It's a surprisingly weak, though heart-felt, to be sure, piece of writing for so distinguished a scholar. For one, he quotes Obama out of context on the whole redistribution matter - I believe Obama was discussing how the Court never reached the issues of school funding equity in the post-Brown era. Secondly, he seems to suffer from the bizarre notion that one can have justice without empathy, compassion or mercy. If that were so, sentencings would be simple Hamurabi-like calculations. Our courts are courts of law AND equity. Heck, wasn't the much-ballyhooed *conservative* Supreme Court decision capping punitive damage awards based on part due to the awards' "cruelty?"