And the Academy Award for Hypocrisy Goes to...

Brad Delong points out the hypocrisy of right wing former Supreme Court appointee Robert H. Bork, a long time advocate for reform, who just won a tort action for $1 million against the Yale Club for a fall he took climbing up to the podium:

There were always two modes of tort reformers. There were people who said relying on tort lawsuits to assess liability a lousy system because it (a) provides screwy incentives and (b) gives out semi-random lottery wins to a few. And there were people who said that filing a tort lawsuit was an act of theft and piracy. Bork was always in the second camp.

If somebody in the first camp wants to file a slip-and-fall lawsuit, I say fine: the fact that they think the system is bad from a utilitarian perspective doesn't make it in any sense immoral for them to exercise their rights under it. People in the second camp--like Robert Bork--are a different kettle of fish entirely. If they truly believe tort lawsuits are bad because they are acts of piracy and theft, then Robert Bork is a self-confessed pirate and thief...