Category: Law

For those who care neither about plagiarism nor legal academia, I assure you this will be my last post on these matters (for now). In the previous post, I sketched how law professors can, and often do, incorporate student work into their scholarly output with less-than-adequate attribution. In perusing a few websites and articles (the very few that ever dare take up this topic), I noticed that one of the frequent defenses of this practice lies in the fact that professors must routinely direct students to their sources; provide details on how they want them analyzed and written up; and then make further modifications—usually stylistic—on the final product. All of that may be true in some circumstances, but I know from first-hand knowledge that the versions of events I set forth previously does occur. And, furthermore, I have seen little evidence that the practice isn’t widespread or just limited to a handful of wayward professors.

Following up on yesterday’s post, “A Note on Plagiarism,” I want to say a bit more about the phenomenon of plagiarism in legal academia. While some high-profile incidents have occurred in the past, it’s still a topic rarely discussed—unless it involves students. Students who commit plagiarism, such as Harvard Law graduate Megon Walker, can expect to find their career prospects crushed, assuming they are not expelled. Professors who commit plagiarism, on the other hand, have a playbook of defenses, some more plausible than others. For example, professors who are “busted” for improperly citing sources or lifting passages from other works without attribution can avail themselves of the excuse that it wasn’t their fault; one of their numerous student research assistants (RAs) must have done it. And that is the end of the story.

I have never been an avid reader of Public Discourse, perhaps because of its manifest classical liberal leanings. Also, it looks like another forum for the Acton Institute.

Last week I discussed briefly Dylan Pahman’s article on religious liberty begetting economic liberty. This time I want to take a look at Samuel Gregg’s latest, “Poverty, the Rule of Law, and Human Flourishing.” Gregg, as many of you may know, is the Acton Institute’s Research Director and the author of Tea Party Catholic. (I have mentioned Gregg before in an earlier post, “The Crony Capitalism Claim.”) Like many of his fellow Actonites, Gregg promotes the marriage of Catholic Social Thought and economic liberalism while, more generally, maintaining that the principles of political liberalism are not only defensible in the light of reason, but essential for what he calls “human flourishing.” In fact, Acton has an entire “wing” dedicated to this idea, PovertyCure. One of the core components of Gregg’s article, and the PovertyCure, project is the idea of the “rule of law.” But what does that mean? And, more importantly, is Gregg (and other Actonites) concerned with the “rule of law” in the abstract or a particular type of law in the concrete? The “rule of law,” when put into practice, isn’t neutral, and it is not intrinsically libertarian.