ABSTRACT
Like most men who make their living by trying to think, I have sometimes attempted to be a philosopher, but, as happened with the man of whom Boswell tells, cheerfulness keeps breaking in. I am a member of a political science department, but no elephantiasis of vanity brings me to view the official act that made me so as anything but a deed of kindness, the opening of a charitable umbrella, and the most I can hope is that my political science colleagues may find profit in using me as what the anthropologists call a native informant, when their own concerns impel them to seek insight into the ways of the tribe to which I do in truth belong. I am a lawyer; I know you will expect me to talk like a lawyer, and I will start with the apportionment cases, which have given our subject most of the high current interest it possesses.
