Re Bork, I find this much more significant (and therefore of course overlooked by the general public) than his being allegedly maligned:
https://washingtonmonthly.com/2018/0...ng-of-america/
So how does one come to advise so wrongly on the law? Well, a good start would be a sheltered background, a lack of exposure to actual commerce that would give one a more rounded view. Bork was an upper middle class to affluent kid who went from boarding school to college to law school. He served in the Marines for a bit and practiced in a huge firm for a few years and then, you guessed it, straight to academia.
Where he could think in the abstract to his heart's content.
If you compare Bork's background to the prosecutors in the Stone case, you'll find similar backgrounds. All people who spent the majority of their time working within a discipline where they were encouraged to think in the abstract more than in the practical.
It is only hubris, or the abstract notion that because one can *technically* call something a threat he may do so in a sentencing memo such as Stone's, that could lead one to do something so dumb and also potentially damaging. Sounds kinda like Bork on antitrust, no?
(Oh, but even if we detest Bork, as we all should, he is indeed a giant intellect in the area of noodling on antitrust matters! Um... no. Bullshit. He's an ivory tower ego who Fucked Things Up With Deeply Flawed Reasoning. Fuck him more for that than for any other shitty views he might have had.)
Maybe, and maybe I'm just riffing here, people who choose to go to law school ought to be compelled to first do at least five years in private sector before they matriculate. I doubt I'll find many voices here who disagree with the notion that the profession is riddled with immature, sociopathic, and socially maladjusted individuals. (Even more so than finance.) If we're going to give these people influence on the laws that impact so many, on the sentences of other humans to time in jail, shouldn't we demand more than purely abstract thinkers?
Or, if you disagree, if you think we must have purely abstract thinkers judges us and write our laws, shouldn't we leave that to algorithms? What's more abstract than that? They're already better investors than humans. Surely they could best us in the pedestrian thinking involved in law.
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