Jacob Levy has a comment on his old home, the Volokh Conspiracy, in response to Professor Volokh's search for a good book about the American Legal System.

Book #16: Camembert: A National Myth, by Pierre Boisard

Between the fact that this book was originally written in French, and that the author acknowledges the French ministry of Culture, one can imagine that American cheese makers come in for a bit of a slating in this friendly history of the great cheese. And they do - Boisard's depiction of the sophisticated American capitalists hoodwinking artisanal French cheese producers into teaching them their secrets - on the pretense of protecting their traditions- is really pretty funny. And I couldn't help chuckling at the (understandable) French reaction when American cheese makers offered to replace the the bombed statue of Camembert's patron saint Marie Harel with a figure inscribed "This statue was the gift of the Borden Ohio Camembert Factory". As if there could be a Camembert factory in Ohio - I mean, really!

But the overwhelming sense from this book isn't the failure of American cheese making, but the apparently troublesome state of the French industry. As Boisard points out, both France and Europe as a whole have started to fall prey to the pasteurization trend - the book reports that 90% of the cheese made in France is now treated. And even if you think you're buying the real article, Boisard points out , worryingly, that not all raw milk Camembert is made equal. Traditional camembert is made by spooning the curds of local milk into molds by hand. The hand ladling ensures that the curd is never cut, distinguishing Camembert from other cheeses (such as Pont L'Eveque) where this doesn't matter. As for the provenance of the milk, ideally you should be able to tell if you're eating a Camembert of Isigny or one of Auge. As the former head of a dairy mill told the author,

"Save for its origin, what is traditional about a Camembert whose milk comes from Dutch Holstein cows fed on imported cattle cakes and corn silage . . . and whose broken curd is ladle-molded by robots?".

Set in the context of our problems here in the US when it comes to cheese, a robot ladle doesn't seem so bad. But if France falters, where can we turn? I'm really not sure.

As a followup to my post yesterday about Kelo v. New London, I should note that Marty Lederman at SCOTUSBlog has an account of the oral arguments in Kelo in Court today. Things do not look good for our heroes. However:

The only possible silver lining for property-rights advocates was that Justices Kennedy, Souter, O'Connor and Breyer all expressed concern that the traditional measures of just compensation under the Fifth Amendment may be subject to reconsideration. Justice Kennedy acknowledged the question wasn't presented in Kelo, but the Court's opinion or a concurrence may raise the issue, opening a new avenue of property-rights litigation.

From the Court's decision today in Smith v. Massachusetts (PDF):

SCALIA, J., delivered the opinion of the Court, in which STEVENS, O’CONNOR, SOUTER, and THOMAS, JJ., joined. GINSBURG, J., filed a dissenting opinion, in which REHNQUIST, C. J., and KENNEDY and BREYER, JJ., joined.

Our Girl in Chicago has finally outed herself as Laura Demanski, since she was unable to control the urge to merge her on-blog and off-blog writings. Very good.

Of course, eager readers with a LEXIS account could have figured out her identity in November by searching a few lines from this post. . . .

I feel somewhat guilty that co-blogger Waddling Thunder is reading books at twice the rate I am while also attending a law school with grades. At any rate, I just finished William Rehnquist's The Supreme Court, which is an interesting read, but it is really time for me to stop reading these sorts of Supreme Court memoirs. After Closed Chambers, Order and Law, and Serving Justice, and now this I am beginning to worry that my parents will come put me into rehab to defray my Supreme Court addiction.

The most interesting thing was Chief Justice Rehnquist's recurring discussion of the length-of-service of various long-serving Justices. One suspects that the Chief Justice would like to be able to be the longest-serving Justice of all time, but that will require him to stay on the bench a few more years yet.