ProfessorBainbridge.com

The New Breed of Priest

From the LA Times (reg. req'd):

Father Marcos Gonzalez ..., an associate pastor at St. Andrew Church in Pasadena, is hardly a relic from a fading past. At 41, he offers one glimpse of the future as a member of a new breed of younger priests ordained during the 25-year papacy of Pope John Paul II and passionately committed to the pope's orthodox teachings.

As the health of John Paul ? now 84 and the third-longest serving pontiff in history ? continues to falter, men like Gonzalez stand ready to guard and propagate his legacy. They represent a global trend toward Christian orthodoxy, in contrast to a generation of more liberal priests ordained during the 1960s reforms of the Second Vatican Council. ...

In general, ... the "John Paul priests" are less supportive than older colleagues of optional celibacy, women priests, the democratic elections of bishops and greater lay leadership, according to numerous surveys. They show less tolerance for dissent against church teachings. And they are more apt to favor greater use of Latin prayers, special vestments, bells and other traditional touches to restore a sense of sacredness to the liturgy ....

Praise God for raising men like this to the priesthood. Given what one hears about the seminaries out here, of course, I'm surprised they made it through. Even in the seminaries, however, the Times article suggests things are changing for the better:

In 1981, he entered St. John's Seminary in Camarillo right after high school. The experience, he says, was filled with conflict. His class of about four dozen men, mostly conservative, challenged the more liberal faculty. The young seminarians asked for uniforms, more discipline and more group devotions such as the rosary. The students also asked for more of John Paul's teachings in class. "The faculty gave the perception that they were suspicious of this pope and that somehow he was turning back the clock," Gonzalez says. "We were perceived to be in line with the pope, so we were also viewed with suspicion."

Weary of the conflict and hoping to help support his parents financially, Gonzalez left the seminary for four years. In 1991, after a stint with a hospital trade association, he returned to the seminary and found the instruction far more balanced. He was ordained in 1994.

Carruades de Lafite (Paillac) 1995

Carruades is the second wine of Chateau Lafite-Rothschild. It gets a mix of the produce of young vines that aren't deemed mature enough for the main wine and barrel lots that don't quite come up to standard for the premier cru. The 95 Carruades is a delicious and accessible wine that is very pleasant to drink, but lacks the complexity of the premier cru. Unlike the big guy, it makes few intellectual demands on the consumer, instead offering easy sensual pleasures. The bouquet and flavor profile suggest rich dark fruits, mainly blackberries and currants, as well as cedar and Provencal herbs. I debated for a long time whether this wine's grade deserved to cross the A line, concluding that it just cleared the bar. This Carruades has the tannic backbone and acid balance to continue to improve for at least a decade, so my grade reflects an expectation of future delights almost as much as current enjoyment. Grade: A--

Screw Caps

I like old things. Old ideas. Old books. Old wines. I guess that's part of the reason I'm a conservative. Yet, the intelligent conservative combines a disposition to preserve with an ability to reform. And so we come to the question of closures for wine. For generations our ancestors used cork to close wine bottles, and they were wise to do so. Indeed, cork is a nearly perfect closure for wine. It is mostly impe meable, yet apparently allows just enough minute amounts of air into the bottle for the wine to evolve with age. And cork lends a certain romance to the otherwise mudane process of opening a bottle, as anyone who has popped a champagne cork knows. (For real romance, of course, port tongs can't be beat.) Yet, sometimes change is necessary. When it comes to wine closures, change has no greater advocate than the Wine Spectator's James Laube, who recently observed:

I briefed [an acquaintance] on how corks tainted by 2,4,6 trichloranisole (aka TCA) ruined otherwise fine wines by imparting a musty character. ... To drive the point home, I said that there are days when 15 percent of the wines we taste in our Napa office are flawed and undrinkable, the result of bad corks. ...

Most wine drinkers are aware of the hassles caused by corks. Those who say they?ve never tasted a ?corky,? or spoiled, wine are undoubtedly mistaken. They just didn?t know it, perhaps because they?re not sensitive to the taint. Those who haven?t lost a good, old, cellared bottle to a crumbled cork, well, that too is hard to imagine. I can only say their time is coming.

I must agree. Crumbling corks are a hassle (albeit one that can be dealt with by decanting the wine through an unbleached coffee filter), while cork taint is an all too often present curse. The answer? I hate to say it, but I am persuaded that the answer is the Stelvin screw cap. Many fine California and Australia wineries are now experimenting with the Stelvin closure. In my experience, wines capped with screw tops taste just as good as those closed with corks and, of course, loads better than those closed with tainted corks. But will wines capped with screw tops age as well? According to the Spectator, Bordeaux and Burgundy wineries are starting to conclude that they can:

Burgundy n�gociant Jean- Claude Boisset is releasing small amounts of several bottles from the 2003 vintage topped with screw caps, including premier cru Santenay Grand Clos Rousseau, Chambolle-Musigny and Gevrey-Chambertin Villages. ... "We feel fairly confident after the research we've done that the Stelvin will work nicely," said Jean-Charles Boisset, the founder's son. Boisset said the decision to test the Stelvin was sparked by a tasting of a 1966 Mercurey that was closed by screw cap....

So the next time you see a $20 bottle of wine topped by a screw cap, don't assume you're being ripped off. As Laube opined:

I?ve long advocated twist-offs, and when I?m shopping I?ve found myself gravitating toward them. One reason is that I?m assured the wine won?t be corked. Another is that I want to taste how fresh the wine is. I also want to support those who are taking an important leadership role for the industry and consumers.

Me too.

Joseph Phelps Ovation Chardonnay (Napa Valley) 1997

Few California Chardonnays are worth aging; most fall apart at around age 3-4. This 97 Phelps is a major exception; it has aged into a delicious, well-integrated wine. A lovely deep gold color suggests its maturity. The powerful bouquet suggests oak, citrus, and lychee. On the palate, the flavor profile includes oaky vanilla, pineapples, lemon, and melons. Grade: A

Was the Presbyterian Divestment Anti-Semitic

When the PC(USA)'s General Assembly voted to divest the denomination's funds from corporations doing business with Israel (see my post), many folks in the blogosphere jumped to condemn the action as anti-Semitic (including the big guy). At the time, it struck me that people were being too quick to play the anti- Semitism card. Playing that card whenever Israel comes into criticism is a problem for two reasons. First, it tends to silence legitimate criticism of Israel, which is no more perfect and no more immune from constructive criticism than any other polity. Second, over time, playing the anti-Semitism card every time somebody criticizes Israel tends devalue the moral authority of that card. (Remember the story of the boy who cried wolf?) In an Opinion Journal column, however, Jay Lefkowitz suggests:

A more nuanced standard, and one that properly recognizes that legitimate criticism of Israel is perfectly appropriate, was articulated last year by Natan Sharansky. A member of the Israeli cabinet who for years had been a prisoner of conscience in the Soviet gulag, Mr. Sharansky defined one current expression of anti- Semitism by three features: the application of double standards to Israel, the demonization of Israel and the delegitimization of Israel.

Fair enough. A nuanced standard indeed. Applying it, Lefkowitz goes on to make a persuasive case that the Presbyterian divestment was anti-Semitic:

The recent action by the Presbyterian Church sadly satisfies Mr. Sharansky's test. The church has singled out Israel, alone among all the nations of the world, for divestment. It has demonized Israel's treatment of the Palestinians, and it has delegitimized Israel's right to self- defense.

The church is not calling for divestment of its $7 billion portfolio from China, despite China's denial of the most basic political and religious rights and its particularly harsh treatment of followers of Falun Gong. It is not condemning Russia, even though Russia's policies in Chechnya are by any human-rights standard atrocious. It is not even calling for economic sanctions against Syria or Iran, whose human-rights records for their own people are egregious and whose Jewish citizens are denied the basic civil rights and liberties afforded to all Israelis, including its Arab citizens, some of whom even serve in the Knesset.

Lefkowitz also notes:

In contrast to the action taken by the Presbyterian Church this month, the Roman Catholic Church has recognized that one-sided criticism of Israel can at times be so grotesque that there is no name to describe it other than anti- Semitism. And in a document ironically signed the same week as the Presbyterian General Assembly, the Catholic Church equated anti-Zionism with anti-Semitism.

As regular readers know, I left the Presbyterian Church several years ago and converted to Catholicism. These events are just one more reason I'm glad I changed teams.

Sunset Cellars Zinfandel (Napa Valley) 1999

Sunset Cellars is one of my pet wineries; I'm a big fan and am always willing to buy without tasting first. I'm also a big fan of Thomas Lifson, who is one of Sunset's principals and a blogger at The American Thinker. This 99 Zinfandel is at or near maturity, although I suspect it would hold for a while. It's a medium ruby with a 1/8th-inch band of brick-red at the rim. Good classic zin nose. On the palate, the tannins and acids are well-balanced. The flavor profile includes brambly berries, earthy sour cherries, with a peppery bite on the finish. I like it quite a lot and recommend it highly, but there's a slightly sour edge that keeps it just outside the A range. (I should note that I picked this wine up at a Whole Foods store a couple of weeks ago. So there's a question of storage conditions; God knows where it's been in the years since it was released!) Grade: B++

Latest Hollinger Decision

In his latest ruling in the ongoing litigation between Hollinger International and its controlling shareholder Lord Conrad Black, Delaware Vice Chancellor Strine concluded that:

The reality is that controlling stockholders have no inalienable right to usurp the authority of boards of directors that they elect.

Readers familiar with my scholarship will recognize a hint of direct or primacy in that quote. In addition, the opinion will be noteworthy for its careful and thoughtful analysis of when the sale of a corporate asset crosses the line to become a sale of "substantially all" of the corporation's assets. (This is important because only the latter sales require shareholder approval; sale of less than all or substantially all assets can be effected solely with director approval.

Who Creates Jobs?

John Kerry's Contract with America's Middle Class claims: "The middle class is the moral and economic backbone of this nation. ... " And, moreover, that it was the middle class that "built America." You know, I;ve worked a fair number of private sector jobs in my lifetime. And not one of those jobs was created by somebody in the middle class. Instead, they were created by small businessmen (yes, including a few trial lawyers!) who became wealthy through their hard work or giant corporations. And those job- creating folks who will bear the burden of John Kerry's tax-and-spend liberalism. His VP John Edwards promises as much: "We're going to roll back -- we're going to roll back the tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans. And we're going to close corporate loopholes." No wonder economists have doubts about Kerry:

The highlight of his economic plan, so far, has been his pledge to repeal the tax cuts given by Congress and President Bush to families making more than $200,000 per year.

Kerry plans to return the savings to middle-class and lower-income families, in the form of further tax cuts and credits, along with a plan to cut health costs.

Wall Street is unhappy about the prospect of this happening, fearing that wealthy people will have less money to invest.

In the short term, Wall Streeters say, it could give the economy a shot in the arm, since lower-income people tend to spend more of their income than upper- income people. But taking money out of the hands of upper-income people could hurt future growth, said Anthony Chan, chief economist at Banc One Investment Advisors. "That group is investing and saving. In the longer term, it would hurt."

And President Bush and some economists believe small-business owners would be hurt by such a measure, because many choose to pay personal-income tax rates.

"There's that group of small business owners, where a lot of the jobs are, for whom hiking taxes will hurt their business," said Robert Brusca, chief economist at Fact & Opinion Economics. "They already face higher heating costs, insurance costs -- at some point, they may decide there are too many costs to run a business and decide it's not worth it any more."

Granted, apparently some economists think the effects will be only marginal, but tell it to the folks at the margin who won't get a job because Kerry's tax increases reduced economic investment and growth.

Perhaps Merits Matter After All

A famous law review article by Janet Cooper Alexander found that that settlements in securities fraud litigation have little to do with the merits of the litigation. Janet Cooper Alexander, Do the Merits Matter? A Study of Settlements in Securities Class Actions, 43 Stan. L. Rev. 497 (1991). Did the enactment of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act back in 1995 change that result? Boalt law professor Steve Choi has just published a paper with some very interesting empirical findings:

The paper provides evidence on the impact of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995 (PSLRA) by examining a sample of initial public offerings from 1990 to 1999 facing a mix of Section 11 and Rule 10b-5 antifraud claims. Others have provided evidence that the PSLRA increased the significance of merit-related factors in determining the incidence and outcomes of securities fraud class actions. The increase in the importance of merit-related factors, however, is consistent with two possible hypotheses. First, the PSLRA may have reduced solely the incidence of nuisance litigation. Second, the PSLRA may have reduced the incidence of both nuisance litigation as well as a subset of the pre-PSLRA meritorious claims where the additional costs imposed by the PSLRA made such claims unprofitable from the perspective of plaintiffs' attorneys. This paper tests between these hypotheses and provides evidence that meritorious claims lacking obvious hard evidence indicia of fraud (an accounting restatement or SEC action) (a) are less likely to be filed post-PSLRA and (b) face a greater likelihood of receiving a dismissal or low-value settlement in the post-PSLRA period. In determining the welfare implications of blocking frivolous suits, policymakers should therefore consider the negative impact of the PSLRA in also discouraging a significant fraction of meritorious litigation.

I like this paper a lot, even though I would quibble with a few points (such as how you measure merit). As a policy matter, moreover, I would argue that it is very difficult to imagine a regulatory scheme that can (a) eliminate strike suits, while (b) leaving meritorious suits unaffected, (c) at a very early stage of the litigation before defendants to strike suits have been put to any significant expense, and (d) do so at a reasonable level of administrability. In other words, we may have to accept the loss of some meritorious suits in order to crack down on strike suits. The unresolved question is whether the social benefits of eliminating strike suits is outweighed by the social costs associated with meritorious litigation going unpursued.

Bonny Doon Le Cigare Volant (California) 2001

In 2001, Le Cigare Volant again tracks a classic Ch�teauneuf-du-Pape formula of blending Grenache, Syrah, Mourv�dre, Cinsault, and Carignane. As usual, it also again features the light-hearted UFO label. The 2001 is a significant improvement on the 2000 vintage. It?s a clean, fresh, very tasty blend of floral berries with lots of acidity and a core of firm tannins. Strong recommendation. Grade: B+

Corporate Racial Identity: More Lunacy from the 9th Circuit

The federal Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals recently held that a corporation can acquire a "racial identity" and therefore have standing to sue in its own name and right under federal civil rights laws on grounds that it was unlawfully discriminated against. This is, of course, just nuts. The Ninth Circuit's approach reifies the corporation, In other words, the court treats the corporation as an entity ? or, more precisely, as a person ? separate from its various constituents. Yet, there is no such thing as a corporate person. The corporation is simply a legal fiction - albeit a very useful one - by which we describe a complex set of contracts having as their nexus a board of directors. (See my article The Board of Directors as Nexus of Contracts for a more detailed account of this argument.) It may be useful to invoke that fiction here, so as to promote administrative convenience by allowing the tntity rather than its individual constituents to sue, but it doesn't change the basic theory. (Compare CE Petit's take with Larry Ribstein's response and Petit's reply.)

CLS Debunked

Brian Leiter has a fascinating post on Critical Legal Studies, which concludes:

What CLS has done is to revive precisely [a] discredited strand of critical theory--the critique of ideas or "consciousness"--in the legal domain. It is not obvious that these critiques are any more plausible or relevant now than they were in 1840.

Ouch.

Trademark your blog

Steven Taylor's must read Poliblog is getting shoved around by a big media outlet:

It came to my attention yesterday that the Seattle Times has started an in house blog using the name of my blog, PoliBlog. I contacted the paper, noted the name problem and requested a name change. I was informed that they would prefer not to change the name, and that their goals were localized and that they would shut down in November. Their traffic and web presence is such that I am willing to live with that. However, despite private pronouncements to me about their intentions in terms of shutting down in November, their public ones (on their blog, and in e-mails to various readers of mine who have e-mailed them to protest the name) have not noted any planned cessation--rather, they make claims based on geography (along the line of "the continent is big enough for a PoliBlog in Seattle and one in Alabama"). I find this disturbing and I have requested of the paper's managing editor written assurance of their intentions to shut down the site in November. They seem to not fully grasp the lack of fixed geography in regards to the internet.

You'd think a newspaper would have more appreciation for intellectual property rights. Anyway, I'm no expert on trademark law, so I can't offer any legal advice. One thing we can all do, however, is to link to Steven's blog and refuse to link to the Times' site. At the very least, after all, we should make sure Steven remains the top Google result for Poliblog and Poliblogger.

Peace Protestors

About 2,000 protesters gathered at noon on the historic Boston Common, site of many of the city's most memorable demonstrations. ... "This is just the beginning of a week of protests," said Larry Holmes, spokesman for Act Now to Stop War and End Racism, a coalition of activist groups that staged the march. ... Several blocks away, about 1,000 anti-abortion advocates gathered at Faneuil Hall, the historic meeting house where patriots gathered before the American Revolution, and set off on their own march to the FleetCenter. The two groups crossed paths at an intersection and exchanged angry words. A brief scuffle broke out between some of the peace demonstrators and a man carrying a graphic anti-abortion sign. The man was pushed to the ground and his shirt was torn but he appeared unhurt.

So they're against fighting to overthrow a mass murderering tyrant, but they're in favor of street fighting to crush dissent from their approved beliefs?

Althouse on Abortion

Ann writes:

If women had no qualms and misgivings and serious moral struggles about abortion, it would make more sense for government to deny them the right to choose. It is precisely because women experience torment over choosing abortion that people who feel abortion is wrong can reject the paternalism of an abortion ban. Supporters of abortion rights should not try to sanitize the difficulty and the guilt out of abortion. It is the very difficulty of the decision that makes it the domain of the individual.

And how would you differentiate infanticide or euthanasia of the elderly, both of which presumably present the actors with moral qualms too? Should they be in the realm of the individual, as well? Personally, I find the Gospel of Life to be both the only plausible moral position and the only logically consistent position:

Thirty years later, taking up the words of the Council and with the same forcefulness I repeat that condemnation in the name of the whole Church, certain that I am interpreting the genuine sentiment of every upright conscience: "Whatever is opposed to life itself, such as any type of murder, genocide, abortion, euthanasia, or wilful self-destruction, whatever violates the integrity of the human person, such as mutilation, torments inflicted on body or mind, attempts to coerce the will itself; whatever insults human dignity, such as subhuman living conditions, arbitrary imprisonment, deportation, slavery, prostitution, the selling of women and children; as well as disgraceful working conditions, where people are treated as mere instruments of gain rather than as free and responsible persons; all these things and others like them are infamies indeed. They poison human society, and they do more harm to those who practise them than to those who suffer from the injury. Moreover, they are a supreme dishonour to the Creator."

Ann responds here. In what strikes me as the core of her comments she observes: "Women would feel outraged that the government was intruding its will into the interior of their bodies." A fair point. Indeed, the problem of government intrusion into the woman's body has always struck me as the strongest moral argument in favor of abortion rights. Yet, I'm afraid it does not persuade me to shift off the hard pro-life position to which I have come. The difficult question here is the extent to which individual autonomy rights should be trumped by duties to another and the community. It's not clear to me why the birth event should so radically shift the moral equation. Believing, as I do, that the fetus is a person, it is very difficult for me to see a difference between abortion and infanticide. Indeed, if the fetus is a person, the case for government regulation of abortion strikes me as being even stronger than that of infanticide. After all, a child that has been born can be separated from its mother and thus protected. In contrast, a child that is still in the womb must be protected there. There are I think two other points to be made. First, I would note the ease with which fathers of unborn children can evade long-range responsibilities by encouraging abortions. Rather than providing liberation for women, I believe that the legalization of abortion has created an environment in which women too often are used for mere gratification, then encouraged to undergo the risks of abortion and the years of emotional trauma that many women feel after an abortion. Finally, I would suggest that the ready availability of abortion has contributed to what John Paul aptly calls the "culture of death." Having thus ensured that I will never be a federal judge, I'll let Ann have the last word if she wishes.