Constitutional Law Prof Blog

Marcia Coyle on the Roberts Court

Marcia Coyle, Chief Washington Correspondent for the National Law Journal, was kind enough to talk with me last week about her new book, The Roberts Court: The Struggle for the Constitution. 

The book tells the full stories (including the fascinating back-stories) of four landmark and defining cases for the early Roberts Court--on race in schools (Parents Involved), guns (Heller), money in elections (Citizens United), and health care (the ACA cases)--and argues that these cases are at the center of a struggle for the Constitution in this new and evolving Court.  

Here's the audio, about 30 minutes:

 

Coyle Interview

SDS

Tsesis on the History of the Declaration of Independence

Prof. Alex Tsesis (Loyola Chicago) joined me on Thursday for a talk on his book For Liberty and Equality: The Life and Times of the Declaration of Independence (Oxford 2012).  This was a terrific read; I highly recommend it.  

But first listen to him talk about it.  Here's the audio of our chat (about 20 minutes):

Tsesis Interview May 16

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Daily Read: First Amendment Institutions by Paul Horwitz

ConLawProf Paul Horwitz's new book, First Amendment Institutions seeks to develop the conversation about reorienting First Amendment doctrine towards institutionalism. 

Most ConLawProfs would agree that First Amendment doctrine suffers from incoherence, but fewer may agree that institutionalism is the solution, and even those who do favor institutionalism may differ on their selection of the institutions deserving deference.

But for anyone teaching or writing in the First Amendment, Horwitz's book deserves a place on a serious summer reading list.  My longer review appears in Law and Politics Book Review.

RR

Daily Read: Larry Catá Backer on Chinese Constitutionalism

What is Chinese constitutionalism?  Larry Catá Backer's new article, Towards a Robust Theory of the Chinese Constitutional State: Between Formalism and Legitimacy in Jiang Shigong’s Constitutionalism, available on ssrn, not only provides answers to that query, but develops the topic in sophisticated and important ways.  As Backer (pictured right) notes, 

The Chinese constitutional system does not imitate those of other developed states, because it political ideology is grounded in Marxist Leninism which suggests a different relationship between the state, the people and the manner of exercising political and economic power, which over the course of nearly a century suggested what Western theorists generally viewed as the anti-constitutionalism of Soviet Stalinism and its variants.

But Backer is not content with such simplistic dismissals.  Instead, exploring the arguments of Chinese LawProf Jiang Shigong (pictured left), Backer traces different strands of Chinese constitutionalism within the context of Chinese culture and society and their possibilities for development.  Backer notes that the "critical distinction for Jiang between Chinese and Western constitutionalism lies in the willingness to fold a Party-State system within notions of substantive constitutionalism—not just in terms of legitimacy but also in terms of providing a foundation for building a governmental apparatus that provides for its people in a way functionally equivalent to that in Western democracies."

For ConLaw comparativists, Backer's article is essential reading: it situates Chinese constitutionalism in global contexts and more importantly, evaluates its various aspects in comparison to each other.  For ConLawProfs who may not consider themselves comparativists, Backer's article may be even more essential.  Backer's exploration is theoretically sophisticated, nuanced, and guaranteed to enrich any reader's thinking about the role of any constitution in any nation, including the United States.

RR

Loyola Annual Constitutional Colloquium Call for Papers

Loyola University Chicago School of Law is organizing the FOURTH ANNUAL CONSTITUTIONAL LAW COLLOQUIUM at the Philip H. Corboy Law Center, 25 East Pearson Street, Chicago, IL 60611. The event will begin on Friday morning, November 1 and end midday on Saturday, November 2, 2013.

This is the fourth annual Loyola conference bringing together constitutional law scholars at all stages of their professional development to discuss current projects, doctrinal developments in constitutional law, and future goals. Presentations will be grouped by subject matter.

This announcement invites abstract submissions of 150 to 200 words from Constitutional Law professors interested in contributing to the current debates concerning constitutional theory and Supreme Court rulings. We also welcome attendees who wish to participate in audience discussions without presenting a paper. The goal of the conference is to allow professors to develop new ideas with the help of supportive colleagues on a wide range of constitutional law topics.

Eligibility: The Loyola Constitutional Law Colloquium is aimed at Constitutional Law, Legal History, Political Science, and Philosophy scholars teaching full-time and part-time at the university, law school, and graduate levels on all matters of constitutional law.

Application Procedure: The registration and abstract submission deadline is June 15, 2013. Conference organizers will select abstracts on a rolling basis.

Register here; more information is here.

Topics, abstracts, papers, questions, and comments should be submitted to:

constitutionlaw@luc.edu

Participants are expected to pay their own travel expenses. Loyola will provide facilities, support, and continental breakfasts on Friday and Saturday, lunch on Friday and Saturday, and a dinner on Friday night.

Conference Organizers:

. Professor John E. Nowak, Raymond and Mary Simon Chair in Constitutional Law

. Professor Juan Perea

. Professor Alexander Tsesis

. Professor Michael J. Zimmer

 Loyola Constitutional Law Faculty:

. Professor John Nowak, Raymond and Mary Simon Chair in Constitutional Law

. Professor Barry Sullivan, Cooney & Conway Chair in Advocacy

. Professor Diane Geraghty, A. Kathleen Beazley Chair in Child Law

. Professor George Anastaplo

. Professor Juan Perea

. Professor Alan Raphael

. Professor Allen Shoenberger

. Professor Alexander Tsesis

. Professor Michael Zimmer

SDS

[Image: Howard Chandler Christy, Scene at the Signing of the Constitution of the United States, Architect of the Capitol]

Daily Read: The Terrorism Exception to the Constitution?

Should there really be a "terrorism" exception to the criminal procedure protections in the Bill of Rights?

ConLawProfs looking for an extended treatment of this question might do well to turn to Norman Abrams' article, Terrorism Prosecutions in U.S. Federal Court: Exceptions to Constitutional Evidence Rules and the Development of a Cabined Exception for Coerced Confessions, available at 4 Harv. Nat’l Sec. J. 58 (2012).

Abrams argues for a something less than a wholesale exception:

The expression, “cabined,”  is  meant to signify not extending  all the way up the ladder of police  interrogation  methods, but only applying to a limited, non  -  extreme set of interrogation  methods, albeit methods that under current law might lead to a  determination of involuntariness.  A cabined exception is one that would, under the appropriate circumstances, authorize the FBI, or other police agencies, to use interrogation methods that exceed existing constitutional limits as  established by the Supreme Court, but only up to a point, and not to the  point where the methods used are extreme.

For some, allowing law enforcement the discretion to determine the "appropriate circumstances" and the methods that are not "extreme" is exceedingly troubling.  But Abrams extended argument seeking to support his conclusion is worth a read, even as the immediate issue of the possibility of a "terrorism exception" applied to Tsarnaev has receded.  

RR

Daily Read: Spindelman on Carpenter on Lawrence

Integral to the same-sex marriage cases of Perry and Windsor argued before the Court last month is the 2003 case of Lawrence v. Texas.  Although the Court's opinion specifically excluded marriage in its caveat paragraph, the declaration that sodomy laws were unconstitutional under the Due Process Clause is generally considered a linchpin of recognizing any constitutional right to same-sex marriage under the Equal Protection Clause. 

Professor Marc Spindelman (pictured) reviews Professor Dale Carpenter's book Flagrant Conduct: The Story of Lawrence v. Texas in a trenchant essay entitled Tyrone Gardner's Lawrence v. Texas appearing in Michigan Law Review.  Spindelman acknowledges the contribution of the book even as he uses it as a springboard to reach different conclusions about the potential of the case to achieve equality or civil rights.  Spindelman focuses on Tyrone Gardner, who along with John Geddes Lawrence was arrested for sodomy, as a lens for exploring the reach of Lawrence v. Texas.  

Refering to Gardner, Spindeleman asks, "How could Lawrence v. Texas, this great victory for lesbian and gay civil rights, have done and meant so very little to the life of one of the two men most central to it?"  Spindelman's answers explore the status-quo bias and moral conservatism of Lawrence, connecting the case to affirmative action decisions as well as to the "Obamacare" case, Nat’l Fed’n of Indep. Bus. v. Sebelius.

Every ConLawProf teaching Lawrence v. Texas would do well to read Spindelman's essay. 

RR

Daily Read: Resnik on Equality's Frontiers

What do our visual images of justice tell us?  Judith Resnik with her co-author Dennis E. Curtis, provide ample, exciting and complex answers to that question in their marvelous book, Representing Justice: Invention, Controversy, and Rights in City-States and Democratic Courtrooms, published in 2011.

Resnik's 2013 essay, Equality’s Frontiers: Courts Opening and Closing, adapted from remarks at an event celebrating Justice Ginsburg’s gender-equality jurisprudence and drawing on the book, is a brief but evocative look at how justice and equality are - - - and were - - - portrayed.  Two images Resnik includes and analyzes from WPA murals in courthouses are particularly salient.

First, there is an image of Justice as Protector and Avenger in a South Carolina courtroom.

Not particularly remarkable, one might think, until one reads about the objections to "justice" looking like a “barefooted mulatto woman wearing bright-hued clothing.”

Second, there is an image in a Idaho courthouse:

Should this be removed as offensive?  Or displayed as an accurate part of the history of justice and equality?  Resnik shares the decisions of state officials, ultimately made in consultation with Native tribes.

Resnik contends that such images, including these from courthouses in South Carolina and Idaho,

make a first point—that courts were one of equality’s frontiers. The conflicts about what could or could not be shown on courthouse walls mirrored conflicts about what rights people had in court.

A terrific read - - - and look - - - as well as a reminder of the richness of the Representing Justice book.

RR
[images via]

Daily Read: Albany Law Review Symposium on Free Speech

Now in print is the Fall 2012 Albany Law Review Symposium “What Are We Saying? Violence, Vulgarity, Lies . . . And The Importance Of 21st Century Free Speech."

Here's the TOC of the issue with links to pdfs of the articles, essay, and discussions:

ARTICLES:
-- Ronald K.L. Collins......Foreword: Exceptional Freedom—The Roberts Court, the First Amendment, and the New Absolutism
 -- Robert M. O'Neil........Hate Speech, Fighting Words, and Beyond--Why American Law is Unique
 -- Rodney A. Smolla........Categories, Tiers of Review, and the Roiling Sea of Free Speech Doctrine and Principle: A Methodological Critique of United States v. Alvarez
 -- Jeffery C. Barnum.........Encouraging Congress to Encourage Speech: Reflections on United States v. Alvarez
 -- Marjorie Heins..........The Supreme Court and Political Speech in the 21st Century: The Implications of Holder v. Humanitarian Law Project
 -- R. George Wright.........Are There First Amendment “Vacuums?”: The Case of the Free Speech Challenge to Tobacco Package Labeling Requirement
 -- Robert D. Richards & David J. Weinert.........Punting in the First Amendment’s Red Zone: The Supreme Court’s “Indecision” on the FCC’s Indecency Regulations Leaves Broadcasters Still Searching For Answers
 -- Marvin Ammori & Luke Pelican.........Media Diversity and Online Advertising
 -- Martin H. Redish & Michael J.T. Downey.........Criminal Conspiracy as Free Expression

ESSAY:
-- Owen Fiss........The Democratic Mission of the University
 
TRANSCRIPTS:
-- Welcome & Opening Remarks.......Benjamin P. Pomerance
-- Debate on Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission.......Floyd Abrams and Alan B. Morrison, moderated by Ronald K.L. Collins
 -- Panel Discussion on Recent U.S. Supreme Court Free Speech Cases and Their Implications......Adam Liptak (moderator), Ronald K.L. Collins, Susan N. Herman, Alan B. Morrison, Robert M. O'Neil, Robert D. Richards

 

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Daily Read: Linda Sugin on the Constitutional Tax Avoidance of the Roberts Court

The Roberts Court majority is avoiding taxes: not the income taxes revealed by the returns due today, April 15, but the constitutional scrutiny that taxes deserve.

Law Prof Linda Sugin (pictured left), in her article The Great and Mighty Tax Law: How the Roberts Court Has Reduced Constitutional Scrutiny of Taxes and Tax Expenditures, draft available on ssrn, analyzes two cases that are not typically paired. 

First, she considers National Federation of Independent Business v. Sebelius, in which, as she describes it, Justice Roberts' "newly muscular tax law saved Obamacare from near death at the hands of the Commerce Clause." 

Second, she examines Arizona Christian Schools v. Winn, in which, as dhe describes it, the majority   "adopted a novel judicial approach to targeted tax benefits" and denied standing in an Establishment Clause challenge.

Sugin argues that these two cases, taken together, "challenge the revenue-raising role of the tax law, and give it tremendous potential to overcome constitutional obstacles that legislatures face," including state legislatures.  She contends that the cases "introduce confusion into the law of taxation by incentivizing the adoption of more non-revenue policy in the tax law, and blurring the conceptual structure of taxation."  She claims that "these decisions undermine the important work on tax reform and fiscal responsibility that other branches of government are doing."  Ultimately, she argues that these decisions portend that "policies administered through the tax law" will be deemed constitutional "even where those same policies would be unconstitutional if administered as either direct regulation or appropriated spending."

Worth a read and not only on "tax day."

RR

Tsesis on Inflammatory Speech

The Supreme Court in recent years has issued a series of opinions striking restrictions on some of the most offensive kinds of speech.  From restrictions on violent video games, to funeral protests, to crush videos, and even to lies about receiving the Medal of Honor, the Court has put free speech ahead of offense.  The Court privileged free speech over countveiling factors in other areas, too, perhaps most notably in Citizens United.

But in Holder v. Humanitarian Law Project, the Court went the other way.  In HLP, the Court upheld the "material support" provision of the PATRIOT Act, which outlawed speech that provided material support to terrorists.  The ruling didn't obviously square with the Court's clear trend to privilege speech over offense or other consderations, and it came under sharp fire in the media and the academic world.  In particular, nobody seemed to defend HLP in relation to some of the Court's canonical cases and doctrine on categories of unprotected speech.  (And that's becuase some the most relevant categories--in particular, group defamation and hate speech--have themselves been targets for some academics.)

Alexander Tsesis (Loyola Chicago) is out to change that in his most recent contribution to free speech scholarship, Infammatory Speech: Offense Versus Incitement, recently posted on SSRN and to appear in the University of Minnesota Law Review. 

Tsesis distinguishes between the Cour's treatment of offensive speech (in the string of cases mentioned above) and its treatment of threatening speech--overturning restrictions on the former, and upholding restrictions on the latter.  He defends HLP as a case involving threatening speech, or as protecting public safety.  In particular, he puts HLP right at the intersection of Virginia v. Black (holding that a state may ban cross burning with the intent to intimidate, as a type of true threat) and Beauharnais v. Illinois (upholding a state statute penalizing group defamation), even if HLP applied a heightened form of scrutiny:

Viewed in concert, the holdings in Black, Beauharnais, and HLP indicate that the Court is deferential to the regulation of speech for a limited number of public safety purposes.  The public safety policies involved in these three cases were inapplicable to the offensive speech cases . . . .  HLP did differ from the other two incitement cases in its reference to a "more rigorous scrutiny" while never adopting any comparable standard for proving up group defamations or true threats.  This distinction is logical because material support might involve discourse that is not harmful on its face, albeit increasing organizations' standing and credibility, while true threats and group defamations are by definition menacing to the public at large or some targeted segment thereof.  Thus, the greater potential for error and abuse in the enforcement of material support statutes required a heightened level of scrutiny that would be unfitting for the other two categories.

P. 147.

Along the way, Tsesis explores some of the problems applying a category like incitement to digital communications and the internet, where there's not always imminence but there still may be a threat to public safety.  Group defamation and true threats are better fits for this kind of communication, he says.  And thus they're better fits for understanding and justifying HLP, too.  He also convincingly takes on those who criticize HLP, Black, and Beauharnais.  

Tsesis's upshot: "When statements, emblems, badges, symbols, or other forms of expression that are historically tied to persecution and harmful stereotypes are intentionally used to put others in fear of violence, they are unprotected by the First Amendment."

This is a terrific piece, well argued, thoughtful and provocative.  It also fills a hole in the literature.  Highly recommended; read it.

SDS

Daily Read: Snyder on Frankfurter's Popular Constitutionalism

Can a judge - - - a Supreme Court Justice - - - be a practitioner of "popular constitutionalism"?  Was Justice Felix Frankfurter such a judge?

In his forthcoming article, Frankfurter and Popular Constitutionalism, ConLawProf Brad Snyder answers both questions with an enthusiastic and erudite "yes." 

Snyder's view of popular constitutionalism may be a broader than some, but his linking of judicial restraint with popular constitutionalism, especially when situated in the New Deal era, is sound.  Snyder concentrates on three of the most important and oft-criticized constitutional moments of Frankfurter's judicial career – the flag salute cases of Minersville School Dist. v. Gobitis (1940), reversed a mere three years later in West Virginia Bd. of Educ. v. Barnette (1943);  Brown v. Board of Education and its progeny; and Baker v. Carr (1962). 

Snyder concludes: "Frankfurter’s judicial reputation suffered at the hands of scholars intent on preserving the Warren Court’s legacy of protecting civil rights and civil liberties. Frankfurter’s Baker [v. Carr] dissent, however, has proven to be just as prophetic as some of Holmes’s and Brandeis’s dissents because it revealed the ugly underside of the Warren Court’s legacy – judicial supremacy."  

While others have certainly noted the vacillations of progressive and conservative judicial activism, Snyder's article calls for a renewed evaluation of Frankfurter and perhaps of popular constitutionalism.

RR
[image via]

Daily Read: Hutchinson on Political Power and Same-Sex Marriage

In the oral argument for United States v. Windsor challenging the constitutionality of the Defense of Marriage Act, DOMA, Chief Justice Roberts expressed skepticism that gays and lesbians were politically powerless, announcing to Roberta Kaplan, representing Edith Windsor, "As far as I can tell, political figures are falling over themselves to endorse your side of the case."

ConLawProf Darren Hutchinson (pictured) provides an indepth examination, context, and prescient critique of Roberts' remark in his new article, Not Without Political Power': Gays and Lesbians, Equal Protection, and the Suspect Class Doctrine, available in draft on ssrn.  Hutchinson argues that the political powerlessness factor used to evaluate claims for heightened scrutiny under equal protection doctrine is "especially undertheorized and contradictory." 

Hutchinson's article is a tour de force of precedent deploying rhetoric of political powerlessness.  Of course, Hutchinson highlights Justice Scalia's well-known dissent in Romer v. Evans, the Colorado Amendment 2 case, noting that not only is it based on stereotypes but it "sounds exactly like a political document against gay and lesbian rights."  But Hutchinson does suggest that there is indeed a role for politics, however at a much more sophisticated level.  Rather than jettison any inquiry into political powerlessness as some scholars have argued, Hutchinson contends that a much more robust understanding of politics is necessary.

Ultimately, Hutchinson concludes that the present scholarly and judicial discourse

fails adequately to discuss the multiple factors that cause political vulnerability among gays and lesbians. While some gays and lesbians possess power, most of them do not. Poverty, gender, race, geography, and disability influence the ability of gays and lesbians to exercise political power.

Instead, he suggests that political science scholarship inform legal scholarship and judicial opinions, and that antisubordination legal scholarship inform wider discussions of equal protection.  Certainly, Hutchinson's article should inform anyone considering political powerlessness in the context of same-sex marriage and equal protection.

RR

Daily Read: Not The Marrying Kind by Nicola Barker

The critique of marriage as a legal institution may seem a bit churlish as the same-sex marriage cases go to the United States Supreme Court this week.  It may seem as if there is universal agreement that marriage is "good" and the only question is whether governments can exclude same-sex couples from this "good."

Yet there is certainly a different way to conceptualize the issue.  In Not the Marrying Kind, U.K. Law Professor Nicola Barker engages the issues from several perspectives.  Importantly, her discussions do not portray the lesbian or larger LGBT communities as monolithically desiring marriage, but rather as critically engaged in questions of formal equality. She is scrupulous about presenting the complexities of opinions, theories, and strategies across several continents. Barker's book is a treat even readers who have been following these developments for years or are suffering from same-sex marriage fatigue.

I review Barker's book, as well as several other books on same-sex and opposite-sex marriage in an essay "Is Marriage Good for Women?" in this month's Women's Review of Books.

Barker's book is the best of the lot and essential reading for anyone seriously engaged in thinking about same-sex marriage.

RR

Daily Read: Tolson on VRA's Section 5 and - - - Section 2 of the Fourteenth Amendment

The controversies surrounding the Court's impending decision in  Shelby County v. Holder regarding the constitutionality of the Voting Rights Act's "preclearance" provision (section 5) have been exacerbated by Justice Scalia's remarks about "racial entitlement."  Seemingly, at issue for the Justices - - - originalist and otherwise - - - is the meaning of the enforcement clauses of the Fifteenth and Fourteenth Amendments: "The Congress shall have power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation."

In a provocative new article, A Structural Theory of Elections, available in draft on ssrn, ConLawProf Franita Tolson (pictured) seeks to redirect our attention to section 2 of the Fourteenth Amendment:

Representatives shall be apportioned among the several states according to their respective numbers, counting the whole number of persons in each state, excluding Indians not taxed. But when the right to vote at any election for the choice of electors for President and Vice President of the United States, Representatives in Congress, the executive and judicial officers of a state, or the members of the legislature thereof, is denied to any of the male inhabitants of such state, being twenty-one years of age and citizens of the United States, or in any way abridged, except for participation in rebellion, or other crime, the basis of representation therein shall be reduced in the proportion which the number of such male citizens shall bear to the whole number of male citizens twenty-one years of age in such state.

Tolson's attention is not to the language that first introduced gender into the Constitution ("male inhabitants") or to the change in counting those male inhabitants ("excluding Indians") or to the subsequent change in voting age, but to the broad ability of Congress to change the apportionment for voting rights violations.  She argues that this previously under-emphasized language makes the Court's "congruence and proportionality" standard for evaluating Congressional power inapplicable in the voting and election contexts.

Tolson's article is a closely reasoned and excellently researched argument for the broad enforcement powers of Congress intended by the Framers of the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments.  She ultimately contends "that requiring preclearance of all electoral changes instituted by select jurisdictions under section 5 of the Voting Rights Act is actually a lesser penalty than reduced representation under section 2, and is thus consistent with Congress’s broad authority to regulate voting and elections under the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments."

Tolson's article is certainly worth a read for anyone considering the issues at the heart of Shelby County v. Holder.

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Zimmer on Inequality and Money in Politics

We don't talk about economic inequality much these days in constitutional law--at least not as much as we should.  And we certainly haven't heard enough about poverty, its causes, and its solutions in politics.  ConLawProf Mike Zimmer (Loyola, Chicago) is out to do something about that in his excellent piece Inequality, Individualized Risk, and Insecurity, recently posted on SSRN and based on his Thomas E. Fairchild Lecture at the University of Wisconsin Law School last April.

Zimmer's core argument connects the dots between inequality in today's economy, government policy, and money in politics--in a way that we don't often hear, even in discussions about campaign finance reform.  (Sure, there's plenty of talk about the vast amounts of money in politics, but we don't often connect that to poverty and economic inequality.)  Here's Zimmer:

The thesis of this paper is that our extreme inequality in part results from government policy, that much government policy is the result of the undue influence of money in politics, and that, before any reform is likely, the dominance of money in politics must be substantially reduced.  An important question is how that dominance can be reduced; however, the ansewr to that question is far from clear.

Zimmer takes us through the current state of economic inequality and connects that to government policy.  He limits his focus to labor policy, but still he manages a wide-ranging discussion, tying federal labor policy to Supreme Court rulings (in Ricci v. DeStefano, Wal-Mart Stores, Inc. v. Dukes, AT&T Mobility LLC v. Concepcion, and even Ashcroft v. Iqbal) to show how the Court has aided and abetted Congress in tamping down labor rights at every turn.  Again, Zimmer:

In sum, putting these decisions together, employers with collective bargaining agreements have a strong incentive to require an arbitration clause shifting all statutory claims to arbitration but at the same time precluding jury trials and class actions.  That same incentive exists for employers without a union representing its workers.

If, somehow, an employee with a federal statutory claim is able to avoid having it shunted into arbitration, the Supreme Court has erected formidable procedural barriers to it reaching trial.  Until recently, employment discrimination cases were not likely to be dismissed before the summary judgment stage, which was typically triggered once discovery was complete.  In Ashcroft v. Iqbal, the Court moved up the possibility of dismissal to the earlier pleading stage before any discovery typically takes place.

Zimmer then persuasively ties federal policies that create inequalities to money in politics, again examining the Supreme Court's complicity (in Citizens United).  He calls for campaign finance reform, but, recognizing that "the prospects . . . are not good," he alternatively suggests an economic equality social movement.  Zimmer says the Occupy Movement is a start; so is popular culture (with, e.g., Steven Colbert's efforts to highlight the problems with super-PACs).  

Zimmer's piece, with its tying-together of everything from poverty and extreme inequality to labor policy to campaign finance to social movements, is a joy to read.  Highly recommended.

SDS

[Image: Vincent Van Gogh, The Potato Eaters, Google Art Project]

Daily Read: Lord Robin Cooke

 

Lord Robin Cooke Coat of Arms

Lord Cooke, 1926-2006, the renowned jurist now has a ssrn author page.

As his obituary in The Telegraph described him, Robin Cooke

strove to give reality to his country's commitment to biculturalism embedded in the Treaty of Waitangi, resolving Maori land claims cases and earning the highest respect from Maori elders. Following the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act (1990) he exercised a steadying hand on the legal tiller, which ensured relative social stability during reforms that culminated in the abolition of the appeals from New Zealand to the Privy Council and the establishment of a newly-created supreme court.

The Lord Cooke Project at Victoria University of Wellington (New Zealand/Aortearoa), spearheaded by law profs Joel Colón-Ríos and John Prebble has a goal to upload all of Lord Cooke’s published and unpublished papers and make them more widely accessible. 

ConLawProfs doing comparative constitutional law will be interested in Cooke's work, particularly his writings about the constitutional arrangements in colonial (especially white settler) societies with both the indigenous populations and with the colonial power.  Cooke also wrote widely on the development of the common law and the ssrn page now includes his four papers from the prestigious Hamlyn Lectures.  This is a terrific contribution since published Hamyln lectures are usually burdened with a hefty pricetag.

The Telegraph obituary also mentions that Cooke authored an article "disagreeing with the creation of a Supreme Court for the United Kingdom on the ground that the present system worked perfectly well." It would be interesting to contemplate Lord Cooke's opinions about the current UK Supreme Court, including its struggle for gender diversity.

Thanks to the work by Colón-Ríos and Prebbles, consulting and citing Lord Robin Cooke's work is now much easier.

RR

Irons's Case for Repudiation of the Japanese American Internment Cases

Professor Peter Irons (UCSD Emeritus, and founder and Director Emeritus, Earl Warren Bill of Rights Project, UCSD) calls for Supreme Court repudiation of Hirabayashi, Yasui, and Korematsu in his recent piece Unfinished Business: The Case for Supreme Court Repudiation of the Japanese American Internment Cases.

The Supreme Court in those cases upheld convictions of Japanese Americans for violations of the military curfew and exclusion orders issued by President Franklin D. Roosevelt on February 19, 1943.

Irons initiated and served as counsel to Fred Korematsu and Gordon Hirabayashi in their 1983 coram nobis actions, which led to the vacation of their wartime convictions.  Irons also wrote Justice at War: The Story of the Japanese American Internment Cases and edited Justice Delayed: The Record of the Japanese American Internment Cases.

Irons now calls for Supreme Court repudiation of Hirabayashi, Yasui, and Korematsu, an unprecedented act, but one that Irons says is appropriate here:

This essay presents the case for the Supreme Court to . . . formally repudiat[e] its decisions in the Japanese American internment cases, issuing a public statement acknowledging that these decisions were based upon numerous and knowing acts of governmental misconduct before the Court, and were thus wrongly decided.  These acts of misconduct, documented and discussed herein, were committed by several high-ranking military and civilian officials (including the Solicitor General of the United States) before and during the pendancy of the internment cases before the Supreme Court.  Consequently, the Court was forced to rely in making its decisions on records and arguments that were fabricated and fraudulent.  Sadly, the Court's unquestioning acceptance of these tainted records, and its upholding of the criminal convictions of Gordon Hirabayashi, Minoru Yasui, and Fred Korematsu, has left a stain on the Court's integrity that requires the long overdue correction of public repudiation and apology, as both the legislative and executive branches of the federal government--to their credit--have now done.

Irons explains why Hirabayashi, Yasui, and Korematsu couldn't get the Supreme Court's rulings overturned, and thus why his efforts are now necessary:

Admittedly, a public repudiation of the Japanese American internment cases would be unprecedented, considering that the cases are technically moot, since the Solicitor General of the United States at the time, Charles Fried, did not ask the Court to review the decisions of the federal judges who vacated the convictions, pursuant to writs of error coram nobis that were filed in all three cases in 1983 and decided in opinions issued in 1984, 1986, and 1987.  The government's decision to forego appeals to the Supreme Court left the victorious coram nobis petitioners in a classic Catch-22 situation: hoping to persuade the Supreme Court to finally and unequivocally reverse and repudiate the decisions in their cases, they were unable--as prevailing parties in the lower courts--to bring appeals to the Court.

Irons argues that the Court "has both the inherent power and duty to correct its tainted records through a public repudiation of the wartime decisions."

This is a piece in the finest tradition of making academic work relevant to the real world--what Irons does so well.  It's a persuasive piece of history, scholarship, and activism by somebody who helped make--and continues to make--that story.  Highly recommended.

SDS

[Image: Gordon Hirabayashi, Minoru Yasui, Fred Korematsu]

Daily Read: Symposium Issue on Perry from NYU Review of Law & Social Change

Debuting on line today is volume 37:1 of the NYU Review of Law & Social Change, a symposium issue dedicated to Perry v. Brown, now Hollingsworth v. Perry that is scheduled to be heard by the United States Supreme Court in 15 days.

According to the Introduction, the Symposium editors sought to present the issue as a "time capsule," filled with "leading and emerging voices in the LGBTQ movement" as well as other scholars, "reflecting on Perry before the Court has its final say, before anyone gets the benefit of 20/20 hindsight."  The comments were "first drafted before the Court had even granted certiorari" on the premise that Perry was already an important case.

The Symposium participants were asked to address three queries.  Here are the questions and the participants:

 



The Symposium will also be available as a print issue, but meanwhile having its full contents available before the arguments makes it more valuable as a daily - - - or weekly - - - read.

RR

"Racial Entitlement": Professor Scalia, then and now

Justice Antonin Scalia's remark during the oral arguments in Shelby County v. Holder last week characterizing the preclearance provision of the Voting Rights Act as a "racial entitlement" has garnered much attention, including "gasps" in the Supreme Court chambers itself.  

Of course, the ability of Scalia's comments to provoke is not new: his statements in last year's oral arguments in Arizona v. United States regarding the constitutionality of SB1070 drew particular attention.

In the Shelby argument, Scalia described the Voting Rights Act provision and its reenactments as

a phenomenon that is called perpetuation of racial entitlement.  It's been written about.  Whenever a society adopts racial entitlements, it is very difficult to get out of them through the normal political processes.

To what writings does Justice Scalia refer?  ConLawProf Chad Flanders, in a news commentary that is itself garnering attention, suggests that Justice Scalia might be referencing Professor Scalia's own writings.  Flanders points to Scalia's article, The Disease as Cure: “In Order to Get Beyond Racism, We Must First Take Account of Race,” 1979 Wash. U. L. Rev. 147, available here. 

Scalia's writing is not an article but rather published as a "Commentary" and obviously taken from his remarks on a panel at a Symposium entitled "The Quest for Equality."  Scalia describes himself as the "anti-hero" of the panel: the other commentator was Herma Hill Kay and the main paper was by Harry T. Edwards. (Ruth Bader Ginsburg delivered the main paper on the next panel.)  His subtitle is derived from Justice Blackmun's dissenting and concurring opinion in Regents of University of California v. Bakke, 438 U.S. 265, 407 (1978).

Scalia indeed does use the term "racial entitlement" in his remarks:

The affirmative action system now in place will produce the latter result because it is based upon concepts of racial indebtedness and racial entitlement rather than individual worth and individual need; that is to say, because it is racist.

But of course, his rejection of "racial indebtedness" was clear in his 1995 concurring opinion in Adarand Constructors, Inc. v. Pena, 515 U.S. 200, in which the Court held an affirmative action policy unconstitutional.  Scalia wrote then:

under our Constitution there can be no such thing as either a creditor or a debtor race. That concept is alien to the Constitution's focus upon the individual.

And of course, Scalia is not alone in his views.  Not only was he concurring in Adarand, but the notion of affirmative action as racist is forcefully articulated by Chief Justice John Roberts in the last (substantive) line in the opinion for the Court in  Parents Involved in Cmty. Sch. v. Seattle Sch. Dist. No. 1, 551 U.S. 701, 748 (2007):

The way to stop discrimination on the basis of race is to stop discriminating on the basis of race.

Perhaps the issue is not so much the provenance of Scalia's statements during oral arguments, but the surprise they are still capable of provoking.

RR
[image: caricature of Antonin Scalia by DonkeyHotey via]