Centerfield

Nil nisi bonum

Without trying to plunge Centerfield's readers into a mire of legal subtlety, I would like to call attention to a situation that began to emerge twenty-four hours ago. Tom Goldstein, the proprietor of Goldstein & Howe, mentor to dozens of the younger generation's brightest rising lawyers, and shaper of public thought on American constitutional jurisprudence in many ways (not least of them the creation of SCOTUSblog), has shared his thoughts on the imminent judicial nominations contest here. The subsequent developments are well-chronicled by Juan Non-Volokh at the Volokh Conspiracy here.

Few people have the credentials, from both legal and non-partisan perspectives, Mr. Goldstein has. He bemoans a recent National Review Online commentary by Ramesh Ponnuru picking on Professor Laurence Tribe. Tribe's constitutional jurisprudential philosophy may be open for fair game, but Mr. Goldstein rightly takes NRO to task for personalizing a political difference. Whether associating the reference to Tribe with the coming nomination fight is accurate or not, I don't know: it seems a bit early even for the early game, and it's not like NRO embraces Prof. Tribe to begin with. Nevertheless, this sort of personalization is exactly what's wrong with modern politics. There are issues that deserve attention, and this only takes their air time.

Without bringing Centerfield into this fight, I only invite you to compare Mr. Goldstein's remarkable 9-page response, dissecting Mr. Ponnuru's article and comparing it to the facts, with Mr. Ponnuru's retort to Mr. Goldstein. While nowhere in his rebuttal does Mr. Goldstein level any personal criticism of Mr. Ponnuru, Mr. Ponnuru says: "Goldstein is . . . rock-dumb," and presumes Mr. Goldstein made so many errors it would require a 15-page document for Mr. Ponnuru to respond--although Mr. Ponnuru admits in the same breath that he hasn't even read Mr. Goldstein's document.

It saddens me that Tom Goldstein, for whom I have a deep and abiding respect, has been drawn into the fray of blindly ideological, ad hominem attacks. It saddens me more that it happened because he was decrying ad hominem attacks in the first place.