Hiding the ball

New York University Law Review

Volumn 71, Issue 6, 1996, Pages 1681-1717

  Schlag, Pierre ^a,b  

^a UNIVERSITY OF COLORADO   (United States)

^b UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA   (United States)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

EID: 0030327611     PISSN: 00287881     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: None     Document Type: Review

References (78)

1. Alfred North Whitehead, Science and the Modern World 48 (1925).
2. See Henry P. Monaghan, Our Perfect Constitution, 56 N.Y.U. L. Rev. 353, 396 (1981).
3. See Robert H. Bork, The Tempting of America: The Political Seduction of the Law 176 (1989).
4. See Richard H. Fallon, Jr., A Constructivist Coherence Theory of Constitutional Interpretation, 100 Harv. L. Rev. 1189, 1231-37 (1987).
5. See Lawrence G. Sager, Justice in Plain Clothes: Reflections on the Thinness of Constitutional Law, 88 Nw. U. L. Rev. 410, 435 (1993).
6. See Ronald Dworkin, Law's Empire 413 (1986).
7. See Jacques Derrida, Force of Law: The "Mystical Foundation of Authority," 11 Cardozo L. Rev. 919, 947 (1990).
8. For elaboration, see Pierre Schlag, This Could Be Your Culture - Junk Speech in a Time of Decadence, 109 Harv. L. Rev. 1801, 1815 (1996) (reviewing Ronald K.L. Collins & David M. Skover, The Death of Discourse (1996)).
9. For elaboration, see Pierre Schlag, This Could Be Your Culture - Junk Speech in a Time of Decadence, 109 Harv. L. Rev. 1801, 1815 (1996) (reviewing Ronald K.L. Collins & David M. Skover, The Death of Discourse (1996)).
10. But see Paul D. Carrington, Of Law and the River, 34 J. Legal Educ. 222, 227 (1984).
11. Or as Sam Goldwyn reportedly said, "The most important thing in acting is honesty. Once you learn to fake that, you're in."
12. McCulloch v. Maryland, 17 U.S. (4 Wheat.) 316, 407 (1819).
13. Id.
14. See Thomas C. Grey, The Constitution as Scripture, 37 Stan. L. Rev. 1, 1 (1984).
15. See generally Charles L. Black, Jr., Structure and Relationship in Constitutional Law (1969); John Hart Ely, Democracy and Distrust: A Theory of Judicial Review (1980); Akhil Reed Amar & Neal K. Katyal, Executive Privileges and Immunities: The Nixon and Clinton Cases, 108 Harv. L. Rev. 701 (1995).
16. See generally Charles L. Black, Jr., Structure and Relationship in Constitutional Law (1969); John Hart Ely, Democracy and Distrust: A Theory of Judicial Review (1980); Akhil Reed Amar & Neal K. Katyal, Executive Privileges and Immunities: The Nixon and Clinton Cases, 108 Harv. L. Rev. 701 (1995).
17. See generally Charles L. Black, Jr., Structure and Relationship in Constitutional Law (1969); John Hart Ely, Democracy and Distrust: A Theory of Judicial Review (1980); Akhil Reed Amar & Neal K. Katyal, Executive Privileges and Immunities: The Nixon and Clinton Cases, 108 Harv. L. Rev. 701 (1995).
18. U.S. Const, art. III, § 2.
19. See generally Herbert Wechsler, Toward Neutral Principles of Constitutional Law, 73 Harv. L. Rev. 1 (1959); Robert H. Bork, Neutral Principles and Some First Amendment Problems, 47 Ind. L.J. 1 (1971); Dworkin, supra note 6.
20. See generally Herbert Wechsler, Toward Neutral Principles of Constitutional Law, 73 Harv. L. Rev. 1 (1959); Robert H. Bork, Neutral Principles and Some First Amendment Problems, 47 Ind. L.J. 1 (1971); Dworkin, supra note 6.
21. See generally Philip Bobbin, Constitutional Interpretation (1991); Paul W. Kahn, Legitimacy and History: Self-Government in American Constitutional Theory (1992).
22. See generally Philip Bobbin, Constitutional Interpretation (1991); Paul W. Kahn, Legitimacy and History: Self-Government in American Constitutional Theory (1992).
23. As Robert Nagel aptly puts it: "[W]hole libraries of modern constitutional interpretations can be reduced to this sentence: Anything can be forbidden or permitted if there is sufficiently good justification." Robert F. Nagel, The Thomas Hearings: Watching Ourselves, 63 U. Colo. L. Rev. 945, 951 (1992).
24. See Pierre J. Schlag, Normativity and the Politics of Form, 137 U. Pa. L. Rev. 801, 876-80 (1991).
25. For an elaboration of the "weak perspectivalism" gambit, see generally Pierre Schlag, Beyond Authority (1996) (unpublished manuscript on file with the New York University Law Review).
26. For a rendition, see John Godfrey Saxe, The Blind Men and the Elephant: A Hindoo Fable, in The Poetical Works of John Godfrey Saxe 111 (1892).
27. See Schlag, supra note 20, at 31.
28. It would be precisely the kind of deficit that might lead wrongly (or rightly) to the practice of idolatry. And as Steven Smith argues, idolatry is a fairly good description of the character of contemporary constitutional interpretation. See Steven D. Smith, Idolatry in Constitutional Interpretation, in Paul F. Campos, Pierre Schlag & Steven D. Smith, Against the Law 157, 178-90 (1996) [hereinafter Against the Law].
29. See James Boyd White, Intellectual Integration, 82 Nw. U. L. Rev. 1, 15-16 (1987).
30. See Dworkin, supra note 6, at 19-20, 95-96.
31. See Owen M. Fiss, Objectivity and Interpretation, 34 Stan. L. Rev. 739, 744-46 (1982). Interestingly, Owen Fiss is aware that his defense of objectivity in interpretation only works to counter "the nihilism that claims the Constitution means everything," not the nihilism that claims "the Constitution has no meaning." Id. at 762-63. What is interesting from my perspective is that Fiss feels absolutely no obligation to confront this latter claim.
32. Christopher Columbus Langdell, A Selection of Cases on the Law of Contracts at viii (2d ed., Boston, Little, Brown & Co. 1879).
33. H.L.A. Hart, Positivism and the Separation of Law and Morals, 71 Harv. L. Rev. 593, 607 (1958) (emphasis added).
34. For an exploration of this question in the context of "rights," see generally Pierre Schlag, Rights in the Postmodern Condition, in Legal Rights: Historical and Philosophical Foundations of Rights 263 (Austin Sarat & Thomas R. Kearns eds., 1996) [hereinafter Schlag, Rights]. In the context of "values," see generally Pierre Schlag, Values, 6 Yale J.L. & Human. 219 (1994).
35. For an exploration of this question in the context of "rights," see generally Pierre Schlag, Rights in the Postmodern Condition, in Legal Rights: Historical and Philosophical Foundations of Rights 263 (Austin Sarat & Thomas R. Kearns eds., 1996) [hereinafter Schlag, Rights]. In the context of "values," see generally Pierre Schlag, Values, 6 Yale J.L. & Human. 219 (1994).
36. Steven Smith argues that the ontological identity the Constitution must have if it is to discharge the functions ascribed to it is quite simply not there. Constitutional interpretation is thus a kind of idolatry. See generally Smith, supra note 23. Paul Campos suggests that the Constitution (as it is treated by American legal thinkers) is not a text but rather a kind of sacred writing legal thinkers invoke to dignify and propagate their cultural or political aspirations. See Paul F. Campos, Against Constitutional Theory, in Against the Law, supra note 23, at 116. I argue that the plausibility of various schools of jurisprudence at once depends upon and establishes rather fantastic assumptions about the ontological identities of self, reason, discourse, and law itself. See Schlag, supra note 19.
37. See generally Smith, supra note 23.
38. Wechsler, supra note 16, at 19.
39. Daniel A. Farber, Legal Pragmatism and the Constitution, 72 Minn. L. Rev. 1331, 1332 (1988).
40. Larry Simon, The Authority of the Constitution and Its Meaning: A Preface to a Theory of Constitutional Interpretation, 58 S. Cal. L. Rev. 603, 613-14 (1985).
41. Bork, supra note 16, at 3.
42. Michael Perry, The Authority of Text, Tradition, and Reason: A Theory of Constitutional "Interpretation," 58 S. Cal. L. Rev. 551, 565 (1985).
43. Geoffrey R. Stone, Precedent, the Amendment Process, and Evolution in Constitu-tional Doctrine, 11 Harv. J.L. & Pub. Pol'y 67, 72-73 (1988).
44. We see this naive belief repeated with the concept of rights. Legal thinkers will say all sorts of things about "rights," confident that when they speak about "rights" they are all referring to the same thing. See Schlag, Rights, supra note 29, at 263, 265.
45. Sure: both elephants and Constitutions are to some degree and in some ways socially constructed. But it does not follow therefore that their social constructedness determines the modality of their being in the same way and to the same extent.
46. For elaboration, see Pierre Schlag, Law as the Continuation of God by Other Means, 85 Cal. L. Rev. (forthcoming Mar. 1997).
47. See Pierre Schlag, Clerks in the Maze, 91 Mich. L. Rev. 2053, 2073 (1993).
48. Schlag, Rights, supra note 29, at 266; see also Pierre Schlag, Law and Phrenology, 110 Harv. L. Rev. (forthcoming 1997).
49. Schlag, Rights, supra note 29, at 266; see also Pierre Schlag, Law and Phrenology, 110 Harv. L. Rev. (forthcoming 1997).
50. U.S. Const. pmbl. Thomas Grey explains the jurisprudential desires that animate this reductive equation: The existence of a legal document means that someone has taken the trouble to put the sense of some agreement or set of instructions in writing. The normal point of doing this - and here legal practice builds on presuppositions taken from ordinary life in a literate culture - is to make relatively definite and explicit what otherwise would be relatively indefinite and tacit. This presumption of literality is itself an essential part of the context of the drafting and the interpretation of every legal document. Grey, supra note 13, at 14. Whether this desire for "literality" is coherent or whether it is realizable are different questions. For discussion of the incoherence of such desires, see Campos, supra note 30, at 119-20; Paul Campos, That Obscure Object of Desire: Hermeneutics and the Autonomous Legal Text, 77 Minn. L. Rev. 1065, 1091 (1993); Walter Benn Michaels, Against Formalism: The Autonomous Text in Legal and Literary Interpretation, 1 Poetics Today 23 (1979).
51. U.S. Const. pmbl. Thomas Grey explains the jurisprudential desires that animate this reductive equation: The existence of a legal document means that someone has taken the trouble to put the sense of some agreement or set of instructions in writing. The normal point of doing this - and here legal practice builds on presuppositions taken from ordinary life in a literate culture - is to make relatively definite and explicit what otherwise would be relatively indefinite and tacit. This presumption of literality is itself an essential part of the context of the drafting and the interpretation of every legal document. Grey, supra note 13, at 14. Whether this desire for "literality" is coherent or whether it is realizable are different questions. For discussion of the incoherence of such desires, see Campos, supra note 30, at 119-20; Paul Campos, That Obscure Object of Desire: Hermeneutics and the Autonomous Legal Text, 77 Minn. L. Rev. 1065, 1091 (1993); Walter Benn Michaels, Against Formalism: The Autonomous Text in Legal and Literary Interpretation, 1 Poetics Today 23 (1979).
52. See Hayden White, Metahistory: The Historical Imagination in Nineteenth-Century Europe 34-36 (1973).
53. See id. at 35.
54. See Friedrich Nietzsche, The Will to Power (Walter Kaufman ed. & Walter Kaufman & R.J. Hollingdale trans., 1967). Nietzsche observed: Our bad habit of taking a mnemonic, an abbreviative formula, to be an entity, finally as a cause, e.g., to say of lightning "it flashes." Or the little word "I." To make a kind of perspective in seeing the cause of seeing: that was what happened in the invention of the "subject," the I! Id. § 548, at 294.
55. See White, supra note 44, at 35.
56. 5 U.S. (1 Cranch) 137 (1803).
57. See id. at 176-78.
58. 381 U.S. 479 (1965).
59. Id. at 530 (Stewart, J., dissenting).
60. McCulloch v. Maryland, 17 U.S. (4 Wheat.) 316, 407 (1819).
61. Frederick Schauer, Easy Cases, 58 S. Cal. L. Rev. 399, 431 (1985).
62. Monaco v. Mississippi, 292 U.S. 313, 322 (1933).
63. Sturges v. Crowninshield, 17 U.S. (4 Wheat.) 122, 202 (1819).
64. McCulloch, 17 U.S. (4 Wheat.) at 414.
65. Bork, supra note 16, at 3.
66. Ronald Dworkin, Taking Rights Seriously 149 (1977).
67. Owen M. Fiss, The Supreme Court 1978 Term - Foreword: The Forms of Justice, 93 Harv. L. Rev. 1, 13 (1979).
68. McCulloch, 17 U.S. (4 Wheat.) at 407.
69. For one answer, see Schlag, supra note 42.
70. With apologies to Thomas Reed Powell, who is reputed to have said, "If you have a mind that can think about something that is inextricably connected with something else, without thinking about the something else, then you have The Legal Mind." Kenneth L. Karst, The Pursuit of Manhood and the Desegregation of the Armed Forces, 38 UCLA L. Rev. 499, 563 (1991) (quoting Powell's unpublished aphorism).
71. As Paul Campos puts it, "[I]n the contemporary American legal system, arguments about legal interpretation are processed routinely within a meta-context in which a multiplicity of constitutive contexts are treated as the singular constitutive context of the activity." Paul F. Campos, The Chaotic Pseudotext, 94 Mich. L. Rev. 2178, 2200 (1996).
72. Griswold v. Connecticut, 381 U.S. 479, 487 (1965) (Goldberg, J., concurring) (quoting Snyder v. Massachusetts, 291 U.S. 97, 105 (1933)).
73. Id. at 530 (Stewart, J., dissenting).
74. This is an abstract echo of an argument once advanced by William Van Alstyne, Interpreting This Constitution: The Unhelpful Contributions of Special Theories of Judicial Review, 35 U. Fla. L. Rev. 209, 227-35 (1983).
75. 505 U.S. 833 (1992).
76. Id. at 865-66 (emphasis added).
77. Cass R. Sunstein, Legal Reasoning and Political Conflict 7 (1996).
78. See supra text accompanying note 28.