"... I got a look at Samuel Beckett’s handwriting. That was tops. It is crabbed, which is a word that is often used in novels to describe handwriting, but rarely serves as a realistic adjective to use in everyday conversation."
Mike writes sincerely about his research trip to College Park.
I have a personal fondness for the term "crabbed" since it helps lead off one of the most influential dissents in the history of the U.S. Supreme Court's jurisprudence on the First Amendment, Justice Stewart's in Branzburg v. Hayes:
"The Court's crabbed view of the First Amendment reflects a disturbing insensitivity to the critical role of an independent press in our society."
In Branzburg, the court ruled 5-4 that requiring reporters to disclose confidential information to grand juries did not abridge their rights to freedom of speech and press under the First Amendment. One could easily read the decision as saying that there is no "journalist's privilege" and reporters have to give up their secrets when the government tells them to. However, in a clear and forceful dissent, Stewart explained that, in many circumstances, reporters need to be able to guarantee confidentiality to their sources in order to gather important information and share it with the public, and in those circumstances the government should be at least be required to show that the information is directly relevant to the case at hand, is not available by other means, and is more vital to the ends of justice than the need to protect the reporter's First Amendment rights. Subsequently, many federal courts have recognized a limited journalist's privilege. Stewart's basic reasoning was, for example, the basis for Judge Leonie Brinkema's decision a couple of weeks ago not to force the New York Times' James Risen to disclose his sources for a book he wrote about some of the CIA's more harebrained schemes to deny Iran nuclear weapons capabilities. Stewart's test has also been the model standard for dozens of state "shield laws" which create a privilege for reporters to keep their secrets from the prying eyes of state cops and courts.
It is exceedingly rare that a dissent has this kind of impact, basically making law by opposing the majority decision. You could argue that Stewart's rejection of the "crabbed" approach to the journalist's privilege has helped contribute a great deal to transparency and accountability in this country.
So yeah, I like "crabbed."
