Lawrence Lessig has been fighting the Eldred v. Ashcroft case for four years; the verdict was a 7-2 against. His Jan. 16 entry strikes a chord with me; I can hear the voice of someone who has believed fervently and worked with an intensity that belied that belief.

I believe he was right to work with this passion, and this passion is not misguided; it is tempered by intellect and a rigor of method. Apathy, however, is sometimes the thing most easily missed by the passionate:

The puzzle in the case was the silent 5 — the 5 justices who have consistently argued that Congress’s power is limited; that enumerated powers must be read in a way that makes sense of those limits. It was my judgment that those justices would apply the same principle to the Copyright Clause, or at least explain why they did not. And ever since the argument on October 9, I have struggled to imagine how they could ever write an opinion that would distinguish commerce from copyright.

It had never even crossed my mind that these 5 justices would simply duck the issue. By assigning the opinion to a justice who has consistently rejected that principle (Justice Ginsburg), the Chief Justice avoided any need to show why his principle of enumeration applied to some clauses of Article I, sec. 8, but not others. And as there was no reason for the dissent to mention the argument, the case gets decided without the central argument that we had advanced even being discussed. It was Hamlet without the Prince.

“How can they just not care?” I know this feeling well. Anyone who has worked hard and passionately for a cause can easily forget that the world does not share their passion. The world is not necessarily compelled to see their way.

I also understand his closing sentiments. Great passion crashes greatly.

Harvard Professor Roberto Unger ends one of his first books by describing us, the professors, as “priests who have lost their faith but kept their jobs.” I remember loathing those “priests” as a student. They have the right to lose their faith, I thought; they have no right to keep their job.

I have felt, in the past, similarly about working in an interdisciplinary field. I have simply responded by working harder, and trusting that in the end, rigor will rule the day. I measure my success not by how the establishment views my efforts, but by a broader, more open-minded community. Scholarship is scholarship, and if someone cannot accept it into their world view, then it is perhaps they who are closed minded, not you who are wrong.

Then again, my test has not yet come. How I will feel rejection letter after rejection letter is yet to be seen. Life, however, will go on, and I would not alter my course even if I could see where it led. I have chosen, and I have chosen rightly for me.