Original Sins

Antonin Gregory Scalia—who stands at ease among my favorite contemporary authors—is himself such a marvelous character that he will, much like John C. Calhoun, but be remembered affectionately in high school history. Slate's Dahlia Lithwick, who refuses to let politics get in the way of her Scalia love, has penned a paean to the Court's rhetor-in-chief that is worth reading. Want to get into Scalia, but don't know where in the man's oeuvre to begin? Try his dissent in the Court's 2003 sodomy case, Lawrence v. Texas; the justice took the unusual step of reading the polemic aloud from the bench.

Meanwhile, Scalia's hermeneutic compatriot but temperamental inverse—why, Robert Bork, of course—has settled his epically ironic $1 million lawsuit against the Yale Club. Bork, a former professor at the law school, had fallen while climbing onto a dais at some alumni event; the late-Catholic convert and famously anti-tort crusader apparently has an injured head and a hematoma on his leg. Peter Schuck, a Yale law school professor, has an amusing surmising in the Yale Daily News:

'But while Robert Bork may have settled his lawsuit against the Yale Club, it seems less likely that he has settled his long-time grudge against Yale quite yet. Last June, Schuck said the lawsuit was indicative of Bork's "resentment" toward the University. "I think his having elevated his defeat into a now 20-year crusade of resentment and fury seems rather churlish," he said. "I certainly sympathize with his anger in having been defeated in his bid for a seat he had every reason to believe he deserved, but I think that this is in the nature of modern-style high Supreme Court nomination politics, and he should get over it."'

Speaking of originalism, if 'justice' can be an undeconstructible condition for deconstruction, why can't the Constitution be the undeconstructible condition for the US justice system? Why, of course the question is garbage. But so—pace late Derrida and 'deconstruction-and-religion'— is the predication.