JURIST: Books-on-Law is edited by Ronald K.L. Collins and David Skover of the Seattle University School of Law

Editorial Consultants:

Following all this talk about talk, there are reviews of books dealing with jurisprudence (Stanley Fish with a reply by Shane O’Neill), property law (Gregory Alexander), tax law (Ellen P. Aprill), criminal law and gender (Nadine Taub), constitutional law (Russell R. Wheeler) and law and language (Douglas Litowitz).

New Yorker writer Jeffrey Toobin has closed a deal with Random House to write a book about the Clinton-Lewinsky relationship.  Among other things, the work will examine the various legal issues raised by the scandal and related issues concerning the role of Kenneth Starr and the Office of the Independent Counsel.  The book is scheduled for publication sometime next year.  Toobin (a Harvard Law grad) was one of the Iran-contra prosecutors.   In addition to writing for the New Yorker, he is also a legal commentator for ABC and is the author of From the Opening Arguments: A Young Lawyer’s First Case: United States v. Oliver North (Viking 1991).  More recently, he authored the best-selling The Run of His Life (Random House 1995), an account of the O.J. Simpson case.

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Chief Justice Rehnquist is again in book news. Given the recent turn of events in Washington, there could be some demand for his Grand Inquests: The Historic Impeachments of Justice Samuel Chase and President Andrew Johnson (William Morrow, 1992). In 1992, Rehnquist did a C-SPAN interview with Brian Lamb concerning his impeachment book. Should impeachment proceedings move to the Senate, the Chief Justice will preside over the trial in that chamber. (See Tony Mauro’s "Rehnquist: Ready for the Role," Legal Times, Sept. 14, 1998, p. 1).

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Not long after it debuted in cyberspace, the infamous Starr Report about our President came under censorsial attack in various cyberspace quarters.  The ribald work about our Chief Executive nonetheless found its way into bookstores in virtually no time.  Three publishers -- Pocket Books ($5.99), Public Affairs ($10.00), and Prima Publishing ($9.95) -- ran to print with the 445-page document, with some of the books containing the White House’s initial rebuttal followed by various commentaries.  Boom: one million copies hit the streets for immediate consumption.   Coming soon: James Carville’s And the Horse He Rode On: The People vs. Ken Starr (Simon & Schuster).  Anyone wonder how that book will come down?

Word has it that the lurid report about our Commander-in-Chief was authored by everybody other than the person after whom it is named.  Our sources (NY Times, Legal Times, & others) reveal that the document was prepared by several lawyers, with the primary work being done by Stephen Bates (literary editor for the Wilson Quarterly and former Playboy contributor) and Brett Kavanaugh (partner in Kirkland & Ellis and former Scalia law clerk).  Other major contributors to the scandal-mongering report about our Top Man: Craig Lerner (a 1994 Harvard Law graduate and Whitewater investigator) and Andrew D. Leipold (University of Illinois law professor and former Powell law clerk).

Still other contributors to the debauched report about our debauched leader: Gregory Maggs (George Washington University law professor and former law clerk to Kennedy & Thomas) and William E. Kelley (Notre Dame law professor, former law clerk to Burger & Scalia).

And then there are the advisors who helped with the controversial report about the forever controversial Bill Clinton: law professors Ronald J. Mann (University of Michigan and former Powell law clerk), Ronald Rotunda (University of Illinois), and Samuel Dash (Georgetown University and former counsel to the Senate Watergate Committee).  (For more, see Karen Alexander’s "Who Wrote What in the Starr Report," Legal Times, Sept. 14, 1998, p. 18.)

Question: So when does the second volume of the Starr Report come out?  Who will author it?  Will it have, well, prurient (and legal) appeal?  Stay tuned.

"There is nothing quite like the exhilarating experience that comes from reading a provocative new piece of legal thought," is how he once put it.  Well, that’s not all he writes. The Enchantment of Reason (Duke University Press, 1998) is his third book in the last two years.  For those who reveled in Laying Down the Law (New York University Press, 1996) and Against the Law (Duke University Press, 1996, with Campos & Smith), there is this yet bolder installment of Professor Pierre Schlag’s venture into critical jurisprudence.  Schlag (University of Colorado Law) diagnoses what he terms as an "epidemic of pathological reliance on the principle of reason."  "The call to reason," he argues, "has become a manipulative vehicle of power, faith, and prejudice."  This is a book destined (and designed?) to tick off the likes of Sunstein and Dworkin, among many others.

For an earlier -- albeit a more restrained -- work of a somewhat similar nature, see Tactics of Legal Reasoning (Carolina Academic Press, 1986) by Pierre Schlag & David Skover.  Schlag, by the way, was once (in another life) a lawyer for Covington & Burling.  In his early writings (dare we add?) he wrote about doctrinal matters such as the Exclusionary Rule (73 J. Criminal Law & Criminology 875 (1982).  The new Schlag, by contrast, has dumped doctrine in favor of critical thinking.  Look out, you old doctrinalists!

Next Issue: Arthur Linton Corbin & Others

The November issue of Books-on-Law will contain the following reviews:

• Arthur L. Corbin: "Corbin on Crosskey & the Constitution"
• Peter Linzer: "Commentary on Corbin"

• Richard Abel, reviewing Terence C. Halliday & Lucien Karpick, editors, Lawyers and the Rise of Western Political Liberalism
• Elizabeth Chambliss, reviewing Bari-Ellen Roberts with Jack E. White, Roberts vs. Texaco: A True Story of Race and Corporate Life
• Stephen Guest, reviewing Richard Posner, Law & Legal Theory in England and America
• Marc Spindelman, reviewing Margaret Otlowski, Voluntary Euthanasia and the Common Law
• Margaret Otlowski Replies
• Robert Peck, reviewing Dennis J. Hutchinson, The Man Who Was Once Whizzer White: A Portrait of Justice Byron R. White
• Stephen Wizner, reviewing Philip G. Schrag & Michael Meltsner, Reflections on Clinical Legal Education
• Martha Fineman, reviewing Gwendolyn Mink, Welfare’s End and James L. Payne, Overcoming Welfare

Ronald K.L. Collins & David M. Skover, Editors, Books-on-Law

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JURIST: Books-on-Law™ is edited by Ronald K.L. Collins and David M. Skover of the Seattle University School of Law.

Board of Editorial Consultants: Raj Bhala, George Washington University Law School; Miriam Galston, George Washington University Law School; Kermit Hall, Ohio State University College of Law; Yale Kamisar, University of Michigan Law School; Lisa G. Lerman, Catholic University of America School of Law; David M. O'Brien, University of Virginia Department of Government and Foreign Affairs; Judith Resnik, Yale Law School; Edwin L. Rubin, University of Pennsylvania Law School; Steven H. Shriffrin, Cornell Law School; Nadine Strossen, New York Law School; David B. Wilkins, Harvard Law School.

Administrative Assistant for Books-on-Law: Ms. Nancy Ammons

© Ronald K.L. Collins and David Skover, 1998. —————————————————————————————
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