This is my kind of email:

Dear Jonah – I went into law school in 1998, at the age of 36, a moderate conservative with no real feel for judicial philosophy and who the warring parties were. My classmates and I, during a long year of Con Law, were exposed to the writings of Justices Scalia and Thomas almost exclusively in dissents. (The case books today often show them writing majority opinions; but such were rare a mere 10 years ago). What really struck me, and I’m sure many lawyers would echo this, is how damn *convincing* both justices’ dissents were. They both often made a case for a contrary outcome that made sense within the context of the law in which we were learning. That is, given the scope and flow of American Const Law, and given our roughly chronological exposure to that body of law’s development, many students were able to see, as what seemed to them a matter of course, that Scalia and Thomas had much firmer Const Law foundations on which to hang their opinion than the majority, which often was seen as stretching that tradition to encompass a desired outcome, something even partisans and fans of the outcome could (almost always) see. That’s the first level of appreciating Thomas’ abilities as a jurist. The second level is that, once you begin to see that, the student of Const Law cannot help but notice that Scalia and Thomas, while similar in temperment, actually possess a much different approach and view. I could bore you with citations, but anyone with knowledge of the S Ct’s published opinions can verify readily that the two often disagree in quite fundamental ways on very basic issues. The number of conservative lawyers the dissents of Scalia and Thomas has produced is just astounding. Kevin Ps> I hear Wolverine solo movie has started filming in Japan, so it looks like they’re following the solo comic book story line.