May 30, 2006

Speculating about why Luttig left the bench.

Is it okay to speculate? This ABA Journal article is full of speculation, including the ample portion I dished up.
Posted by Ann Althouse at 4:49 PM

3 comments:

Craig said...

The most prescient comments in the ABA article: "The speculation 'is sort of a Rorschach test of one’s politics.' .... 'People are speculating, and that may say more about us than him.'"

All other speculating (especially including that of the above-noted speaker) should be read with that in mind.

5/30/06, 11:37 PM
Richard Dolan said...

Kudos to Ann on being the "go to" professor on this one. Do you think the article's author called you for comment because of your blog about Luttig's resignation a week or two ago?

Like a lot of other idle exercises, speculation of the sort reflected by this article is done mostly for the amusement it provides to those who read (and write) this stuff. There's obviously nothing wrong with it, but there's also almost no real content to the article either. And who (other than Mrs. Luttig) really cares whether Judge Luttig resigned for the money, for reasons of personal pique, out of boredom, in the hope of improving his chances of being named to the SCOTUS, or something else? Like most people, he probably had several reasons for a major, life-changing decision such as this.

The rag that published it -- the ABA Journal -- is aimed at lawyers, and like every other group, lawyers love to gossip about those among them who have done well. The American Lawyer is constantly publishing stats of "profits per partner" and the like for the large national lawfirms. Like professors with the US News rankings, everyone dumps on those stats but also makes sure to read them carefully. The article's political angle -- trying to conscript Luttig into the anti-Bush forces --is pretty pathetic, but also not surprising given that it's the ABA editing and publishing the story.

5/31/06, 3:02 PM
Ann Althouse said...

Richard: I was definitely called because I posted on the subject. This kind of thing frequently happens. Sometimes reporters call me thinking I have information, when I'm just speculating. There's a kind of speculating and, really, fooling around that goes with blogging. That's why some of my comments in the ABA Journal are along the lines of -- this is just idle speculation, who knows?

5/31/06, 5:44 PM

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