2005

The missus and I headed out to the Wild West for Christmas, and while the trip was not by covered wagon, it might as well have been. Since when does it take twelve hours or more to fly from point to point inside the continental United States? We had electrical difficulties on one of our planes on the return trip, and we had to get off that plane, board another, and wait for the luggage to be transferred. We left California at 8:00 AM Pacific time, and arrived in Lafayette at a little before midnight Central time. To make matters worse, Amanda and I were both sick for the whole trip. Wandering through three different airports in a Dayquil haze is not exactly my idea of a good time. However, I think we’re both recovering, and should be back to normal within a few days.

I flew home last night from Austin, but almost didn’t make it. Due to inclement weather, which apparently down south means temperatures below 40 °F and a bit of rain, my flight from Austin to Houston was slightly delayed. What was supposed to be a 35 minute layover turned into a 7 minute one. Oops. As soon as the pilot turned off the seatbelt sign, I sprinted up the aisle, out the door, up the jetway, across two concourses to my departing gate, down that jetway, and onto the second plane. The crew closed the door on my flight from Houston to Lafayette about two minutes after I boarded. And, miraculously, my luggage made it as well.

Most American families share a common Thanksgiving experience, including turkey, family visits, and football. Each family, of course, has its own unique traditions, and we seem to be developing our own: illness. Our plan this year was to drive to the in-laws’ on Wednesday night, meet up with my brother-in-law and his girlfriend on Thursday morning, and head up to Amanda’s aunt and uncle’s home for a big Thanksgiving lunch. Afterwards, we were to drive back to the in-laws for an afternoon of football, followed by a gumbo dinner.

It was not to be. We learned after we arrived that my father-in-law had been ill earlier in the week, with a nasty but short-lived stomach virus. Conveniently, no one else started to show symptoms until we had already been exposed. Amanda’s cousins, living with her parents, started feeling sick shortly after we arrived, and we decided that we would forego the Thanksgiving lunch and avoid exposing the rest of the family unnecessarily. Amanda’s mother started feeling ill later that evening, and we headed back here on Thursday night. Amanda is now very sick, and I’m not too optimistic about my chances of avoiding it entirely.

This isn’t the first time my wife’s family has enjoyed a communal illness around Thankgiving. A few years ago, they got food poisoning from one of those grocery store rotisserie chickens. I was out of town, but Amanda wasn’t so lucky. Before that, another stomach virus hit hard and lasted the whole week.

At least this time we got gumbo.

The paper analogue of the blog is not the diary, but rather the commonplace book. With the availability of relatively cheap paper beginning as early as the 14th century, people began to collect knowledge in commonplace books. Bits of quotes, reference materials, summaries of arguments, all contained in a handy bound volume. This merchant’s commonplace, for example, dates from 1312 and contains hand-drawn diagrams of Venetian ships and descriptions of Venice’s merchant culture. An English commonplace dating to the 15th century, the Book of Brome, contains poems, notations on memorial law, lists of expenses, and diary entries. John Locke devised a method for keeping a commonplace. Thomas Jefferson kept both legal and literary commonplaces, and owned a copy of Sir John Randolph’s legal commonplace, published in 1680.

The Jefferson books are the real highlight of this post. Not only are they scanned and online in their entirety, the images are actually quite readable. Unfortunately, many of the really interesting vintage commonplace books are not available online. The British Library’s collection includes, for example, John Milton’s commonplace book with notes on Ethics, Economics, Politics and Literature; Sir Walter Ralegh’s ‘Tower’ notebook, written c1606-1608 while he was imprisoned, replete with library lists, poetry and an illustrated guide to the Middle East; and a commonplace book attributed to Thomas Harriot (1560-1621), polymath and friend of Ralegh, Kepler and Marlowe, featuring the earliest known quotation from Shakespeare’s Henry IV Part 1. You can, however, get them on microfilm.

Related: 43 Folders on Thomas Jefferson and Ben Franklin keeping notes of their lives.

President Bush nominated Judge Samuel Alito, Jr. from the Third Circuit to the Supreme Court yesterday. Judge Alito has a reputation as a solid conservative, and Democrats are predictibly rushing to criticize the nomination. Here’s a roundup of information and opinions on Judge Alito:

* The White House has “the remarks of the President and Judge Alito”:http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2005/10/20051031.html.
* The University of Michigan Law Library has a “fantastic site”:http://www.law.umich.edu/library/news/topics/alito/alitoindex.htm with biographical information, opinions written by Judge Alito, briefs he wrote as a lawyer, and more.
* “The Daily Princetonian”:http://www.dailyprincetonian.com/archives/2005/10/28/news/13656.shtml spoke with classmates and professors of Alito’s.
* The NYT has several articles on the nomination, including a “backgrounder”:http://www.nytimes.com/2005/11/01/politics/politicsspecial1/01alito.html on Judge Alito, and editorials by “Ann Althouse”:http://www.nytimes.com/2005/11/01/opinion/01althouse.html, “Linda Greenhouse”:http://www.nytimes.com/2005/11/01/politics/politicsspecial1/01casey.html?hp&ex=1130907600&en=16a75ab91dd59ab6&ei=5094&partner=homepage, and the NYT Editorial Board, which calls the nomination “Another Lost Opportunity”:http://www.nytimes.com/2005/11/01/opinion/01tues1.html?hp.
* The Washington Post also has comprehensive coverage of the nomination, including a “career timeline”:http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/graphic/2005/11/01/GR2005110100141.html and a “table of major cases”:http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/custom/2005/11/01/CU2005110100050.html. The WP also runs the “Campaign for the Supreme Court blog”:http://blogs.washingtonpost.com/campaignforthecourt/, and has more coverage of the nomination “here”:http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/linkset/2005/03/24/LI2005032400136.html.
* ACSBlog has “some background on Judge Alito”:http://www.acsblog.org/judicial-nominations-2188-who-is-sam-alito.html, and is guaranteed to have “continuing coverage”:http://www.acsblog.org/ of the nomination.
* ThinkProgress has a “critical review”:http://thinkprogress.org/2005/10/31/samuel-alitos-america/ of the nomination, complete with hyperbolic descriptions of a few of Judge Alito’s opinions. “Julian Sanchez”:http://www.reason.com/hitandrun/2005/10/wow_a_nominee_w.shtml and “Patrick ‘Patterico’ Frey”:http://patterico.com/2005/10/30/3872/alitos-dissent-in-casey/ both respond.
* Not all liberals are upset with the choice, however. Kate Pringle, now a partner at a New York law firm, clerked for Judge Alito, and is pleased with the nomination. She “comments”:http://bluemassgroup.typepad.com/blue_mass_group/2005/10/katherine_kate_.html that the judge is “interested in focusing on the immediate case at hand. He is not someone who is eager to reach out and grab broad principles and institute them separate and apart from the case.”
* Ms. Pringle’s thoughts are echoed by Rick Garnett in an “editorial in the NY Sun”:http://www.nysun.com/article/22380?access=239167, in which he recommends confirming Judge Alito, and concludes: “He will do his best, in every case, to interpret and apply the law as it is, and not to remake the law according to his own view of what it should be. His vision of the Constitution is one that takes seriously the idea that judges’ role in resolving policy debates is a very limited one. Justice Alito, when he is confirmed, will not be in the business of imposing his policy preferences on Americans, but will instead enforce and maintain the structure of government that our Constitution created, one in which individual liberty is protected by dividing and limiting the power of government.”
* While most predict that Alito will be confirmed, albeit after what looks to be a nasty battle in the Senate, Rick Hasen “predicts”:http://electionlawblog.org/archives/004318.html that Alito won’t make it to a floor vote. Orin Kerr “disagrees”:http://volokh.com/posts/1130786987.shtml.
* UTR has a couple of thorough “roundup”:http://underneaththeirrobes.blogs.com/main/2005/10/a3g_not_a_man.html “posts”:http://underneaththeirrobes.blogs.com/main/2005/10/judge_samuel_al.html.
* A number of lawyers and law professors are looking closely at Alito’s record in particular types of cases, including:
** The First Amendment Center on, you guessed it, “Alito’s First Amendment jurisprudence”:http://www.firstamendmentcenter.org/analysis.aspx?id=16003.
** Howard Friedman comments on Alito’s “religious freedom decisions”:http://religionclause.blogspot.com/2005/11/alitos-3rd-circuit-religion-decisions.html, and notes that if Alito is confirmed, “Catholic Justices will form a majority”:http://religionclause.blogspot.com/2005/11/alito-will-make-catholics-majority-on.html on the Supreme Court. See also the “Top ten changes a Catholic majority would make to the Supreme Court.”:http://southernappeal.blogspot.com/2005/10/top-ten-changes-catholic-majority.html
** Of Arms & the Law comments on Alito’s Second Amendment jurisprudence.
** Larry Ribstein examines “Alito’s business law background”:http://busmovie.typepad.com/ideoblog/2005/10/justice_alito.html, while concurring opinions looks more specifically at securities law issues “here”:http://www.concurringopinions.com/archives/2005/10/alito_the_busin_1.html and “here”:http://www.concurringopinions.com/archives/2005/10/alito_and_secur.html.
** William Patry comments on “copyright cases”:http://williampatry.blogspot.com/2005/10/judge-alito-and-copyright.html.
** White Collar Crime Prof Blog covers, as expected, “white collar crime cases”:http://lawprofessors.typepad.com/whitecollarcrime_blog/2005/10/judge_alito_and.html.
** Jack Balkin comments on potential implications for “constitutional doctrine generally”:http://balkin.blogspot.com/2005/11/what-alito-nomination-means-for.html.
* And, of course, this roundup would not be complete without the obligatory “Alito parody blog”:http://samuelalito.blogspot.com/.

Well, we all knew it was coming. Harriet Miers has withdrawn her nomination to replace Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O’Connor. She submitted her letter [.pdf] this morning, and President Bush made a short statement reluctantly accepting.