Paul Krugman: The Careerism and De Facto Soft Corruption of the Center_: "given Kavanaugh's record (sexual assault aside) and the Whelan stunt it's now clear that the right-wing judicial establishment is full of charlatans and cranks.... What's different is how respectfully the judicial crazies have been treated by the non-right-wing legal establishment...
...Economists generally call cranks cranks, with some unfortunate exceptions; lawyers apparently don't. The unfortunate exception I have in mind, btw, is the letter too many colleagues signed supporting Kevin Hassett—who repaid their gesture by being every bit as dishonest and craven as you might have expected. But there's been nothing like the way law professors rushed to endorse Kavanaugh—who got his career start pursuing conspiracy theories—or the high reputation of Whelan, who seems to have been a crank all along.
What seems to explain the difference is incentives. Judges are political appointees; so a lawyer may find himself or herself facing a Federalist Society judge, creating an incentive to treat these people respectfully. Nothing comparable in econ. The point here is that in this area, as in so many others, we got to this nightmare point in US history in part because of the craziness of the right, but also in part because of the careerism and de facto soft corruption of much of the center...
#shouldread
