insurance for profit of children's lives. A woman was put on trial in this city last year for incredible cruelty in her treatment of a step-child. The evidence aroused a strong suspicion that a pitifully small amount of insurance on the child's life was one of the motives for the woman's savagery. A little investigation brought out the fact that three companies that were in the business of insuring children's lives, for the sum varying from $17 up, had insured not less than a million such policies! The premiums ranged from five to twenty-five cents a week. What untold horrors this business may conceal was suggested by a formal agreement entered into by some of the companies, 'for the purpose of preventing speculation in the insurance of children's lives.' By the terms of this compact, 'no higher premium than ten cents could be accepted on children under six years old.' Barbarism forsooth! Did ever heathen cruelty invent a more fiendish plot than the one written down between the lines of this legal paper? Id. at 144. From Sante's Introduction: "There is another reason why How the Other Half Lives remains compelling so long after its first publication, one that is rather more ironic and bitter. The book haunts us because so much of it remains true. While its lasting social effects were many--there are no more windowless rooms, double-decker tenement, cellar apartments, dwellings accessible via alleys, doughnut bakeries in basements, sweatshop franchises in slum flats--the living conditions of the poor remain abominable. New York City's homeless population, virtually nonexistent a few decades ago, is again what it was at the time Riis wrote, and now in addition there are people living on the streets of cities and towns where such a thing would have been unthinkable in the [nineteenth century]. The sweatshop is as much a feature of the recent immigrant's daily hell as it was in 1890. The face of misery has been altered to some degree, but not its substance. The housing project, a concept that would have sounded nearly utopian a century ago, in its allowance for light and air, has proven to contain as much potential for harm as the tenements of Riis's day. . . . Id. at xiii.).

BOOK OF THE WEEK: WEEK TEN, 2011

Evgeny Morozov, The Net Delusion: The Dark Side of Internet Freedom (New York: PublicAffairs, 2011) ("Despite the reductionist models that have made many in the West believe that information can destroy authoritarianism, information also plays an instrumental role in enabling propaganda, censorship, and surveillance, the three main pillars of Orwell-style authoritarian control." "The Internet hasn't changed the composition of this 'trinity of authoritarianism,' but it has brought significant changes to how each of these three activities is practiced. The decentralized nature of the Internet may have made comprehensive censorship much harder, but it may have also made propaganda more effective, as government messages can now be spread through undercover government-run blogs. The opportunity to cheaply encrypt their online communications may have made 'professional' activists more secure, but the proliferation of Web 2.0 services--and especially social networking--has turned 'amateur' activists into easier targets for surveillance." Id. at 82. "if anyone is 'lost,' it is the citizens, not the authorities. Even authoritarian governments have discovered that the best way to marginalize dissident books and ideas is not to ban them--them seems only to boost interest in the forbidden fruit--but to let the invisible hand flood the market with trashy popular detective stores, self-help manuals, and books on how to get your kids into Harvard (texts like You Too Can Go to Harvard: Secrets of Getting into Famous U.S. Universities and Harvard Girl are best sellers in China)." Id. at 69. "The media's roles in the cultivation of political knowledge in both democratic and authoritarian societies are strikingly similar. Before the rise of cable television in the West, knowledge about politics--especially of the everyday variety--was something of an accident even in democratic societies. Markus Prior, a scholar of political communications at Princeton University, argues that most American were exposed to political news not because they wanted to watch it but because there was nothing else to watch. This resulted in citizens who were far better politically informed, much more likely to participate in politics, and far less likely to be partisan than today. The emergence of cable television, however, gave people the choice between consuming political news and anything else--and most viewers, predictably, went for that 'anything else' category, which mostly consisted of entertainment. A small cluster has continued to care about politics--and , thanks to the rise of the niche media, they have more opportunities that they could ever wish for--but the rest of the population has disengaged" "Prior's insights about the negative effects of media choice in the context of Western democracies can also shed light on why the Internet may not boost political knowledge and politicize the fence-sitters, the one who remain undecided about whether to voice their grievances against the governments, to the degree that some of us hope. The drive for entertainment simply outweighs the drive for political knowledge--and YouTube could easily satisfy even the most demanding entertainment junkies. Watching the equivalent of 'The Tits Show' in the 1970s required getting exposed to at least a five-second political commercial (even if it was the jingle of Radio Free Europe), while today one can avoid such political messages altogether." Id. at 60-61. This not an anti-technology, anti-Internet, etc., book. Rather, as its subtitle suggests, it is a thoughtful discussion of the underside of our latest technology, the Internet. Morozov argues, rather convincingly, that the Internet is not necessarily the friend of democracy because, after all, the Internet is merely a tool/means of communication. And tools can be use for good (e.g., promoting democracy), but also for no-so-good (promoting or carrying out authoritarian objectives). Referring back to an early means of communication, the radio, Morozov cautions us: "While Internet enthusiasts like to quote the optimistic global village reductionism of Marshall McLuhan, . . . few of them have much use for McLuhan's darker reductionism, like this gem from 1964: 'That Hitler came into political existence at all is directly owing to radio and the public-address system.' As usual McLuhan was overstating the case, but we certainly do not want to discover that our overly optimistic rhetoric about the freedom to connect has deprived us of the ability to fix the inevitable negative consequences that such freedom produces. Some networks are good; some are bad. But all networks require a through ethical investigation. Promoting Internet freedom must include measures to mitigate the negative side effects of increased interconnectedness." Id at 261. All food for thought, making The Net Delusion The Cosmopolitan Lawyer's Book of the Week. Also see Lee Siegel, "Twitter Can't Save You," NYT Book Review, Sunday, 2/6/2011, at 14.).

HOMESICK FOR CHICAGO, THAT FLAWED YET VIBRANT CITY

Hill, Libby, The Chicago River: A Natural and Unnatural History (Chicago: Lake Claremont Press, 2000).

Miller, Donald L., City of the Century: The Epic of Chicago and the Making of America (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1996).

Pacyga, Dominic A., Chicago: A Biography (Chicago & London: U. of Chicago Press, 2009).

Smith, Carl, The Plan of Chicago: Daniel Burnham and the Remaking of the American City (Chicago & London: U. of Chicago Press, 2006).

FOOD FOR THOUGHT: IN SEARCH OF THE INTELLECTUAL LIFE

Hubert Dreyfus & Sean Dorrance Kelly, All Shining Things: Reading the Western Classics to Find Meaning in a Secular Age (New York: The Free Press, 2011) ("But improvements of technology are impoverishments as well. The GPS covers over the meaningful distinction that the art of skilled navigation revealed. To the extent that technology strips away the need for skill, it strips away the possibility of meaning as well. To have a skill is to know what counts or is worthwhile in a certain domain. Skills reveal meaningful differences to us and cultivate in us a sense of responsibility to bring these out at their best. To the extent that it takes away the need for skill, technology flattens out human life." Id. at 213.).

Bernard-Henri Levy & Michel Houellebecq, Public Enemies: Dueling Writers Take on Each Other and the World, translated from the French by Miriam Frendo & Frank Wynne (New York: Random House, 2011).

James Miller, Examined Lives: From Socrates to Nietzsche (New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 2011) ("Here, then, are brief lives of a handful of philosophers, ancient and modern: Socrates and Plato, Diogenes and Aristotle, Seneca and Augustine, Montaigne and Descartes, Rousseau and Kant, Emerson and Nietzsche. They are all men, because philosophy before the twentieth century was overwhelmingly a vocation reserved for men: a large fact that has limited the kinds of lives--stubbornly independent, often unattached, sometime solitary and sexless--that philosophers have tended to lead. Within these common limits, however, there has been considerable variation. Some philosophers were influential figures in their day, while others were marginal; some were revered, while other provoked scandal and public outrage." "Despite such differences, each of these men prized the pursuit of wisdom. Each one struggled to live his life according to a deliberately chosen set of precepts and beliefs, discerned in part through a practice of self-examination, and expressed in both word and deed. The life of each one can therefore teach us something about the quest for self-knowledge and its limits. And as a whole, they can tell us a great deal about how the nature of philosophy--and the nature of philosophy as a way of life--has changed over time." Id. at 14-15.).

SOME SUGGESTED FICTION FOR WOMEN LAW STUDENTS

Elizabeth Hardwick, The New York Stories of Elizabeth Hardwick, selected and with an introduction by Darryl Pinckney (New York: New York Review Books, 2010) (From the backcover: "This first collection of Hardwick's short fiction reveals her brilliance as a stylist and as an observer of contemporary life. A young woman returns from New York to her childhood Kentucky home and discovers the world of difference within her. A girl's boyfriend is not quite good enough. his 'silvery eyes, light and cool, revealing nothing except pure possibility, like a coin in hand.' A magazine editor's life falls strangely to pieces after she loses both her husband and her job. Individual lives and the life of New York, the setting or backdrop for most of these stories, are strikingly and memorably depicted in Hardwick's beautiful and razor-sharp prose.").

Elizabeth Hardwick, Seduction and Betrayal: Women and Literature, with an Introduction by Joan Didion (New York: New York Review Books, 2001) (From the title essay: "Seduction may be baneful, even tragic, but the seducer at his work is essentially comic." Id. at 175. "The most interesting seducers are actually rapists; for instance, Don Giovanni and Lovelace. Their whole character is trapped in the moil of domination, and they drudge on, never satisfied, never resting, mythically hungry. The fact that the two characters mentioned are gentlemen gives a stinging complication to their obsessions. Ritual comes naturally to them and birth bestows rights and blurs cruelties. What we may feel is a misplaced elaboration of desire in a gentleman would be in a man of less imagination of of inferior social and personal decoration simply coarse or criminal. In the common man, excessive demand fore sex is repulsive. Gentlemen merely run the risk of being ridiculous. . . . " Id. at 175-176. "Biology is destiny only for girls. . . ." Id at 189. "Now the old plot is dead, fallen into obsolescence. You cannot seduce anyone when innocence is not a value. Technology annihilates consequences. Heroism hurts and no one easily consents to be under its rule. The heroines in Henry James, rich and in every way luckily endowed by circumstance, are seduced and betrayed by surfaces, misled because life, under certain rules, is a language they haven't the key to. Feeling and desire hang on and thus misfortune (if not tragedy) in the emotional life is always ahead of us, waiting its turn. Stoicism, growing to meet the tyrannical demands of consequence, cannot be without its remaining uses in life and love; but if we read contemporary fiction we learn that improvisation is better, more economical, faster, more promising." Id. at 205.).

Hardwick, Elizabeth, Sleepless Nights, with an introduction by Geoffrey O'Brien (New York: New York review Books, , 1979, 2001) (From the backcover: "In Sleepless Nights a woman looks back on her life--the parade of people, the shifting background of place--and assembles a scrapbook of memories, reflections, portraits, letters, wishes, and dreams. An inspired fusion of fact and invention, this beautifully realized, hard-bitten, lyrical book is not only Elizabeth Hardwick's finest fiction but one of the outstanding contributions to American literature of the last fifty years.").