I’ve long been a huge fan of the libertarian Reason Hit & Run, which has never shied away from getting down in the weeds on calling bullshit on legal issues at risk.  They’ve done some spectacular original reporting, most recently outing the David Lisak scam upon which the serial rapists on campus myth was based.

Among the writers that make Reason matter is Robby Soave, a young guy who has demonstrated a surprising skill at seeing through the rhetoric that conceals the evisceration of due process rights on campus.  And then the other day, Robby made me sad.

He wrote a post about Democratic presidential contender, Bernie Sanders, asserting that campus rape is still rape, and should be handles by law enforcement rather than the dilettantes at colleges, where the crime is presumed, and the accused guilty.  Given Sanders progressive base, this was heresy.

Curiously, the title to Tyler Kingkade’s Slate Huffington Post post (awkward) changed from its original, “Bernie Sanders doesn’t understand campus sexual assault or Title IX,” to “Bernie Sanders Comments On Campus Rape, And Totally Drops The Ball,” after I twitted:

So Bernie is incapable of grasping Title IX but he’s capable of being president? Are you sticking with that story?

There’s no evidence that my twit had anything to do with this bit of revisionism, but I would like to think it did. And since there’s no proof it didn’t, well, that’s the story I’m sticking with.

But then there was an exchange between Robby and Tyler Kingkade on the twitters that changed everything.

Oh, Robby. Oh, oh, Robby, You didn’t. You di-i-idn’t.  You accepted Tyler Kingkade’s legal analysis?  What were you thinking?

What made this infinitely worse, beyond the fact that Kingkade had no clue what he was talking about, was that I offered up my two cents to Robby before this exchange, after his Bernie Sanders post, for the very reason that while it covered the story, it fell short on legal analysis.

This could have used a little actual law in there. @robbysoave https://t.co/L4oE4q8fzd and https://t.co/b8RkKbk6GF https://t.co/j9BBEeUmq0

— Scott Greenfield (@ScottGreenfield) January 13, 2016

That’s right. I spoon fed Robby the posts, the analysis, the law. I served it up on a silver twitter platter.  And Robby ignored it.

Now granted, law is kind of dry and boring, and I do tend to be pretty lawyerish in explaining stuff like, you know, law. Granted I can’t turn a phrase like Ken White, and my efforts at youthful cultural appropriation often fall flat, mostly because I’m not young, don’t watch the right TV shows or see the right movies.  I get it. Hell, when my daughter told me yesterday that Alan Sidney Patrick Rickman died, I replied, “who?” I mean, how far out of it can I be?

But then, when it comes to understanding the law, being a lawyer is a feature, not a flaw.  And yet, Robby blew me off in favor of Tyler Kingkade’s throwing a decision in his face. A decision that neither of them understood. A decision that both totally misconstrued. And it pissed me off.

Great. Two non-lawyers put their heads together to concede non-existent law. What could possibly go wrong.

It’s long been my complaint that non-lawyer writers do enormous harm to the public’s understanding of law, and by spreading the stupid to their readers, they embed legal myths that become part of the popular perspective on critical legal issues. The problem, of course, is that they’re myths, and so the public believes it understands something about the law that it doesn’t.

There is a lot, a lot, of bad legal information spread around the internet, and it’s nearly impossible to undo the stupid once it becomes part of the popular myth.  As SJ is merely a law blog, and as such of interest only to those who have an interest in knowing what the law actually is, there is no way it can compete with the broader, bigger, badder media websites, with significant political following, that get a thousand eyeballs to every eyeball that comes here.

But that’s where guys like Robby Soave come in. That’s where one could hope that hard legal analysis translates into more popular, even more political, media.  My hopes were dashed.

But then, I can only write it. I can’t make anybody read it.  And obviously, Robby Soave didn’t read what I wrote, and accepted Tyler Kingkade’s legal thoughts. While this isn’t the death of Reason, it reminds me how little concern there is among non-lawyers to actually understand law.

But if Robby decides that he would rather get his law from a lawyer than Tyler Kingkade, I am still here, writing about law stuff.  So dear Robby Soave, I’m here for you.