What do judges wear beneath their black robes? Mostly likely tie-dyed t-shirts, hemp belts, and peace symbols. For despite their seemingly conventionalist exterior, the music they cite in their legal opinions and briefs reveals they are a bunch of closet hippies:
No musician’s lyrics are more often cited than Dylan’s in court opinions and briefs, say legal experts who have chronicled the artist’s influence on today’s legal community. From U.S. Supreme Court rulings to law school courses, Dylan’s words are used to convey messages about the law and courts gone astray.
His signature protest songs, “Blowin’ in the Wind” and “The Times They Are a-Changin’,” gave voice and vocabulary to the antiwar and civil rights marches. His most powerful ballads, “The Lonesome Death of Hattie Carroll” and “Hurricane,” have become models for legal storytelling and using music to make a point.
Dylan’s music and values have imprinted themselves on the justice system because his songs were the score playing during the formative years of the judges and lawyers now populating the nation’s courthouses, colleges and blue-chip law firms, says Michael Perlin, a New York Law School professor who has used Dylan lyrics as titles for at least 50 published law journal articles.
[. . .]
During a semester in 2007, Long combed legal databases to identify lyrics in court filings and scholarly publications, finding Dylan cited 186 times, far outpacing the rest of the top 10: the Beatles, 74; Bruce Springsteen, 69; Paul Simon, 59; Woody Guthrie, 43; the Rolling Stones, 39; the Grateful Dead, 32; Simon & Garfunkel, 30; Joni Mitchell, 28; and R.E.M., 27.
Is it any wonder that our judicial system is such a mess when we have Deadheads writing legal briefs?
May 10th, 2011 | 10:36 am
Mr. Carter:
Ad hominem attacks do not become you.
May 10th, 2011 | 10:38 am
Carson Chittom Ad hominem attacks do not become you.
Oy vey. It was a joke. I just like tweaking the Dylan fans.
Now go take a bath, hippie.
May 10th, 2011 | 10:45 am
Mr. Carter:
I operate under the principle that jokes should be funny—or hey, at least obscene. If you’re “tweaking” people you don’t know, that just means you’re being mean.
For the record, I’m not a Dylan or a Dead fan—both well before my time.
May 10th, 2011 | 10:51 am
I operate under the principle that jokes should be funny—or hey, at least obscene.
I myself prefer humor that is subtle—and aimed at hippies.
If you’re “tweaking” people you don’t know . . .
I suspect the Dylan fans can take it. If they can stand Bob’s voice, they can probably stand anything—including a bit of good-natured ribbing.
For the record, I’m not a Dylan or a Dead fan—both well before my time.
Mine too. I’m old (41) but not that old. I realize that there are a lot of Baby Boomers in the judiciary, but they should really update their iPods. Even REM is geezer-rock.
May 10th, 2011 | 10:59 am
I guess what I meant was: having read lots of your other posts, knowing that you come from a very conservative perspective, I honestly didn’t read your “ribbing” as “good-natured.” Apparently, I misunderstood you, so I apologize. And hey, at 31, 41′s not looking old at all.
May 10th, 2011 | 11:04 am
I would have scoffed at this if I had not witnessed the Dead Head cultural immersion while visiting my sister’s law school. (Yes, I am having a flashback: the commencement address – to faculty, family, august guests including a Supreme Court Justice – that ended with the pronouncement, “What a long, strange trip it’s been.” Yes.)
May 10th, 2011 | 11:12 am
To their credit, conservative judges cite 80s music. See, e.g., Zibtluda LLC v. Gwinnett County, Georgia 411 F.3d 1278, 1280 (11th Cir. 2005).
May 10th, 2011 | 11:16 am
Interesting and not that surprising. I am a lawyer and my formative years were more in the Bruce Springsteen era than the Dylan glory days. One point to consider as a possible silver lining: Dylan was never the liberal icon that hippies and other children of the sixties wanted him to be. He gave them some good anti-war songs and raised some valid social criticisms, however many lefties felt abandoned by him. He fought against becoming the poster child for the hippie generation. He later became a born again christian and I believe a recent biography shows him to be more conservative than one would expect. Perhaps some conservative justices are using Dylan’s language to make some converts. If not they ought to consider it.
May 10th, 2011 | 11:29 am
From the August/September 2006 First Things article by Stephen H. Webb:
NO MATTER HOW MANY albums Bob Dylan keeps recording, he will always be an icon of the 1960s. Elvis Presley might have invented rock and roll, but Dylan infused it with a moral seriousness that, for better or worse, gave rock the cultural status it still enjoys to this day. . . . Dylan’s surreal lyrics and offbeat diction furnished rock with the pedigree of an art form. Above all, he was both a musical and a social revolutionary. He challenged the conservative consensus of the 1950s by giving a unique voice to the radical politics of the 1960s. With songs like “Masters of War,” he spoke truth to power, and with songs like “Don’t Think Twice, It’s All Right,” he called for the liberation of personal behavior from traditional moral constraints. He knew the times were changing, and his music led the way.
At least that is what the scholars and journalists who grew up listening to Dylan want you to believe. By dominating the abundant secondary literature about Dylan, the survivors of the 1960s have a lot invested in the myth of Dylan as a man on the political and cultural Left. But to read the recently published volume Bob Dylan: The Essential Interviews is to realize that this is not just off the mark-it’s off the wall. Dylan was more mysterious, private, and complex than the 1960s generation could fathom—and the humbling fact is that their greatest musical hero was not one of them.
May 10th, 2011 | 11:38 am
Here’s a fun exercise: try separating the music from the persona. Sort of like appreciating Wagner while forgetting he was a vile anti-semite.
The Grateful Dead produced a remarkable catalog of music, influenced by folk and Americana (Garcia), blues (McKernan), rock and roll (Weir), “world” (Hart), and 20th-century classical (Lesh)—not to mention jazz, with their extended live jams. Sure, they were smelly hippies. But whatever politics they were supposed to have represented were there largely by association.
Said Jerry Garcia himself in an interview: “Our trip was never to go out and change the world. I mean, what would we change it to? Whatever we did would probably be worse than the way it is now.”
May 10th, 2011 | 12:18 pm
Even if it weren’t funny, not every joke can succeed. Blogging is somewhat like being a comedian — not every post can be uproariously funny or successfully entertaining. It is a tough gig. Cut Joe some slack.
Also, being a lawyer, I will say that, frankly, most lawyers who quote the Grateful Dead are damn crusty old hippies, whose judicial philosophy would be inconsistent in the main with legal conservatives of whatever stripe. It isn’t ad hominem. Just a passing observation.
May 10th, 2011 | 12:19 pm
As a reader of this site who was born in the 1980′s, I would just like to say that Bob Dylan sucks… and the 1960s too.
On a more relevant note, once the hipsters-turned-lawyers of my generation become judges, expect to see more Arcade Fire, Passion Pit and At The Drive-In quotes. All opinions will be for irony’s sake, though, so there shouldn’t be any precedential value to them (unless that would seem ironic).
May 10th, 2011 | 1:00 pm
We Lawzguls find this both amusing and interesting.
May 10th, 2011 | 1:45 pm
Mike To their credit, conservative judges cite 80s music.
LOL, good one! Yet I can see “you spin me right round baby right round” showing up in a decision. And if that doesn’t scare you, one mere word should do it: Madonna.
Heh. In a few more years, we may see 90s music showing up in decisions. “Hit me baby one more time.”
May 10th, 2011 | 1:56 pm
Oh dear, not on the First Things site, too…
Can’t we all just agree that everything about “rock and roll” is extremely overrated, and that it’s a very low form of art, unsuitable for adult tastes, let alone discussion?
Hasn’t anybody here heard of Frank Sinatra?
May 10th, 2011 | 1:57 pm
In one of the few musical references I recall in the Scottish courts, counsel informed the judge that the case involved the well-known soccer player Paul Gascoign, “known,” said counsel, “as Gazza.”
“As in ‘La Gazza Ladra’ ?” asked the judge, obviously more familiar with Rossini than the sports pages.
May 10th, 2011 | 1:59 pm
@pigboy
Although I totally agree (listening to 5/5/77 now!), you’re fighting an uphill battle with this crowd.
May 10th, 2011 | 2:44 pm
Consider us tweaked, Joe ;).
A Dylan concert is a weird thing. You go to one, and you’ll find the Deadhead hippie types spinning around and doing stupid things.
But you’ll also find the lawyers, the doctors, the professors, and maybe, just maybe, a priest or two.
May 10th, 2011 | 2:59 pm
I was born in in the ’80′s too, Tim! However, I like both Dylan and The Dead — even now, after finishing college, cutting my hair, exchanging my scruffy plaid shirts for polos, and getting a job and a wife.
Said wife, by the way, is more into the Rolling Stones and David Bowie.
We are both conservatives, though! But neither of us are lawyers or judges.
May 10th, 2011 | 6:06 pm
I suspect the Dylan fans can take it. If they can stand Bob’s voice, they can probably stand anything—including a bit of good-natured ribbing.
I’ve been to 51 shows, so I can take his voice and I enjoy the ribbing. But he’s not a hippie and neither am I!
May 10th, 2011 | 6:22 pm
Can’t we all just agree that everything about “rock and roll” is extremely overrated, and that it’s a very low form of art, unsuitable for adult tastes, let alone discussion?
That’s like saying that sweets are a childish taste. There are Gummi Bears and there is Sachertorte, and there are many kinds of rock ‘n roll and plenty of levels, from the base to the sophisticated, to appreciate it on. I’ve largely lost my taste for it except in small doses, and I feel sorry for anyone whose taste never expands beyond it. But I don’t turn my nose up at Sachertorte.
May 11th, 2011 | 12:03 am
“To live outside the law you must honest.”
May 11th, 2011 | 2:27 am
Hasn’t anybody here heard of Frank Sinatra?
Is that the guy who just sorta slowly talks?
Fun post. And who doesn’t like finding bits of levity in legal opinions once in a while?
May 11th, 2011 | 2:31 am
Joan Baez: “Thirty some years whenever I would go to a march or a sit-in or a lie-in, or a be-in, or a jail-in and people would say, ‘Is Bob [Dylan] coming,’ and I’ll say ‘he never comes, you moron, never did, probably never will. When are you going to get it?”
May 11th, 2011 | 5:17 am
“Is it any wonder that our judicial system is such a mess when we have Deadheads writing legal briefs?”
The answer is blowin’ in the wind.
May 11th, 2011 | 7:42 am
“Is that the guy who just sorta slowly talks?”
Is that the guy who’s never actually listened to Sinatra? ;-)
I like a wide variety of music, but Sinatra not actually sing? Come on.
May 11th, 2011 | 8:05 am
Well–this explains the strangely sweet odor which so often emanates from “chambers” between the courtroom sessions!
Stare decisis is also for charlatans and those with no common sense. A prominent case in point is Roe v Wade. The radical justices use this bit of terrible jurisprudence to turn millenia of common sense and good law on its ear, then turn around and use stare decisis as a defense against any radical justices which may come later and try to undo the damage.
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