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| You won't believe what's happened to handsome Martha's Vineyard lawyer Alan Dershowitz! |
I was kind of astonished by Dershowitz, by his vigor and concentration, of all things, which make his languid and uncertain teammates look pretty bad, to say nothing of the bleating old Kenneth Starr. When his former students tell you what a good professor he was, I bet they're not kidding. At the same time, you didn't need a lot of legal sophistication to see he was wrong.
I thought it was mildly funny how he started out off the bat emphasizing how he's taken up "doing his own research", as struck me earlier ("I didn't do research back then, I relied on what professors said"), rather than looking at what current scholars are doing, bragging about the "dusty old volumes" he's been consulting:
Dersh has pondered weak and weary over many a quaint and curious volume of forgotten lore— Good With Rockets (@Yastreblyansky) January 28, 2020
But his main point seemed to be doubling down on a very well-understood error, the error that says an impeachment has to accuse the defendant of some statutory crime:
Dersh: "This view" that high crimes and misdemeanors are whatever Congress says they are "amounts to saying Congress is above the law"— Good With Rockets (@Yastreblyansky) January 28, 2020
I'm sorry but I think that is in fact what Article I says. Congress is fons et origo of law. They're expected to obey the laws that exist...
And not by codifying them, the project Madison rejected, but by examining the situation they're called to judge. Mark Delahay was impeached for "drunkenness on the bench", Robert Archbald for "improper business relationship with litigants", George English for "abuse of power".— Good With Rockets (@Yastreblyansky) January 28, 2020
Justice Joseph Story on “High Crimes and Misdemeanors”—The Antithesis to Dershowitz https://t.co/8j21VvrR8o via @just_security— Good With Rockets (@Yastreblyansky) January 28, 2020
— Good With Rockets (@Yastreblyansky) January 28, 2020
"I do my own research, I do my own thinking". Refusal to take note of others who have thought about the questions over the last 40 years is a problem.— Good With Rockets (@Yastreblyansky) January 28, 2020
Given that everybody disagrees with him, why should we take his views more seriously than anyone else's?— Good With Rockets (@Yastreblyansky) January 28, 2020
But what he's doing is what a great defense attorney does with a guilty client (Epstein? Simpson?), the magic act of making all the opposing arguments disappear. He is definitely wrong, and probably knows he is.— Good With Rockets (@Yastreblyansky) January 28, 2020
Hafta say you could see why he's a highly regarded professor. Ten times the energy and focus of anybody else on the team. Also easy for a layperson who's read a couple articles to see he's wrong (and knows it), but he's a fantastic trouper!— Good With Rockets (@Yastreblyansky) January 28, 2020
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