“Life must be lived forwards, but it can only be understood backwards.”1
“One of history’s uses is to remind us how unlikely things can be.2
I have considerably less to say about Steve Teles’ book than the other participants here. That should not be taken as criticism of the book – indeed, I think that The Rise of the Conservative Legal Movement is a terrific book, scholarship of the highest order, and I learned a great deal from it – about the rise of the “LLN” (Liberal Legal Network) in the 1960s and 70s (and in particular about the role that the Ford Foundation, under its then-President MacGeorge Bundy, played in developing that network, about which I knew very little prior to reading this book), about the early failures of the counter-revolutionary attempts (by groups such as the Mountain States Legal Foundation and the Center for Constitutional Litigation), about Henry Manne, and Richard Mellon Scaife, and the Olin Foundation, about the rise of “law and economics,” and about many other people, events, institutions, and ideas that played an important role – at least, Teles has persuaded me that they played an important role – in the rise of the conservative legal movement. [click to continue…]