Midwestern Mugwump (mw)2

Why I Can't Stand Con Law

Professor Bainbridge notes that Instapundit is disappointed in conservatives embrace of the Schiavo legislation because it violates the principals of federalism, which PB accuses GR of fetishizing.  Nice.

My point is that not only is the difference between the two one of libertarian (more or less) v. conservative, it also reflects a difference in legal specialities.  Constitutional lawyers have a much greater tendency to take a principle/doctrine to its absolute end (and often, beyond) - building doctrines on top of metaphors that are picked up from dissents years later.  Business lawyers have much different styles.  Essentially working out of contracts, the core doctrines of business and contract law are (in my opinion) of a very different character.  They are more interested in balance and equity and are typically an outgrowth of the English common law tradition.  It is a telling of the gradual accumulation of common sense intended to get at a right result.  Doctrine plays a much more distant role.

My first semester in law school, I had Contracts immediately following Con Law and the contrast could not have been more stark between two radically different styles of thinking and legal reasoning.  And I don't think it was a function of the professors - this was Yale,after all, even the business lawyers tended toward the ethereal and had never substantively practiced.

Like $2 million a car

GM has announced a program with the Department of Energy for a 5 year, $88 million program to produce a fleet of 40 hydrogen cars and re-fueling facilities.

Technology pushing can certainly be valuable and government spending is vast, but holy cow, $2 million a car seems expensive.  Maybe the story should have been told a little differently to take the focus off of that rather obvious calculus.

I assume there is substantial likelihood of considerable spin-off technology.

A strange side-note - MSN has a front-page story titled - GM Must Get Real About Its Future.  Is this DOE deal getting real?

Our Debt to Wesley on Easter

For a while in the mid-1990s I was seriously annoyed with Reformed Christianity.  I agreed with the theology, I just found it to be presented with a consistent and overwhelming arrogance - actively disdainful of other Christian traditions.  And this even when the proponent disagreed with many of its central elements (tossing out at least 2 of the TULIP letters).

In retrospect, the issues were mine as much as the church we were attending, but I still always get a pleasant little smirk on Easter Sunday when the entire (more or less) Protestant world is indebted to the hymnody of Charles Wesley.  To me, this one of the two central liturgical pillars of Easter worship (the other being a call and response of "He is risen - He is risen, indeed" - which I taught to one of my 5 year olds, though she was reluctant to do it in front of others). 

Mark Roberts has re-printed what he believes to be all 11 verses (sound here).

Enjoy the irony, but more importantly, enjoy the worship of the Living God.

Martha and My Job

I obviously don't work with Martha Stewart and her ongoing legal issues, but her travails occasionally touch on things I am familiar with and often make me laugh - a fact that I greatly appreciate.  The latest, her company's 10-K reveals that she has made a claim against her D & O insurer.  To wit:

"Martha Stewart has submitted a claim, pursuant to the Corporation's
By-laws, for approximately $3.7 million, for reimbursement of certain
expenses relating to her defense of the count of the federal criminal
complaint against her alleging she made false and misleading statements
intended to influence the price of the Corporation's stock. Ms. Stewart's
defense of this count was successful and a judgment of acquittal was entered
in her favor. The Corporation and Ms. Stewart submitted the question of
whether or not she is entitled to indemnification to an independent expert
on Delaware law. On March 15, 2005 the independent expert determined that
Ms. Stewart is entitled to indemnification. The Corporation believes that
any amount to be reimbursed to Ms. Stewart will be reimbursable to the
Corporation under its Directors & Officers insurance policy and,
accordingly, does not believe that the payment will result in an expense to
the Corporation."

I wouldn't want to pay that legal bill, either, but  I continue to get the feeling that she sees herself as a victim in this whole mess.  I can't imagine that in the long term that will be good for her, her company or her shareholders. 

Oh, well.  Thanks for the laughs, good luck with the claim.

Interview with George Marsden

Prison Fellowship has an interesting interview with George Marsden.  This was particularly interesting (emphasis mine) to me:

F:   What is most encouraging to you about the state of the American university today?  What most concerns you?

GM: The trends I have noted above are all encouraging. I think the universities still suffer from fragmentation and careerism. The tenure system puts all younger scholars on a track of having to produce scholarship in order to get promoted, regardless of how little need there may be for such scholarship otherwise. Students are looking for the practical skills and credentials for their own careers. Very little in the structures encourages people to look at the big picture.  That invites politicization and power struggles.  The result is that, although universities are useful places for developing or acquiring specialized skills, their structures are not well designed to get an education.

Which leads me to the question of - aside from quaint blathering about the idea of a liberal arts education and its prior glory days - what might be done to make these places, at least those that profess a Christian worldview, someplace to get "an education."

Bainbridge on Everything (or so it seems)

The Good Professor takes to task Andrew Sullivan's article - "I-Pod World" and in the process picks apart Robert Putnam and others.  He also (again) cites to one of his own pieces - Community and Statism: A Conservative Contractarian Critique of Progressive Corporate Law Scholarship - that I would read if I didn't actually need to bill hours and sleep.  I must admit that I am amazed at his productivity.  And the article looks quite interesting. 

Given the above, I didn't actually read Sullivan's article, but  I presume he answers the obvious question - Apple didn't invent the personal listening device, so how has the I-Pod separated us to any greater extent than the Walkman?  After all, I had one youth pastor who strongly encouraged an informal ban on these walkmans, etc. (in the 1980s) so that we would talk and get to know each other on trips instead of sit with our headphones blasting.  I wasn't happy but it seemed reasonable enough.

Passing the Peace

Mark Roberts had a weekend series about "Fellowship Time" at churches, evidently responding to Josh Claybourn (and picking up Tod Bolsinger's comment).  While Josh's critique seems a little harsh to me, I must agree that I find the whole 'Greeting Time.'  I frankly can't remember what we call it, but we've got it and for the first two years it annoyed me.  Mostly because it was unformed, you didn't know what to do with the time and some people talked to long and left you standing there feeling like a dope because you don't have anyone to talk to. 

What I've always felt, and Roberts discussed in a much more thorough manner, was that a time where you actually had something to say, like - "Peace be with you" was much better.  A presbyterian taps into an Anglican practice for a nice Via Media.  It is simple, it is straightforward, it can be meaningful, it allows you to easily break away and provides you with a basic 'script.'  Once again, I'm with Roberts on this - which isn't the first time I've agreed with him and probably won't be the last from everything I know about him (my pastor used to serve in the same presbytery and we have a mutual friend).

Check out the site - it is a great pastor blog. 

Worst Kept Secret in Illinois Politics?

The Sun-Times has a piece on Henry Hyde's probably retirement.  I'm not sure, but is this the worst kept secret in Illinois politics?

The article mentions people who might run for the seat include Peter Roskam (who I'm met on a number of occasions and like very much - and who needs a new website desperately).  It could be interesting out there.

Big Win For ND

Clearly, I'm not talking about basketball here.  Argh. 

Rick Garnett highlights the victory for Notre Dame in the Americorp case in the DC Circuit.  This really is a pretty big deal on the 'faith based iniatives' front.  A very big deal.  The case is here.  Rick's other posts on the topic are here and here.

While I wanted to see Notre Dame basketball in the Big Dance, the Americorp case win is way bigger.  This is a final four caliber case.

Not a Pacifist, but

Busy at work - but then again, I'm a lawyer, I should be.

Rob Vischer points to a Martin Marty critique that reacts to both a quote from a Marine Lt. General and World magazine's Gene Edward Veith's defense of that quote.

The quote references the 'fun of killing' and Veith (at World Magazine) defends the reference as applied to Christians.  Marty carves it up - of course it was sitting there as still as a cooked Easter ham.

My 'insight' - on a personal level, pacifism makes a lot of sense.  The idea of taking the life of another individual is deeply disturbing, particularly when done as a matter of state policy and where the ability of that individual to make choices (say, a draftee in the Iraqi army) is uncertain or non-existent.  On that level, I'm sympathetic and the concept of 'fun' is terrifying.  Even effectiveness and efficiency are disconcerting, though necessary.  Yet on a larger level, pacifism just doesn't compute.  There are violent people in the world and it seems that resorting to violence is often the only way to solve the problems they create.

I'm sure, however, that the friends that have been in the military have developed more appropriate and more thorough resolutions to the inherent moral conflicts.