Constitutional Propps

Vladimir Propp, that guy knew his way around a fairy tale.

Basically, Propp read a ton of fairy tales and came up with a taxonomy of 31 building blocks that they use -- like when the hero about to embark on a journey meets an old crazy person who gives him some kind of magical whosits.

I've been a fan of Propp's Morphology of the Folk Tale since I read it in grad school, and am pretty sure it had some kind of influence on one of my favorite books of all time, Roland Barthes' S/Z. I think Jospeph Campell must also have been at least indirectly influenced by Russian formalist narratology, since his Hero With a Thousand Faces uses a lot of similar moves, along with some new age hooey. George Lucas relied on Campell in writing his 318th draft of Star Wars, so when the crazy old guy is Obi Wan, and the mystical thingy is THE FORCE, the whole thing puts Propp at the beginning of a pretty kickass chain. Here's a nifty comparative chart of the different approaches.

Anyhoo, to get to the point, today while reading 10 or so cases for Con law, I was thinking how much we need a morphology of the Supreme Court decision. Maybe one already exists, though it seems more like any given scholar sprinkles a few into there work, but there's no sustained synthesis of this approach.

With my lack of experience, I'm just starting to see the standard moves and postures, but some of my favorites so far include:

- That second to last paragraph where the majority says, "Ok, we know this decision looks kind of broad, so some of you are probably already thinking of ways to take this apparent expansion for a spin. But we mean this one to be narrow, even though it doesn't look that way, so watch it."

- proleptic snark (a Scalia specialty), in which the majority opinion can't resist upstaging and dumping on the dissent.

More to follow. Observations from more experienced con law hands appreciated.