his new ad touts. Wow, that’s quite an honor! Uh, except all it takes to get that status is to four times get nominations from any “professor[] of social sciences, history, philosophy, law [or] theology” or any judge or national legislator in any country. That includes, for instance, me. I could nominate you for the Nobel Peace Prize four times, and then you could say in your commercials that you’ve been nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize four times.
To be fair, this is one small item in the commercial, and Richardson may well deserve recognition as a peacemaker on the merits; I’m speaking here only of the one tidbit about which I have something relevant to say. But it seems to me that this particular “credential” doesn’t belong in the ad: If I’m right that the credential is likely to be impressive only to people who don’t know how easy it is to get, then it’s more misleading than informative.
Thanks to fellow lawprof — and fellow potential Nobel Peace Prize nominator — Steve Lubet for passing along the video (though I have no idea whether this is what he had in mind when passing it along).