Home -> Law Blog Directory -> Administrative Law Blogs -> Within the Scope

Administrative Law

: Within the Scope

Hannah and Her Zingers

By Eric L. Lipman

Posted this week to the Duke Law Journal website, and to Howard Bashman?s ?How Appealing,? was a copy of a forthcoming law review article by Duke third-year law student and Senior Notes Editor, Hannah L. Weiner.

The Article, The Next "Great Dissenter"? How Clarence Thomas Is Using the Words and Principles of John Marshall Harlan to Craft a New Era of Civil Rights, links Justice Thomas? early experiences, with the themes announced in Justice Harlan?s famous dissent in Plessy v. Ferguson and with recent race-based preference cases decided by the High Court.

To her credit, Ms. Weiner?s law review note is artfully structured, scrupulously annotated and beautifully written. It carries readers along an important and very sophisticated path of analysis, making this item a worthwhile read for court-watchers of all stripes. Indeed, as close as a law review article might hope to come to being a ?page-turner,? this is it.

The caution that I would make to readers, is that as devoted as Ms. Weiner is to clarity in her the presentation she has an obvious and unshielded contempt for her subject, Clarence Thomas. Thus, during what would otherwise be a gentle glide between themes, readers are buffeted by the swipes she takes at Justice Thomas; jabs that vary in intensity from the snidely snotty to the caustically mean. Discounting the comparisons that Justice Thomas has made between the critiques that have been leveled at his work, and those that were made earlier against leaders of the civil rights movement, for example, Weiner writes: ?The civil rights protestors of the mid-twentieth century were forced to endure tear gas, fire hoses, and billy clubs, whereas Thomas?s ?modern-day flogging? mostly consists of fairly ordinary public scrutiny. Thomas, who is notoriously sensitive to criticism, is nothing if not dramatic.?

Meow.

Still, if one can look past Ms. Weiner?s determination to take the Associate Justice down a peg or two, her article provides a provocative and genuinely useful frame for Clarence Thomas? work on race-based preferences.

Ms. Weiner?s journal note, zingers and all, is accessible here.

Full post as published by Within the Scope on November 11, 2008 (boomark / email).