78 Similarity
without threatening the carefully disciplined core focus of legal translations, which
remains centered on textual authority and precedent.
Transcript 4.16 [5/8/14]Prof.: So we’re talking about a time, thirty years later. Thirty years after the
fighters’ prime, thirty years after their prime, they meet. It’s unlikely
they’re going to fight thirty years later. I mean it’s unlikely that they’ll
move very easily. [[class laughter]] And in the case of modern boxers,
it’s the last- they can’t even talk, let alone fight [[class laughter]], at this
point in their careers. Now, what’s going on here, why does it take
thirty years for Dempsey to meet Wills? Now there are all kinds of
overtones, racial and otherwise in this case. But I think there’s a pretty
simple explanation for why Dempsey doesn’t want to fight Wills. And I
don’t think- I could be wrong about this- that it has anything to do
with matters of race. I think it’s a bit simpler than that. Take a wild
guess, Ms. U.
Ms. U.: He was afraid to lose?
Prof.: He was afraid that he was going to get maimed by Wills, the “Brown
Bomber” who was probably the greatest boxer of the world, indeed of the
universe at that point, and Dempsey wants to stay away from him, okay?
Now there are a lot of people who want to try to get him to fight Wills,
but there is, alas, a problem with the color bar in a lot of places and there
are a lot of promoters who won’t touch that fight and there are a lot of
people who are worried about the future of the sport. [... ] my guess is
he’s worried about losing the battle. And maybe he finally realizes that
that’s what’s going to happen. He signs the contract and he tries to back
out. Now what do you do with the fact that he’s backed out of this
contract?[This question marks the transition to the core case analysis, and
the remainder of the discussion centers on issues of contract breach and legal
remedies]Here one aspect of social context—racial prejudice—is touched on briefly, and then
we are told an alternative story centered on strategic concerns, on a fear of losing.
Note that there is no careful weighing of the evidence supporting this story, nor is
there a basis in the text for these speculations. Rather, the epistemological founda-
tion for this discussion lies in common sense, a cultural logic shared by the speak-
ers. If we know that one fighter backed out of a fight, and we are told that he was
probably a weaker fighter, then it makes sense that he may have backed out to avoid
losing. The relative honor and shame entailed in backing out as opposed to losing,
common understandings of human motivation, the primacy of strategic concerns—
these are the kinds of warrants on which this speculative attribution of motive rests.
In sum, there are rich data in the discussions of policy. They alone could form
the basis of an entire volume, which could trace the cultural logics and assump-
tions underlying such conversations about policy and society while also noting how
and when they flirt with legal analysis. In these policy discussions, we find tales
about human motivation, about trust and trickery, about poverty and free will.
Grand stories are told about the role of markets in ordering societies, about com-