Jarndyce v. Jarndyce, the infamously dreary lawsuit at the center of Dickens’ Bleak House, dragged on for generations, cost a fortune, and fostered a climate of secrets, despair, and suicide, in which “. . . whole families . . . inherited legendary hatreds.” Ultimately Bleak House contributed to 19th-century reforms of the English legal system, but it has also become a shorthand term for the wasteful destructiveness that affects all participants in a lawsuit.
Expertise, Credentials, and the Value of the University
It seems we can’t trust our own credentials or those that we provide to our students. Or perhaps it would be better to say that we have so much confidence
Constance C. Relihan
May 18, 2026
