You probably got here by Googling "Brian Leiter." The purpose of this blog—a permanent public record—is to hold Leiter accountable for his abominable conduct, which might otherwise escape notice. Leiter has viciously attacked all of the following individuals (listed in alphabetical order) on his taxpayer-supported blog:
Alschuler, Albert (law professor)
Althouse, Ann (law professor)Beckwith, Francis (philosopher)
Bennett, William (lawyer, philosopher)
Buck, Stuart (lawyer)
Burgess-Jackson, Keith (lawyer, philosopher)
Burton, Steven (philosopher)
Bush, George W. (president)Cheney, Dick (vice president)
Cherniss, Josh (government student)
Ciolli, Anthony (law student)
Coulter, Ann (lawyer)Dershowitz, Alan (law professor)
Dworkin, Ronald (law professor)Feser, Edward (philosopher)
Friedman, David (law professor)Geras, Norman (political scientist)
Gerhardt, Michael (law professor)Heck, Richard (philosopher)
Hitchens, Christopher (journalist)Malkin, Michelle (journalist)
Niska, Harry (lawyer)
Rakove, Jack (historian)
Rawls, Alec (journalist)
Reynolds, Glenn (law professor)
Roberts, John (Supreme Court justice)
Rumsfeld, Donald (Secretary of Defense)Sunstein, Cass (law professor)
Taranto, James (journalist)
Thomas, Clarence (Supreme Court justice)VanDyke, Lawrence (law student)
Volokh, Eugene (law professor)Yoo, John (law professor)
Yousefzadeh, Pejman (lawyer)
There are many others, unfortunately. If you want particulars on any of Leiter's attacks, type his name and that of the victim into Google. I will leave it to you to explain Leiter's thuggishness. Leiter says it's because he's "an irritable New Yorker."¹ University of Wisconsin law professor Ann Althouse says it's because he's a "jackass." Yale University law professor Jules Coleman says it's because he's "complicated." My theory is that he suffers from Narcissistic Personality Disorder. This in no way excuses his shameful conduct, and it certainly doesn't justify it; but it does shed light on why he behaves as he does.
__________
¹"Let's make this point concrete with an example. I recently moved from New York City, my hometown, to San Diego, where I now teach. Among the many wonderful things about San Diego is the great variety of fine dining opportunities. As a New Yorker, however, I have some strong feelings about ambiance and service. One of the odd things about many restaurants in Southern California is that the waiters are very friendly—indeed, too friendly for my tastes. They always introduce themselves, they're chatty, they're cheery and perky, and I've even met some who will rest their hand on my shoulder or touch my arm as though we'd been friends for years.
"Now as an irritable New Yorker committed to preserving my private 'space' in public settings, I find this tasteless familiarity and superficial amiability deeply annoying. Indeed, the phenomenology of these restaurant situations is quite vivid to me: I become tense, agitated, uncomfortable as this annoying sequence of pseudo-intimate interchanges plays out with the waiter.
"Let's go back to the restaurant for an illustration. The best explanation for my experience of the waiter service is surely not that I am detecting (the modestly objective) property of 'annoyingness' in the waiter's conduct. Rather the best explanation would appeal to certain psychological and sociological facts about my upbringing and socialization in New York City, a large, and particularly surly, urban area; it is these psychosocial facts that explain my propensity to find the waiter service annoying—and not the presence of objective 'annoyingness' facts which I 'perceive.'
"Now positing the existence of objective 'annoyingness facts' would help explain only one thing: namely, my judgment that the waiter's service is annoying. At the same time, we would be left with the mystery of why it is no one else detects or perceives the situation as annoying (if it's 'really' annoying why doesn't everyone make the same judgment?). By contrast, an appeal to the peculiarities of my psychological and sociological identity as an irritable New Yorker would explain not only my judgment that the service is annoying, but would also explain why all the other non-New Yorkers I dine with do not share my judgment. These psychosocial facts about my being a New Yorker do other explanatory work as well: for example, they help explain why I am the only person in Southern California who honks my car horn, and why I am more likely to have a dispute with a check-out clerk than are my 'mellow' neighbors."
(Brian Leiter, "The Middle Way," Legal Theory 1 [March 1995]: 21-31, at 26-7, 28, 29 [italics in original; footnote omitted])