Jan Crawford interviews Justice Scalia at the Federalist Society annual dinner.

David Lat reports:

Crawford asked Scalia if he ever found himself in a situation where he was torn between his personal conscience and his professional duty as a justice. He said no. After Crawford expressed a hint of incredulity — you’ve never encountered such a situation, in your many years on the bench? — Scalia quipped, “Maybe I have a lax conscience.” The resulting laughter cleared the air nicely.

Conversation turned to whether the Supreme Court’s opinions offer adequate guidance to the lower courts and litigants — a topic recently raised in this fascinating New York Times article by Adam Liptak, which Crawford explicitly referenced. Scalia appeared to agree with the general thrust of the piece.

“You can write a fuzzy decision that gets nine votes,” Scalia said, “or a very clear decision that gets five votes.”

On the subject of putting Supreme Court oral arguments on video, Scalia said he disapproved. He thought it would mainly lead to out-of-context clips. He thought he'd look great in those clips though: "I could ham it up with the best of them on television... I’d do very well." Lat calls that boasting, but I see modesty. Best of them implies that he doesn't think he is the best oral-argument entertainer. But he is!

On the subject of attending the President's State of the Union Address, he said: “It is a juvenile spectacle, and I resent being called upon to give it dignity…. It’s really not appropriate for the justices to be there.”

On the subject of hiring clerks from Harvard and Yale law schools:

"The best minds are going to the best law schools. They might not learn anything while they’re there [laughter], but they don’t get any dumber."

I should reprise that Vonnegut quote from my 10:20 post. What if you had to argue that they do get dumber? I'll bet you could.

Lat says:

Note how Scalia did not use politically correct terminology. The PC approach calls for referring to the “highest ranked” law schools rather than the “best” law schools.

I must chide Lat for not seeing the political incorrectness of saying "the best minds." Or has Allen Ginsberg's "Howl" made "best minds" seem like a standard phrase? "I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by madness, starving hysterical naked...." That's not innocuous. "Best minds" should prick up our attention and make us feel that something is not right.

Surely, the applicants that Harvard and Yale smile upon are not really our "best minds." Perhaps they are the "best minds" that are applying to law school in any given year, but I don't think even that is true. You have to do too many things right, too diligently, too early in life to hit the law school application sweet spot and get into the most selective schools. The best minds will have resisted acquiring the conventional indicia of career promise.

Come to think of it, Lat is also wrong to say that "highest ranked" is the preferred terminology for law schools. In academia, "highest ranked" implies highest ranked by U.S. News, and it is the proper thing to loathe U.S. News. It lacks the nuance to perceive the subtle qualities that make our favorite law schools so damned special.

Seriously... I think Scalia, being a good writer and speaker, simply believes that short, simple words are... best.

"Parents don’t send their kids to Yale to sleep with their professors. Why don’t we say that?"

An actual rule saying faculty can't have sex with students. (Via Instapundit.) Didn't you think that already was the rule?

I remember years ago, here at Wisconsin, they put us faculty through an elaborate training session about how to follow the new rule about faculty-student sexual relations. It was elaborate because it was not simply a rule against it. (Click "read more," below, to see the text of the rule.) It was a reporting requirement. When, exactly, did you need to file a report about the relative location of your genitalia and how?

I remember asking a 2-part question: Doesn't this really function as a rule against student-teacher sexual relations and why don't we just have a straightforward rule against student-teacher sexual relations? I can't remember the answer, other than that it was roundabout and evasive. I had 2 ideas about what the answer really was:

1. Perhaps they thought that there is an important individual freedom — even a constitutional right — to choose your intimate associates. You know: At the heart of liberty is the right to define one's own concept of existence, of meaning, of the universe, and of the mystery of human life.... And maybe that includes defining for yourself what is right and wrong in the complexities of power between 2 (adult) partners.

2.  A good number of current faculty members have marriages that began as student-teacher coupling, and it wouldn't be very nice to impugn these relationships retrospectively. If it's a reporting requirement, we can indulge in the fantasy that these people would have reported if there had been a reporting requirement, so they are just fine, even as any new couples will be either: a. deterred or b. in violation of the rule.

Here's the text of the UW-Madison rule:

II-307 STATEMENT ON CONSENSUAL RELATIONSHIPS

Guidelines

It is in the interest of the University of Wisconsin-Madison to provide clear direction and educational opportunities to the university community about the professional risks associated with consensual romantic and/or sexual relationships between members of the university community where a conflict of interest and/or a power differential between the parties exists. Individuals entering such relationships must recognize that:

Conflicts of Interest may arise when such relationships occur between and among faculty, staff, students and prospective employees. University policies and ethical principles already preclude individuals from evaluating the work or academic performance of others with whom they have intimate familial relationships, or from making hiring, salary or similar financial decisions concerning such persons. The same principles apply to consensual romantic and/or sexual relationships and require, at a minimum, that appropriate arrangements be made for objective decision-making.

Power Differentials between the parties in a consensual romantic and/or sexual relationship may cause serious consequences even when conflicts of interest are resolved. Individuals entering into such relationships must recognize that:

the reasons for entering, maintaining, or terminating such a relationship may be a function of the power differential;

where power differentials exist, even in a seemingly consensual relationship, there are limited after-the-fact defenses against charges of sexual harassment. Furthermore, under certain situations consensual relationships may be outside the scope of employment for university employees and, if so, an individual would not be covered by the state's liability protection in subsequent litigation; and

it is almost always the case that the individual with the power or status advantage in the relationship will bear the burden of accountability.

Reporting Policy

Where a conflict of interest exists, or may exist, in the context of a consensual romantic and/or sexual relationship, the individual with the power or status advantage shall notify his or her immediate supervisor. The supervisor shall have the responsibility for making arrangements to eliminate or mitigate a conflict whose consequences might prove detrimental to the university or to either party in the relationship.

[UW-Madison Faculty Document 940, 6 April 1992]

How will Yale close its $150 million budget gap?

"Yale University announced on Wednesday that it planned a number of steps to close a remaining $150 million budget gap, including cutting staff, freezing salaries for deans and officers, reducing the number of graduate students — even turning down all thermostats to 68 degrees."

Even turning down all thermostats to 68 degrees? Even?!

Sorry about your budget gap, but why the hell did you have winter thermostat settings above 68°? Even — even — if you have money to burn, you should want to keep temperatures at least that low for health and comfort. And I do not believe that the people who run Yale think that there's such a thing as anthropogenic global warming worth worrying a damn about. In fact, if you actually thought cutting carbon emissions was important, your thermostats would already be at 62° or lower. If you thought AGW is an emergency — of the sort Al Gore warns us about —you'd set the thermostat at 52° or lower.

Good lord, you're firing people from their jobs! Why are you still roasting the place to 68°?!

***

A literary reading:

Man has invented, not only houses, but clothes and cooked food; and possibly from the accidental discovery of the warmth of fire, and the consequent use of it, at first a luxury, arose the present necessity to sit by it. We observe cats and dogs acquiring the same second nature. By proper Shelter and Clothing we legitimately retain our own internal heat; but with an excess of these, or of Fuel, that is, with an external heat greater than our own internal, may not cookery properly be said to begin? Darwin, the naturalist, says of the inhabitants of Tierra del Fuego, that while his own party, who were well clothed and sitting close to a fire, were far from too warm, these naked savages, who were farther off, were observed, to his great surprise, "to be streaming with perspiration at undergoing such a roasting." So, we are told, the New Hollander goes naked with impunity, while the European shivers in his clothes. Is it impossible to combine the hardiness of these savages with the intellectualness of the civilized man? 

Yale.

Fail.

"Lobsters? This is how I wind up after leading a just life? In a tank on Third Avenue?"

"The Lord works in strange ways... Take Phil Pinchuck. The man keeled over with an aneurysm, he’s now a hamster. All day, running at the stupid wheel. For years he was a Yale professor. My point is he’s gotten to like the wheel. He pedals and pedals, running nowhere, but he smiles."