PJ Rule of Law. Karlan falsely attacked the Bush administration’s Justice Department for not protecting racial minorities. It is a favorite and well worn tactic. Its what the old segregationists like Coley Blease and Woodrow Wilson used to do, stoke racial division by lying about opponents. Unfortunately, Karlan’s lies were published with an air of respectability in the Duke Journal of Law and Public Policy (4 Duke J. Const. L. & Pub. Pol’y 17 (2009)). She writes in this scholarly publication from Duke Law School: “for five of the eight years of the Bush Administration, [they] brought no Voting Rights Act cases of its own except for one case protecting white voters.” The only problem with Karlan’s scholarship is that it is demonstrably false. A short visit to the DOJ website demonstrates her false scholarship. Remember, Karlan says the Voting Section brought no cases to protect minorities under the Voting Rights Act in 5 of 8 years. Let’s look. . . . Let’s rehash. Karlan claimed that no cases were brought by the Bush DOJ under the Voting Rights Act to protect racial minorities in 5 of 8 years (except of course to protect those undeserving whites.) The truth? Cases were brought under the Voting Rights Act to protect non-white racial minorities in 8 of the 8 years of the Bush administration. And some people actually want this woman on the Supreme Court? No Ed, airbrushing hasn’t fallen out of favor. Sometimes they airbrush out inconvenient transcripts. Other times they airbrush out cases filed in United States District Court to protect minority civil rights. Stalin’s old airbrush artists are alive and well. Couldn’t Karlan’s dishonesty offer the academic left a chance to redeem itself in a small way? Couldn’t responsible left of center law professors publically toss Karlan overboard to demonstrate that intellectual honesty survives on the left side of law schools? Couldn’t Karlan’s Dean at Stanford demand that Karlan correct her false scholarship? Of course not. That’s not how they play ball. When rank academic dishonesty among one of their own is spoken of as a justification to disown her, to Karlan’s allies and sycophants, such observations are “bizzaro world.” When an esteemed leftist law professor is called out for dishonesty, less esteemed leftist law professors can’t even begin to process the possibility. That’s the state of the academy today: dishonesty is ignored depending on the political persuasion of the liar. Such evil compounds Karlan’s original lies. Karlan will still get invited to speak at ACS events. She will still get calls from Wall Street Journal reporters. Her articles in barely-read publications will still be blogged about by left wing professors. It is narrative uninterrupted over there. Perhaps there is still enough credibility and honesty on both sides of the aisle in the United States Senate to ensure that Pam Karlan has hit her career ceiling. Hopefully Democrats and Republicans alike can agree that it is best to keep a dishonest academic in her position as a dishonest academic. Karlan’s corrosive and bitter worldview is best kept in the insular world of academia where her damage can be contained to corrupting scores of would-be lawyers who don’t have a clue about who is really standing at the lectern, where Deans like Elizabeth Magill can turn a blind eye to outright scholarly dishonesty on their faculty. Confining her to a life in the academy will limit the damage Karlan could do to the Constitution and the Rule of Law compared to if she were ever nominated to the federal bench. Article printed from Rule of Law: http://pjmedia.com/jchristianadams
“. . . Karlan’s dishonesty goes beyond womyn’s issues. It extends to the election system.