[ Wednesday, February 11, 2004 (3:17 PM) ] ( link )
"He alone can properly interpret": There's an interesting article in the New York Times entitled Judges Skeptical of U.S. Efforts to Ban a Tax Book. The article is about a guy who published a book on how to avoid taxes; now he's being sued by the IRS for, among other things, perpetrating fraud. The judges don't seem to like the idea of restricting the sale and distribution of the book, even though they also seem unanimous in their opinion that the book contains "nonsense."
Here's the paragraph that caught my eye:
In a separate case in Las Vegas, where the Justice Department is trying to collect $2.5 million in taxes, interest and penalties, Mr. Schiff [the defendant-author] has filed papers by his psychiatrist, who concluded that Mr. Schiff is insane and holds a deluded belief that he alone can properly interpret the tax laws.
Think that you're the only correct interpreter of the tax code, and you get declared insane. Think that you're the only correct interpreter of the Constitution, and you become a Yale Law School professor. Now that's justice.
Conservative bias: This is too short for another post so I'm just appending it to the end of this one. I'm reading Brian Leiter's blog and this post contained the following excellent question.
Conservatives are usually keen to deny that the absence of, say, Blacks in academia doesn't signal bias; why are they so ready to infer bias from the absence of conservatives?
Why indeed.
[ Monday, February 9, 2004 (2:21 AM) ] ( link )
Asian-American television night: I don't watch a lot of television. But sometimes when I'm sick of working, I take short 10-to-15-minute television breaks where I watch snippets of whatever's on.
For whatever reason, today seemed to be Asian-American night for late-night television. First, there was the concluding 15 minutes of Pearl Harbor, where Ben Affleck and Josh Hartnett are attacked by hordes of faceless Japanese soldiers and rescued by equally faceless Chinese soldiers. Now obviously Pearl Harbor isn't about Asian-Americans--nevertheless, it got me thinking about Asian-Americans and movies because I wondered if the rescue by Chinese soldiers was a way to appease Asian-American discomfort at the subject matter of the film. Second, on an episode of Seinfeld where Seinfeld & Co. get tickets to see Pagliacci, George scalps his ticket to a very fat Asian-American man whom he calls Harry Fong.
So far, so good. Pearl Harbor's Asian references are understandable, and Seinfeld didn't make anything of the guy's race--it was far more important that he was fat.
Then we get into somewhat more extensive discussions of Asians-Americans. On an episode of the Larry Sanders Show (which is otherwise quite excellent), Larry Sanders's accountant, Frank, takes to the bottle and then fritters away Larry's money. In retaliation, Larry's boss, Artie (the inimitable Rip Torn) and his sidekick Hank (Jeffrey Tambor) go to accountant Frank's home and torch the trellis. Unfortunately, it turns out that Frank moved out of that house a while ago. Artie and Hank feel guilty and so invite the current residents of the house to a special backstage tour of the Larry Sanders Show, without confessing their crime. It turns out that the family is Asian-American; in the one brief scene where they appear, Larry greets them, expresses sympathy for the terrible vandalism of their trellis (without naming names), and then says, with a big grin, "Sorry about the Margaret Cho Show." There's a moment of awkward silence; then, with the same big grin frozen on his face, Larry glides away. (The family members don't have any actual dialogue.)
The joke about Larry's relative insensitivity to Asian-Americans continues when he insists on performing a skit that he absolutely loves, but that everybody else thinks is stupid. In the skit, Larry, sitting in the studio, interviews the owner of a Chinese restaurant (Peng Lee) by videophone about the latest movies. The chief joke of the skit seems to be the owner's relatively thick Chinese accent. The skit becomes a minor skirmish in the episode, with studio executives and then a faceless "Mr. Chen" from the Anti-Defamation League complaining about the racial insult. (The executives inspiringly explain that Letterman can make fun of Indians but Larry can't make fun of Asians because Asians are "more organized" and therefore continuing the skit will lead to "a bunch of Japs picketing outside the studio.")
Finally, I saw about five minutes of an episode of Taxi where Danny DeVito's mother gets married to a Japanese-American man named Itsumi Fujimoto. DeVito introduces the fact that his mother's fiance is Japanese by complaining to all of his friends about the man's shortcomings, and then saying, "And I haven't gotten to the worst part: he's Japanese!" (To the show's credit, one character immediately responds, "So?" and another character accuses DeVito of ignoring his mother's best interests.) When DeVito first meets Fujimoto, he asks him whether he's ever known another woman; when Fujimoto, incredulous at the question, says that a man of his age clearly has known other women (he's 83), DeVito turns toward his mother and says, "You can't marry him! He's bedded half the Orient!" Supposedly the marriage turns out well, and DeVito blesses the groom, but I wouldn't know because I turned off the television after that line.
You don't see a whole lot of Asian-Americans on screen. So this steady stream of references and bit roles surprised me, especially since it wasn't as though I left the television on throughout this approximately six-hour stretch. It's also not as though I think that the presence of these Asian-Americans was unmitigated racial insult: in both the Larry Sanders Show and Taxi, part of the joke seems to be about a character's insensitivity about race. Nevertheless, this sequence left me feeling a little odd, and I thought it was worth mentioning. Draw your own conclusions.
[ Sunday, February 8, 2004 (7:50 PM) ] ( link )
Tooting your own horn: This man is a genius. (Broadband required.) If I had such talent I would not be toiling away in law school.
[ Friday, February 6, 2004 (7:58 PM) ] ( link )
There oughta be a law: Mathematics uses parentheses and brackets to keep relevant figures together, so that (2+2)*5 = 20 while 2+(2*5) = 12. Language should also use parentheses and brackets to keep relevant linguistic units together in order to avoid confusion with things such as prepositional phrase modifiers.
Take the following sentence, which utterly confused me until I finally read it right. "The Commission does not hesitate to declare that there exists no international rule prohibiting the sovereign right of a nation to protect its citizen abroad from being subject to any limitation whatsoever under any circumstances." There are two ambiguities in this sentence. First, is the international rule "prohibiting" something, or "prohibiting" something "from" something? Second, does the final "from" phrase attach to "prohibiting," or to "protect"?
Brackets could easily set aside various elements to clarify what the writer meant. Thus, the sentence above could be rewritten in two ways:
- The Commission does not hesitate to declare that there exists no international rule prohibiting [the sovereign right of a nation to protect its citizen abroad] from being subject to any limitation whatsoever under any circumstances.
- The Commission does not hesitate to declare that there exists no international rule prohibiting the sovereign right of a nation to [protect its citizen abroad from being subject to any limitation whatsoever under any circumstances].
In the first formulation, nations have a sovereign right to protect their citizens, but international law allows this right to be limited. In the second formulation, nations have a sovereign right to protect their citizens; what they're protecting them from is the danger of being subject to a limitation.
Isn't that much clearer? I'm aware this problem could be easily solved through better writing. But in the absence of better writing--and, more importantly, in the absence of clear rules regarding where modifiers and phrases attach--some sort of bracketing system would be immensely helpful.
[ Friday, February 6, 2004 (10:53 AM) ] ( link )
Rereading LOTR: Sam the Servant (part 2): This is the sequel to my first post on the subject. In that last post I speculated that Sam might grow out of his blind devotion to Frodo in the third book.
Well, he doesn't--at least not according to the language Tolkien uses. For one thing, the dog analogies continue.
The Return of the King, Book VI, Chapter 1: [Sam, ascending Cirith Ungol in search of Frodo, encounters an orc.]
For a moment the orc crouched, and then with a hideous yelp of fear it turned and fled back as it had come. Never was any dog more heartened when its enemy turned tail than Sam at this unexpected flight. With a shout he gave chase.
Sam also continues to have a rather unhealty obsession with Frodo, to the exclusion of any interest in himself or even in the world at large. Again, while he's ascending the tower of Cirith Ungol:
The Return of the King, Book VI, Chapter I:
He ran back to the lower storey and tried the door. It would not move. He ran up again, and sweat began to trickle down his face. He felt that even minutes were precious, but one by one they escaped; and he could do nothing. He cared no longer for Shagrat or Snaga or any other orc that was ever spawned. He longed only for his master, for one sight of his face or one touch of his hand. . . .
[Sam then finds Frodo.] [Frodo] lay back in Sam's gentle arms, closing his eyes, like a child at rest when night-fears are driven away by some loved voice or hand. Sam felt that he could sit like that in endless happiness; but it was not allowed. It was not enough for him to find his master, he had still to try and save him. [Editor's note: "Try and save him?" Tolkien, for shame!]
Sam's love for Frodo is occasionally--make that "often"--very sweet, even inspiring. His battle with Shelob to save Frodo's life is even better on the page than on the screen, and everybody should be fortunate enough to hear, at least once in their lives, "I can't carry it for you, but I can carry you and it as well." (I've been fortunate enough to hear it once--but only in jest.) Frodo also seems fairly devoted to Sam--one of the more touching scenes in the book (though still evidence of a profoundly master-servant relationship) is when Frodo asks when Sam will move back to Bag End, and then happily offers to allow Rosie to move in also when Sam informs him of their impending marriage.
That's not enough though. Sam is a great character, perhaps one of the most personable and admirable characters in the trilogy. It's too bad that he's stunted by Tolkien's strictly hierarchical class sensibilities.
[ Thursday, February 5, 2004 (9:06 PM) ] ( link )
Class arrogance: I know that grades (even Yale grades) are crucial to snag clerkships and jobs. I know that clerkship and job hirers don't really care about the difficult of the classes you take, only the results you get in them. I know which professors and classes are particularly Honors-prone, and which only give Passes or Low Passes. And I am perfectly aware of the limits of my own legal ability--not Cardozo, nor Holmes, nor even that guy Waddling Thunder knows will find a true peer here.
And yet, over and over again, I find myself taking infamously difficult classes on infamously complex issues taught by infamously hard-grading professors. I did it in college with Social Studies 10 (syllabus here) and other classes well beyond my reach; I did it last semester with Professor Langbein's Trusts & Estates and Professor Mashaw's Administrative Law; and I'm doing it again this semester with the queen of them all, Professor Resnik's Federal Courts.
I don't actually enjoy pain, as my friends unfortunate enough to hear me complain will attest. So the only real explanation is that there's some pathological arrogance taking place here: the same arrogance that leads people to climb mountains though their noses fall off, to race fast cars though they might burn up, and to fight bulls despite the horns.
Except I can exercise this arrogance in the chilly comfort of my own apartment. So I guess it's not perfectly analogous.
I'm not entirely sure why I'm writing this. Maybe this is a cry for help. Or just an excuse to take a break from the 150 pages of Fed Courts reading due on Tuesday.
[ Thursday, February 5, 2004 (12:00 PM) ] ( link )
YLS Outrage: Powerful and divisive changes are sweeping across America. Gay marriage is legalized. The war in Iraq continues. And President Bush is still in office.
But if there is one thing that unites students of all colors and ideologies, it is being charged exorbitant rates for seemingly baseless administrative reasons.
The Yale Law School registrar requires students every semester to go to the registrar's office (which is in the law school building) to get a tiny sticker affixed to ID cards. The sticker signifies that the ID card is still valid; to the extent that people actually pay attention to the sticker (which is questionable at best), the presence of an updated sticker allows you to gain access to Yale buildings, while the absence of an updated sticker will keep you out.
At the end of finals period last semester, the registrar sent out a longish email detailing various notices and requirements for the upcoming semester. Buried in the middle of the email, without any special headings, was a reminder for students to get their new stickers within the first week, and a short sentence saying that a fine would be charged for students who failed to get the sticker within the first week. No further reminders of the sticker requirement were emailed out.
As inevitably happens--particularly at a place like YLS, where rules are proposed for the rest of America but not followed by the students--several students were late in getting the sticker. They discovered, upon approaching the registrar, that the office was charging $35 per day for getting late stickers. Somebody who wanted to get his sticker this past Monday would be charged $35; somebody who forgot to get his sticker until this Friday would be charged $175; and somebody who waited until the end of the semester (assuming they only count weekdays) would have to pay over $2000!
It turns out that the $35 per day fine was actually listed in the early email sent out to YLS students. Nevertheless, students here are pissed. The complaints generally revolve around a clump of problems: (1) the lack of real notice, (2) the severity of the punishment, and (3) the perceived lack of a rational basis for such an exorbitant fee (by contrast, changing classes a month and a half into the semester only costs $10, and changing classes one week before finals does not exceed $60). Thus far I have yet to hear a really persuasive argument for the enormous fee imposed by the registrar. I think if they just transformed the daily double-digit fee to a flat double-digit fee, students wouldn't mind. It'll be interesting to see the growth (and hopefully success) of this quiet but powerfully felt grass roots campaign to repeal this fee.
(I realize that to outsiders this seems like a fairly trivial issue--and perhaps even a little bit whiney. But from such minor concerns do democratic sensibilities spring.)
[ Tuesday, February 3, 2004 (10:27 PM) ] ( link )
Eerie coincidence: An article on the imminent end of the Hubble Space Telescope mentions the Columbia shuttle disaster and concludes with a factoid that I never knew.
The anniversaries of each tragedy fall with in a week and will be commemorated together in the future. The Apollo 1 fire on the launching pad on Jan. 27, 1967, resulted in three dead astronauts. The Challenger explosion and loss of its seven-member crew was on Jan. 28, 1986. The Columbia disintegrated on re-entry on Feb. 1, 2003, killing all seven astronauts.
The article then just ends, giving no hint about why the week spanning January and February is so deadly.
My guess is that there are probably only so many days during the year that NASA can launch its rockets, meaning that disasters are actually highly likely to occur around the same time. If I'm wrong, though, and the lovely weather in Florida allows launches at any time, then I don't understand why NASA administrators keep re-launching craft during that time period. I'm not very superstitious, but I sure wouldn't want to be sitting above highly explosive liquid fuel on the anniversary of Apollo 1, Challenger, and Columbia. Brr.
[ Monday, February 2, 2004 (6:24 PM) ] ( link )
Rereading LOTR: Sam the Servant: Even when I was much younger, I was a little disturbed by how servile Sam often is to Frodo. There is a very thin line between Sam's loyalty to Frodo and Gollum's fawning, though I think it is fair to say that Sam's relationship is motivated by love, while Gollum's is motivated by the precious. Nevertheless, Sam is not a particularly strong character for much of the trilogy. Take the following passages, for instance.
The Fellowship of the Ring, Book I, Chapter II:
'Get up, Sam!' said Gandalf. I have thought of something better than that. Something to shut your mouth, and punish you properly for listening. You shall go away with Mr. Frodo!'
'Me, sir!' cried Sam, springing up like a dog invited for a walk. 'Me go and see Elves and all! Hooray!' he shouted, and then burst into tears.
Two things bother me about this passage. The first is the dog analogy, which would be an insult anywhere else. The second is the rather callous roping in of Sam, despite knowing that the Quest of the Ring would lead to almost certain death. From Sam's response to Gandalf's order, it seems fairly certain that he doesn't really comprehend the scope and danger of the journey. He just wants to see Elves! Instead, he gets to descend into the very pits of Mordor. Deceptive advertising indeed.
The Fellowship of the Ring, Book I, Chapter III: [The hobbits meet Gildor and other Elves while on their way to Buckland.]
After a while Pippin fell fast asleep, and was lifted up and borne away to a bower under the trees; there he was laid upon a soft bed and slept the rest of the night away. Sam refused to leave his master. When Pippin had gone, he came and sat curled up at Frodo's feet, where at last he nodded and closed his eyes. Frodo remained long awake, talking with Gildor.
Again with the dog parallels. Of course, it turns out Sam is spying on the discussion, which lessens the bad taste of this interaction, but still.
The Two Towers, Book IV, Chapter III:[Sam, Frodo, and Gollum stand before the Black Gate.]
Now they were come to the bitter end. But he had stuck to his master all the way; that was what he had chiefly come for, and he would still stick to him. His master would not go to Mordor alone. Sam would go with him--and at any rate they would get rid of Gollum.
I think I would have liked it better if Sam's motivation for going on was either (1) to prevent a second darkness from covering the land, or (2) out of love for an equal, like a friend. Instead, there's again this slavish devotion to his "master" prevailing over all other motives. Ugh.
Now, I've read that this might be a British thing, so maybe cultural differences make these master-servant interactions less palatable to American readers. Furthermore, I haven't yet finished the trilogy--I'm halfway through the third book now--so perhaps Sam's final triumph on the slopes of the volcano will show that he's overcome his servant-like tendencies and become an individual in his own right. And, again, it might be that Tolkien deliberately compared and contrasted Sam and Gollum as a way of distinguishing between genuine loyalty (Sam) and craven abjectness (Gollum), in a way that makes some subtle point about the proper role of the noble servant. Still, I'm glad that the movie somewhat muted Sam's dog-like devotion and emphasized his individual doughtiness instead.
[ Monday, February 2, 2004 (6:09 PM) ] ( link )
Rereading LOTR: Introduction: I've been silent on this page for a little while, in part because I think I'm a little burned out on law and don't really have anything interesting to say on the subject. (I have, however, been posting on Lawmeme a little more than usual.)
I might become more interested in law again when I actually start reading for class. At the moment, though, what I've been doing is rereading the Lord of the Rings--something I'd promised myself I would do since the first movie came out, but never got around to.
In the spirit of the rereading, I'll be putting up some posts on observations I've made on the trilogy--in particular, comparisons with the movie. I'm sure people have done this before but, as I said, I have nothing original to contribute to legal scholarship on this page so I might as well contribute something unoriginal to a subject I enjoy.
I'm going to start with a post or two about Frodo and Sam. Then I'll move on to specific passages in the book that reflected what was said in the movie--Jackson & Co. obviously spent a lot of time culling together a variety of sources to write the script. Finally if I have anything additional to say I'll spill it all on this page. If you're not a fan of the Lord of the Rings I can assure you that this page will be deathly boring for about the next week.
