Lipshaw Creates Firestorm By Talking About Religion and Brian Leiter

Two subjects that, Miss Manners said, should never be the talk at a formal dinner.  Anyway, Jeff’s SSRN piece analyzing Leiter’s conception of religion has become “recommended reading” by Larry Solum on the Legal Theory Blog, and is number one with a bullet on the First Amendment Law Prof Blog. 

It has also caused some consternation on the Prawfsblawg blog because Brian Leiter does not like what Jeff says very much.  Although blogger Rick Garnett cut out the most strident comments by various people (none by Jeff, who is polite, in my opinion), it is still fun to read Professor Leiter’s apparent position that Jeff is wrong with a capital F.  When he refers to Jeff as Professor Lipshaw (as in “Professor Lipshaw’s incompetent caricature of my arguments in the SSRN essay”), you immediately think of Marshall McLuhan coming out from behind a theatre billboard telling Jeff, “You know nothing of my work.  How you got to be a professor in anything is beyond me.”  [And read a real attempt to engage Jeff intellectually here by blogger Michael Young.]  Keep it up, Jeff.  At least he spelled your name right.  If law school were a situation comedy, you and Brian Leiter would be in-laws.

[Alan Childress]