SOURCE: “Is There a Fish in This Class?,” in Dissent, Vol. 37, Spring, 1990, pp. 259-60.

In the following essay, Siegel comments on Fish's sophistry and apparent lack of concern for the real-world implications of his theoretical arguments, as demonstrated by his remarks at a public lecture.

Stanley Fish, the Duke University Arts and Sciences professor of English, chair of the Duke English Department, distinguished professor of law, and self-described “academic leftist,” has just finished a dazzling performance. The overflow audience at Princeton has sat rapt as Fish, who made his reputation as a critic of Renaissance poetry and a theorist of “self-consuming artifacts,” demonstrates the sheer absurdity of the law. Time and again he shows that what is clearly X in a legal text can, by dint of judicial interpretation, become not X.

Contemptuous of conservatives like Allan Bloom who search for certainties, Fish has, in the manner of...