Ahem

I really have nothing to say about charges that Laurence Tribe cribbed material from another law professor. Frankly, I find the entire subject tiresome. However, while reading this story I came across a bit of benighted thinking from Alan Dershowitz:

Tribe joined the Harvard Law faculty in 1968 and quickly entered the spotlight as an eloquent advocate for liberal causes. He has argued three dozen cases in front of the Supreme Court—famously representing Vice President Albert J. Gore Jr. ’69 in the December 2000 Florida recount dispute.

Dershowitz said that Tribe’s 1985 book was an effective element of “the Democratic arsenal” as liberals tried to block Ronald Reagan’s right-wing judicial nominations.

“It worked, and the Right has been pissed at Tribe ever since,” said Dershowitz.

Unless Dershowitz has been taken out of context, his entire defense of Laurence basically boils down to saying that the charge is irrelevant because the people making it are ideologically motivated. By this logic roughly 99.99% of all charges made against public figures related to politics should be immediately discounted and ignored. I say that because virtually all such charges are brought by that persons ideological opponents. (Which makes sense; their allies have nothing to gain from such stories.)

This reasoning is complete bunk. There's an old saying that goes something like, "Even the paranoid have enemies." Likewise, even cynically motivated charges can be true. As far as I'm concerned, the ideological motivations of those making such charges is only relevant if the charges prove to be baseless. (That's baseless, which isn't the same as false. I'm not interested in someone's motivations if the story turns out to be false, but the person had reasonably good evidence of their charges when they were made. I'm also interested in their motivations if they're proven wrong, but refuse to admit it.)

If the evidence supports the charges, I couldn't care less about the motivations of those making the charges. All I care about at that point is what's being done to alleviate the problem. In this case, Tribe offered an immediate apology and made no attempt to excuse his actions. Because I'm not aware of any other such ethical problems regarding Tribe, I'm inclined to say the matter should be closed. The aggrieved party shows no signs that he feels a need to pursue the matter, so I can't imagine why the rest of us should be interested.

On a side note, I've never understood how Dershowitz teeter from brilliance to utter stupidity from one moment to the next. What's that about?