I'd especially like to thank Walter for his exceptionally moving reflections before and after the schools case came down on the real life meanings of segregation and racial difference in this society--truly America's original sin passed down from generation to generation (and thanks for the Charlie Black quote!).

I'm not generally such a great fan of Justice Holmes, but I do believe the arid syllogisms that Roberts and Alito seem so drawn to, miss the life of the law in compassion for the exigencies of human experience and suffering.

Law has all too often in our history (particularly on racial issues) been more an instrument of oppression than of redemption. A generation of us grew up during the Warren Court era (and following on the post-1938 FDR Court), believing that something fundamental had changed. Many of us were inspired to become lawyers, and some of us law teachers, to further our collective quest to become a more just society. We are now learning, to our horror, that what we mistook for a fundamental change was a mere interlude in an unhappy larger story.

It is not clear to me, at this moment, why idealists should pursue a legal vocation, or how some of us can continue to teach, except perhaps as oppositional figures.

I think I need to reread Bob Cover.

The Wise Bard (YLS 1977)