This is the conclusion to a series of posts in which legal historians reflected on Outside In: The Oral History of Guido Calabresi (Oxford University Press), by Norman I. Silber.
“Why am I worried today? Blogs.”
This quote, from one of Norman Silber’s interviews with Guido Calabresi, was part of a reflection on the role of academics in society. Calabresi was explaining his view that academics should be truth-tellers, “whose job is to look into dark places, to tell us what is going on” (OI, v.1, 350). Blogs, to him, raised concerns about academics’ willingness and freedom to tell the truth, because (if I’m reading him correctly) blogs encourage and enable scholars to weigh in immediately on the controversies of the day and, likewise, to receive real-time feedback on their views.
I like to think that this blog raises fewer concerns, and that this series of posts might even strike Calabresi as a worthwhile pursuit of truth. Contributors have admired the wealth of autobiographical and biographical content found in Outside In, and they have paired it with their own scholarly and personal insights in order to enrich readers’ understanding of the past.
Here is a compilation of all the posts in this series:
- Alex Zhang (Emory Law), "Between History and Poetry in Judging"
- Karen Tani (University of Pennsylvania), "Guido Calabresi and the Economic Style" (Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4)
- José Argueta Funes (Berkeley Law), "On American Legal Topography"
- Kate Redburn (Columbia Law), "Guido’s Religious Egalitarianism"
- Serena Mayeri (Penn Carey Law), untitled reflections
- Noah Rosenblum (NYU Law), "An Illustrious Immigrant: Guido in Historical Time"
- Alison Gocke (UVA Law), "The Long Law and Economics Movement"
Should Silber or Calabresi wish to reply, we would welcome the exchange. As Calabresi wisely notes in his "Subject's Note" at the beginning of Volume 1, his own remembrances of particular events and actions did not always align with the conclusions that Silber drew from his research—but the two collaborators’ acceptance of multiple viewpoints is part of what made the project “a joy” and the resulting volumes a treasure.
-- Karen Tani
