Scott Lemeiux and Jon Zasloff comment on the "academic Broderitis" of Cass Sunstein (something I alluded to yesterday). Zasloff writes:

Sunstein suggested last year that John Roberts would be the quintessential legal craftsman, and thus a judicial minimalist. Conservative to be sure, but carefully so. And what has happened this year? Roberts marching in lockstep with Scalia, Thomas, and the other radicals. You might think that this has given Sunstein second thoughts. But no.

In The New Republic, he acknowledges

It turns out that with stunning regularity, Chief Justice John Roberts and Justice Samuel Alito are indeed voting the same way as their conservative colleagues." But he insists that there is a divide, because Roberts and Alito do so on narrower grounds. . . . Here, in a nutshell, is the division between the Court's conservative minimalists and its visionaries," Sunstein proclaimed.

This is really grasping at straws. Does Sunstein really think that the next time taxpayers sue over a legislative appropriation, Alito and Roberts will gravely uphold standing, saying that they are bound by the precedent? If so, I have a bridge in Brooklyn to sell him. . . . Remarkably, . . . Sunstein still won't acknowledge what is going on. Call it the academic equivalent of Broder-itis: you're so above-it-all that you can't see what is happening.

Yep.