By coincidence, the days in which the Yale Law Journal / Kiwi Camara controversy unfolded also brought us this story (thanks to How Appealing for the pointer):
Four white men fired by the Philadelphia School District have won a racial-discrimination lawsuit, and a federal jury awarded them nearly $3 million in damages.So here's the question: Imagine that a month from now, the Yale Law Journal receives an article submitted by Carl Singley. How would you like the editors to react? Which reaction do you think fosters the best attitude on the editors' part, the attitude that's most likely to help advance legal scholarship?After Friday's verdict, Carl E. Singley, a prominent African American lawyer who represented the school district, exchanged words with some members of the all-white jury as they rode a courthouse elevator. He called them "crackers," four jurors said in interviews.
Within 30 minutes, U.S. District Judge Harvey Bartle 3d brought Singley and five of the seven jurors in the case back into his courtroom. Singley, a former Temple Law School dean, promptly apologized.
"What I did and said was inappropriate," Singley said, according to a transcript. "I should not have disrespected you, and I do apologize." . . .
- "Throw it out. We don't publish articles by people who have ever said anything racist."
- "Hard call. On the one hand, most whites are probably not as insulted by 'cracker' as they are by 'nig.' On the other hand, this was said to the targets' faces, which probably makes it more insulting; Camara's words weren't. Back to the first hand, it sounds like the author was upset and spoke in a moment of anger, while Camara had more time for deliberation, and in fact knew that his words would offend people. But back to the second hand, Singley is an experienced lawyer, teacher, and administrator, not a 17-year-old, who can be expected to do immature things. Back to the first hand, . . . ."
- "Does anyone else know? Are they going to cause a fuss? People who get offended by 'cracker' are probably less likely to start protests, e-mail campaigns, and the like than people who get offended by 'nig'; but will they still cause enough to put us in an awkward position?"
- "Better set up an ad hoc committee, arrange a town hall meeting, speak to the representatives of all affected groups, and issue a carefully crafted report."
- "Hey, is his article any good?"
I vote for (e).
Related Posts (on one page):
- More on the Authorial Morals Police:
- A Bit More on Scholarly Journals and Authors' Past Offensive Speech:
- Scholarly Journals and Authors' Past Offensive Speech (1):
- Scholarly Journals and Authors' Past Offensive Speech (2):
It seems like that should remedy the problems you've addressed.
More to the topic, does his unprofessional behavior (forget "racist;" this was simply grossly unprofessional) affect his credibility on the article in question? And how much do an author's credenials matter in judging an article for a law journal? (I'm asking, because this question is definitely discipline-specific. I read mathematics journals, and in those, credentials are meaningless; if you've found an elementary proof of the four-color theorem, it matters not whether you're a high-school dropout or a Princeton professor -- or an infamous holocaust-denier for that matter. I also read education journals, and in those, which are also supposed to be scholarly, the author's credentials are often paramount to the credibility of the article itself.)
The federal courts recruit their juries from the surrounding counties, while the Common Pleas Courts recruit exclusively from Philadelphia (where eligible voters are more than 60% black).
As a Temple alumn, I think there's slim chance that Singley would ever submit an article to the Yale Law Journal when he's devoting most of his time to setting black legal achievement back 50 years.
(a) Bring it to the attention of someone who can cause it to be removed or redacted (again, perhaps, with a disclaimer to that effect);
(b) hard call. Not said to anyone's face, there is a disclaimer, these are informal notes...but on the other hand...; or,
(c) hey, is this outline any good?
It seems that (c) here is the wrong choice. With respect to the article for the symposium, I agree to some extent with Eugene that the first question should always be "is this any good?" If no, then it's easy. If yes, then there very well may be a series of other issues to address, which go both ways, by the way. For instance, this symposium is certainly bound to attract a lot more publicity than it likely anticipated...that in itself may advance legal scholarship.
But I agree with A. Rickey. Harrassing jurors because you don't like their verdict is a serious ethical breach.
Eugene's attitude ("(e) is correct") is in many ways laudable, but it overlooks the value in an empirical assessment of the author's "track record" in determining the value of an idea. It's not unreasonable to assess the reputation of an author in judging an idea, because the plain fact is that good and workable ideas do not rain down randomly on everyone. Character matters. Some people are much better than others at sifting out the gold from the trash that bubbles up from the imagination, much better at that unconscious and half-conscious reasoning process that lets one detect what Philip Morrison calls "the ring of truth." Some other people are much more likely to be taken in by plausible-sounding but ultimately foolish notions, and still others lack integrity and will deliberately try to foist delusion on you.
Because of this fact, and because none of us is perfectly equipped to have the same insight as the author into his ideas, it's long been a successful human strategy to factor the reputation of the author into the judgment of an idea. (That is why any completely blind review or judging process is, I think, ultimately doomed to failure. While such a mechanism can undoubtably filter gold from dirt, it's simply not good enough to sift real gold from fool's gold, and it is the latter task which is the really important task of the editor.)
In the case at hand, the fact that this legal scholar made a serious legal mistake is evidence that his legal judgment may have flaws, at least in some areas, and this fact is material to the question of whether an idea he presents can be expected to have merit. It is, therefore, reasonable to take it into account.
The situation is not conceptually different than when a jury is asked to consider the testimony of a witness in a criminal trial and a lawyer tries to impeach his testimony by presenting evidence that the witness is a man of poor character and judgment (a criminal, drug-user, et cetera). The jury is reasonable to to use those reflections of the witness's character to assess the quality of his testimony. In the same way, the editors are reasonable to use evidence of an author's character to assess the quality of his submission.
Man, the stories they told. He was was "removed" from his Dean position. And it got real ugly.
He did sort of redeem himself by coming out against his former friend and client John Street, and endorsing Republican Sam Katz, in the mayor's race.