[Volokh] New post at The Volokh Conspiracy
Posted by Orin Kerr: Who Wants to Draft Judge Prado?: http://volokh.com/archives/archive_2005_06_05-2005_06_11.shtml#1118246328 Both [1]How Appealing and [2]SCOTUSblog provide links today to a new website, [3]www.DraftPrado.org, that claims to be part of an independent grassroots campaign to encourage President Bush to nominate Fifth Circuit Judge Ed Prado to the Supreme Court. A Supreme Court Justice for All Americans Imagine a Supreme Court nominee with a mainstream approach to the law who has earned the respect of both Republicans and Democrats. Imagine a nominee for the Supreme Court of unquestioned stature with decades of judicial experience. Stop imagining... Meet Judge Ed Prado. The idea that some average Americans might come together to push a little-known judge for a seat on the Supreme Court is pretty interesting, so I figured I would look into it and see who is behind the campaign. The campaign's website states that it is being run by people who, [i]n an era of intense partisanship, . . . believe the time is right to come together around a highly qualified consensus nominee. It lists a few names in particular: Arkadi Gerney, Marc Laitin, and Tim Cullen. I googled Arkadi, Marc, and Tim to see if I could find out more about who they are. [4]It turns out that Arkadi, Marc and Tim have together led at least three other campaigns in the last two years, the goals of which might give you a little perspective on this latest independent effort: [5]Run Against Bush: A Movement to Defeat George W. Bush in 2004 Launched late 2003, the Run Against Bush campaign raised over $450,000 in small donations from over 11,000 runners across the country. [6]The KerryConnector Started in July 2003, the Kerry Connector was an online grassroots meeting and house-party tool that was partially integrated into the Kerry campaign website in October 2004 and was a model for the John Kerry Volunteer Center (www.volunteer.johnkerry.com/) that premiered in June, 2004. [7]Concerts for Kerry / Concerts for Change Launched in March 2004, the Concerts effort raised more than $370,000 to support John Kerry from 16,000 concertgoers at events around the country. References 1. http://legalaffairs.org/howappealing/060805.html#003449 2. http://www.scotusblog.com/movabletype/archives/2005/06/blog_roundup_we_1.html 3. http://www.draftprado.org/ 4. http://cgl-group.com/taxonomy/term/13 5. http://www.runagainstbush.org/ 6. http://cgl-group.com/node/9 7. http://cgl-group.com/node/7 ___ Volokh mailing list Volokh@lists.powerblogs.com http://highsorcery.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/volokh
[Volokh] New post at The Volokh Conspiracy
Posted by Eugene Volokh: Karns Elementary School Students Barred from Discussing a Certain Subject During Recess: http://volokh.com/archives/archive_2005_06_05-2005_06_11.shtml#1118249488 A 10-year-old student and his friends were barred from engaging in a certain kind of speech during recess at Karns Primary School. The recess in that school, I'm told, is about 30 minutes long, and students are generally allowed to play, sit and read, talk, and do lots of other things. But this student and his friends were barred from engaging in one particular kind of speech. What is this speech that a Kentucky school has decided must be banned? 1. Wearing black armbands to protest the war. 2. Displaying a confederate flag. 3. Discussing the Wiccan neo-pagan religion. 4. Wearing insignia that depicted firearms. 5. Something else. And the answer is . . . #5, specifically discussing the Bible. Those are the charges levied in [1]a lawsuit filed by the student's parents (see [2]the Complaint here). The Principal's letter to parents specifically says that children could not have a Bible study class -- which apparently includes an informal group of a few kids sitting around and talking in the schoolyard -- during recess; I have seen a copy of it myself. I've long been appalled by the willingness of government officials to discriminate against religious speech this way. It's true that under the Court's Establishment Clause caselaw the government generally may not itself engage in religious speech (especially in K-12 schools), nor may it give preferential treatment to religious speech. But this ban on government preferences for religious speech doesn't require or authorize discrimination against private religious speech. Such discrimination is itself unconstitutional; it violates the Free Speech Clause, and in my view the Establishment Clause and Free Exercise Clause as well (though that's less clear than the Free Speech Clause violation). Here, the students were trying to talk religion on their own, in a time and place in which students were perfectly free to talk about other subjects (sports, television, politics, and so on). This wasn't an organized class activity. (School officials naturally are entitled to more control over speech in such activities, for a variety of reasons.) Any students who weren't interested in talking or hearing about the subject were free not to talk or hear about it. There was, to my knowledge, no evidence that the speech would cause material disruption. And ten-year-olds are perfectly capable of distinguishing what their classmates say on their own from what the school is saying or endorsing as true, and the speech in this instance was clearly on the classmates say on their own side of the line. Unless there's something seriously missing from the news story and the Principal's letter, there seems to me to be no justification for this, except an assumption that separation of church and state (a rather misleading phrase) requires the state to suppress speech by students, who are clearly not the state. The Supreme Court has repeatedly rejected this assumption, for over two decades in education generally, and over a decade as to K-12 education in particular; and so have lower courts. It bothers me that so many school officials still haven't gotten the message, and continue to violate students' First Amendment rights. References 1. http://www3.knoxnews.com/kns/local_news/article/0,1406,KNS_347_3826676,00.html 2. http://www.telladf.org/UserDocs/WhitsonComplaint.pdf ___ Volokh mailing list Volokh@lists.powerblogs.com http://highsorcery.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/volokh
[Volokh] New post at The Volokh Conspiracy
Posted by Orin Kerr: Blogging Can Change Your Life: http://volokh.com/archives/archive_2005_06_05-2005_06_11.shtml#1118252090 [1]Daniel Solove reflects on his first month as a blogger. References 1. http://prawfsblawg.blogs.com/prawfsblawg/2005/06/how_blogging_ch.html ___ Volokh mailing list Volokh@lists.powerblogs.com http://highsorcery.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/volokh
[Volokh] New post at The Volokh Conspiracy
Posted by Todd Zywicki: Mike Greve on the Constitution In Exile: http://volokh.com/archives/archive_2005_06_05-2005_06_11.shtml#1118261689 Must reading, as always, [1]here. The abstract: Liberal academics and newspapers have proclaimed that the Rehnquist Court and conservative intellectuals are attempting to resurrect a pre-New Deal âConstitution in Exile.â This absurd campaign illustrates the intellectual impoverishment of what now passes for âprogressiveâ constitutional thought. Still, liberals are right in suggesting that conservatives may not have thought as sharply and constructively about constitutionalism as they should. This Outlook discusses the liberal constitutional project. The next Outlook will outline a conservative response. References 1. http://www.aei.org/publications/filter.all,pubID.22622/pub_detail.asp ___ Volokh mailing list Volokh@lists.powerblogs.com http://highsorcery.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/volokh
[Volokh] New post at The Volokh Conspiracy
Posted by Eugene Volokh: a href=http://www.sctnomination.com/blog/;The Supreme Court Nomination Blog/a: http://volokh.com/archives/archive_2005_06_05-2005_06_11.shtml#1118269451 This is the blog put up by Goldstein Howe, a major Supreme Court litigation boutique and the operator of [1]SCOTUSblog. My question: How influential is the blog likely to be during the Supreme Court nomination season? My conjecture: Very. I don't know how many hits it will get, but I suspect that: 1. Most journalists who are covering the debates, and politicos involved in the debates, will check it routinely, and will be influenced to some extent by what is written there. 2. People who want to influence the debate will dearly love to get their points picked up by the GH bloggers. 3. As with all editors and reporters, the bloggers will occasionally have opportunities to influence the process, for instance by deciding what to stress, what things to cover more than other things, what to investigate further, when to post certain things, and so on; it will be up to the GH people to decide whether they want to use the opportunities, and how much. Of course, this raises another point: What other Supreme Court Nomination Blogs will there be out there? And how will they persuade reporters and politicos to read them, as well as the GH blog? References 1. http://www.scotusblog.com/movabletype/ ___ Volokh mailing list Volokh@lists.powerblogs.com http://highsorcery.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/volokh
[Volokh] New post at The Volokh Conspiracy
Posted by Eugene Volokh: I Am Glad To Live in a Country http://volokh.com/archives/archive_2005_06_05-2005_06_11.shtml#1118270943 in which the President does not say things like: Let us stop drinking from the enchanted waters of Lethe, which strike with amnesia those who want to quench their thirst, and let us dare to taste those 'fresh waters that run from the Lake of Memory' -- as the words say on the golden bars of the disciples of Orpheus, that bard of metamorphosis and of ascending reincarnation. ([1]The Telegraph (U.K.), quoting the new French Prime Minister, Dominique de Villepin; thanks to [2]Best of the Web for the pointer.) In fact, maybe that should be our reaction any time President Bush is mocked for misspeaking: Hey, at least it's not 'Let us stop drinking from the enchanted waters of Lethe . . . .' References 1. http://opinion.telegraph.co.uk/opinion/main.jhtml?xml=/opinion/2005/06/05/do0510.xml 2. http://www.opinionjournal.com/best/ ___ Volokh mailing list Volokh@lists.powerblogs.com http://highsorcery.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/volokh
[Volokh] New post at The Volokh Conspiracy
Posted by a href=http://www1.law.ucla.edu/~sander/;Rick Sander (guest-blogging)/a: Systemic Analysis of Affirmative Action in American Law Schools: Responding to the Critics http://volokh.com/archives/archive_2005_06_05-2005_06_11.shtml#1118273427 Although my article on affirmative action appeared in the Stanford Law Review less than five months ago, a legion of critics has sprung into print, publishing rebuttals with very non-ivory-tower speed. By my (probably incomplete) count, eleven articles entirely devoted to âdebunkingâ Systemic Analysis have been published or accepted for publication in legal or education journals, and dozens of more informal critiques have appeared in the media and a variety of websites. Through most of this period, Iâve tried to focus on taking the criticisms to heart â understanding the arguments, looking closely at the evidence, and trying to separate the wheat from the chaff. I am publishing a lengthy response to critics in the May issue of the Stanford Law Review (which probably wonât be out for another four weeks) and a shorter response in the June issue of the Yale Law Journal (which should be out in two or three weeks). These responses tend to be pretty technical and very detailed. What I would like to do in this space, for the next couple of weeks, is something more informal and, I hope, more interactive. So starting Friday, June 10th in this space, I will examine seriatim the fallout and controversies that followed in the wake of Systemic Analysis. I will leave an open comments section at the end of each post, and on the following workday Iâll both cover a new topic and address significant questions raised in the last dayâs comments. If any of the major critics or commentators on the article is willing, Iâd love to arrange an on-line debate on this or any other site. My goal is to have a substantive, issue-driven discussion that goes into some depth while avoiding arcane terminology. In the first column this Friday, I will discuss a new data source which no one, including myself, had looked at before Systemic Analysis was published, and which provides the most definitive test yet devised for the arguments Iâve advanced about racial preferences. ___ Volokh mailing list Volokh@lists.powerblogs.com http://highsorcery.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/volokh
[Volokh] New post at The Volokh Conspiracy
Posted by Orin Kerr: Still Outrageous: http://volokh.com/archives/archive_2005_06_05-2005_06_11.shtml#1118276226 [1]Mark Kleiman has an update in the disturbing case about the four white men in Linden Texas who brutally beat a retarded African-American man and received only light sentences. Fortunately, the [2]Chicago Tribune is on the case. References 1. http://www.markarkleiman.com/archives/the_wayward_press_/2005/06/racism_in_the_linden_incident.php 2. http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/nationworld/chi-0506050298jun05,1,3120599,print.story ___ Volokh mailing list Volokh@lists.powerblogs.com http://highsorcery.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/volokh
[Volokh] New post at The Volokh Conspiracy
Posted by Orin Kerr: Bill O'Reilly Cancelled For Lack of Interest: http://volokh.com/archives/archive_2005_06_05-2005_06_11.shtml#1118277280 No, not his show; [1]his week-long Caribbean cruise. The story's clever ending: I'm very, very disappointed, said liberal political comedian Al Franken. My wife and I had made it our vacation, and we really had been looking forward to the cruise and hearing Bill O'Reilly talk about the American values all while sailing the high seas. Thanks to [2]Punch Judy for the link. References 1. http://www.nydailynews.com/news/gossip/story/316836p-271032c.html 2. http://www.xanga.com/home.aspx?user=judithemily ___ Volokh mailing list Volokh@lists.powerblogs.com http://highsorcery.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/volokh
