Scott Lemieux (Lawyers, Guns and Money) comments (harshly) on Bruce Allen Murphy's Scalia: A Court of One: Murphy's Hamdi Botch. From the conclusion:
[I]n an extreme form it [the error on Hamdi] illustrates why Scalia: A Court of One is a major disappointment … [A] lot of the book is taken up with Murphy’s analysis of what Scalia contributes to the United States Reports, and this really isn’t Murphy’s strong suit. Again, the hash [Murphy] makes of Hamdi seems to be an outlier, but he’s sometimes shaky on basic concepts (“the Court defers to a state’s laws because a rational person would agree with them” isn’t really what the “rational basis” test means) and even when his doctrinal analysis is unobjectionable it’s pedestrian.
(Via Ed Whelan, who adds his thoughts here).
Posted at 6:37 AM