Legal Commentary

William Van Alstyne responds

By Jack M. Balkin

A few days ago, Jack Balkin posted an SSRN reference to a forthcoming piece of mine titled "The Unbearable Lightness of Marriage in the Abortion Decisions of the Supreme Court." He courteously sent me an email, providing an attached copy, with an expression of hope that he had not "mischaracterized" what I wrote. I thought that he had done so in a variety of ways, and at once wrote him back to say so, with a few paragraphs as merely a start to a longer reply.
After reflecting on the matter over the weekend, however, I decided against the idea. Frankly, it is too reminiscent of the endless exchanges Raoul Berger got into whenever anyone wrote something less than flattering of something he had offered in print. (It was all too much like pleadings at common law, i.e., complaint, answer, rejoinder, surrejoinder, rebuttal, surrebuttal. If nothing else, it could rightly be said of Raoul Berger that he was "indefatigable," i.e., Raoul let no critic go unanswered, determined always to have the last word, no matter what).
On reflection, it seems far better to thank Jack for drawing attention to my SSRN-posted essay, with the suggestion to the many readers of his blog just to read what I wrote, judge the matter for themselves, and leave it at that. To the extent they find it wanting, well, that's quite all right. Still, at the end of the day, it will be quite nice that it may thus achieve a wider audience than I had any reason to expect.

Full post as published by Balkinization on August 01, 2009 (boomark / email).