[lit-ideas] Re: Eric Hobsbawm dies, aged 95
- From: Donal McEvoy <donalmcevoyuk@xxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: "lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx" <lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Fri, 5 Oct 2012 11:25:28 +0100 (BST)
________________________________
From: "cblitid@xxxxxxxx" <cblitid@xxxxxxxx>
>Michael Burleigh finds Hobsbawm "deceitful" and his eminence an indication of
>" the bovine complacency with which, since Mrs Thatcher, the Conservatives
>have allowed such dubious figures licence to dominate the soft culture of the
>BBC and our universities."
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/politics/9579092/Eric-Hobsbawm-A-believer-in-the-Red-utopia-to-the-very-end.html#>
Burleigh writes: "Hobsbawm was one of a group of Central European ÃmigrÃs who
went on to enrich
British and US academic and intellectual life. They were gifted linguists
and technically professional scholars, at a time when British universities
were dominated by port-guzzling Oxbridge hacks, whose vocation was teaching
undergraduates rather than advancing the frontiers of knowledge."
As an Oxbridge graduate may I refute this (my view seems the standard one among
my friends who were also undergraduates there): it would be more accurate to
say "...at a time when British universities
were dominated by port-guzzling Oxbridge hacks, whose vocation was
port-guzzling rather than advancing the frontiers of knowledge." More accurate
still to say their vocation was engaging in donnish banter and gossip in the
Senior Common Room, everything from personal tittle-tattle to anything about
who might secure some chair or other preferment, but nothing much advancing the
frontiers of knowledge. Only in their own fantasy might their vocation have
been teaching undergraduates, many of whom they held in thinly veiled contempt.
To say teaching undergraduates was their vocation would be like my saying that
persuading and engaging a jury was my vocation when in fact my models for
addressing a jury were obscure articles in academic journals with needless
classical references thrown in (and if the jury was left none the wiser that of
course would be their fault, not mine). As well as that, they didn't half talk
some rot. *
Donal
*This shouldnât perhaps be claimed without any
examples being given, particularly as on some rankings Oxford is the second
best in the world of universities.
(1) One tutor's book, based on his doctoral thesis, was an attempt to show the
role of "policy" in judicial decision-making, by way of reading off the role
of "policy" in various judicial decisions. This 'reading off', we were
repeatedly informed, amounted to an "empirical critique" of rival
jurisprudential views. Aside from the misconceived and pretentious use of
"empirical" (for how was this 'reading off' falsifiable by observation?), what
the book lacked was some kind of argument or analysis that explained how we
move from 'what judges say [when giving judgment]' to the underlying
jurisprudence. Imagine, at doctorate level, using the 'talk of mathematicians'
where they talk as if mathematical objects are real objects of some sort
[rather than the product of conventions] as an "empirical critique" of any view
that mathematical objects are not real: without a bridging argument showing how
this (mere) "talk" grounds such a philosophical conclusion, one
might think this would be blue pencilled even in an undergraduate essay. Yet
the equivalent kind of approach seems adequate for a doctorate in law from
Cambridge. Here what should be the meat-and-potatoes of such a "thesis" - the
argument constituting the bridge from 'what judges say' to the underlying
jurisprudence - is left aside as if its not really necessary, or is
self-explanatory, or as if it is provided simply by (mis-)using jargon like
"empirical critique".
(2) Another tutor's book was littered with specious and spurious claims of
which the following is an example, but requires some scene-setting. At common
law, if I steal your painting and sell it to another who buys in good faith,
that buyer does not get a good title - you can sue the buyer to get your
painting back. But property held under trust is different. If I hold ownership
of a house as a trustee for you [with my name on the deeds as the legal owner],
and I sell the house to another who buys the deeds in good faith and without
knowing my legal ownership is subject to a trust [which trust I have kept
hidden from them], you cannot sue the buyer to get back the house. The tutor
describes this different result as the "only unacceptable result", because, to
the buyer, the common law crook [who never legally owns the property] and the
dishonest trustee [who has legal ownership but subject to a trust] will look
the same. But this is specious and spurious.
(a) They do not 'look the same' in any decisive sense: in terms of being
detected by a buyer, the common law crook is much more detectable than the
dishonest trustee: for the dishonest trustee is the legal owner, and so that
they are the person named in the title deeds, and that those deeds are genuine,
will check out because it is true; the common law crook can only pull off a
fraudulent sale of a house by using fake deeds, or by pretending to be the
person named in genuine deeds - but, in both cases, the pretense is detectable
in ways that will not detect that a genine legal owner holds subject to a
trust. Ergo, they do not necessarily look the same at all. (b) The broad
question is which of two innocent parties should suffer. And it might well be
said -contra the tutor completely - that the 'only acceptable result' is that
the loss should fall on the party most able to prevent the loss - not merely
because this is just as between the two innocent
parties, but because it is the only rule that gives the party most able to
prevent the loss, a proper incentive to prevent that loss. Hence the apparent
difference in result. At common law, it is the buyer who should be incentivised
that they are not buying from a common law crook who has no proper legal title,
since the buyer is more able to ensure this than owners are able to ensure that
their property is not stolen; and so the loss should fall on the buyer of
stolen property, and not on the person whose property has been stolen. But when
the property is held under a trust, the loss should fall on the trust and not
the buyer - because it is the settlors of the trust who should be incentivised
to ensure that they choose a trustworthy trustee, something which they can try
to ensure much more readily than a buyer can ensure that a legal owner does not
actually hold that ownership subject to a trust. Without the incentives being
allocated properly, the
law would not only become unacceptable in its working but would fall into
disrepute. But we also see that while on the surface the result may differ [in
one case the buyer loses, in another the buyer wins] the underlying rationale
for this apparent difference is the same viz. proper allocation of incentives
to those most able to prevent the loss (c) Without the rule as it is, the law
would not merely fail to incentivise to prevent loss but would facilitate fraud
- for the settlor could otherwise connive with a dishonest trustee so that the
dishonest trustee sold the property and made off with the proceeds, both
knowing that the beneficiary of the trust could then sue to get the property
back.
(Seen properly, the tutor's [typically unargued and unexplained] contention is
not merely one of a poor teacher but of a poor lawyer.)
(3) A third tutor, who has now sadly passed, had a worthwhile book on the law
of evidence that is not so open to this kind of criticism - gaping holes in
explanation, specious and spurious etc. - and perhaps this should be mentioned
in fairness.
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