Following up on Tuesday’s post about whether the Yale Law Journal should withdraw its offer to publish an article because of racist statements made by the author while a law student: Eugene Volokh considers whether a law review should publish an article by a professor who has committed adultery with a student. I agree with Eugene’s conclusion:
Bad behavior? You bet. Does it reveal a character defect? Sure….But this has zilch to do with the important question, which is: Does the law review article advance our understanding of law? They’re not giving the author a decency award, they’re publishing an article for the benefit of readers and of the profession. The same goes with other forms of misconduct, whether or not race is involved.
3 responses to “Should Law Review Publish Article by Adulterous Professor?”
I think the quoted language goes too far, although I haven’t looked further at Professor Volokh’s analysis. Surely there is some misconduct that is over the top. Adultery, possibly not. Murder? Maybe. But apart from magnitude of the misconduct, how about its relevance to the topic, which is in general terms “legal development”? Egregious racial insensitivity (the most charitable definition for the conduct at issue in the Yale Law Journal issue) certainly is a step closer than is adultery; after all, racial equality issues have loomed large in the legal landscape for all of my life. Not so with marital infidelity.
The issue seems to be one that has already been addressed in a number of other contexts. For instance, a walk through the bookstore at Yale will most likely show that Mein Kampf, Tom Sawyer, and many other books with offensive and racist or sexist language. One will find The Bell Curve, the writings of Thomas Sowell, and countless other authors who have taken controversial positions on race as well.
Why should the editors of the Yale Law Journal engage in a punitive exercise with respect to someone who, in a totally unrelated context, published a racist comment? What is the source of this moral authority which supersedes even the Constitution?
Yes, Law Review must publish articles writtten by adulterous professor, however, only as far as that professor does not opine on ethics.