Odd analogies

[Volokh, Eugene]

                While I wasn't entirely persuaded by Howard Gillman's
critique of the Court's analogy to NAACP v. Alabama, I do agree that one
ought to be cautious in drawing analogies like that.  Even if the cases are
similar in some formal respects, when the background circumstances
underlying the cases are different enough, the analogy does risk appearing
"tone-deaf" to the reader.

                I wonder, then, what people who sympathize with Howard's
criticism think of the analogy of Justice Scalia to . . . Joseph Stalin.
Shouldn't analogies to one of the three great mass murderers of the century
be just a *bit* more hesitantly drawn?

                Eugene



Paul Finkelman writes:


> The only hard thing for us is that some of us will have to teach this
> stuff with a
> straight face, and try to figure out a "rule" or a "reason."   I am just
> thankful
> that the semester is over, and I will not teach con law this spring, so I
> do not
> have to try to convince students that we do have a rule of law and even a
> rule of
> reason.   This case reminds me of what Uncle Joe Stalin said about
> elections:  it
> doesn't matter who gets to vote, it only matters who gets to count the
> votes;
> this is something that Uncle Nino and Cousin Clarence clearly understand.
>
>
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