...even when not united by adversity, the lawyer and the economist are different rather than hostile. Whether because of natural selection or of a triumph of education over human nature, the lawyer and the economist have very different traits. One which only scrupulous candor compels me to mention is the existence of a higher level of legal than of economic scholarship: if a lawyer cites a fact or quotes a passage, the chances that the fact or quotation are correct are higher then when the economist so cites or quotes. A second difference, which I hasten to mention, is that the lawyer views words, not merely as somthing without a cost of production, but even more as a food for which the reader has an insatiable hunger. The lawyer's luxurious documentation often serves no perceivable role as amplification or support, and must, I assume, be intended as a diary of a peculiarly chosen reading. Could the legal prolixity be a by-product of the adversary process? -- one's adversary must read everything that one writes in a case, and the lawyer's style of writing makes every reader an adversary.I catch hints of H.L. Mencken there, a likely influence on the writing of a man who was young and iconoclastic in the 1930's.
By the way, I just read an article by Craig Freedman (Summer 2003, J. Ec. Ed.) on Stigler as a PhD advisor. He notoriously advised few students, which everybody agrees is because his manner scared them. His only student in 11 years at Columbia was Mark Blaug (not bad average quality!). The article doesn't seem to list his Chicago students, except to say they included, in the first 11 years, Sam Peltzman, John Hause, James Ferguson, and Thomas Sowell, and in later years David Levy. (It *implies* that the list of those in the first 11 years is complete but does not say that-- a good example of poor use of the word "includes" in writing.) [ http://php.indiana.edu/~erasmuse/w/04.02.06b.htm . Erasmusen@yahoo.com. ]
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