Newsgroups: misc.legal
From: cbo@cs.toronto.edu (Calvin Bruce Ostrum)
Subject: Re: Hate Speech Okay, says the Supreme Court
Organization: Department of Computer Science, University of Toronto
Date: 26 Jul 92 08:41:57 GMT

Mike Godwin insists upon knowing why I have bothered to point out his
numerous errors with respect to the usage of "CLS".  Why is it 
so important, he repeatedly demands to know?

Well, it isn't really that important.  No more important than Mike is
himself.  But I will try to explain directly since I have apparently
been unsuccessful with a less direct approach.  Basically, what I was 
doing was pointing out a phenomenon that disturbs me, by commenting 
on some examples of it.  

I am aware that most everybody here thinks Mike is a great man, 
so very few of them agree with what I will say.  I also know that Mike 
is a great deal smarter than I am, and knows far more now about almost
everything of importance than I will ever know in my lifetime.  
His value as a person, all things considered, is immeasurably higher.  
But I do not like the way he often acts when he is caught up in an error, 
or when someone disagrees with him in a way he does not like.  I feel 
that he oftens makes fun of people who aren't as good as he is.  I 
have not been recording instances of these things, so I can't produce 
a long list of instances as proof.  But recently, I did comment on
one particular example, hoping that it would illustrate the principle.
It does, I think, and so does Mike's reaction. 

With respect to his errors, Mike appears to me to bob and weave, 
attempting to make them look even more trivial than they usually are.  
Of course, with completely blatant errors, he might be forced to admit 
that in some sense he has indeed made an error.  But various techniques
are available to lighten the blow.  It *may* be an error, but it is an
error we should all greatly tolerate because it is a tradeoff for 
some highly valuable feature of his, such as his blinding speed as
a touch-typist (perhaps Posner would have something to say here). 
It *may* be an error, but he was driven to it by even worse failings
of some other person (Ed Nilges being the obvious choice for scapegoat
in this case).  It *may* be an error, but Mike can always move it
further down in the hierarchical chain of control that makes him up,
so that something that is undeniably cognitive at some level ("Iago"
for "Othello") becomes a "typo".  (Then to defend the the idea that
there was a "transposition" occuring here, rather than saying, "oops",
he can appeal to a speculative notion of an internal representation
where such a transposition occured in his brain, and hope our 
ignorance of cognitive psychology will not lead us to question this.
This works well when it goes with an "everyone who knows anything
about" gambit). Similarly, it *may* be an error, but rather than 
"misthinking" (conceptualising "CLS" internally as singular) he  
merely "misspoke".  People often blame others for mistakes by saying 
they have "spoken without putting their brain in gear".  For a man who 
makes his living with his mind, and prides himself on his mental prowess
(I speculate that this last point is true for Mike) this is much 
worse than the opposite. So Mike misspeaks, but he does not misthink. 

Mike may point out that in this case in question, he immediately 
admitted that he misspoke. Sure, what else was there for him to do?
(I still think that's not an accurate account of the error, since
he used "CLS" as a singular on other occasions also, and yet never
used it once clearly as a plural, suggesting a more central location
for the origin of the error).  But he failed to notice the irony in
making the same error that he was accusing someone else of making,
despite the fact I pointed this out more than once.  He has to look
extra hard to see these things in his own posting, yet he leaps to
criticise them in the postings of others.  This particular irony
is made worse by the fact that he commits the "error" while
arguing with others that it IS in fact an error.  And it is made
worse by the further fact that most probably, it is NOT an error
at all, something I have pointed out more than once, but which he
has ignored.  This is not the only case, even with me, where Mike
has appeared to act deliberately obtuse with respect to recognising
his own errors.  The most recent one, prompting my deja vu remark,
occurred when he claimed I invented a comment from him, and
proceeded to ignore it when I pointed out that I did not. 

With respect to the initial issue of whether or not it is okay to
use "CLS" as singular, let me just say this.  Mike picked on Ed
for using "CLS" as singular.  Like it or not, though, this is the
way that the phrase tends to be used in the literature.  When Mike
first started to argue with others about it, I checked my own meagre
legal library, and found two authors that use the phrase. Examples:

" Critical legal studies should be rescued from these mistakes
" because its general skeptical ambitions, understood in the mode of
" internal skepticism, are important.
	Ronald Dworkin, in Law's Empire, at 275

" Harvard law school is also a stronghold of Critical Legal Studies,
" a nihilistic neo-Marxist movement that views all law as oppressive and
" political.
	Robert Bork, in The Tempting of America, at 207

Rare it is to find something that Bork and Dworkin agree upon. 
But they both agree that "CLS" is to be used as singular, it appears.

Next time I passed by the law library (to check the decision in the
R. v. Butler pornography case, of all things) I looked up a few more
references. Not to waste too much time at it, I checked the 1984 SLJ 
special issue on CLS. *All* *eight* articles that I checked used  
"CLS" as singular, just as Ed did originally.  Not once did I find a 
plural use anywhere (again, not even in Mike's own writing, where,
apparently, he managed to "misspeak" into the accepted usage).  Maybe 
Mike will argue these eight should only count as the decision of one 
bad editor, but that's still quite a few very reputable folk using "CLS" 
as singular, and not yet one using it as plural.  Even if Mike manages
to dig up a bunch of plural uses,  I think we must conclude that the 
singular use is perfectly okay. 

			*	*	*

It's not that the emperor has no clothes.  But why does he have 
to make fun of the clothes of others?  And if he has a little piece 
of lint on his splendid costume, why can't he be gracious about 
letting someone remove it? 

These are just my feelings.  Mike and others can criticise me if
they want to, for expressing these feelings, but they are heartfelt.
I think I've said all I want to about this, and I don't want to engage
in parry and thrust forevermore, so don't be suprised if I ignore any
any of the flames and criticisms that may arise. 

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Calvin Ostrum                                            cbo@cs.toronto.edu  
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  I tell you, Hobbes, it's great to have a friend who appreciates
  an earnest discussion of ideas.    -- Calvin, 1992/07/14
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Newsgroups: misc.legal,talk.abortion