Agon at Agora: Creative Misreadings in the First Amendment Tradition
![handle is hein.journals/ylr95 and id is 876 raw text is: The Yale Law Journal
Volume 95, Number 5, April 1986
Articles
Agon at Agora: Creative Misreadings in
the First Amendment Tradition
David Cole-
Of course, the law is not the place for the artist or the poet. The law
is the calling of thinkers. But to those who believe with me that not
the least godlike of man's activities is the large survey of causes,
that to know is not less than tofeel, I say-and I say no longer with
any doubt-that a man may live greatly in the law as well as else-
where; that there as well as elsewhere his thought may find its unity
in an infinite perspective; that there as well as elsewhere he may
wreak himself upon life, may drink the bitter cup of heroism, may
wear his heart out after the unattainable.
-Oliver Wendell Holmes*
[T]o be judicious is to be weak, and to compare exactly and fairly
is to be not elect ....
-Harold Bloom**
t Attorney, Center for Constitutional Rights, New York, New York. This article, which cele-
brates the efforts of lone individuals, could not have been written without the assistance of many,
including Ellen Hertz, David Nied, Dan Ortiz and Nina Pillard. Special thanks are owed to Owen
Fiss, who first showed me that there is room for poetic greatness in the law by strongly misreading
the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure.
* O.W. HOLMES, The Profession of the Law, in CoLLEcTFD LEGAL PAPERS 29-30 (1920).
** H. BLOOM, THE ANXIETY OF INFLUENCE 19 (1973).](ViewImageLocal?handle=hein.journals/ylr95&div=49&collection=&method=preview&ext=.png&size=3)
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Agon at Agora: Creative Misreadings in the First Amendment Tradition
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