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24 Osgoode Hall L. J. 353 (1986)
Frivolous Cases: Do Lawyers Really Know Anything at All

handle is hein.journals/ohlj24 and id is 361 raw text is: FRIVOLOUS CASES: DO LAWYERS REALLY KNOW ANYTHING AT ALL? By SANFORD LEVINSON* There has been much recent jurisprudential discussion of 'hard' and 'easy' cases in the law. This 'academic'debate has been complemented by the increasing willingness by judges to sanction lawyers for making frivolous' legal arguments, which are prohibited by both United States and Canadian law. To identify the attributes of a frivolous case has proved no easy matter. A focus on the nature offrivolous cases, moreover, requires us to recognize how different the phenomenology of lawyering is from that of judging and the concomitant importance of integrating the practice of lawyering into our jurisprudence. This; in turn, necessitates that we move away from the almost exclusive concentration on the practice ofjudging. I. INTRODUCTION I assume that one of the reasons for your inviting me to present this lecture involves work that I have already done. It thus presumably will come as no surprise that my remarks relate to that body of work, in two different ways. I have been attracted, perhaps like a moth to the flame, by problems arising from the lawyer's task of interpreting documents. In my case, I have tended to focus on the interpretive problems surrounding a particular document - the United States Constitution. As Professor Hirsch has said, With a numinous document like the Constitution or the Bible, the principles and methods of correct interpretation are as important as they are problematical.' What Hirsch evokes is the classic debate © Copyright, 1986, Sanford Levinson. * Professor of Law, University of Texas Law School. This article was originally delivered as the Eighth Annual 'Or 'Emet Lecture at the Osgoode Hall Law School on 3 April 1986. Although I have revised some of my remarks and expanded some of the footnotes, I have left the text substantially as delivered. I want to express my deep gratitude to the faculty of the School for inviting me and for responding to the ideas I am trying to develop. I am particularly grateful to Marc Gold, Allan Hutchinson, Leslie Green, and Peter Hogg. As always, I am also grateful to several of my colleagues at the University of Texas Law School for their willingness to endure seemingly endless new drafts and formulations and other interruptions of their own work. Particular mention should be made of Mark Yudof, Douglas Laycock, William Powers, and Scot Powe; John Dzienkowski not only read the entire manuscript but also provided especially valuable counsel in regard to the problem of administrative non-acquiescence to judicial decisions. Professors Robert Post and Ted Schneyer also reviewed the manuscript and provided helpful advice. Finally, I received valuable reactions from John McArthur, immersed in the actual practice of law. I E.D. Hirsch, Jr., The Aims of Interpretation (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1976) at 20.

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