Ceramic Spirits of the Law

Abstract

This was supposed to be a speech delivered by the author at a meeting of the Tenth Circuit Historical Society on March 11, 2020, in the Byron White U.S. Courthouse in Denver, Colorado. But COVID-19 intervened, and the timid DC-based author did not travel to Denver for the event. Routine recourse to Zoom was not yet a thing, so remote delivery was not even considered. The speech was instead read by one of the organizers of the event, Stephen R. McAllister, a longtime friend of, and frequent contributor to, the Green Bag (and also a former law clerk to Justice Byron R. White). That speech, gently revised for readability instead of listenability, is reproduced below. It is part partial origin story (about Green Bag bobbleheads in general) and part elaborated annotation (about the Justice White bobblehead in particular). And there is an aside about eccentricities in the reporting of the opinions of Justices of the U.S. Supreme Court.

Keywords: U.S. Reports, Rehnquist, Marshall, Lockwood, Coleman, Hutchinson, Tushnet, basketball, Tarkanian, NCAA, Shakespeare, Chadha, Westlaw, U.S. Reports, Julius Caesar, Taco Cabana