FIRST to say Phil Telfeyan must be lying about his "honest belief" about a statue of a barefoot, rag-clad figure depicting a rich, aristocratic man.

"Telfeyan, whose favorite hat is a green beret . . ."

Some Army special forces soldier needs to teach him who's allowed to wear those, and who isn't.

Based on the Crimson article, Hat Boy sounds like a complete douchebag.

Phil is hot!

Phil, if you're looking for a Big Law Sugar Mama to bankroll your public interest dreams, call me.

-- Future Partner, V10

waaaah, i want pajamas day!

Back when I was in high school, my friends would chain themselves to trees & engage in hunger strike tactics to reinstate lame traditions all the time, it was no big deal

FRAT STUD

That Phil totally botched the nature of the statue that supplies the piece's title is hilarious and emblematic of the piece. That he (and the HLR editors) failed to give even a cursory look to the statue seems just a perfect reflection of the piece -- sloppy, completed without care or circumspection, and telling exactly half of the story.

Unbelievable douche.

His profile name of "Harvard Law Avenger" also suggests that he is a d-bag of the highest order.

Doesn't UVA have a kid like this? Wears stuffed animals instead of hats, though.

Phil.

I wouldn't save that kid on the trian track if it meant I would lose my 2007 Honda Civic DX, never mind a Ferrari.

Phil. Think of all those starving kids you could have saved if you hadn't wasted thousands on your hat collection.

Phil doesn't exactly sound like the type to hold down a paying job. How'd he afford those hats? Why didn't he insist that Mommy & Daddy, Inc., donate that money to charity rather than to his spoiled whim?

I went to high school with this kid. He had a whole lot of promise then and I'm pleased to see he's exceeded all of our expectations of utter douchebaggery.

I hope Telfeyan doesn't think that the poor use of the statue was the real problem with the piece. The part that I personally find most egregious is how it basically just repeats Unger's work (I mean even using the same charity!?). At least he cites him.

plus the d-bag needs to fix his teeth.

fucking d-bag.

just re-read the d-bag's comments, and in his first line he apologizes on behalf of the review's members. how presumptuous.

i missed that the first time. it moves him from champion d-bag status to colostomy bag status. what a waste of diarrhea.

Indeed, PT's comment is terribly written. Here are but a few errors/terrible phrasings:

---"The side of the statue which I quoted in my Note"
THAT I quoted

---"There is plenty else in Cambridge which can be depicted as supporting the thesis in my Note,..."
Terrible writing. Should be something like:
Plenty else in Cambridge is capable of supporting the thesis, or
Cambridge scarcely lacks for other examples *that* may be depicted as supporting the thesis...

--- "examples of frivolous activities which cannot be justified under any plausible moral calculus"
THAT cannot be....

---"I regret that neither I nor anyone, during our arduous editing process, who was checking the accuracy of what I wrote in my Note caught this error"
A far superior phrasing would be: I regret that, during our arduous editing process, neither I nor anyone who was checking the accuracy of what I wrote in my Note caught this error

The actual note contains numerous examples of similarly sloppy and terrible prose. Stop using "There is" constantly PT, and wean yourself off the passive voice. Also, learn the difference between "that" and "which."

Do you think Janice Rogers Brown -- his future boss -- has read this note / seen all this?

I am glad I didn't waste 150k at Harvard and have to spend 3 years with pos like this guy!

Phil is from Mira Loma, Ca, a comfortable middle class coommunity with a median home price of $521,000.

In Back to the Future style, Phil travels back a couple of decades and meets his parents. He attacks his parents for their comfortable middle class jobs and berates them into quitting and accepting psoitons as a social worker and activist on a small left newspaper.

Phil travels back to 2008 in the DeLorean and finds himself flipping burgers. He asks his parents what happened. "Sorry, son, but when we quit our jobs we couldn't afford to live in Mira Loma and the schools in our new poor area sucked!"

Dear Phil and other Harvard Law Review editors,

In footnote 22 on page 1905, you cite the census report to say that the "median income of an American family is $48,201". Actually, the report explicitly says that number is the median income of an American HOUSEHOLD. There is a very specific and important difference between census family and census household, which is evident by the census term "non-family household."

You also say "family" in the main text and even italicized the word for emphasis. Actually, the MEDIAN FAMILY INCOME is $58,500, which is higher than the sixth-year public defender salary of $57k and defeats the whole point of the analysis that a public defender earns more than a two-spouse family.
http://factfinder.census.gov/servlet/ACSSAFFFacts

Why purposely change "household" to "family" to support a tenuous point? If you don't know the difference, sometimes it is better to be silent and be thought a fool than to open one's mouth and remove all doubt.

Perhaps this guy won the advocacy competition because he did not have to spend any time researching or writing his "Comment." Any one with reasonable intelligence could have cranked out that claptrap in a matter of days. At other law schools, the law reviews require you to do actual "work" before they will publish your Comment.

7:00, the other top winners of the 2008 ABA moot court competition came from UMemphis (tier 4), Michigan State (tier 3), Seton Hall (#46), South Texas (tier 4), Brooklyn (#47), Regent (tier 4) and Baylor (#49).

We're not talking about winning the Nobel Prize here.

Good find 6:57. The condescending and immature tone of this piece, the lack of research, and the glaring and misleading falsehoods (median income misrepresentation, statue misrepresentation, public defender salary misrepresentation, and the false/laughable claim that law students' loan payments only equal $500) are enough to warrant an apology on the part of both Phil and anyone else on the HLR staff that had a hand in this nonsense.

To quote the great Emily Litella (see here http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emily_Litella):

"Never mind."

The howler about the statue is emblematic of the entire article: the author didn't stop for even the briefest moment to examine whether his assumptions actually made sense; the note is entirely without critical reflection. As a 3L editor, he may have had the right to publish almost whatever he wanted in the review; but by publishing a note of such frivolity, he compromised not only his own reputation but also that of all other HLR editors who make a bona fide effort to write serious, scholarly notes.

I'll try this link again: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emily_Litella

Apparently, at HLR, the "arduous editing process" and related fact-checking that should precede Note publication does not mandate LOOKING AT THE OTHER SIDE OF THE DAMN STATUE!

I look forward to blogosphere coverage of hilariously mistaken Janice Rogers Brown opinions in 2008-2009.

In answer to 6:06 p.m.: you make fun of the "Harvard Law Avenger" thing, but I don't think that makes Phil a douchebag. He's not saying he gave himself that title. Rather, it's a self-deprecating note -- that's what HIS FRIENDS teasingly call him.

In other words, he's admitting that he's perceived, even by his friends, as a little on the fringe-- as passionate in trying to avenge social injustice -- and he's in a self-deprecating way saying he's all right with that, by adopting the name, sort of as a joke. Right?

If I'm correct in my understanding of why he's using "Harvard Law Avenger," I sort of like the guy -- at least he's not shy in sticking to his guns.

7:20 = Phil. Nice attempt at placing at least one comment in your favor.

I think calling comment's reasoning flimsy is too charitable, but talk on this site of his career being over is a little overdone.

If he wasn't planning on doing so before, he has now pretty much locked himself into a public interest job out of school. And many public interest places are so skewed and results-oriented that they will think his note is brilliant just because his conclusion is that it is morally superior to do public interest work. So he's pretty much golden there. A few years out it will be easy to dismiss as youthful indiscretion, and no one will care.

No one really does now, except for 1) indignant former HLS grads that need to get over themselves, and 2) the vultures on this site who next week will be on to some other tabloid post and next year will be on to some other tabloid site (see, e.g. greedy associates)

Hang in there, Phil, but open your eyes to critical reasoning and reality.

6:09 - I believe the UVA guy doesn't actually "wear" the animals. He just brings them to class and adjusts their heads to watch the professor when he or she moves about the room. And don't think he is representative of UVA. Every law school has a few quacks that, unfortunately, get 90% of the press.

7:20

Hi Phil. Go back to counting your hats. Seriously, all joking aside, your comment is the single worst thing I've ever read. And your sloppy writing is a symptom of your sloppy thinking.

7:35, no, I'm not Phil. I'm just saying that people are being too hard on him. I think his post was written with good humor, and various pieces of it are being quoted out of context.

Take, for example, the 7:16 reference to the "arduous editing process." I think Phil made that as a tongue in cheek remark -- he was sort of making fun of the editing process, reputed to be arduous, not really being that arduous in his case. Get it? Give the guy a break for trying to be light-hearted about the whole thing.

7:20 p.m. commentator (NOT Phil)

Rumor has it that Phil personally confronted Orrick CEO Ralph Baxter during his 1L summer and had an awkward conversation that may or may not have led to his not being asked back.

I saw him making a baby in the closet and then I saw the baby and the baby smiled at me.

Way to go, Phil, if you DID tell THE MAN where to stick it!

Isn't that the kind of thing Duncan Kennedy (or maybe it was Alan Dershowitz) years ago wrote that law students should do, to challenge "the system"? Aggressively attack law firm partners?

Come to think of it, maybe Duncan Kennedy was Phil's paper adviser. There can't be a handful of professors who would go along with radical trash like this.

One more thing: does anyone know who was the paper adviser for BARACK OBAMA? The word I've heard, via the Volokh blog comments, is that Obama is one of the few Review editors who published NOTHING while on the Review. Alec K. at least published that case comment last fall which got so much attention, even though rumor has it that his Note was deemed unpublishable.

Was Obama's Note deemed unpublishable, too? Or was he just too lazy to write a paper? Or was he avoiding a paper trail? It would help to know who his third year paper adviser was. Did he write something as radical as our good friend Phil? It would be interesting if someone "in the know" would comment.

"he's admitting that he's perceived, even by his friends, as a little on the fringe-- as passionate in trying to avenge social injustice -- and he's in a self-deprecating way saying he's all right with that, by adopting the name, sort of as a joke"

Oh, I see that's what he's doing. The only problem is, a HLR note this fucking bad isn't funny. It's pathetic. Phil can poo poo this all he wants, say it's all ok and no big deal, but what it comes down to is that he's a sloppy, spoiled brat who doesn't give a shit that he was careless.

Guess whose largesse allows him to think and to live that way.

PAJAMA DAY:

The Mira Loma website has this summary of Pajama Day:

Pajama Day

The morning program has Pajama Day in the Spring. Everyone comes in their pajamas for a special breakfast snack.

http://www.miraloma.org/events.html

Why all the outrage here? What happened? A Harvard law student is exposed as a classic limousine liberal by professing his hypocritical views? Unprecedented!

Yeah Phil, drone on all you want.

Hey Phil, I found a bunch of pornographic photos on a website, shot by one Keith Telfeyan:

http://www.indiecrush.org/?p=118

Any relation? I'm thinking he's your brother -- the first photo looks a lot like you!

8:15,

I think any real outrage here--as opposed to mere riducule--is fueled by what 8:11 pegged as Phil Telfeyan's blythe hypocrisy. He's happy to write a bombastic piece tarring that to which a lot of his peers devote their lives, but when it turns out that he wrote a sloppy, error-ridden piece of trash, he can't see where the beef is. What's the big deal, in his mind, it's just a note.

For those of us who put a lot of value on doing our work well, be it boring corporate contract drafting or interesting pro bono litigation, we're pretty fucking offended by the combination of his note's sanctimonius, holier than thou message and his response's "why are you insulting me for doing shitty work, none of this stuff is as important as my lofty goals" tone.

Well said!

P.S.

Hey Phil Telfeyan,

The sleeves of your ill-fitted jacket aren't supposed to cover the cuffs on your unfilled shirt; get your sorry ass to a tailor, you look as bad as your note reads.

(http://media.www.hlrecord.org/media/storage/paper609/news/2008/04/17/News/Hls-Wins.National.Appellate.Advocacy.Competition-3332885.shtml)

Does anyone know that the moral avenger or whatever spent all of last summer at a law firm?

Surely he donated the money he "earned."

Upon closer inspection, rather than a ill fitted 3 piece suit, Phil may be wearing an overcoat. If so, I humbly retract that part of my critique.

The photo is terrible, so one can easily see how I held that honest belief, etc.

Sincerely,

8:31

He's also an ugly Turk.

There are even more ways in which the error about the statue is emblematic of the paper as a whole. First, the author literally fails to look at what the other side says. Second, the author, for all his rhetoric about poverty and responding to poverty, doesn't recognize poverty when it's literally staring him in the face.

8:57, you're truly insightful; well done.

"First, the author literally fails to look at what the other side says."

Very nicely turned phrase, and a stark contrast to Phil Telfeyan's own writing style.

Phil Telefayan is truly "all hat and no cattle."

Actually, the side of the statue which Phil admits he DID read contains a very important clue to what the statue's about, which despite his supposed intelligence Phil didn't pick up on.

Phil has helpfully supplied a photo of that side (as part of his bid to convince everyone that he had a reasonable, though mistaken, good-faith belief as to what the statue meant) here (1st photo):
http://picasaweb.google.com/harvardlawavenger/CambridgeCommonGreatHungerStatute

So here's what it says: "NEVER AGAIN SHOULD A PEOPLE STARVE IN A WORLD OF PLENTY."

Notice it doesn't say "any person," or "anyone" it says "a people" should never again starve! Obviously, this indicates that mass starvation within a whole nation should never be permitted to occur (there's a political bent here: some suggest that at least in the beginning states, the Irish potato famine was, in effect, a form of genocide perpetrated by the uncaring British government).

Phil, given the statue's reference to "a people," don't you think you should have done a little more digging into the history behind the statue, even if you didn't bother to literally look at the other side?

Hey, does the Review still have subcites and techcites? If so, it seems they don't include walking across the street to see what a statue actually says.

Wow. I just looked at the pictures. When he claimed he hadn't read the other side of the statue, I assumed there was some sort of smallish metal placard on a stand in front of the statue....definitely not GIANT letters inscribed in the base. How embarassingly stupid.

I feel like PT would be very well served to cool out for a while, lay a bit low, and contemplate the possibility of acting in a manner that doesn't scream "I think I'm the smartest person in the room!"

9:22, you're thinking like a textualist. Phil lacks the intellectual rigor to give words a definite meaning and work within the confines of the structure imposed thereby.

-8:23

As 9:31 notes, the main part of the inscription on the statue is on the side at which Phil never looked.

Stop and consider what this means, beyond the specific instance in which he looked at it, felt it embodied his note's thesis, but never walked around it.

He walks past or near this statue most days, and yet, he's never deviated from his rote path so far as to see the other side of a statue that's part of his daily life.

And they call us V3 drones lifeless. Ha!

Dear Phil,

Dearest comrade, we are so proud of you and your work.

Sincerely,

V.I. Lenin and K. Marx

Dear Phil,

Keep fighting the good fight. Soon we will convince those lowly proletariat imbeciles to rise up in rebellion against their capitalist pig opressors. Then, we will nationalize all of the greedy corporations and funnel their profits to "the social good" so that we will be exalted like the kings we are. After we have achieved our great and noble goals, you will be able to own every hat in the country if you so wish and it will be paid for by your hard working, debt-ridden classmates who chose to work for corporate greed instead of the people's need.

Your Comrade,
Mao

Phil Telfeyan's ATL debacle to #3 on GOOGLE!

Hey Mao, how about those eleven year old virgins? Were they a perk for bring freedom to the proletariat, too?

9:58--those virgins were for "society" and the "underprivileged" who otherwise would have no access to women.

--Mao

8:52: I'm not about to defend this guy, but please don't call him a Turk; he's probably Armenian, and that's just not nice.

It seems that with Phil the apple doesn't fall far from the tree where appellate advocacy is concerned (nor is daddy averse to bragging):
http://www.mcgeorge.edu/x2819.xml

Speaking of which, Dad teaches at McGeorge Law, and the family relationship with that school seems to go a bit beyond that (see named scholarship #5):
http://www.mcgeorge.edu/x2504.xml

Fight the power, Phil.

Judging from 10:04's post, it appears that Phil has an acute case of White Guilt, except that since he's Armenian, it's just a case of Privileged Rich Kid Guilt. I hear that the best cure for this illness is closeted self-loathing and disparagement of all those like you.

Even though all these comments are funny and entertaining. I think the best part of this will be when Phil is forced to take a high paying job to pay off his loans.

Preferably, he will be killing babies in his job. Good Luck Phil, your nationally hated.

Sorry, I'm confused, Chairman... how did your bedding them help society and the underprivileged gain access to women?

His nationally hated what?

Don't write like Phil, 10:22. Just don't do it.

Thanks, 10:29, I needed that!

Looks like Phil's daddy is responsible for killing babies for 20 years:

"Before joining the Pacific McGeorge faculty in 2000, Professor Telfeyan amassed over twenty years of experience as both a litigation and transactional attorney."

http://www.mcgeorge.edu/x545.xml

People -- The note was ill conceived and it's perfectly legitimate to tear it to pieces. But comments attacking Phil personally (except insofar as they relate to hypocrisy) should have no place here. The author put his note out into the public discourse, but personal attacks go beyond the pale.

10:58 = Phil's mom.

Phil: can you hook me up with a new car using some of your trust fund?

Someone please explain to me how these scholarships works. Doesn't having a Telfeyan scholarship at a law school mean that this kid's family is loaded?

If this is the case, f*ck off Phil.

Holy shit, Phil Tefelyan. I went to college with him - he used to try to start these incredibly pretentious pseudo intellectual debates by saying something utterly outrageous and then trying to "debate" people. I honestly thought (and possibly hoped) I'd never hear of him again. Anyone know what he's going to do next year, so I can avoid all potential future contact?

On the other hand, this will make for some great 5 year reunion gossip.

You know, it was obviously a poorly thought out piece, and of poor quality, but I can't believe that reason that you guys are collectively so inflamed is that the reasoning per se was bad, or the research was faulty. It's not like you guys are sanctimonious academics, right? On the other hand, considering that most of you are corporate lawyers, maybe you feel a bit excoriated by this piece? Phil is not the only person to suggest that a bunch of intelligent, well-connected people, may best serve their time by other means than drafting documents for corporations to pay off loans for the law schools that YOU ELECTED TO GO TO. You aren't victims.

Let me get this straight, Phil wants to put down people that perform well paid Biglaw/corporate jobs, and yet his own father is a former private firm litigator and CEO.

Thus his ability to preach from to us from Harvard's ivory tower is probably strongly related to his family's ability to afford to live in Mira Loma, CA and go to a decent school...which is a direct result of his father NOT going into low paying public interest.

http://www.mcgeorge.edu/x545.xml

I am reminded of a story which was done on HLS, I think in the Wall St. Journal, in which someone pointed out that Duncan Kennedy, the main professor preaching redistribution to the masses, DROVE A JAGUAR TO WORK. Apparently, indignent, he called the reporter and insisted on a correction of the record -- he emphasized that the Jaguar belongs to his wife.

He married Mopsey Strange, heir to the Boston Globe fortune.

Nice photo of Mopsey here (seems like she likes to write about shopping):
http://www.seaciapavaophotography.com/index.php#s=19

Nice photo of Duncan in the next slide:
http://www.seaciapavaophotography.com/index.php#s=20

Amazing! The same website has this photo of Phil's dog, and "man bag" (nicely matches his hats):
http://www.seaciapavaophotography.com/index.php#s=11

And Phil Tefleyan's classy girlfriend:
http://www.seaciapavaophotography.com/index.php#s=12

And his whole harem (the "Harvard Law Avenger Groupies"?):
http://www.seaciapavaophotography.com/index.php#s=13

Sorry, the direct links I just posted don't work.

But you can go here to find the Mopsey photo:
http://www.seaciapavaophotography.com/school-work/mopsy-strange-kennedy-14_19_49.html

Then, go to the next slide for Duncan. Go back a bit for the dog, girlfriend, and harem photos (girls in red on rollar skates). Good fun.

I can't believe no one has said it yet, but I am 99 percent confident that the supposed comment from PT on the other thread is a hoax.

This is news? Even the WSJ Law Blog isn't sure if they would have posted this. Why not cover something more interesting and important, like secretarial layoffs, or the move to cut costs by switching to generic glass cleaner?

8:07: Only 99% confident it's a hoax, Phil? I guess that means 1% of your brain remembers you posting the thing in an attempt to rapidly diffuse the situation.

Now 99% of your brain is trying to forget it -- and trying to distance yourself from an action which has only attracted more attention to the situation?

Sounds like the Phil phenomenon has struck a nerve with the angry law students who now make up most of the readership of this blog, and who are pissed because they didn't get into HLS, didn't make law review, and didn't get asked to participate in national competitions of any sort. These comments are a yuppiewhine clusterfuck. Be sure to use internet cafes when you post. Someday Phil will be hiring or firing you and you won't want him to know what you said. The Autoadmit lawsuit shows how easy it is to find out.

8:23 p.m. - you've articulated my reasons for irritation quite nicely. Thank you.

8:40 a.m. - Pfiffle. But I stand behind my comments, which is why I post under an easily-traceable user name.

I'd say more but I don't have time to develop my thoughts articulately. I think some outrage is also directed to the fact that this kid has a golden career track laid out in front of him. He'll do quite well without having to really exert himself. But his statements demonstrate an astonishing lack of self-awareness.

-- ET! (who'd write more but has to get back to killing others' babies in order to feed my own)

8:40: Sounds like you're on the Review. I find the behavior of the Law Review editors OTHER than Phil Tefelyan (including you, it seems) lamentable.

Phil Tefelyan drafted up a Note which probably didn't qualify as "scholarship" suitable for publication in the Review in the first place and, if it did, needed a serious amount of editing to make it presentable.

Page 1775 of the May issue, in which Phil's Note appears, lists 86 members of the Board of Editors of the Review. They are EDITORS, right? They're supposed to EDIT, right? And they have an incentive to edit, right? The incentive is that all of the student-written pieces are unsigned, and thus are presented as the collective product of the Review. Each and every one of the editors listed on page 1775 -- not just Phil, but the 85 others -- are in part responsible for the piece drafted by Phil which appears at pages 1886 to 1907. If it's embarrassing, and not up to the standards expected of the Review, it reflects poorly on all of them, not just on Phil. (It would be different if student Notes were signed; then other editors could properly distance themselves from situations like this.)

Consider: each and every editor worked all year within about 100 feet of the statue in question, which apparently is visible across the street outside the Law Review's windows. Yet each and every editor had his or her name listed on an issue in which the statue is falsely described in the following incorrect ways (remember, this is a three-dimensional object; there's no room for "interpretation" about its physical reality):

1. Page 1886 says the statue is "in the middle of" the Cambridge Common, making it seem like a big deal -- the centerpiece of the park. In fact, it's on the edge of the Cambridge Common, as Phil, after actually going over and taking a close look at it, has admitted in his comment:
http://abovethelaw.com/2008/05/hlr_in_toilet_flush_flush.php#comment-601475

2. Page 1886 also says that part of the statue depicts "a wealthy man, dressed in the clothes of a nineteenth-century aristocrat." In fact, as numerous commentators have pointed out, the man is dressed in rags, and is barefoot. Even the photos Phil posted to try to show how someone could have made mistakes in interpreting the statue show that the man's bedraggled and without shoes (particularly photos 6 and 8):
http://picasaweb.google.com/harvardlawavenger/CambridgeCommonGreatHungerStatute

3. Page 1886 also asserts that the man, who is standing, and the mother with child, who is sitting, are reaching toward each other, and are ALMOST, but not quite, touching: "But their hands fail to grasp -- she is inches too far away and the statue has frozen them in that pose forever."

"Inches"? Maybe if you're a lazy editor who just glances out the window 100 feet away it seems like "inches," but judging from the 1st and 3rd photos Phil posted, it looks like SEVERAL FEET separate the fingertips of the two figures:
http://picasaweb.google.com/harvardlawavenger/CambridgeCommonGreatHungerStatute

4. Finally, and most egregiously in terms of an insult to the Irish, to whom the statue is dedicated, is the top of page 1887, which asserts that the statue is making an anti-elitist statement against greedy old rich people:

"The statue is an intergenerational depiction of inequality. As the poverty of the woman is cast in stark contrast to the wealth of the man, the children of each are chilling prophesies of the unequal future that is certain to come."

In fact, as a number of commentators have noted, the subject and point of the statue, which one side says was dedicated by the president of Ireland (a Harvard law alum) is perfectly obvious: it depicts a painful family parting as the result of the Irish potato famine. It does not depict an old rich man brushing off a woman who's seeking a handout. It depicts a mother with a young child saying goodbye to her adult son and his child (her grandchild), as he is forced to leave the country due to the famine:
http://harvardmagazine.com/1997/09/jhj.brevia.html
http://abovethelaw.com/2008/05/hlr_in_toilet_flush_flush.php#comment-601159
http://abovethelaw.com/2008/05/hlr_in_toilet_flush_flush.php#comment-601682

Here's a list of all 86 editors of the Review listed on page 1775 of the May issue, just to make clear for the record everyone's who's responsible for this error-ridden, embarrassing piece of "scholarship" -- all 86 of them, not just Phil Telfeyan, signed their names to this issue and are collectively responsible for its contents (much as they'd like to throw Phil under the bus at this point, by remaining silent and neither taking their share of responsibility nor even coming to Phil's defense; compared to the others, Phil's a class act):

Monique Abrishami
Derek Alexander
Jessee Alexander-Hoeppner
Shahira Ali
Robert Allen
Melissa Anderson
Brett Arnold
Chiraag Bains
Elizabeth Barchas
Elizabeth Bell
Ishan Bhabha
Matthew Bleich
Alexander Boni-Saenz
Geoffrey Brounell
Richard Chen
Candice Chiu
Jonathan Cooper
Chris Couvelier
Andrew Crespo
Alexandra Davies
Thomas Davies
Alexander Del Nido
Jeffrey Dubner
Gregory Dworkowitz
Daniel Epps
Michael Fawcett
Randolph Frazier
Andrew Furlow
Renee Gerber
Miriam Glaser
Roman Goldstein
Joshua Goodbaum
Ilan Graff
Rebecca Haw
Sonam Henderson
Zoila Hinson
Lee Hochbaum
Steven Horowitz
Adam Jed
Robert Johnson
Blair Kaminsky
Alexander Karakatsanis
David Kellis
Michael Kolber
Yelena Konanova
Jane Kucera
Jessica Lindemann
Kimberly Liu
Marco Lopez
Robert Lutzker
Maggie Lynaugh
Derek Lyons
Sarah Marcus
Jason Marisam
Kirkie Maswoswe
Michael McGinley
Paul Mezzina
Proshanto Mukherji
Andrew O'Connor
Andrea Paul
Portia Pedro
Daniel Pierce
Deanna Rice
David Riskin
Daniel Rubens
Sara Kerkhoff Rundell
Laura Seaton
Matan Shacham
Abigail Shafroth
Neil Shah
Weili Shaw
Ganesh Sitaraman
Thomas Sullivan
Phil Telfeyan
Elisabeth Theodore
Saritha Komatireddy Tice
Jeffrey Todd
Greta Enid Matta Trotman
Emily Ullman
Osvaldo Vazquez
Justin Walker
Timothy Waters
Nicola Woodroffe
Andrew Zee
Ming Zhu
David Zionts

9:19: I'm still laughing at "all hat, no cattle."

I think it's pretty clear 10:33 = Phil and he just threw the rest of the staff under a bus (mentioning each by name no less).
I don't see how anybody else in this world could spend so much time writing a blog comment.

as pointed about above, the fact that the front refers to "a people" should have tipped off the HLR editors.

11:51, you honestly think Phil would post a comment attacking his own Note, in detail, just as a cover to listing all the other editors? Come on. Seems like an independent comment to me. Can't imagine anyone on the Review had anything to do with it -- just makes all of them look bad.

Seriously folks, while I don't agree with Phil's comment, the commentator trolls look more ridiculous than Phil.

I think we can all agree that the Note was ridiculous. But why is so much hostility directed toward the author, while other so-called "academics" spew similarly ridiculous nonsense all the time. The Note is merely a symptom of a much larger problem: a system where neo-socialist gibberish like "The Stakeholder Society" gets you tenure at places like HYS.

Isn't this Note just the logical extension of the illogic the rules academia?

10:33 is almost certainly Phil. Would someone go to all the trouble to insert internet citations (like his original post) for some random ATL posting? Only 1 person in this world cares enough to write something so long and detailed.

12:59, why don't you show us an article from a top law review by an "academic" where there are blatant errors on the first page that could have been cured by any author or editor walking outside.

The unspoken truth's now on the table. The position of "editor" at a law review has nothing to do with editorship. It's all about the resume (more precisely, enhancing hourly rates by claiming that associates are "Harvard Law Review" material and thus worth $350-450/hr).

What's a shame is most clients won't (a) learn about this silliness or (b) even care that HLR runs a shabby operation. And in a year or two, it'll all be forgotten. *sigh*

-- ET!

P.S. I walk by the statue regularly. It's clear that Phil saw precisely what he wanted to see, rather than what the statute represented to the rest of its viewers. And in failing to verify his preconceptions, he committed one of the gravest errors a lawyer can make.

Aw dammitall, I forgot...

There actually IS a statue that portrays what Phil wanted to see. The statue's outside the Borders book store off of School Street in downtown Boston. I've always found it to be a pretty ham-handed piece of solipsism, but at least it exists.

-- ET!

Re: 4:41 AM ('You know, it was obviously a poorly thought out piece, and of poor quality, but I can't believe that reason that you guys are collectively so inflamed is that the reasoning per se was bad, or the research was faulty.")

You're right that the note's poor quality and lack of scholarship isn't the reason for the reaction. But I don't think that people are upset about the note because it excoriates their career choices and therefore hits a sensitive note. The author uses his poor excuse for scholarship to attack millions of hard-working people. At the same time, the comment is a remarkable display of hypocrisy. I think anytime you make launch unfounded and hypocritical attacks, regardless of the target, you're not going to be liked.

People, come on. The HLR editors assigned to any given piece (and they are only a small minority of all the editors) subcite as follows: one editor early on makes a list of all the sources cited in the piece, another editor collects hard copies of those sources and files them in manilla folders in Gannett House, and a few other editors assigned to sections of the piece then subcite using the pulled hard copies of the sources. Was somebody really supposed to have taken a picture of the statue and filed it in its own little folder? Yes, I get that the statue is close to Gannett House, but editors aren't bad editors for being uninterested in or unobservant of their surroundings before entering Gannett House (perhaps that makes them dull people, but not bad editors), and it's silly to expect the main editor of the piece to have "pulled" a hard copy of the statue "source." Authors sometimes make mundane factual claims that find their way into their writing where they serve as little more than window dressing, and such facts typically are not and ought not to be footnoted (legal scholarship is already ridiculously over-footnoted). Ultimately, the AUTHOR, not his editors, bears responsibility for the accuracy of these mundane facts.

That said about the author's responsibility, people need to get over the statue thing. Who the fuck cares? The author used it as a literary device to introduce his subject -- as he said in his mea culpa, nothing in his Note hinged on the accuracy of his description of the statue. If you want to argue that this kind of writing doesn't belong in a law review, fine. If you want to argue that the left-leaning substance of the piece is misguided, fine. If you want to argue that the piece is poorly written, or presents no new philosophical arguments, or is hypocritical in indulging in the luxury of esoteric scholarship when the author could have been working a soup kitchen, fine. But please, people, let's get over the fucking statue already. The commenter who researched it before Phil posted his own pictures of it is a bigger tool than Phil, based on the limited knowledge I have of each.

Did anyone else notice that the Crimson article mocking him for d-baggery was dated October 2001 and identified him as class of '05? That means his d-baggery had to be so notable, that IT MADE THE SCHOOL PAPER BY OCTOBER OF HIS FRESHMAN YEAR!!

Uh, wow.

To 2:31, trying to wipe away the feces being heaped on the Harvard Law Review Editor line on his resume, let me reiterate what someone else has said:

"There are even more ways in which the error about the statue is emblematic of the paper as a whole. First, the author literally fails to look at what the other side says. Second, the author, for all his rhetoric about poverty and responding to poverty, doesn't recognize poverty when it's literally staring him in the face."

You have a footnote cite that Radcliffe college has been around for 120 years, a point which is entirely superfluous. Yet there is no cite that the statue depicts intergenerational inequality nor any background source for the inscription that forms the TITLE OF THE NOTE.

2:31, if you don't think that the entire HLR staff including yourself should be tarnished by a few numbnuts, I agree. Why don't you tell us who are the "small minority" of editors who did "work" on this piece, so that responsibility can properly be focused on them? Are you also going to print a retraction?

Until then, don't blame collective punishment tarnishing all of you with a guilty brush since the whole point of anonymous Notes is that the entire journal stands behind it. When a good article is praised, do you tell everyone, "well actually, I didn't work on it, only a small minority of other editors did."

2:59 -- I'm a former, not a current, HLR editor, so I can't help you; I don't even know for sure that the author is Phil (whom I do not know). If I actually thought this controversy was going to tarnish the HLR line on my resume, I would of course care, but I can't seriously believe this is going to make one whit of difference. So I'm not trying to refocus blame in an effort to save my resume, I'm just calling it like I see it (and procrastinating doing work by posting).

As for your retraction suggestion -- again, I'm not a current editor and don't even know a single current editor so I'm in absolutely no position to influence, much less make, a decision on this one way or the other -- printing a retraction for misdescribing a statue strikes me as silly. As I tried to suggest above, there may be many lessons to be learned from this incident (e.g., perhaps it's time to reconsider HLR's policy regarding the standards for publishable Notes), but my own feeling is that poor subciting is not one of them.

As a former editor, I think the best solution is to drop the anonymity -- to require that all pieces of case comment length or longer be signed.

Obviously, this incident shows that the whole journal doesn't stand behind each piece. If it did, this piece wouldn't have been published; apparently, only a small number of left-leaning editors were involved with this piece, allowing it to slip through. If it did, by now a press release would have been issued in which all the editors stood behind the piece.

If the Review isn't willing to stand 100% behind each piece, then the pretense needs to be dropped. And having each piece individually signed will ensure that each author knows he or she will be held individually accountable for the piece -- and that other authors won't be excessively tainted by association.

"His high school tried to stop Pajama Day, a popular school spirit activity. Telfeyan reacted by going on a hunger strike and chaining himself up to an oak tree for three days."

Exactly...School's cancelling pajama day? Two words: hunger strike. (Although, those two days surely could have been spent earning money to support third world babies).

This is your Left Wing, America. Drink it up.

Gandhi goes on a hunger strike to protest Hindus and Muslims killing 15 million of each other.

Phil Telfeyan goes on a hunger strike to protest abolition of Pajamas Day.

PHIL'S PARENTS "UPSIZE" THEIR HOUSE -- KILLING 1,480 BABIES!

Phil's thesis is that everyone who spends $200 on something other than a contribution to Unicef, to save a baby's life, is killing a baby. Honest -- read the Note!

Well, check out his parents' moral choices. According to publicly available property records, his parents "upsized" their California home, selling the 2,100-square-foot home Phil grew up in for $599,000 in 2006, and buying a 2,900-square-foot home for $895,000 -- spending an extra $296,000 on housing (not counting the financing costs) during a period of time in their lives when most people "downsize." Each $200 they spent on housing instead of the Unicef donation Phil suggests in his Note could have saved a baby -- so by Phil's moral calculus, they killed 1,480 babies in Third World countries by upsizing their house.

Wonder whether Phil feels guilty when he visits.

Check out the info yourself:

OLD HOUSE:
4971 Francis Way, Carmichael, CA 95608, bought by Edward H. Telfeyan and Jerilyn Paik on 8/29/1999, and sold on 7/14/2006 for $599,000. Info, including picture of house (nice pool!) on Zillow, here:
http://www.zillow.com/HomeDetails.htm?zprop=26085014

NEW HOUSE:
5521 Clarendon Way, Carmichael, CA 95608, bought Edward H. Telfeyan and Jerilyn Paik on 7/17/2006, for $895,000. Info, including picture of house (nice pool!) on Zillow, here:
http://www.zillow.com/HomeDetails.htm?zprop=26097137

Hey, Phil, according to Zillow your parents' home costs $219 per square foot -- that's one baby dead for each square foot. Something to think about during your next visit, I guess.

4:03 back

Phil, one more thing. I noticed on Zillow that after your parents bought their new house at the top of the market, for $895,000, it's dropped a quarter million dollars in value, down to $643,000.

And, I noticed that to buy the house, they took out a loan from Bank of America for $716,000 at 6.62% interest, so that they're something like $70,000 "under water" on the house and are paying something like $4,000 a month interest on a house that's worth vastly less than when they bought it.

Two questions:

1. Assuming your parents read your Note, don't they now wish they could be spending that $4,000 a month saving babies, rather than pouring it down an interest rat hole?

2. Who do you think is more stupid -- you for writing the Note, or your parents for buying that house? For me, it's a close call.

Why didn't Phil insure the Ferrari? Because he's a dumbass and doesn't live in the real world.

4:03, you've really gone beyond the pale. The personal attacks on Phil have been bad enough. Now attacks on his family? Commentators are descending into silliness.

4:33, I think there's a difference between a "personal attack" and pointing out a publicly available fact. See if you can tell the differen