In “Supreme Court Shakespeare,” C-Ville, one of Charlottesville’s two free weekly newspapers, pays homage to local legal bard Dahlia Lithwick, SLATE’s legal writer.
A self-described “nerd debate kid” her entire life, Dahlia Lithwick’s fascination with court-related reporting began when she stumbled into the Microsoft anti-trust trial and discovered, as she puts it: “This is theater. This is Shakespeare.” Her subsequent Supreme Court writing has been tailored accordingly: a series of fun, irreverent pieces that portray the justices not just as arbiters of the law, but as personalities
As I have pointed out here a number of times (such as here, here, here, here, here, and here), I am a big fan of her verve and style but not of what she actually says most of the time. Her titles can be quite engaging (“Slippery Slop,” “Pick A Chick,” etc.), and her breezy style can be quite seductive. Indeed, in commenting on the bizarre views on religion and the law she expressed in “Rock of Ages and a Hard Space,” I succumbed to what can only be described as a Lithwickian style myself, calling my post about her “Gimme That Ole Time (Anti-) Religion…” and writing at one point:
Lithwick’s summary of the argument was, not to coin a phrase, generally fair and balanced, but when she offered her own views in the last paragraph she suddenly morphed into a sputtering character right out of Looney Tunes.
Dahlia Dahling’s comments in the current C-Ville piece reveal yet again that her style and verve, impressive as they are, still can’t convert the sow’s ear of the content of what she writes into silk purse commentary. Here’s a taste:
C-VILLE: What are the most interesting Supreme Court rulings coming up?
The big decisions coming out in the next month are Hamdan, the enemy combatant Guantanamo case, and the Texas redistricting case. My dire prediction is that the Roberts court will be known for its hands-off approach. That’s the possible big, big, big shift. The Rehnquist court was conservative, but it was also the most meddling freakin’ court ever.
In other words, Conservative courts are direly damned when they “meddle” … and when they don’t.
Perhaps C-VILLE is right, but if Dahlia Dahling is Shakesperean, it is the Shakespeare of farce. Come to think of it, much of what she has written can be described as a “Comedy of Errors.” Indeed, what many critics have said of that farce, though far too harsh to fit exactly, is not altogether off the mark as a description of Ms. Lithwick’s lighter pieces:
Through the years, critics have dismissed The Comedy of Errors, probably Shakespeare’s fourth play (behind the three Henry VIs), as a silly product of his youth, as an early experiment of embellished “translation,” and as fluff, froth, or farce — and therefore unworthy of serious consideration. G. B. Harrison, noted scholar of a generation ago, called it “very good fun on the stage, but . . . more suited for a New Year’s Eve party than for a conference of critics” (Shakespeare: The Complete Works, ed. G. B. Harrison [New York: Harcourt, 1980], 271). A more recent scholar, David Bevington, notes that since its earliest performances, it “has been the victim . . . of directors who regard it as too inconsequential to survive without adaptation and embellishment” (The Complete Works of William Shakespeare, ed. David Bevington, 6 vols, [Toronto: Bantam, 1988], 1:np).
As I said, however, this harsh view doesn’t quite fit. Ms. Lithwick’s great forté, and her greatest contribution, is that her columns themselves provide “adaptation and embellishment” to a conventional liberal approach to jurisprudence that is much in need of both.
