Did it seem to you in law school that sometimes the hardest part of reading cases was not deciphering some obscure legal principle — say, the difference between larceny by trick and taking under false pretenses, or the Rule in Shelley’s Case, or pretty much anything in Article 9 of the Uniform Commercial Code —
Today we ponder “do-overs,” a timely topic as the House of Representatives struggles, over and over, to elect a speaker. As we write, the seventh unsuccessful vote has just concluded. We have learned that the record stands at 22 votes before the beleaguered candidate finally prevailed. This was in 1820, as John W. Taylor, an