Bench-Slapped! Nino Responds to 'Studious' Invasion of Privacy

by Clerquette 

The above-signed blogress admits to daydreaming about what it would be like if, one day, the anxiety-inducing 'ping' or intrusive new-message rumble of her BlackBerry signaled the receipt of something more glamorous than the Daily Decision Alert or conference call dial-in instructions ... like an e-mail from one of the Supremes!  Sadly, Clerquette has yet to experience such e-Nirvana.  But our fabulous friend at Above the Law, Kashmir Hill, is living the dream.

As Kash reports today, ATL wrote last week about a Fordham law professor who instructed his class to assemble a dossier of publicly-available information about Justice Antonin Scalia.  Although Clerquette can certainly understand the urge to satisfy one's cyber-curiosity about this famously spicy jurist, the professor was, in fact, responding to Nino's remarks at a conference on privacy issues, at which he pooh-pooed the notion that "every single datum about [his] life is private." Nino's characteristically no-nonsense opinion: "That's silly."

Kash wrote to the Justice to ask him how he felt about the assembly of what sounds, to Clerquette, like the starting ingredients for Nino's Facebook page. (Hint, hint.) And Nino wrote back, with his typical puissance.  Clerquette encourages you to go directly to the source for full coverage, but cannot resist the urge to share Nino's response here:

I stand by my remark at the Institute of American and Talmudic Law conference that it is silly to think that every single datum about my life is private. I was referring, of course, to whether every single datum about my life deserves privacy protection in law.
It is not a rare phenomenon that what is legal may also be quite irresponsible. That appears in the First Amendment context all the time. What can be said often should not be said. Prof. Reidenberg's exercise is an example of perfectly legal, abominably poor judgment. Since he was not teaching a course in judgment, I presume he felt no responsibility to display any.

Meow!  Professor Reidenberg, you got served ... with a helping of Nino's famously piquant CastiGate-O-Rade! Consider yourself honored.

Congratulations, Kash! For now, Clerquette continues to dream a dream of Supreme e-mail.

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