About the Federalist Society
Each semester, we work to promote awareness of these principles at UM Law and beyond, through a wide range of activities including speeches and debates, as well as social and networking events. For more information, visit the national Federalist Society website, or contact us.
A Judicial Misfire?
When the Washington Post takes this kind of issue with your legal scholarship you know you've failed to make your case:
- "[T]he decision yesterday by a federal district court in Detroit, striking down the NSA's program, is neither careful nor scholarly, and it is hard-hitting only in the sense that a bludgeon is hard-hitting. The angry rhetoric of U.S. District Judge Anna Diggs Taylor will no doubt grab headlines. But as a piece of judicial work -- that is, as a guide to what the law requires and how it either restrains or permits the NSA's program -- her opinion will not be helpful."
Perhaps LSAC might give Judge Diggs Taylor a grant. Her prior efforts certainly appear consistent with LSAC's current research.
UPDATE: Judge Diggs Taylor's opinion is overturned on appeal.
- The government can continue to use its warrantless domestic wiretap program pending the Justice Department's appeal of a federal judge's ruling outlawing the program, an Appeals Court in Cincinnati ruled on Wednesday.
The ruling overturned District Judge Anna Diggs Taylor's decision last week to deny a lengthy stay in the case, which is expected to end up with the Supreme Court.
###
ABA, LSAC and Diversity
The ABA has recently taken a rather unprecedented position regarding affirmative action at the law schools it accredits. (For more on "Standard 211" see ABA Watch, page 2). Some, including David Bernstein of the Volokh Conspiracy (a former guest speaker of this chapter), have suggested that the ABA's position requires schools to violate the law. (See here, here and here.)
In light of the ABA's actions, it is interesting to note this piece by Michael Barone about LSAC's (the LSAT folks) grant of $540,000 to study "whether racial diversity in U.S. law schools results in educational benefits." Certainly, this is an interesting question implicating significant social and legal issues, and one deserving of an impartial empirical analysis. Sadly, it appears that LSAC may have chosen the grant recipients more for the ideological slant of their scholarship and their prior involvement in the organization. Indeed, it has been suggested that LSAC "commissioned professors to produce support for a valued position... rather than an answer to a perplexing question..."
All of this leads to other serious questions about whether LSAC, as the sole administrators of the law school admissions exam, are really the appropriate people to be looking into these issues in the first place? Will LSAC be modifying the LSAT to advance the findings of the study? Will LSAT scores be "race-normed" if the study finds that affirmative action is desirable? Will LSAC then publicly disclose the process by which it discriminates between various racial and gender groups? Does such discrimination by a "private" administrative organization amount to state discrimination if the tests are used for admissions purposes at publicly funded law schools? How about the ABA's use of discriminatory preferences? Afterall, the ABA is engaged in the "licensing" of law schools and thus determines bar admissibility in many states--bar admission being a traditional governmental function. See OWATONNA, INC. v. TOWN OF HARRISON; see also BATES V. STATE BAR OF ARIZONA.
Perhaps Congress should be doing an investigation of its own.
###
Another case supporting the doctrine of "Free-speech, so long as we agree."
###
ACLU report tells of prison terrors that allegedly occurred during and after Hurricane Katrina last year. The report states that the prison "lost electricity and backup generators when it was inundated by floodwater. Stuck without food or water, inmates broke windows, burned blankets and rammed holes in buildings." A building in New Orleans lost power and was flooded during Hurricane Katrina? I don't believe it! Inmates rioted when presented the opportunity? Again, I'm shocked! Thanks to the ACLU for pointing out the obvious! Maybe when an earthquake hits California, they will issue a report on how ceiling tiles fell at San Quentin...
###
The Volokh Conspiracy has this interesting bit on the Espionage Act from today's opinion by the U.S. District Court in Alexandria, VA.
- Gov't May Prosecute Recipients of Leaked Information:
The federal government may prosecute private citizens who illegally receive and retransmit classified information, held federal district court Judge T.S. Ellis III yesterday in United States v. Rosen. Judge Ellis denied a motion to dismiss filed by Steven Rosen and Keith Weissman, two former employees of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), who are being prosecuted under the Espionage Act for obtaining classified information and communicating it to third parties, including members of the media....
Under Judge Ellis' interpretation, it also seems the federal government could prosecute reporters at the Washington Post and New York Times for their reports on secret prisons, NSA surveillance, and other classified counter-terror activities.
The real question, of course, is does the government actually have the political cajones to prosecute the NY Times?
More on the case here.
###
Robert Novak describes how "Hillary gets slapped down!"
###
Not Anti-war, Just Supporting the Other Side.
The New York Times finally shows its support for the troops... the ones shooting at American soldiers. Shameful. Just what did the Times have to promise to get this
###
On the Mexican Elections
Yahoo News and other sites have been featuring an AP Newswire story about the election protest in Mexico City today. The crux of the story is that a "mass" of people came out to protest right-wing PAN candidate, Calderon's victory over the left-wing PRD candidate, Obrador. (Funny that the lefty candidate is named "Worker!") More funny, perhaps, is watching the AP spin the numbers.
Compare:
- "More than 100,000 defiant supporters of leftist presidential candidate Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador massed Saturday in a bid to overturn his narrow election defeat with protests that threatened to widen Mexico's regional and class divisions."
- "[M]ore than 100,000 people in the square waved banners with slogans denouncing the alleged fraud."
- "Election officials say Calderon beat Lopez Obrador by less than 244,000 votes out of a total of 41 million ballots - or a margin of about 0.6 percent."
###
Miami Hosting Senate Immigration Hearings On Monday, July 10th
- Sen. John Warner, R-Va., said Wednesday he will hold a Senate Armed Services Committee hearing Monday in Miami as the House and Senate hold dueling hearings across the country in a tussle over divergent proposals over how to rewrite U.S. immigration laws...
The hearing will be held at 11 a.m. Monday in the Chapman Conference Center at Miami Dade College's Wolfson Campus, 245 NE Fourth St., in downtown Miami.
Warner will be joined at the hearing by Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., and other committee members.
Martinez and Florida Democratic Sen. Bill Nelson, a member of the Armed Services Committee, are expected to attend.
###
President Reagan Expressly Rejected The Geneva Convention Protocol I Provision "Ratified" By The Supreme Court In Hamdan
In fact, he found it so objectionable that he did not even send it to the Senate for ratification. On January 29, 1987, the President transmitted the following "Message to the Senate Transmitting a Protocol to the 1949 Geneva Conventions."
- "While I recommend that the Senate grant advice and consent to this agreement, I have at the same time concluded that the United States cannot ratify a second agreement on the law of armed conflict negotiated during the same period. I am referring to Protocol I additional to the 1949 Geneva Conventions, which would revise the rules applicable to international armed conflicts. Like all other efforts associated with the International Committee of the Red Cross, this agreement has certain meritorious elements. But Protocol I is fundamentally and irreconcilably flawed. It contains provisions that would undermine humanitarian law and endanger civilians in war. One of its provisions... would grant combatant status to irregular forces even if they do not satisfy the traditional requirements to distinguish themselves from the civilian population and otherwise comply with the laws of war. This would endanger civilians among whom terrorists and other irregulars attempt to conceal themselves. These problems are so fundamental in character that they cannot be remedied through reservations, and I therefore have decided not to submit the Protocol to the Senate in any form, and I would invite an expression of the sense of the Senate that it shares this view. Finally, the Joint Chiefs of Staff have also concluded that a number of the provisions of the Protocol are militarily unacceptable.
It is unfortunate that Protocol I must be rejected. We would have preferred to ratify such a convention, which as I said contains certain sound elements. But we cannot allow other nations of the world, however numerous, to impose upon us and our allies and friends an unacceptable and thoroughly distasteful price for joining a convention drawn to advance the laws of war. In fact, we must not, and need not, give recognition and protection to terrorist groups as a price for progress in humanitarian law.
***
The repudiation of Protocol I is one additional step, at the ideological level so important to terrorist organizations, to deny these groups legitimacy as international actors.
Therefore, I request that the Senate act promptly to give advice and consent to the ratification of the agreement I am transmitting today, subject to the understandings and reservations that are described more fully in the attached report. I would also invite an expression of the sense of the Senate that it shares the view that the United States should not ratify Protocol I, thereby reaffirming its support for traditional humanitarian law, and its opposition to the politicization of that law by groups that employ terrorist practices."
###