Nothing New Under the Sun...

I went to a constitutional law conference yesterday held at my law school. Since con law is often seen as the most prestigious area of law, con law professors are often seen as the most prestigious professors among other law professors. This conference included some of the most famous professors in con law, and so it was a room where the prestigeometer hit pretty high.

There were only a few students in attendance, probably because it was not advertised to students. I only discovered it by accident, as I was walking through the building in which it was held to go into the Dean of Students office to steal candy (one of my daily activities from which I derive great pleasure. :)). In any case, I was curious, so I followed the signs and stopped by. The room was filled with luminiaries from my law school, and all the faces I didn't recognize turned out to be ridiculously big names (well, in con law at least) whose work I have read in con law or other law classes. All the students sat against one wall, looking awed and taking notes. The dean was there, seated among three newly hired assistant professors who never spoke a word during the discussion. The president of the law review was there. My con law prof and comparative con law prof from last semester, my admin law prof from this semester, my local gov law prof, my two workshop professors, Professor M, with whom I'm doing an independent writing this semester, were all there.

I stayed for about two hours, long enough to eat THREE pieces of pastries. (As I stood up for the third time to go out of the room to get food, I thought vaguely to myself how weird it is that I felt no shame... hehe). The discussion was about a paper that two of the professors (whose name I actually DIDN'T recognize) in attendance wrote. Since I missed the presentation of the paper itself, I was only able to glean the gist of it from the presentation it ensued, and I guess it was a discussioin of whether Congress should be more activist in asserting wartime powers against the president. (Boy wouldn't it have been funny if I got that completely wrong?) But the discussion was meandering and also touched upon various methods of interpreting the constitution (of course summarized by Prof S, who loves this sort of taxonomy), a vigorous defense of originalism by one of the resident conservatives Prof. M., an exhortation to consider the constitution from an internationalist perspective (not surprisingly from Prof J who co-wrote the casebook on comparative con law), and a very healthy dose of legal realism from Prof F, who along with Prof M co-organized the conference.

I think I was following the discussion well, but as I was sitting there, I also realized that I was really, really, really bored. It was more interesting for me to see the whole thing from a sociological perspective - to note the silence of the younger profs, the awe of the students, the ease with which some of the older profs pontificated and interrupted each other at length (though the conversation was never heated - everyone was jovial and warm and friendly and there were frequent eruptions of laughter). Also how the conversation always seems to center around the comments of some professors (I'm thinking especially of Prof. S here - later I heard the dean ask him over to her house for dinner - I guess we are really in heavy recruitng mode), and also noting that my con law professor, although relatively young, was already treated by his older colleagues with a lot of respect (he DID speak quite a few times and in spite of his weird inflection seemed quite commanding). This was fascinating to me, much more than the subject matter itself.

If anything, as I left the room, I realized how the stale the whole conversation seemed to me. It was all the themes we actually read about in our con law casebooks; it seemed like those were the themes and issues that have been debated about for decades, if not centuries. Clearly certain questions (such as the extent of the war powers of the president) takes on special urgency in certain times (like now), but there simply doesn't seem to be new arguments advanced one way or another (Other than an internationailst approach, which from what I understand is kind of trendy these days). People talked about originalism, and instrumentalist approaches, the value of the precedent, the pros and cons of following established practices, the separation of powers and its good/bad/practical/impractical parts... blah blah blah. Professor F. probably made the most cogent and accurate (but no less boring) comment when he said that under our system, it's unlikely that these questions will ever only have one plausible answer. There will always be arguments "on the other side". Yes! I was thinking. But, wait... so what else is new? Why are we still all sitting here? haha!

Could it really be true that there is nothing new under the sun for con law? This was the question I was thinking about as I left the room (filled with cake). I suppose in the past few years, what has really been new and exciting in law was the introduction of the social sciences, but constitutional law seems peculiarly resistent to that, probably because it is all textual interpretation and not a lot of concern over empirical data. It reminds me a lot of philosophy, the bad parts of philosophy, and the precise reason why I got out of phiosophy - it's a lot of people sitting around a room with no outside information (or concern for outside information, for that matter) and who endlessly ruminate over age-old questions with no answers, at least no answers that you can prove were the correct ones. I can see how some people would enjoy that, and would find that stiumulating and even noble. Having experienced it, I am a bit frustrated by this and find it a bit wasteful.

Perhaps that's just me. Omg have I finally become an anti-intellectual?!?