The five bloggers are like the dramatis personae of a drawing-room comedy about irascible conservatives — written by Alan Bennett but set at the Heritage Foundation.

There’s the urban pragmatist (Ms. Mac Donald, who clerked for the liberal federal Judge Stephen Reinhardt but now writes conservative essays about homelessness and policing), the data-driven scientist (Mr. Khan), and the libertarian enthusiast for tort reform (Walter Olson, also founder of the blog Overlawyered).

The other two, I should add, are John Derbyshire and Andrew Stuttaford, both born in Great Britain and well known through their association with National Review, and both, like Khan and Mac Donald, exceptionally talented writers. The article is interesting throughout, and has already begun to provoke a variety of responses: Memeorandum, Dan Riehl (disapproving) with response from Razib Khan, Amy Alkon, Tyler Cowen, Ilya Somin, FrumForum, etc.

On Secular Right (& welcome NY Times readers) is a post from Overlawyered - Chronicling the high cost of our legal system

Upcoming New Orleans speeches is a post from Overlawyered - Chronicling the high cost of our legal system

Young Walter Olson is a post from Overlawyered - Chronicling the high cost of our legal system

“Exorcising Toyota’s Demons” is a post from Overlawyered - Chronicling the high cost of our legal system

…Walter Olson imagined that his Overlawyered blog would pull an audience of his friends and acquaintances and a cadre of legal policy wonks.

“But you don’t know who your audience really is until you start writing and find out,” he notes. “My readership has a large following among lawyers, but I’ve been surprised to find that a lot of doctors are reading it, as are a lot of people from other countries.” …

Olson, who has been writing Overlawyered since July 1, 1999, knows a thing or two about longevity. His blog is widely considered to be the oldest legal blog and is also one of the most popular, regularly surpassing 9,000 unique daily visitors.

“People who force themselves to blog, it’s a sad spectacle,” he says. “You can tell reading it that it’s painful to them.” The key is to find a topic that will sustain you. “You have to think, ‘Boy, there’s so much to write about I can’t imagine getting tired of it anytime soon,'” he says.

And I still can’t.

Welcome Law.com readers is a post from Overlawyered - Chronicling the high cost of our legal system

The City Journal article is in turn a much condensed version of a draft chapter in my book-in-progress about the influence of the law schools. As I show in that chapter, there were few places where reparations enthusiasm burned hotter than in legal academia, with conferences and law review articles galore devoted to advancing the cause. The most prominent law school advocate of the reparations cause back then, Harvard’s Charles Ogletree, is back in the news these days because of his role as mentor (and, reportedly, chief advisor on racial issues) to Democratic candidate Barack Obama; he’s being mentioned as a possible civil rights chief in the next administration. Not surprisingly, Ogletree has had much less to say about the reparations cause this year than he did eight or nine years ago; I have a feeling that in an Obama administration he’d be under strict orders not to get near the issue, but of course I could be wrong.

We’ve covered reparations litigation extensively at Overlawyered.

What happened to the slavery reparations movement? is a post from Overlawyered - Chronicling the high cost of our legal system

One thing I didn’t mention in the article that is on topic for this site is that Lieberman is one of the few prominent federal Democrats still in office that is generally willing to stand up to the trial bar. If Lamont does supplant Lieberman, the trial-lawyer takeover of the Democratic party (commented on a year ago by Walter) will be all but complete.

Update: Walter reminds me of his 2000 Wall Street Journal op-ed on Lieberman’s record on liability reform.

“The Lieberman Purge” is a post from Overlawyered - Chronicling the high cost of our legal system