Re. "Say it ain’t so, Joe."

From: Alan M. Dershowitz
To: Dean Lawrence R. Velvel
Sent: Thursday, September 30, 2004 11:08 AM
Subject: Dershowitz response


Dear Dean Velvel:

Thank you for your generally kind words about me. I understand your criticism of the comments that were attributed to me in various newspaper reports. Let me make my position clear. I do believe there are cultural differences between the legal profession and academia, especially in the context of hierarchical law firms where briefs are produced by the research and writing of associates and junior partners and then either signed by the law firm or by the senior partner. The same is true of briefs produced by prosecutors' offices. Moreover, judges routinely copy verbatim large chunks of briefs submitted by litigants without any attribution whatsoever. This observation was in no way intended to provide any kind of a justification for plagiarism. The observation was made in a related but different context, namely, the problem of lawyers and law professors assigning drafting responsibility to research assistants – a phenomenon that may well lead to accidental plagiarism. It is because of this cultural difference that I proposed the establishment of a committee to lay out clear guidelines on attribution and the use of assistance. Lawyers love clear lines and easily adapt to them. Unclear lines encourage selective targeting of professors by their ideological enemies and critics. There is never under any circumstances any justification for plagiarism and nothing I said was intended to serve as a justification. If you’ve read my books, particularly, The Abuse Excuse, you know that I’m very tough on excuses. To understand is not to forgive, but it is to suggest positive steps designed to avoid recurrence of the problem.

I’m pleased that these issues are now being debated on your blog and others. Debate about these matters is healthy.

Sincerely,
Alan Dershowitz
__________
Alan M. Dershowitz
Felix Frankfurter Professor of Law
Harvard Law School
1575 Massachusetts Avenue
Cambridge, MA 02138

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----- Original Message -----
From: Richard_Posner
To: Dean Lawrence R. Velvel
Sent: Wednesday, September 29, 2004 2:56 PM

Larry, you make some good points. But it's a losing battle. The problem is that we no longer have a culture of writing. Writing is now a specialty. So judges, politicians, businessmen, lawyers--and now it seems law professors--increasingly hire ghostwriters (whether they're called ghostwriters, law clerks, or research assistants) as specialists in writing. I am one of the dinosaurs who still does all my own opinion writing (and of course book and article writing as well). You probably are too. But let's face it: we're on the road to extinction.

All the best. Dick
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September 30, 2004

Dear Dick:

Thanks much for the response. You make a very worrisome point. I would therefore like to post your response and this reply, and since your email does not object to posting your comments, I presume it is okay to post them and the reply. But if it is not okay, please tell me.

To turn to your comments, let me say, first, it is surely not surprising that you do your own work. I would have been stunned if it were otherwise. For paradoxical as it may seem to many, nobody turns out the quantity of first rate work that you do if he has others doing his work for him. This would seem to many counterintuitive, since they would think more could be done if others are bearing part of the burden. But though it is counterintuitive to many, it is nonetheless true. There is an old saying that, if you want something done, give the job to a busy person. That is something that I think a lot of people understand. Yet the idea underlying it is the exact same idea as underlies my view that nobody will be as prolific as you have long been if others are writing his stuff.

You are, incidentally, correct in apparently thinking that I too do my own writing. This shows that one can do one’s own writing but not have your prolificness.

You make the worrisome point that the battle against having others do one’s writing is a losing one because "we no longer have a culture of writing." Thus, people turn over their writing to "specialists in writing," "whether they’re called ghost writers, law clerks, or research assistants." One simply cannot argue with your view of the present culture, i.e., that it is not a culture of writing. But such a culture is a disaster, is accompanied by the unhappy corollary that we no longer have a culture of reading, and in significant measure is attributable to our schools, from grammar schools to post graduate schools. Every effort should be made to change the culture, in my judgment, and the change should be promoted at every level of the school system.

The non-culture of writing, I may add, is also pretty strange in a way. For computers have made it easier and faster than ever to write and rewrite. It is far easier today than it was in, say, the first 60 or 70 years of the 20th century. There are precious few people left who, like me, don’t use a computer and write out everything in longhand.

There are some interrelated reasons why I feel strongly that we should get back to a culture of writing. One is the very question of honesty discussed in the prior posting. Much has been said there about that. But let me add one thing: if people insist on continuing to have others do their writing for them, then, heretical as this may sound to CEOs, politicians and judges, due credit should be given to the others. Perhaps, for example, a judge should say in a footnote in his or her opinion that so and so, a law clerk, assisted in the writing of the opinion. Or perhaps politicians or CEOs should explicitly thank -- i.e., give credit to -- those who helped them.

This may sound bizarre to judges and politicians and businessmen. But others have faced and resolved similar problems by giving credit where it is due. Newspapers, for instance, have faced the problem and have solved it by putting the names of two or more reporters on articles, instead of just one. Or sometimes they say at the bottom of a piece that X and Y and Z contributed to the article.

Thanking others for their help would be the honest thing to do. It would also let readers know who contributed to resolutions of problems or to other work -- or is this precisely the problem because the putative writers don’t want people to know that others contributed to the work. I would say that, if it is the problem, if CEOs, politicians and judges don’t want people to know that they have relied on the work of others, then they damn well ought to do the work themselves, as you do.

But there are other problems, too. One is encapsulated by the old saw that clear writing makes clear thinking. This, as you know, is a way of saying that writing things out stimulates one’s thought process wonderfully. Problems, illogicalities, possible solutions, etc. that one would never have thought of otherwise impress themselves on one if he or she has to write out the matter. (Judges have long had an expression that reflects this: "The opinion wouldn’t write.") When people don’t write, their thinking can be far less competent. This is very dangerous to our society, because it bespeaks a much lower quality of thinking on the part of leaders.

The corollary that a society which does not write will not read is, I think, equally true and, if anything, even more dangerous. What can one say? A society where people do not read is doomed to progressively greater ignorance and mistakes, is it not? Although you might strongly disagree, it seems to me that non-reading and the ignorance it breeds are in no little measure responsible for some terrible messes we find ourselves in today. Harry Truman once said there is nothing new under the sun except the history you don’t know, and apparently he also said, or least thought, that not all readers can be leaders, but all leaders must be readers. To me Truman seems exactly right.

There is one final point. Even if we do now have a general culture of non-writing, the people who recently have found themselves in trouble -- Ogletree and Tribe -- and the ones who previously got in difficulty because of a charge of plagiarism -- Ambrose, Kearns-Goodwin, to some extent Dershowitz -- have made their lives in a specific sub-culture of writing. So they in particular should not have had books, for which they claimed credit, written in part or whole by others, and should not have plagiarized. You know, it is sad to say, but may be inevitable, that what has been coming to public notice will lead to questioning of the bona fides of what is done generally at the Harvard Law School, in other parts of Harvard University, and at other top ranked and lesser institutions. Suspicion may run deep for awhile, and God forbid that it should prove widely warranted. This society really should get back to people doing their own work. I seem to remember that Holmes did it. I believe Brandeis did it. You do it. Even turkeys like me do it. At rock bottom there is not much in the way of sustainable reason why most people shouldn’t do it, and there are lots of good reasons why they should.

And yet . . . . and yet . . . . one dreads the possibility that your pessimism may be all too well placed.

In any event, thanks again for your response. I would like to post it and this reply. Also, any further comments you wish to make would be avidly received and, if you have no objection, would be posted.

All the best.
Sincerely yours,
Larry Velvel

From: Richard Posner
To: Dean Lawrence R. Velvel
Sent: Thursday, September 30, 2004 11:02 AM
Subject: Re:

Larry,
you can post my email if you'd like. You make some very telling points in this reply, especially about Ogletree et al. being (or being viewed as) writing specialists. Dick