First Amendment Bargains

Abstract

Before starting formally, let me pause to say that it is quite an honor to participate in this celebration. When I think of the properties of Carol Rose, I think first of her laugh. It is a wonderfully exuberant cackle which, when in full bloom, often causes her head to tilt slightly back. She has a way of laughing after delivering a tangy barb that somehow diffuses the sting. I know it's not possible, but sometimes I hear her laugh when I'm reading her footnotes.

This laugh is a great pedagogical gift. When Carol was teaching me property in, I believe, the fall of 1985, she would occasionally cold-call students in the very large class that filled Room 127. One day, Carol looked down at her class roster and called on my classmate Lisa Allred for the first time. Lisa was not prepared, or at least was not prepared to speak, and thought she would try to hide out in the masses and simply not respond, with the hope that Carol would think she wasn't in class that day. But Carol turned and looked at Lisa and said "Isn't that yoooouuu?" There was a scared silence in the class. And then Carol laughed. It was not a mean laugh, it was so full of sincere joy that it was very hard not to be pulled along.

I've been lucky to hear this same laugh many times over the yearsoften just after Carol has skewered a speaker with some particularly deflating retort. "Socrates, Shmocrates," she said in response to Robert Frank's Winner-Take-All theory. As Carol moves west, I'm going to miss the chance to hear her laugh.