The latest issue of the Chicago-Kent Law Review is devoted to a "symposium" on Dred Scott. There are articles by Jack Balkin, Paul Finkelman, Mark Graber and others.
I have read only one of the articles, by Balkin and Sanford Levinson entitled "Thirteen Ways of Looking at Dred Scott." Unfortunately, I found it a lightweight affair, the sort of effort a prestigious academic dashes off between "real" articles, confident that some journal will take a second-rate stream-of-consciousness article because of the author's name.
It's also marred by Balkin's bizarre radical-leftist politics. It turns out that, on issues ranging from gay rights to Guantanamo and "what the Bush administration terms the 'global war on terror'" (note the obligatory quotation marks), conservatives are the intellectual descendants of Chief Justice Taney. Ho hum. Whatever.
I'll be reading the other articles and will report back on anything noteworthy I find.
I have read only one of the articles, by Balkin and Sanford Levinson entitled "Thirteen Ways of Looking at Dred Scott." Unfortunately, I found it a lightweight affair, the sort of effort a prestigious academic dashes off between "real" articles, confident that some journal will take a second-rate stream-of-consciousness article because of the author's name.
It's also marred by Balkin's bizarre radical-leftist politics. It turns out that, on issues ranging from gay rights to Guantanamo and "what the Bush administration terms the 'global war on terror'" (note the obligatory quotation marks), conservatives are the intellectual descendants of Chief Justice Taney. Ho hum. Whatever.
I'll be reading the other articles and will report back on anything noteworthy I find.
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