Submitted by hdhouse, Sep 24, 2007 07:49

There are, obviously, two classes in our society - lawyers and lay people. Obviously the quarter percent requires a brief by brief cited book about the holy of holys, perhaps fewer examples but each fleshed out in the detail that makes the other 99+% of us glaze over in disbelief.

The majority likes simply to "take a peek" under the robes and are comforted that there are human beings in there who, selected by a highly political and ideological basis, approaching law with some "seat of the pants" reasoning and common sense.

Ms. Althouse clearly wants the detail, to see the wheat before it is ground, as it is ground and as it is bagged. Would Toobin have satisfied her grist-lust if he had perhaps taken 3-4 cases and footnoted them to death in 4 chapters? Perhaps. Would such an investigation and therefore book have driven another wedge of "non-understanding" into the body politic who views the court and its processes as one part mysticism and one part political convention?

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