Osler's Razor

I'm devoting Wednesdays to profiles of my law school classmates. This week I check in on Amy Adler, who is the Emily Kempin Professor of Law at NYU Law School.

Back in law school, Amy Adler was at the other end of the cool spectrum from me-- she had it together, and was one of those people who made a day there more interesting (in a good way-- I realize that could go either way). We had overlapping friend groups, and I went out of my way to overhear what she would say; it was always fascinating and worthwhile.

Like a lot of the others I have profiled here, Amy was double-Yale, so she knew her way around. She's from what must be an interesting family: her brother is potter, designer and artist Jonathon Adler.

After a clerkship and stint at a New York firm, Amy landed at NYU, writing and teaching about art law, feminism, and the First Amendment. She is a rare breed of academic writer, whose work is consistently readable, well-grounded, and interesting.  I think the first article of hers that I read, years ago, was Girls! Girls! Girls!: The Supreme Court Confronts the G-String. It made me want to add more of an edge to my own work, which of course made it better.

Out of a plethora of great quotes in an interview with Amy in Bomb Magazine, I found this one especially compelling:

It seems as if there’s some sort of magical fantasy of authenticity imbedded in the art market right now. There have been some fascinating cases. One case was about a Calder that seemed to be perfect, but was discovered to be a fake. A bunch of dealers saw it and at first they said, “It’s beautiful. It’s magnificent.” But as doubts arose, they went to Klaus Perls who was for a time the expert on Calder. Perls said, “No, it’s a perfect fake!” At that moment, the work went from being worth God knows what, to being unsalable. It’s interesting to consider, Why? If it looks the same, why is it worthless? Why is it no longer art? The value of an authentic work is based on some fantasy of the artist’s touch or presence in the object that’s still there, that we still yearn for, or that we monetize, I’m not sure which.

There are a lot of us out there teaching in law schools. But out of the whole lot of us, my bet is that Amy is among the few whose classes most fascinate students.  And that, like the work of so many of my other classmates, is good for the world.