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Without Patricia Williams’ encouragement, and Rob Nixon’s advice and support, this book would still be an idea. I am also grateful to Richard Delgado, Andrew Ross, Drucilla Cornell, Antony Anghie, and Stephen Vas-cianne. Girardeau Spann’s suggestions on an earlier draft account for a range of important improvements. Duncan Kennedy was provocative, and I am grateful to Steven Winter and Joan Williams for discussing with me my discussion of their work.

The book began, at Harvard Law School, with Randall Kennedy’s suggestion that I address, generally, the political responsibilities of intellectuals, and examine the (he felt) competing duties of political loyalty and truth-telling. But Kennedy was soon in an unusual position: both supervisor and subject. While his enthusiasm may have waned, his cordiality has not. Just after that early draft was finished, in mid-1991, Clarence Thomas was nominated to the Supreme Court.

I am hugely grateful to Niko Pfund, editor-in-chief of New York University Press, who took an early and instructive interest in the book, and to Roger Normand and Chris Jochnick who first told him about it. Danzy Senna and Omar Wasow taught me lots about America. Stephanie Flanders bravely read and commented incisively on earlier drafts. I am also grateful to Sarah Leah Whitson, Balram Kakkar, April Tash, Jen Stein, Guy Evans, Margaret Minister, Isabel Karpin, David Ellison, Armen Merjian, Stephen Blacklocks, and Dan Harris. Susan Kohlmann and John Pritchard provided indispensable support. Daphne Heywood taught me literature; Jane Stapleton, Paul Davies, and Andrew Ashworth taught me law; Nicola Lacey, legal theory; John Gardner and Stephen Mulhall, moral and political philosophy.