NY AG Letitia James drops the (civil) hammer {On Trump & Family} [9/21/2022]

This center-left poster endorses the Volokh Conspiracy blog. It started as a blog in 2002, migrated to WAPO in 2014, before moving to Reason in 2017: it is editorially independent of the latter. Thirty people, mostly law professors, run the place.

Steven Calabresi is a law professor at the Northwestern Pritzker School of Law who once worked in the Reagan administration under Edwin Meese. He is not listed under “Who We Are”, though he has penned a number of articles at the website. Based upon the linked article, he is a complete hack. He asserts without evidence that this fraud is a victimless crime, despite fairly high profile pieces saying the opposite. Now you can be wrong and still be a good scholar - this happens all the time. But when you flatly assert something without evidence that any informed peer of yours knows is dubious at best, you are a hack. If Mr. Calabresi discussed whether this fraud was a victimless crime and wrongly concluded that it was that would be different. That’s not what he did. The opinions of Steven Calabresi should generally be ignored as he is a wholly unreliable narrator.

Mr. Calabresi needs to rethink his life choices, as does the staff of the Volokh conspiracy. But I stress I’ve read some terrific articles there, and Volokh himself has a healthy curiosity about the world. Their politics generally differs from mine, but I’ve learned a lot from their articles. Differing perspectives can aid in the fight against ignorance, but the process isn’t automatic. You have to be both an independent thinker and avoid tendentious nonsense.