Washington and Lee visiting law professor Todd Peppers has published an essay, coauthored with Marquette Law School’s Chad Oldfather, in the Emory Law Journal. The piece is title “Truthiness and the Marble Palace” and is a review of the book “Supreme Ambitions” by David Lat. From the introduction:
Supreme Ambitions raises a host of important questions, extending into most facets of the judicial process, and thus presents many potential angles of approach for reviewers. We are not literary critics, but rather academics who study judicial behavior and institutions. The old adage “write what you know” applies to us too, and so we will primarily address the following two sets of issues raised by the book: First, we consider the book’s reflections on some of the broader pathologies of legal education and the legal profession, including the elitism and ambition that pervade many corners of the legal world, as well as the book’s treatment of challenges faced by women judges and lawyers. Second, we explore the book’s depiction of the processes of judging, including its specific treatment of the clerkship institution, and the implications of clerks and their role for the doing of the work of the judiciary.
You can read the entire essay online.
