Legal Commentary

Many thanks to Dan and the Prawfsblawg crew for hosting me in the past month.  As always, it?s been a very enjoyable stay.  I?d hoped to write primarily on law teaching and technology but things don?t always go as planned, and I found I had more to say about music and baseball.  The law and teaching technology posts will have to wait for next time (and, in any event, many of Kelly Anders? posts in the past month raised some great questions about that issue).

Before signing off, I?d thought I?d briefly celebrate Justice Souter?s work on the Court by quoting from, what is these days, my favorite statement of his about First Amendment law ? namely, that which recognizes that even unintelligible and nonsensical expression can count as protected speech.  An ?articulable message is not a condition of constitutional protection, which if confined to expressions conveying a ?particularized message,? would never reach the unquestionably shielded painting of Jackson Pollock, music of Arnold Schoenberg, or Jabberwocky verse of Lewis Carroll.?  Hurley v. Irish-American Gay Lesbian and Bisexual Group of Boston, 515 U.S. 557, 569 (1994).  More on the implications of that in an article (or two) coming soon to a journal and SSRN posting near you.