Posted by Juan Non-Volokh: Tribe's Travails: [1]NRO's Ramesh Ponnuru thinks Harvard law professor Laurence Tribe of "falsifying as fact what was, in truth, fantasy" -- what Tribe himself has called the "cardinal sin" of scholarship. [2]SCOTUSBlog's Tom Goldstein thinks Ponnuru has overstated the case. Goldstein further surmises that Ponnuru's article is evidence that "the battle lines for the next Supreme Court nomination are being drawn in frighteningly personal terms." As Tribe may be called upon to critique a conservative Bush nominee, Goldstein suggests, the Right is seeking to discredit him now. A SCOTUSBlog commenter has what I think is a more plausible explanation: "the basic dynamic of journalists on one side of the political spectrum being overly critical of intellectuals on the other side is pretty common." NRO and its ideological compatriots go after folks like Tribe, while liberal periodicals go after [insert name of prominent neoconservative here].
This isn't the first attack on Tribe. Back when there were a spate of stories about plagiarism at Harvard (see, e.g. [3]here), The Weekly Standard's J. Bottum [4]leveled this charge against Tribe as well. Prof. Tribe [5]admitted a "failure to attribute some of the material The Weekly Standard identified," but many commentators thought the initial allegation was itself overblown. For myself, I think the [6]Ogletree case was worse. References 1. http://www.nationalreview.com/ponnuru/ponnuru200502250845.asp 2. http://www.scotusblog.com/movabletype/archives/2005/03/how_bitter_will.html 3. http://volokh.com/archives/archive_2004_09_12-2004_09_18.shtml#1095083397 4. http://www.weeklystandard.com/Content/Public/Articles/000/000/004/674eijco.asp?pg=2 5. http://www.thecrimson.com/article.aspx?ref=503493 6. http://volokh.com/archives/archive_2004_09_12-2004_09_18.shtml#1095083397 _______________________________________________ Volokh mailing list [email protected] http://highsorcery.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/volokh
