Legal Commentary

Please, Mr. Postman:

By David Post

?Neither snow nor rain nor heat nor gloom of night stays these couriers from the swift completion of their appointed rounds?

It?s not, actually, the official US Postal Service motto (there is no such thing), but it is carved onto the pediment of the James Farley Post Office building in midtown Manhattan (the big, beautiful one across 8th Avenue from the monstrosity that is Penn Station/Madison Square Garden ? damn you, Skidmore Owings & Merrill!!), and I bet that over 90% of you recognized it right away when you saw it.

It?s also nonsense, of course. I live in Washington DC, and yesterday we received our first mail delivery in over a week. Snow had stayed the couriers from not merely the swift, but any, completion of their appointed rounds.

Now, I?m not a big fan, as it happens, of the sort of Post Office-bashing that one sees so frequently; I happen to believe they perform an important function reasonably well (at least, given that they?re a public agency). So I?m not blaming them for skipping out during the big snowstorms ? pretty much everything came to a standstill in DC, so it?s hardly blameworthy to have been similarly unable to function.

It does make me wonder, though ? does anyone know of another inscription on a government building that is more ridiculously inaccurate?

Full post as published by The Volokh Conspiracy on February 14, 2010 (boomark / email).