With Kagan's nomination the the Supreme Court, the issue of plagiarism at Harvard has arisen ... again. And people like Glenn Reynolds (a law professor) are asking:
what is it with Harvard and plagiarism, anyway?
Well, I have an answer, and while it's not Harvard-specific, it does have the property of being credible. You see, there are only so many good ideas in Legal Studies today, and a glut of lawyers. There are just not enough ideas to go around, so lawyers, like good Liberals everywhere, are into recycling. It's not plagiarism, it's insuring that ideas are not carelessly discarded after a single outing. Allan Dershowitz should be praised, not condemned, for picking a good idea out of the trash, brushing it up and sporting it as his own. Just like going to the Goodwill store and giving that tweed jacket a second life.
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