One reason why I never took up litigation was that litigators kept telling me how hectic their lives were: “hundred hour weeks”, “writing briefs till dawn”, “no time for the family”, “vacations preempted” and so forth. Not the kind of life for a guy like me.
But perhaps, like Chaucer’s sergeant of the law,
Nowhere so busy a man as he there was
And yet he seemed busier than he was.
Inspiring this reflection is Tom Goldstein, name partner of Goldstein & Howe, P.C., a man who has argued a dozen cases before the Supreme Court and scarcely ever seems without a high profile client. “Nowhere so busy a man as he” – yet not too busy to disregard the adage, Never pick a fight with a man who buys ink by the barrel. I have previously taken note of his dispute with Ramesh Ponnuru of National Review over whether Ramesh [I don’t actually know him, but we’re undoubtedly within one degree of separation, so I’ll presumptuously call him by his Christian name] unfairly denigrates Laurence Tribe. My view, already expressed at sufficient length, is that the denigration is fair but unimportant, and I noted that those few right-of-center bloggers who have animadverted to the matter mostly express the same opinion.
Mr. Goldstein, however, is quite furious at Ramesh, so furious that, in his latest tirade he makes this announcement:
I think that people ought to take just as seriously my sense that Ponnuru has to some extent presented fiction – in his account of how Tribe litigated Richmond Newspapers and later represented it in the Green Bag – as fact.
But Ponnuru thinks I’m stupid, so I’m doing him a big favor. In a bit, I’ll copy the Word documents that make up my posts directly into the blog, and globally replace “Ponnuru” with “Ramesh Ponnuru.” There have to be a hundred or so references, enough to get picked up byGoogle and other search engines when people enter his name. Then, on my own dime, today I bought
www.rameshponnuru.com
www.rameshponnuru.org
www.rameshponnuru.net
www.ramesh-ponnuru.com
www.ramesh-ponnuru.net
www.ramesh-ponnuru.org
And starting later today all of those sites will point to this blog.
Where he will post all of the documents generated by this affair. He does this because he thinks – clearly hopes – that “there may be consequences for Ponnuru’s reputation and the credibility of the causes he champions”, which he sees as proper retaliation for the damage that Ramesh is trying to inflict on Professor Tribe’s reputation.
So an eminent advocate passes his time in google bombing and flame wars. He sounds like so many losers on so many Usenet news groups that I begin to wonder whether my awe for the Supreme Court Bar isn’t misplaced.
Now, I was practicing law before Mr. Goldstein learned how to pronounce “certiorari”, so I shall claim the right of the elderly (for which I can cite no less an authority than Judge Richard Posner) to be patronizing.
First of all, Tom, lad, have you bothered to check whether Professor Tribe needs defending? Is the blogosphere abuzz with “Tribe is a liar” posts? If, as you aver, “Ponnuru wrote with the intention that there would be serious consequences for Tribe and his reputation”, he failed. If you truly wish to discourage similar conduct by others, would it not be more effective to point to that failure rather than publicize the original accusations and devote hours and pages to straining to refute them?
Second, while you doubtless believe that you have crushed the foe beneath your feet, you haven’t. Ramesh’s article rests on an uncomplicated contrast: Professor Tribe declared that he resisted pressure to scrap his Ninth Amendment argument in the Richmond Newspapers case, that he was a lonely believer in the amendment’s significance against “the Pooh-Bahs of the establishment”, and that the argument that he refused to abandon “hit its target”. Yet, counters Ramesh, other parties on the same side of the case had emphasized the Ninth Amendment to an equal or greater extent in their briefs, Professor Tribe barely mentioned it after resolving that it was going to “stay in”, and it played little role in the Court’s decision.
Your response, Tom, doesn’t focus on those essentials. Instead, it succumbs to the fighting barrister’s temptation to contradict your adversary on every point, large or small. He says the Sun rises in the east? It’s really the southeast, Your Honor, and the exact direction depends on the latitude and time of year, and how can you listen to anything said by an idiot who doesn’t know that? Readers who put Ramesh’s article and your rebuttals side by side may agree that Ramesh has overstated his case here or there, but they aren’t likely, unless strongly predisposed that way, to think that it’s been refuted.
Third, among those who think less of Ramesh after perusing your assaults, in what precise way will his reputation and credibility suffer? Most of your points are based on his alleged inability to grasp moderately technical legal arguments. Well, what if he doesn’t understand how Fourteenth Amendment cases can bear on a Ninth Amendment argument? That will be pertinent if he’s ever nominated to a judgeship. In the meantime, is he any less credible when writing about the size of the federal government or Social Security reform?
So the most that your google bomb will do is make this kerfuffle known to people who would otherwise never have heard of it. Of those who read closely enough for their reading to matter, the majority, I strongly suspect, will think that Ramesh has the better of the debate. Those who don’t will conclude that he isn’t a very good lawyer – not too devastating for a writer who isn’t a lawyer at all. Meanwhile, at least a few will come away thinking that Professor Tribe has sinned seriously against Truth. That’s not a fair and balanced position, and I don’t agree with it, but right now you’re doing more to promote it than Ramesh Ponnuru ever did.
Update (3/6/05): Mr. Goldstein’s anti-Ponnuru blog warns, “Someone has set up a fake blog purporting to be by me, that isn’t.” I’ve now learned that a faux Goldstein site, apparently the one to which he refers, does exist: Rock-Dumb, in which “Tommy Goldstein” purportedly declares,
I deny Ponnuru’s charge that I am slippery. I deny Ponnuru’s charge that I am dishonest. But I plead guilty to his charge that I am “rock-dumb.” That fact, as I hope to show, fully explains the various actions for which I have been criticized which Ponnuru and others have suggested are the product of slipperiness or dishonesty. I am not malevolent. Just rock-dumb.
Unless Mr. Goldstein’s readers truly are rock-dumb, I doubt that they need his warning. Rock-Dumb is in the grand tradition of making mock of Usenet flamers. Perhaps “Tommy” will learn from it.
Update (3/14/05): The latest – and we may hope the last – on this affair.
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