Law Professors Are Monday Morning Quarterbacks

So, I've been working on a paper that's due tomorrow criticizing a Yale law professor's argument about redistributing wealth (hence, I really shouldn't be posting to my blog right now, but this just hit me and it will better the world to get it off my chest). And I notice a common thread among all the academic papers I come across.

All these law review articles I've been reading criticize the Court one way or another for argumentative and intellectual mis-steps. Always ending with something like, "so you see, Roe v. Wade was improperly decided. We should only allow extra terrestrials to perform abortions, not other human beings because that'd be murder!" Or, "FDR was such a genius. By disregarding the Constitution's mandate of Seperation of Powers during the 30s and 40s, we not only got out of the Depression as quickly and efficiently as possible, but he laid the groundwork for such awesome government entitlement programs that will self-sustain forever like Welfare, Social Security, and hopefully--now that The Chosen One is taking office--Socialized Health-care. *crosses fingers!!!*"

My point is this, law professors are just Monday Morning Quarterbacks. They're Sean Salisbury, Steven A. Smith, Skip Bayless, Keith Olberman, Sean Hannity etc. They didn't have to deal with the difficult decisions faced by these judges with the knowledge (often times limited) and resources as they faced them. They also don't have to hack up their opinions in order to compromise with the 8 other brilliant and ideologically diverse members of the Court.

Now, what the law profs do is necessary. We may come across these issues again in the future, and in order to progress, a little retrospection and learning from our mistakes never hurt anyone (G-Dubbya, I'm staring in your direction).

But, while these profs like to pat themselves on the back every time they get published because they are so enlightened, and we peon law students try and chip away at their Ivory Tower of Intelligentsia, it helps to remember that they write things every bit as ludicrous as this: