Critiquing Cass Sunstein
Since I'm in Japan, I'm going to feel free to nitpick Cass Sunstein's latest piece on The Volokh Conspiracy, "Holmes Haiku":
Ok, it's not quite a haiku. But as sentences in Supreme Court opinions go, it's not all that far from that: "Property, a creation of law, does not arise from value, although exchangeable -- a matter of fact." That's from Holmes' 1918 opinion in INS v. AP.
No, it's not even close. It's reasonably close in syllables--enough that Prof. Sunstein's caveat would cover it--but it doesn't contain a kigo, a word referencing a season. Indeed, it has nothing close, unless one wants to apply 'value' to a season. Since most of the annual general meetings of Japanese corporations are occuring about now, maybe you could stretch it to reference summer. But I don't think that's what Sunstein was on about.
I only mention it because some haiku afficianados of my acquaintance get rather miffy when people start talking about things being 'like haiku' when what they mean is 'short.' As a friend of mine once sniffed: "When we already have a decent word like epigram, why do we need to stomp on a Japanese one?"
Comments
A nit: The name is spelled with one N in the middle, and two N's total, not three. SuNstein, not SuNNstein.
See http://www.law.uchicago.edu/faculty/sunstein/
Posted by: Kaimi | June 25, 2004 04:01 PM
Thanks! (I know I checked this, and must have still gotten it wrong. Very sloppy of me.)
Nit noted, picked, and now corrected.
Posted by: A. Rickey | June 26, 2004 10:49 PM