Signing off

One of the things I’ve been telling the JV-FPD team is that you can tell a lot about someone from reading what they write, even if it isn’t about them. So, you come to feel like you know your favorite author or your favorite musician pretty well. (P.J.’s band used to play at Bar in New Haven and their cassette was in my big yellow Sony Walkman when I walked to the D.C. Metro every day for my 2L internship. So, we go way back.)

For that reason, it was with not a little irritation that I read the two articles about Justice Stevens in the big newspapers today. The Post tracked him down in his SDFla home up in Fort Lauderdale (giving me an excuse to post this in D.O.M.’s space). The Times piece gives a Washington byline, so I guess Adam Liptak did his work by telephone. What irritates me is that they both described him as leading the Court’s “liberal wing” which is just wrong. I have no problem with certain justices being slapped with ideological tags, but insisting that they all should bear one—that Stevens should—is simplistic. At least the Times let J.P.S. say that it’s wrong and explain a little something about having a jurisprudential philosophy.

If the writing wasn’t already on the wall, it is now. Stevens is out, probably in the next few days, with an outside chance that he’ll stay one more term, which is a far greater loss than the articles hint at. All the media care about is that the president will appoint another “liberal” because they don’t get that it’s intelligence and wisdom that matter. And I’m out, too. Back to my own page.