Legal Commentary

Search me. One reason I chose to be an academic is to gain the right to choose my positions a la carte rather than from the prix fixe menu of Left-Right vacuities that dominate the punditocracy and blogosphere. So, for instance (to pull a random example out of thin air), it strikes me as inane to have a general ideological position on "unions," as if one should endorse or condemn together the baseball players' union, the corrections officers union in California, the Teamsters, or District Council 37. Likewise, it strikes me as absurd to think that, because I worry about the latest round of contracts between the public sector and New York City, that I am hostile even to public-sector unions in general. When Jerry Wurf organized the park workers against Robert Moses in the 1950s, that was a victory for justice against tyranny. When Wagner signed Executive Order 49 recognizing the right of the public-sector unions to engage in collective bargaining, that was a magna carta for labor. I think that it perfectly possible -- indeed, easy -- to hold these views and also believe that public-sector unions held a troubling veto over fiscal policy in the last round of CBA negotiations. Bloomberg was right to believe that '05 was the time to sock away money in a rainy day fund. That he surrendered so entirely on getting public employees to shoulder a bit of their health insurance premiums or work a bit longer strikes me as a small failure of democracy, if democracy means that one narrow constituency should not dominate the city's public life.

To respond to such a worry by angrily denouncing Wall Street types as greedy bastards who make too much money is a colossal non sequitur. Of course, Wall Street makes too much money: Indeed, they are another narrow constituency that tends illegitimately to dominate NYC life. (The bond underwriters tend to be the worst of the bunch in terms of excessive influence). Why would anyone think that worrying about District Council 37 somehow implies approving of Wall Street?

My hypothesis: Some academics have joined a sort of intellectual's trade union in which two positions -- disapproval of District Council 37 and love of Wall Street -- must somehow be bundled together as negotiating items. That sort of bundling of positions makes perfect sense in a two-party system as a means of simplifying ballots for busy voters: After all, Duverger's Law requires us to choose one of two sides. But it is senseless in an academic blog. When it comes to thinking and writing, we academics should put our union cards in our shoes and all be shameless scabs, choosing whichever intellectual position happens to yield the greatest payoff.

Oh, and just to state the obvious: Yes, Brian, we NYU law profs are overpaid. Bloomberg definitely should not give us a raise.