What We Can See in Law (and a Conditional Valediction)

I began teaching law about 10 years ago, at a time when blogging was relatively new, but already old enough to seem only a partially, rather than a totally, suspect and outré activity. For new law professors, blogging represented a way--comparatively low-cost and easy--to begin to make connections and meet other people. Before blogging, I had always considered myself a (proud) luddite but unlike some of my junior colleagues, I made use of blogging fairly liberally in those days for networking. Dan Markel invited me to guest blog over at Prawfsblawg, and as far as I can reconstruct it, my first blog was this one "against novelty" in May 2009. 

After a few repeat stints at Prawfs, Rick asked me over to Mirror of Justice in the fall of 2010, where my first post was about my review of what was then a new book by MOJ denizen, Steve Shiffrin. At that time, a lot of my scholarly focus was in criminal law, and I was especially interested in the idea that there was something distinctive about criminal law that differentiated it from other disciplines. This old post from back in those days--on the smoldering core of criminal law--was in that vein.

One nice thing about retrospective moments like this is that they allow one to think about themes that bind together one's work in a very general way. That post and several others from the earlier days reflect a much broader issue that has interested me over the years: namely, what multifarious sets of values and principles we can glean about the law from the way in which it actually exists and is practiced in our world. From the bottom up, as it were. In criminal law, law and religion, free speech, constitutional adjudication, and (now) constitutional interpretation (in a new article on the Supreme Court's use of tradition to inform constitutional meaning...more soon), I often find myself drawn to the theme of taking the practices immanent in law as reflecting a set of views, or even a mood about, or perhaps a general orientation toward, the legal and political world that is worth investigating and studying. To see what we can squeeze out of what it is now, rather than of what it might or ought to be. At Mirror of Justice, I've sometimes tried to think about how those practical realities about law, as I perceive them, inform and are informed by Catholic ideas. 

But enough of this tedious navel-gazing. Mostly what I want to say now is that Mirror of Justice has been a place of true scholarly community for me. I have met some of my closest friends in the legal academy through this blog. It has been a source of fellowship and friendship for me over the years. If it has run its course, I will miss it. Ave atque vale!