On May 1, having received notice that Justice Souter will retire, President Obama said:I read nearly 60 exams, and it was interesting to see which cases were chosen in the 2 categories. One case clearly won the prize for most empathetic. Perhaps you can guess. Interestingly, one opinion that was frequently presented as empathetic was also cited a few times as an example of the abstract type. That's not surprising: a judge driven to a conclusion by empathy might strive mightily to present the decisionmaking process in dryly abstract terms.
Now, the process of selecting someone to replace Justice Souter is among my most serious responsibilities as President. So I will seek somebody with a sharp and independent mind and a record of excellence and integrity. I will seek someone who understands that justice isn't about some abstract legal theory or footnote in a case book. It is also about how our laws affect the daily realities of people's lives — whether they can make a living and care for their families; whether they feel safe in their homes and welcome in their own nation.Let’s assume that the President — who used to teach constitutional law — has arrived at this preference through studying the cases that we studied in this course. [We studied equal protection and due process.] He might see various of the opinions as the product of “some abstract legal theory or footnote in a case book.” Other opinions might seem to him to spring from an awareness of “how our laws affect the daily realities of people's lives — whether they can make a living and care for their families; whether they feel safe in their homes and welcome in their own nation” and so forth.
I view that quality of empathy, of understanding and identifying with people's hopes and struggles as an essential ingredient for arriving as just decisions and outcomes. I will seek somebody who is dedicated to the rule of law, who honors our constitutional traditions, who respects the integrity of the judicial process and the appropriate limits of the judicial role. I will seek somebody who shares my respect for constitutional values on which this nation was founded, and who brings a thoughtful understanding of how to apply them in our time.
Don’t assume the listed “daily realities” are the only “daily realities” that he thinks a Justice should “understand and identify with” to “arrive at just decisions and outcomes.” And consider that he merges this “quality of empathy” with dedication to the rule of law, honor for constitutional traditions, and respect for “the integrity of the judicial process and the appropriate limits of the judicial role.”
Where, in the cases that we studied, has it mattered whether a Justice followed abstract theories and dry text from case books instead of the things the President wants from a Supreme Court Justice? Choose specific opinions (majority, concurring, or dissenting) ... that illustrate the two types of judicial reasoning that the President contrasted....
[L]ooking at the opinions you have written about, take a position on the importance of the quality of empathy in a Supreme Court Justice.
I do not know whether the men of VMI lived by this ["Code of a Gentleman"]; perhaps not. But it is powerfully impressive that a public institution of higher education still in existence sought to have them do so. I do not think any of us, women included, will be better off for its destruction.I am looking for intellectual engagement with ideas and with the texts of the opinions, and the students did an excellent job (especially with only 3 hours to do it).
"The real question is not whether these cities shrink – we're all shrinking – but whether we let it happen in a destructive or sustainable way," said [Dan Kildee, treasurer of Genesee County, Michigan, where Flint is located]. "Decline is a fact of life in Flint. Resisting it is like resisting gravity."...Nobody will be forced to move? People will enjoy living near a forest or meadow?
Choosing which areas to knock down will be delicate but many of them were already obvious, he said.
The city is buying up houses in more affluent areas to offer people in neighbourhoods it wants to demolish. Nobody will be forced to move, said Mr Kildee.
"Much of the land will be given back to nature. People will enjoy living near a forest or meadow," he said.
Mr Kildee acknowledged that some fellow Americans considered his solution "defeatist" but he insisted it was "no more defeatist than pruning an overgrown tree so it can bear fruit again."
Every night for the last two months, thousands of abortion opponents across the nation logged on to a blog run by the suburban Chicago woman who identified herself only as "B" or "April's Mom."But the doll — the doll — was too much. She should have figured that some of those readers know their dolls.
People said they prayed that God would save her pregnancy. They e-mailed her photos of their children dressed in pink, bought campaign T-shirts, shared tales of personal heartache and redemption, and sent letters and gifts to an Oak Lawn P.O. box in support.
As more and more people were drawn to her compelling tale, eager advertisers were lining up. And established parenting Web sites that oppose abortion were promoting her blog -- which included biblical quotes, anti-abortion messages and a soundtrack of inspirational Christian pop songs.
By Sunday night, when "April's Mom" claimed to have given birth to her "miracle baby" -- blogging that April Rose had survived a home birth only to die hours later -- her Web site had nearly a million hits.
"DOMA does not address whether a same-sex couple may marry within the United States," the motion says. "Instead, it permits the citizens of each state to decide that question for themselves."
[I]'s important to note that when Chelsea Clinton was 13 years old she was the target of numerous insults based on her appearance. Rush Limbaugh even referred to her as the "White House dog." NOW hopes that all the conservatives who are fired up about sexism in the media lately will join us in calling out sexism when it is directed at women who aren't professed conservatives.So NOW is setting an example. Let's hope they keep it up too.
What was your “I have to get the f**k out of here” epiphany?(He's not related to Judge Posner, by the way.)
Never had it. It wasn’t a single light-bulb moment. Instead, I did this pro bono lawsuit (that was unsuccessful) for twins of a Nazi concentration camp. And during the four-year course of gathering documents and doing research, I became an expert of sorts on the so-called Angel of Death, Josef Mengele. When the suit was over, I approached a publisher, McGraw-Hill, without an agent, and they figured this obsessive work of mine might make a good biography. I never expected to never practice law again. But I so liked writing the book (a bit like doing a giant brief on a tight deadline) that I never looked back....
Do you think your legal background gives you an edge as a reporter?
Big time. The major thing is that I’m not afraid of documents, after getting used to them in the antitrust litigation against IBM while at Cravath. So when I approached the JFK assassination, reporters would say there are tens and tens of thousands of pages of docs. And I’d think, “So?” Also, non-lawyers tend to be more impressed with a legal degree than they should—it helps open up doors.
He was captured by a guard and sentenced to 11 years in prison in 1983. "[I was] convicted by a Negro jury, Jew/Negro attorneys, and sentenced to prison for 11 years by a Jew judge," he wrote.
"Deep water animals have trouble adapting," said Ken Peterson, an aquarium spokesman. "We were a bit disappointed that it wasn't here longer to connect with visitors face to face."...Well, plunge some of those face-time-seeking visitors into the ocean depths and see how good they are at adapting.
The shark is distinguished by thornlike scales and two dorsal fins near the tail. The species is found around the Pacific Rim at depths of 3,000 feet. It is a sluggish bottom-dweller that feeds on fish, other sharks, octopus, squid and crustaceans
"The A.M.A. does not believe that creating a public health insurance option for non-disabled individuals under age 65 is the best way to expand health insurance coverage and lower costs. The introduction of a new public plan threatens to restrict patient choice by driving out private insurers, which currently provide coverage for nearly 70 percent of Americans."
If private insurers are pushed out of the market, the group said, "the corresponding surge in public plan participation would likely lead to an explosion of costs that would need to be absorbed by taxpayers."...
The medical association said it “cannot support any plan design that mandates physician participation.” For one thing, it said, “many physicians and providers may not have the capability to accept the influx of new patients that could result from such a mandate.”
annalthouse Early breakfast alone in the dark. I'm hoping somehow it will inspire me to efficient exam-grading today. Deadline tomorrow."From web"... I sound like a spider!
less than 5 seconds ago from web
annalthouse Some synchronous things are pleasing, but I'm sorry my art museum foolery coincides with the Holocaust museum shooting.
less than 5 seconds ago from web
annalthouse Obama at the Obama museum, where even the wallpaper is Obama. http://tinyurl.com/kk5x8d
less than 5 seconds ago from web
annalthouse Must there be a thunderstorm every morning at 5 a.m.? Ah, maybe I'd love to adapt to exactly that.
1 minute ago from web
Here's the new concept:
Von Brunn maintains a white-supremacist Web site, HolyWesternEmpire.org. The biography of Von Brunn on the site states that he spent over six years in federal prison for attempting to "place the treasonous Federal Reserve Board of Governors under legal, non-violent, citizens arrest." A World War II veteran and resident of Maryland, Von Brunn is the author of a pamphlet entitled "Kill the Best Gentiles: A new, hard-hitting exposé of the JEW CONSPIRACY to destroy the White gene-pool." He is a Holocaust denier who has written that "Hilter's worse mistake" was that "he didn't gas the Jews."
She seems to want some kind of Mullah Obama, who can parse religions in expert ways so as to provide a path in which all religious devotees can, at the same time, be convinced by their own misunderstanding of others and the wrong nature of their own religious awareness that invokes chaos.
She wants a Messiah, a clear figure who dashes aside millennia of religious and cultural conflicts within a single speech. And, the fact is, people don't even want to listen to a messiah on these topics. The issue is religious but it's so much more than religious. It's about ego, and power, and control, using religion as a tool as much as a source.
Obama's lack of fervor is probably the best thing that can be delivered to a region wracked with fervor. Blessed are the peace-makers, after all.
Fervor is not overcome by more fervor, a waged war of passion. Rather, fervor is overcome by refusing to engage in the frenzy, absorbing and deflecting the rage into something constructive. The sins of the world are not addressed by talking them over in excited and rhetorically impressive ways.
She is conflating fervor with belief and frenzied excitement with persistent character. Most fundamentalists aren't acting out of real fervor for their chosen god, most are acting out of insecure egos who are attempting to manipulate the seen world so as to secure their own identity as dominating and secure their meager faith in some kind of obvious sign of their supposed devotion.
The religious passions of so many are not really religious at all, but are expressions of a deep-seated insecurity in the face of a rather dismissive world.
Obama's approach won't really change anything, but America is not the salvation of the middle east, and cannot leap into the frenzy with the same passion. We are the people who can show, in our actions, what it means to live for something greater -- our children, our future, our peace -- and how a steady approach is the way lives are built and rebuilt.
The Middle East does not need more fervor. It needs calm, but a calm that is trustworthy, and listening, and pushes for real changes in substantive ways within the societies themselves, pointing out that the answer is within not by changing someone else.
Well, he certainly played the gay card well. He didn't acknowledge it but put out plenty of hints on YouTube prior to the show, refused to answer questions about his sexuality after the show was over just long enough to be "in the closet" and therefore able to stage a big coming out thing, used coming out as a way to get the best magazine cover you could possibly get, and somehow managed to negotiate a deal where that very magazine cover would make no mention of his coming out in the article and would appear to just be about how "wild" he is as a performer. On the show, he got all the credit for being out without having to deal with any of the consequences, and now he gets the big cover but gets the appearance of it not being about his coming out. He is quite media savvy and played the game for maximum attention.Ouch!
Oh, I do like that he acknowledges in the article that he's fat. Bad skin isn't quite as much of a revelation, and people can forgive bad skin, but people act like he's hot when he's quite out of shape and can't possibly look good naked. But props to him for admitting it.
Ha ha ha ha ha
I can't stand it. But Palladian, Post- Impressionist? Allow me recommend filter/pixelate/pointillize for Seurat-like dotage to conform Obamalisa, ha ha ha ha ha, that kills me all over again, with our Hostess' bleg.
[Jolie] managed the almost unheard-of task of turning the home-wrecker label into a wholesome, family-friendly triumph. There was little Maddox, who was growing up and clearly enjoying tossing footballs with his mother's new boyfriend. Jolie had managed to head off the scarlet letter by giving a boy an ideal masculine counterpoint...."Ideal masculine counterpoint"... you mean in terms of ideal "male beauty and virility"? A boy needs a role model... if he is to grow up to fit the traditional "self-entitled category" that we admire so much... at least in a woman... or whatever....
[S]he took for her own pleasure the male seen as the most desired of the tribe, Brad Pitt, who is always ranked at the top of indexes of male beauty and virility. As for the constraints of social convention — ahem, he was still married? You can have a variety of feelings about this, but Jolie's evident disdain of that social constraint certainly, for better or worse, put her in the same self-entitled category as those men who have traditionally taken what they wanted and let the emotional chips fall where they may.
Those holding 92 percent of the $6.9 billion in secured debt already approved a deal that would give bondholders $2 billion. Together, Indiana pension funds said they had $42 million invested in Chrysler, less than 1 percent of its secured debt. They paid about 43 cents on the dollar to acquire their share and, under Chrysler's plan, would get back 29 cents on the dollar.So $42 million is chump change. And the rule of law? No time for that! It's an eeeemmmmerrrrrgenceeeeee.
The bankruptcy judge said, in effect, that these small players should not stand in the way of a deal that could save Chrysler and keep the company in business making cars and trucks.
... I have a feeling that there might be some kind of connection between the development of a need for a distinct, somewhat comical, caricaturic musical way of signalling Asia, and the apparent desire for material that ridiculed Asians or "put them into place." (Although it is true that more or less ridiculous musical clichés have developed for pretty much everything during the 20th century, in connection with the rise of cinema and television and their usage of background music.)(Via Metafilter.)
But I am no musical sociologist or such and don't really feel capable to connect the threads and interpret what the bigger story is which the rise of this cliché-phenomenon tells. And this project is still in the stage of gathering the evidence.
[Y]es – I criticized [Ed] Whelan rather harshly. But that’s what the blogosphere is about. Blogging is not for the thin-skinned. And you would think that someone who spends their days trying to destroy other people’s reputations in dishonest and inflammatory ways wouldn’t be so childish and thin-skinned.Here's Ed Whelan, exposing "publius" in the National Review. On what grounds?
Anyway, I’m not sure whether I’ll start posting under my own name or not. And there were several people who already knew – it’s not like this is a state secret. But still, if I wanted my name out on this blog, I would have done so. It should have been my choice.
In the course of a typically confused post yesterday, publius embraces the idiotic charge (made by “Anonymous Liberal”) that I’m “essentially a legal hitman” who “pores over [a nominee’s] record, finds some trivial fact that, when distorted and taken totally out of context, makes that person look like some sort of extremist.” In other of his posts (including two which I discussed here and here), publius demonstrated such a dismal understanding of the legal matters he opined on—including, for example, not understanding what common law is—that it was apparent to me that he had never studied law.Whelan wanted to do a "you a law professor" attack on his opponent. You've got to establish that the person is a law professor first, of couse, but it's not really worth doing, especially if the blogger isn't using his status as lawprof to bolster his opinion.
Well, I’m amused to learn that I was wrong about publius’s lack of legal education....
I think blogging anonymity is fine — though in the absence of a track record I tend to trust anonymous bloggers less — but is it a “despicable” act to identify an anonymous blogger? I’d say it depends. Certainly the political operative who leaked the Foleygate story via an anonymous blog had no right to anonymity. On the other hand, what about people who blog in a non-hitjob fashion but just want to avoid job repercussions? I’m more sympathetic there. But if you appoint yourself someone’s anonymous blogging nemesis, you can probably expect to be outed.I think you should expect it and be fully aware of the risk, but it would take a lot before I would feel justified exposing someone who had chosen the cloak of pseudonymity, certainly something quite different from the usual name-calling, insults, and bad arguments and criticisms, no matter how unfair or vicious.
Oscar wants to be free to use naughty words and otherwise break out of the professorial mode. But my experience is that even though students know who I am and can and do read this blog, they seem to accept this as a separate mode of mine and don't use it as a basis for talking to me in a newly confidential way. In the law school, the student-professor relationship is very well established. It really doesn't break down, even when students read your personal journal.More here.
Of course, there are things I won't say here, but these are things I wouldn't say even if I used a keyboard name. I would never insult or demean or deliberately hurt the feelings of students. I wouldn't casually knock my law school (though there are some considered criticisms I would be willing to make). I wouldn't hurt my family or acquaintances or even reveal much of anything about them (without permission). So there aren't really any significant ways using my own name limits me. Like Oscar, I care immensely about freedom as I do this blogging. But I also want to be aware of myself as an identifiable person, responsible for what I say (which is true whether you use a pseudonym or not). And I don't mind getting personal credit for anything good I might happen to say. Also, I kind of like being a public persona.
Happy Tune from the the 30's?
Sounds like Secretary of the Treasury "Tiny Tim" Geithner.
"What bothers you doesn't bother me."
My father worked with Miss Vicki's uncle and I was very young when he brought me along for a visit.
That was the first time I heard the expression "hippie weirdo freak."
In such ways are the incentives to conform made known to small children.
Miss Vicki now.
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