Law Review Trivia

I've written about the importance of opening lines before.  Let me ask a trivia question related to the opening line of a law review article.  This one will probably be pretty easy.  Whose article began with this memorable line:

There are places in law through which a pair of mutually oblivious doctrines run in infinitely parallel contrariety, like a pair of poolhall scoring racks on one or the other of which, seemingly at random, cases get hung up.

Comments

[Doug L]

Charles Manson?

[Jacqueline Lipton]

C'mon, Al. You have to give us the answer! Don't keep us guessing.

[Alfred L. Brophy]

Very funny, Doug L. Perhaps a hint is in order: this is the first line of one of the most famous student notes ever written; and its author is a very most famous law professors (and death penalty lawyer).

[Ray Campbell]

Tony Amsterdam's student note, The Void-for-Vagueness Doctrine in the Supreme Court," 109 University of Pennsylvania Law Review 67 (1960)

[Pep]

Better hint -- the Netherlands?

[Alfred L. Brophy]

Very nicely done, Ray.

[Alfred L. Brophy]

Thinking for a moment more about opening lines, maybe we should have a thread on readers' favorites -- both from their own work and work they enjoy. How's this from one of the article of our co-blogger here Calvin Massey: "Fashions in constitutional law, like hemlines, rise and fall." I guess that could be said of academic writing, too.

[Doug L]

"Mother died today. Or was it yesterday?"

-Albert Camus, The Stranger.

[Bruce Boyden]

"There are two things wrong with almost all legal writing. One is its style. The other is its content."

[Michael J.Z. Mannheimer]

"The ones I feel sorry for are the people who paid $150 for the cassette tapes explaining the Federal Rules of Evidence." John Hart Ely, The Irrepressible Myth of Erie, 87 Harv. L. Rev 693 (1974).