I recognize that this might seem to tread too close to the negative liberty / anti-censorship model, but in my view, it helps connect the anti-censorship model with the pro-architecture model.  We should worry when government micro-manages speech and chooses winners and losers, but macro-managing/structuring the speech environment is unavoidable.  A nondiscrimination principle guides the latter (macro-management) to avoid the [...]]]> There is one principle that I would add to the five that Marvin examines in the article:  nondiscrimination.  It seems to me that across public and private, physical and virtual ”space” contexts (and judicial opinions), one persistent principle is that nondiscriminatory approaches to sustaining spaces, platforms, … infrastructures are presumptively legit and normatively attractive — whether government efforts to “sustain” involve public provisioning, subsidization or regulation.

I recognize that this might seem to tread too close to the negative liberty / anti-censorship model, but in my view, it helps connect the anti-censorship model with the pro-architecture model.  We should worry when government micro-manages speech and chooses winners and losers, but macro-managing/structuring the speech environment is unavoidable.  A nondiscrimination principle guides the latter (macro-management) to avoid the former (micro-management).

This sixth principle is implicit is the other five that Marvin discusses.  It’s not articulated as a stand-alone principle, uniform across situations, or even defined completely.  Nonetheless, nondiscrimination of *some* sort is part of the spatial analysis for each principle. For example, in the paper, when Marvin discusses designated public spaces, he says that government can designate spaces–so long as it does so in a nondiscriminatory way. The nondiscrimination principle here is limited: government cannot discriminate based on the limited notion of “content.”  Another example is limited public forums where government cannot discriminate on viewpoint, but can set aside a forum for particular speakers based on the expected content (say students / educational content).  There are other examples that Marvin explores in the paper.  In my view, there is something fundamental about nondiscrimnation and the functional role that it plays that warrants further attention.

Frankly, the idea of a nondiscrimination principle connects with my own ideas about the First Amendment being aimed at sustaining infrastructure commons and the many different types of spillovers from speech–or more broadly, sustaining a spillover-rich cultural environment;  I explored those ideas in an essay and I expand on them in the book.   It is important to make clear that government support for infrastructure commons — whether by direct provisioning or by common carrier style regulation — lessens pressure on both governments and markets to pick winners and losers in the speech marketplace/environment, and as Marvin argues, that is something that is and ought to be fundamental or core in any FA model.

In the article, the critical approach that Marvin takes to challenge the “standard” model of the First Amendment is really interesting. He claims that the standard model of the First Amendment focuses on preserving speakers’ freedom by restricting government action and leaves any affirmative obligations for government to sustain open public spaces to a patchwork of exceptions lacking any coherent theory or principles. A significant consequence of this model is that open public spaces for speech—I want to substitute “infrastructure” for “spaces”–are marginalized and taken for granted. My forthcoming book—Infrastructure: The Social Value of Shared Resources–explains why such marginalization occurs in [...]]]> Thank you to Marvin for an excellent article to read and discuss, and thank you Concurring Opinions for providing a public forum for our discussion.

In the article, the critical approach that Marvin takes to challenge the “standard” model of the First Amendment is really interesting. He claims that the standard model of the First Amendment focuses on preserving speakers’ freedom by restricting government action and leaves any affirmative obligations for government to sustain open public spaces to a patchwork of exceptions lacking any coherent theory or principles. A significant consequence of this model is that open public spaces for speech—I want to substitute “infrastructure” for “spaces”–are marginalized and taken for granted. My forthcoming book—Infrastructure: The Social Value of Shared Resources–explains why such marginalization occurs in this and various other contexts and develops a theory to support the exceptions. But I’ll leave those thoughts aside for now and perhaps explore them in another post. And I’ll leave it to the First Amendment scholars to debate Marvin’s claim about what is the standard model for the First Amendment.

Instead, I would like to point out how a similar (maybe the same) problem can be seen in the Supreme Court’s most recent copyright opinion. In Golan v. Holder , Justice Ginsburg marginalizes the public domain in a startlingly fashion. Since it is a copyright case, the “model” is flipped around: government is empowered to grant exclusive rights (and restrict some speakers’ freedom) and any restrictions on the government’s power to do so is limited to narrow exceptions, i.e., the idea-expression distinction and fair use. A central argument in the case was that the public domain itself is another restriction. The public domain is not expressly mentioned in the IP Clause of the Constitution, but arguably, it is implicit throughout (Progress in Science and the Useful Arts, Limited Times). Besides, the public domain is inescapably part of the reality that we stand on the shoulders of generations of giants. Most copyright scholars believed that Congress could not grant copyright to works in the public domain (and probably thought that the issue raised in the case – involving restoration for foreign works that had not been granted copyright protection in the U.S — presented an exceptional situation that might be dealt with as such). But the Court declined to rule narrowly and firmly rejected the argument that “the Constitution renders the public domain largely untouchable by Congress.” In the end, Congress appears to have incredibly broad latitude to exercise its power, limited only by the need to preserve the “traditional contours.”

Of course, it is much more troublesome that the Supreme Court (rather than scholars interpreting Supreme Court cases) has adopted a flawed conceptual model that marginalizes basic public infrastructure. We’re stuck with it.

One aspect of the brief [...]]]> Is the sky falling?  According to Florida et al., which filed their brief regarding PPACA’s Medicaid expansion today, the answer is a resounding yes.  In many respects, this brief rehashes the coercion arguments made in the district court and Eleventh Circuit.  The states continue to argue that they cannot afford the Medicaid expansion that will occur in 2014 (which I discussed on this blog here, here, and here), even though the federal government will pay 100% of the cost initially; and, they cannot afford not to participate in Medicaid because the costs of their medical welfare populations would be too high.  Thus, the states claim to be coerced into accepting this “onerous” new condition on federal funds.  Again, these arguments are not new. 

One aspect of the brief that was new was the inclusion of the severability arguments through describing the Medicaid expansion within the context of the universal insurance aspirations of PPACA (see especially fn. 18).   The states essentially contend that the minimum coverage requirement (“individual mandate”) gives impoverished Americans no option but to be in Medicaid, which in turn makes it so that the states cannot opt out of Medicaid.  The states further assert that this was Congress’s plan – to coerce the states by giving the poor no other options for obtaining minimum insurance coverage.  The fallacious assumptions underlying this argument are too numerous to unpack at this late hour, but at least two thoughts can start the job: first, New York v. U.S. does not require the federal government to offer alternatives to conditional spending programs (unlike, say, when it exercises commerce authority – the insurance exchanges in PPACA, which are a point of contrast in the brief, are an exercise of Commerce Clause authority, and states can either create them with some federal funding or reject them and the federal government will create the exchanges in the states that choose not to act — all of this fits neatly within the New York architecture).  Second, suffice it to say that the impoverished are not seeking private insurance alternatives to Medicaid.

Medicaid’s history is skewed by the brief more greatly than it was at lower court levels.  For example, the brief ignores the fact that Medicaid has always contained mandatory elements; these mandatory elements were one of the major defining features of the program as it was amended from Kerr-Mills, its predecessor program.  The brief also misrepresents the existence of mandatory eligibility and coverage standards and how they serve the aspirations of the program.  Likewise, the brief either misunderstands or misrepresents the minimum essential coverage requirement, which is actually more flexible for states than the mandatory coverage provisions for other Medicaid populations.  Additionally, the brief appears to misunderstand the statutory clarification that Medicaid provides both care and service (Congress here was responding to lower federal courts that had misconstrued certain language in the Medicaid Act).

Also, decisions such as Arlington, Dole, and Pennhurst that have required clear notice of conditions on spending are cited in the brief to support the states’ position that they have not voluntarily agreed to this condition on spending.  Before this point, the states have not argued that any other Dole element was violated, but the states now seem to indicate that these conditions were not unambiguous and thus the ‘contract’ with the federal government is unconstitutional.  In addition, the states offer a limiting principle that adopting their view of the coercion theory does not threaten other federal spending programs because Medicaid is by far the largest federal spending program (echoes of the federal government’s argument that nothing else is like healthcare).

Bottom line, the states want the Court to revive Butler and to expand the theory of coercion that the Court merely acknowledged in Dole and Steward Machine by relying heavily on Justice Kennedy’s concurrences and dissents that have expressed an interest in such an expansion.  The question is whether a majority of the Court is interested in a new limitation on Congress’s power to spend.

In a Note just published by the Stanford Law Review Online, Daniel J. Hemel discusses a jurisdictional issue that might delay a ruling by the Supreme Court on the constitutionality of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, and a novel way in which the Solicitor General could bypass that hurdle. In How to Reach the Constitutional Question in the Health Care Cases, he writes:

Although the Supreme Court has agreed to hear three suits challenging the 2010 health care reform legislation, it is not at all clear that the Court will resolve the constitutional questions at stake in those cases. Rather, the Justices may decide that a Reconstruction-era statute, the Tax Anti-Injunction Act (TA-IA), requires them to defer a ruling on the merits of the [...]]]>

In a Note just published by the Stanford Law Review Online, Daniel J. Hemel discusses a jurisdictional issue that might delay a ruling by the Supreme Court on the constitutionality of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, and a novel way in which the Solicitor General could bypass that hurdle. In How to Reach the Constitutional Question in the Health Care Cases, he writes:

Although the Supreme Court has agreed to hear three suits challenging the 2010 health care reform legislation, it is not at all clear that the Court will resolve the constitutional questions at stake in those cases. Rather, the Justices may decide that a Reconstruction-era statute, the Tax Anti-Injunction Act (TA-IA), requires them to defer a ruling on the merits of the constitutional challenges until 2015 at the earliest. . . . Fortunately (at least for those who favor a quick resolution to the constitutional questions at stake in the health care litigation), there is a way for the Solicitor General to bypass the TA-IA bar—even if one agrees with the interpretation of the TA-IA adopted by the Fourth Circuit and Judge Kavanaugh. Specifically, the Solicitor General can initiate an action against one or more of the fourteen states that have announced their intention to resist enforcement of the health care law, and he can bring this action directly in the Supreme Court under the Court’s original jurisdiction. Such an action would be a suit for the purpose of facilitating—not restraining—the enforcement of the health care law. Thus, it would open up an avenue to an immediate adjudication of the constitutional challenges.

Read the full Note, How to Reach the Constitutional Question in the Health Care Cases by Daniel J. Hemel, at the Stanford Law Review Online.

Yesterday, U.S. District Court Judge Christina Snyder issued an injunction against California preventing the implementation of the HHS-approved rate reductions because they would cause irreparable harm to [...]]]> After the Supreme Court heard oral arguments in Douglas v. ILC, the Secretary of HHS approved some of California’s deep cuts in Medicaid reimbursement.   The Court requested additional briefing regarding the impact of the rate reduction approval, and the United States responded that the case was not moot because the grant of certiorari was based upon the Supremacy Clause question, not a determination as to the actual sufficiency of the state’s Medicaid payment rates.  As soon as the rate reductions were approved by HHS, the California Hospital Association, the California Medical Association, and other Medi-Cal providers filed additional claims for injunctive relief.  

Yesterday, U.S. District Court Judge Christina Snyder issued an injunction against California preventing the implementation of the HHS-approved rate reductions because they would cause irreparable harm to hospitals’ skilled nursing units (among other problems).  The new injunction keeps the issues in Douglas alive, whether as a matter of payment rate adequacy or as a matter of private enforcement of state violations of the Supremacy Clause.  Thus, even though HHS approved Medi-Cal rate reductions, the conflicts in Douglas have not been resolved. 

There is also a fascinating real-time separation of powers quandry in this case, which is highlighted by the injunction that was just issued.  Federal courts perceive states’ failure to abide by the mandate of the Equal Access provision, but HHS, whose job it is to ensure state compliance, turns a blind eye to state decisions that will limit access to medical care.  In the meantime, Congress does not modify the Equal Access provision to contain stronger language or a clearer private right of action, it merely relies on implied private enforcement actions (see the amicus brief of Members of Congress).  And HHS has issued paltry draft regulations to facilitate enforcement of the Equal Access provision, but the draft regulations do not guide CMS’s enforcement efforts so much as they provide some standards for states to self-report with little federal oversight.  It seems that federal courts are acting because the legislative branch either can’t or won’t, and because the executive branch either can’t or won’t ensure that this federal law is followed.  This makes the Obama Adminstration’s deference to state decisions all the stranger in Douglas, and courts’ patience with Equal Access litigation a bit more understandable.  It also helps to explain the sort of underlying tone of confusion at oral arguments.  The Court is left with the unenviable task of cutting this Gordian knot of inter-branch disfunction.

Assistant Solicitor General Leondra Kruger answered no, apparently because a priest’s employment relationship with his church cannot be outweighed by any government interest. Kruger should have said yes.

Kruger correctly said yes later in the argument when pressed by Justice Samuel Alito about the case of a nun, a canon law professor, who alleged gender discrimination in her denial [...]]]> JUSTICE SCALIA: Let’s assume that a Catholic priest is removed from his duties because he married, okay? And, and he claims: No, that’s not the real reason; the real reason is because I threatened to sue the church. Okay? So that reason is just pretextual. Would you allow the government to go into the dismissal of the Catholic priest to see whether indeed it was pretextual?

Assistant Solicitor General Leondra Kruger answered no, apparently because a priest’s employment relationship with his church cannot be outweighed by any government interest. Kruger should have said yes.

Kruger correctly said yes later in the argument when pressed by Justice Samuel Alito about the case of a nun, a canon law professor, who alleged gender discrimination in her denial of tenure. Alito suggested that the case inevitably involved the courts in theological doctrines of canon law. Kruger disagreed:

If on the other hand the plaintiff has evidence that no one ever raised any objections to the quality of her scholarship, but they raised objections to women serving in certain roles in the school, and those roles were not ones that were required to be filled by persons of a particular gender, consistent with religious beliefs, then that’s a case in which a judge can instruct a jury that its job is not to inquire as to the validity of the subjective judgment, just as juries are often instructed that their job is not to determine whether an employer’s business judgment was fair or correct, but only whether the employer was motivated by discrimination or retaliation.

Kruger’s two answers illustrate the confusion about pretext that has bedeviled lawsuits involving employees of religious organizations.

Both the priest’s and the nun’s lawsuits depend on whether they were fired for discriminatory or nondiscriminatory reasons. As Judge Posner has explained, “the question in a discrimination case is not whether the employer’s stated nondiscriminatory ground for the action of which the plaintiff is complaining is correct but whether it is the true ground of the employer’s action rather than being a pretext for a decision based on some other, undisclosed ground. … If it is the true ground and not a pretext, the case is over.”

A similar distinction between what is true and what the individual believes to be true is also a crucial component of First Amendment analysis. Under a long line of Supreme Court cases beginning with Ballard v. United States, courts and juries are free to decide whether an individual’s religious beliefs are sincerely held but not whether they are true. Soldiers are routinely subjected to court analysis of whether their religious beliefs are sincerely held before they receive conscientious objector status. Unemployment compensation benefits may be withheld or granted based on whether an applicant’s religion is sincerely held. Prisoners’ religious beliefs are regularly subjected to sincerity review when they request accommodations of their religious practices. Plaintiffs must hold a sincere religious belief in order to win a religious discrimination lawsuit under Title VII. Legislators are usually subjected to a court determination whether they acted with a secular purpose; the Establishment Clause invalidates their legislation if they acted with a religious purpose or a sham secular purpose.

In the employment discrimination context, it should be appropriate for courts to ascertain whether the ascribed religious-based reason was in fact the reason for the discharge, i.e., whether the priest was fired in retaliation and the nun denied tenure on the basis of gender. Courts should be able to determine the sincerity of the employer’s motivation without intruding upon religious truth. Was it disabilities or religion that motivated the firing? Race or religion? Gender or religion? Age or religion? And so forth.

Justice Antonin Scalia parsed pretexts when he asked the church’s lawyer if a sham is different from a pretext. Scalia asked if the church’s position

would allow the government courts to probe behind the church’s assertion that this person is a minister? You would allow that, right? But once it is determined that the person is a minister, you would not allow the government to decide whether the firing was a pretext?”

The church’s lawyer, Douglas Laycock, said yes to probing the church’s sham assertion that this person is a minister and no to deciding whether the firing was a pretext.

But the question of who is a minister is much more theological than determining whether a firing was pretextual.  Perhaps it is the justifications for the ministerial exception that are a sham?

Justice Alito’s question arose soon after Justice Sonia Sotomayor had asked Laycock whether the ministerial exception should apply to “a teacher who reports sexual abuse to the government and is fired because of that reporting.” Justice Sotomayor’s question was probably based on Weishuhn v. Catholic Diocese [...]]]> Hosanna-Tabor Evangelical Lutheran Church and School v. EEOC is the first ministerial exception case to make it to the Supreme Court, even though the Fifth Circuit first recognized the exception in 1972. The ministerial exception is a court-created doctrine that requires the dismissal of lawsuits by ministerial employees against religious organizations. At last Wednesday’s oral argument in Hosanna-Tabor, Justice Samuel Alito asked the church’s lawyer, University of Virginia law professor Douglas Laycock, how the exception has worked since its inception.

Justice Alito’s question arose soon after Justice Sonia Sotomayor had asked Laycock whether the ministerial exception should apply to “a teacher who reports sexual abuse to the government and is fired because of that reporting.” Justice Sotomayor’s question was probably based on Weishuhn v. Catholic Diocese of Lansing, which has a cert. petition pending before the Court. Weishuhn, a teacher at a Catholic elementary school, alleged violations of the Michigan Civil Rights Act and Whistleblowers’ Protection Act in being fired because she reported possible sexual abuse of a student’s friend to the authorities without first informing her principal. Justice Alito asked if there have been “a great many cases, a significant number of cases, involving the kinds of things that Justice Sotomayor is certainly rightly concerned about, instances in which ministers have been fired for reporting criminal violations and that sort of thing?”

Laycock gave a confusing answer by suggesting that Weishuhn would lose her case on the facts. He said there is a “cert. petition pending [undoubtedly Weishuhn] in which a teacher with a long series of problems in her school called the police about an allegation of sexual abuse that did not happen at the school, did not involve a student of the school, did not involve a parent at the school, someplace else; and — and called the police and had them come interview a student without any communication with — with her principal. And the Respondents tried to spin that as a case of discharge for reporting sexual abuse. But if you look at the facts it’s really quite different.”

The serious problem with Alito’s question and Laycock’s answer is that we do not know the facts of Weishuhn or most cases dismissed under the ministerial exception. Ministerial exception cases are dismissed without trial; the facts are never developed. In Weishuhn the Michigan Court of Appeals spent the bulk of its opinion reviewing the facts of the workplace that determined whether schoolteacher Weishuhn was a minister. Indeed, the Michigan opinions merely record that Weishuhn was fired “[a]fter a series of employment-related incidents, none of which involved the subject of religion.” To find more facts about the case, you have to search other court documents and Michigan news accounts.

Like any plaintiff, Weishuhn could lose her case on the facts. But the ministerial exception doesn’t allow her a day in court to win or lose her lawsuit. It dismisses her lawsuit before it can be litigated.

What is the answer to Justice Alito’s question? Justice Alito should be “rightly concerned about” the numerous retaliation cases similar to Hosanna-Tabor in which ministers alleged they were fired or demoted for registering employment complaints with the EEOC. Or the hostile work environment, sexual harassment and disabilities lawsuits that did not make it to court. Other cases are factually closer to Alito’s question. State and federal courts have relied on the ministerial exception to dismiss cases in which a Catholic school principal lost her job after complaining to church authorities that her priest-supervisor had assaulted and battered her; a minister reported his bishops’ conversion of church funds and failure to pay income taxes to state authorities; two church staff members consulted with an attorney about their employer’s possible violations of sex discrimination laws; a university chaplain complained about her school’s sexual harassment policy; another university chaplain reported student complaints of faculty sexual harassment to administrators; and a minister told church authorities that her stepfather, a fellow minister, had sexually abused her as a child.

In each case we do not know who would win or lose. What we do know is that the ministerial exception kept the plaintiffs from having their day in court, or as Justice Kennedy said soon after Laycock answered Alito’s question, “you’re asking for an exemption so these issues can’t even be tried.”

That is how the ministerial exception has worked since its inception.

__________________________________________

            Leslie Griffin holds the Larry & Joanne Doherty Chair in Legal Ethics at the University of Houston Law Center and is author of Law and Religion: Cases and Materials (Foundation 2d ed. 2010).

The contested issue in Hosanna-Tabor is whether Lutheran elementary schoolteacher Cheryl Perich can sue her former employer, Hosanna-Tabor Evangelical Lutheran Church and School, for retaliation under the Americans With Disabilities Act. The school fired Perich after she threatened to report the school’s disabilities discrimination against her to the EEOC. The specific legal question is whether the ministerial exception, a court-created doctrine that holds that the First Amendment requires the dismissal of many employment discrimination cases against religious employers, applies to schoolteacher Perich because the church considers her to be a minister.

Justice Sonia Sotomayor identified the important legal issue [...]]]> Lost in the muddled oral argument of Hosanna-Tabor Evangelical Lutheran Church and School v EEOC was the case’s central question: Are religious groups entitled to disobey the law?

The contested issue in Hosanna-Tabor is whether Lutheran elementary schoolteacher Cheryl Perich can sue her former employer, Hosanna-Tabor Evangelical Lutheran Church and School, for retaliation under the Americans With Disabilities Act. The school fired Perich after she threatened to report the school’s disabilities discrimination against her to the EEOC. The specific legal question is whether the ministerial exception, a court-created doctrine that holds that the First Amendment requires the dismissal of many employment discrimination cases against religious employers, applies to schoolteacher Perich because the church considers her to be a minister.

Justice Sonia Sotomayor identified the important legal issue early in the oral argument when she asked the church’s lawyer, University of Virginia Professor Douglas Laycock, “doesn’t society have a right at some point to say certain conduct is unacceptable, even if religious?” That is what the ministerial exception is all about: at what point do religious organizations have to obey the law?

Justice Sotomayor was concerned about “a church whose religious beliefs centered around sexually exploiting women and children,” which Laycock did not defend. But how can courts determine which laws must be obeyed and which may be flouted? In the past, lower courts have held that Baptist churches’ religious, Scripture-based belief that men are heads of households and therefore entitled to higher pay than women did not allow them to violate the equal pay laws; that the Shiloh True Light Church of Christ’s religious belief in children’s vocational training did not permit it to violate the child labor laws; and that the Quaker tradition of hospitality to the stranger did not allow Quakers to ignore the alien worker requirements of the immigration laws. Those cases focused on how strong the government’s interest was in enforcing the laws. The courts concluded that the government’s interest in enforcing the equal pay, child labor and immigration laws was strong enough to overcome important religious beliefs.

In Hosanna-Tabor, Assistant Solicitor General Leondra Kruger tried valiantly to focus the Court’s attention on the government’s strong interest in enforcing the antiretaliation laws. She explained that the Court would have to apply a balancing test between the government’s interest and the Lutheran Church’s religious beliefs in order to determine whether Hosanna-Tabor should be required to obey the antidiscrimination laws.

Several justices immediately and repeatedly challenged that argument, insisting that Kruger’s position favored Catholic theology over Lutheranism. No one, including Kruger, argues that the Roman Catholic Church can be forced to ordain women. Once Kruger conceded that point, some justices could not be distracted from the potential Lutheran v. Catholic battle that would erupt without a broad ministerial exception:

JUSTICE ALITO:  … are you not implicitly making a judgment about the relative importance of the Catholic doctrine that only males can be ordained as priests and the Lutheran doctrine that a Lutheran should not sue the church in civil courts? I don’t see any distinction between — I can’t reconcile your position on those two issues without coming to the conclusion that you think that the Catholic doctrine is older, stronger and entitled to more respect than the Lutheran doctrine.

CHIEF JUSTICE ROBERTS: You’re making — you’re making a judgment about how important a particular religious belief is to a church. You’re saying — this may just be the same question Justice Alito asked — but you’re saying: We don’t believe the Lutheran Church when it says that this is an important and central tenet of our faith.

On the other hand, the — the belief of the Catholic Church that priests should be male only, you do defer to that, even if the Lutherans say, look, our dispute resolution belief is just as important to a Lutheran as the all-male clergy is to a Catholic.

JUSTICE SCALIA: I think that’s saying nothing different than what the Chief Justice suggests, that you think the one is more — is more important to — to Catholics than the other is to Lutherans.

Although Justice Breyer understood that Kruger was focused on the strength of the government’s interest and not on the nuances of Lutheran and Catholic theology, he was self-describedly “stuck” because he couldn’t figure out why “going to court is a more fundamental interest than a woman obtaining the job she wants.” Breyer had a point; Kruger’s position that the government’s interest in antiretaliation law is stronger than its interest in antidiscrimination law is not evidently based in constitutional or statutory law. All she could say is that “the contours of the First Amendment doctrine at issue here will depend on a balancing of interests.”

That balancing is the whole problem with the ministerial exception. It leaves courts choosing which religions are acceptable and unacceptable based on vague balancing tests. The Baptists, the Shiloh True Light Church of Christ, the Quakers and (potentially) the Lutherans should be angry if their beliefs are subordinated to the government’s interests while Catholic beliefs prevail.

Petitioner Hosanna-Tabor would solve this problem by exempting religions from all the laws whenever religions assert ministerial performance is involved. Justice Scalia’s questions suggested the Establishment Clause requires that outcome. That solution is exactly backwards. The starting point should be a rule that requires religions to obey the law. The Establishment Clause should be violated by a rule that lets courts determine which theologies override government interests and which do not.

The Court should be wary of issuing an opinion holding that religions are free to disobey the law.

____________________________________________

Leslie Griffin holds the Larry & Joanne Doherty Chair in Legal Ethics at the University of Houston Law Center and is author of Law and Religion: Cases and Materials (Foundation Press 2d ed. 2010).

Vanderbilt Law Review En Banc is pleased to present our current Roundtable on Golan v. Holder, which is to be argued at the Supreme Court on October 5, 2011. In Golan, the Court will consider whether Congress may constitutionally confer copyright on works that have fallen into the public domain. Congress created a new class of “restored” works in 1996 in order to fulfill its obligations under the Berne Convention, an international copyright treaty. Professor Tyler T. Ochoa introduces the case, discusses the history of the Berne Convention, and analyzes how the Court’s decision will affect the idea of the public domain. Professor Daniel Gervais takes a closer look at the Berne Convention. He argues that Berne is a flexible document and that [...]]]>

Vanderbilt Law Review En Banc is pleased to present our current Roundtable on Golan v. Holder, which is to be argued at the Supreme Court on October 5, 2011. In Golan, the Court will consider whether Congress may constitutionally confer copyright on works that have fallen into the public domain. Congress created a new class of “restored” works in 1996 in order to fulfill its obligations under the Berne Convention, an international copyright treaty. Professor Tyler T. Ochoa introduces the case, discusses the history of the Berne Convention, and analyzes how the Court’s decision will affect the idea of the public domain. Professor Daniel Gervais takes a closer look at the Berne Convention. He argues that Berne is a flexible document and that Congress provided greater protection to restored works than is actually required by the treaty. Dale Nelson, Senior Intellectual Property Counsel at Warner Bros., questions whether restoration has had as significant an effect on the public domain as its detractors believe. She argues that the benefits of restoring foreign works to copyright greatly outweigh the burdens to users. Professor David Olson looks at Golan’s constitutional questions from a perspective not emphasized in the parties’ briefs. He argues that, because restoration is in violation of the Progress Clause, the Government can assert no legitimate interest to support its claim that restoration does not unconstitutionally restrict the Petitioners’ First Amendment speech rights. Finally, Professor Elizabeth Townsend Gard takes a detailed look at the mechanics of the statute enacting copyright restoration. In her view, the statute does not achieve the Government’s stated interests and transgresses the traditional contours of copyright. She provides several recommendations for statutory amendments that would make determination of public domain status a more manageable exercise.

Tyler T. Ochoa, Is the Copyright Public Domain Irrevocable? An Introduction to Golan v. Holder, 64 Vand. L. Rev. En Banc 123 (2011).

Daniel Gervais, Golan v. Holder: A Look at the Constraints Imposed by the Berne Convention, 64 Vand. L. Rev. En Banc 147 (2011).

Dale Nelson, Golan Restoration: Small Burden, Big Gains, 64 Vand. L. Rev. En Banc 165 (2011).

David S. Olson, A Legitimate Interest in Promoting the Progress of Science: Constitutional Constraints on Copyright Laws, 64 Vand. L. Rev. En Banc 185 (2011).

Elizabeth Townsend Gard, In the Trenches with § 104A: An Evaluation of the Parties’ Arguments in Golan v. Holder as It Heads to the Supreme Court, 64 Vand. L. Rev. En Banc 199 (2011).

Here’s my question:  In the end, isn’t a ruling that there is no right to civil Gideon assistance in a case [...]]]> The recent focus on Civil Gideon triggered by the pending US Supreme Court case, Turner v. Rogers (please track the Turner Symposium here on Concurring Opinions, when the decision comes down), has set me thinking about the relationship between Civil Gideon and our current unauthorized practice of law (UPL) rules. By UPL rules, I mean the current sets of laws that generally fence off large areas of legal activity, making it unlawful for anyone without a law degree to provide services in those areas in any context at all.  I do not mean the general concept that legal services of different kinds can be regulated.

Here’s my question:  In the end, isn’t a ruling that there is no right to civil Gideon assistance in a case really the same as a ruling, at least in significant stake state deprivation cases, that the case is simple enough that people can do it on their own – even if technically the court is more likely to use a balancing test saying that the case is easy enough that it is unfair to make the state pay for counsel.  See, e.g. Lassiter v. Dept of Social Services, 452 U.S. 18, 33 (1981) (analyzing, in Part III, limited impact on the outcome on the specific facts, of lack of counsel); Turner v. Rogers, Transcript of Oral Argument, at 20-21, (Associate Justice Alito questioning petitioner’s counsel Seth Waxman as to whether it would be sufficient if the Court were to require judicial engagement when determining the issue of whether defendants are in civil contempt for having “willfully” refused to pay, except in harder cases — “And then if you run into some of these complicated legal problems or arguably complicated legal problems that you referred to, maybe in particular cases there would be need for the appointment of counsel.”)

Insofar as the Court denies a right to counsel for matters that are too simple, wouldn’t that also eliminate any basis for UPL rules?  After all, the premise of UPL rules is that a matter is too complex to be handled by non-attorneys. The main other argument for ULP rules is that there is a need for the activity to be regulated as to the “character” of the person helping and the quality of the service, but that is really a different matter, that could be taken care of in many ways other than requiring a legal education and the passing of the bar exam — see below.)

Put another way, where is the justification for the legal system to say, in any important matter that triggers due process concerns, that it is OK to require that a lawyer, and only a lawyer be allowed to help, and then to refuse to make one available?  Either the case is simple enough for non-lawyers to help, in which case the UPL prohibitions make no sense (and are arguably unconstitutional in such circumstances), or it is too complicated for a non-lawyer.  If it is too complicated, there must be help from a lawyer, and one should be provided to those unable to pay.  Indeed Professor Tribe points out the unconstitutionality of requiring the use of a legal path, and then making it financially impossible, Boddie v. Connecticut, 401 U.S. 371 (1971) (holding that if state prescribes only one method of dissolving marriage – judicial divorce, it can not deny the route to those who can not afford it; here the state is requiring that help must come from an admitted lawyer, and then refusing to provide one to the indigent.)

Any claimed middle group of cases — that a case is complicated enough that you can not allow non-lawyers to help, but simple enough that people can not do it on their own, just makes no ultimate sense.  I suppose one could assert that there is so much easier for a self-represented litigant to handle their own case than for a non-lawyer to help them that you can require people to handle their own cases.  But the only reason I could think of for this would be that the process of drawing out what someone else’s actual problem is, is so difficult that you need a law degree to do it. But we all know that the skill of drawing out from someone what their problem is, is hardly taught in law school at all — more likely in social work school.

As to the skill of legal “issue spotting,” that would be just as much needed by the self-represented as by any helper, and if needed in a case, should move it into the category of those needing counsel. Remember too, at least in this country, the structure of UPL rules cannot be justified as preventing unregulated commercial exploitation of the vulnerable.

In this country those rules reach to any activity that is substantively considered the practice of law, regardless of the relationship between the helper and the helped, regardless of whether provided by a non-profit or one in business, and regardless of whether money changes hands.  So the rigor and comprehensiveness of ULP rules can not be justified in such ethical and protective terms, but only in skill terms.  There are, of course, legitimate concerns about the ethics and quality of services provided by non-lawyers (as by lawyers), but there are many regulatory ways of taking care of this.  Abolishing or modifying the rules governing UPL is not the same as having no consumer protection regime.  Such an appropriate protective regime might potentially include registration, an insurance requirement, a complaint mechanism, and/or limitation to certain activities, including possibly to non-profit practice. Moreover, getting the line right would make it easier for appropriate consumer protection enforcement.

You could also argue, I suppose, that UPL rules do no harm, because, after all, you can always represent yourself, and a lawyer is denied only in cases where it would make no difference.  But surely that is a matter for the person providing or receiving the help to decide, and, to the extent we might be talking about associational or commercial relationships, that relationship can only be reasonably, not unreasonably, regulated.  (Indeed the prohibition, particularly in the associational non-commercial contest, might raise First Amendment questions.  It may well be that these First Amendment implications and the over and under inclusiveness of the current structure of UPL are what might doom the current bright line between lawyers and non-lawyers and between legal practice and non-regulated activities.)

In the end, I would hope that this insight — if it is that — will help us all focus more comprehensively on the whole access issue with its many components, and on the need not to focus on battles about small parts of it.

Final Note:  Although I have focused this early pre-post on the possible UPL implications of Turner, this is, of course, just one aspect of the much larger conversation we are anticipating once Turner comes down.

The upshot is that we now have two very different conceptions of habeas corpus at Guantanamo: one as a meaningful judicial check on executive power; the other as a legal proceeding in which the judiciary remains powerless to remedy unlawful executive action.

In Boumediene, the Supreme Court held that Congress’s effort to strip Guantanamo detainees of the right to habeas corpus violated the Constitution’s Suspension Clause and ordered the [...]]]> Yesterday’s New York Times editorial, “A Right without a Remedy,” finally shines a spotlight on what anyone familiar with the Guantanamo detainee habeas corpus litigation already knows: the steady erosion of the Supreme Court’s 2008 decision in Boumediene v. Bush, and the open disdain for that decision exhibited by several D.C. Circuit judges, most notably A. Raymond Randolph.

The upshot is that we now have two very different conceptions of habeas corpus at Guantanamo: one as a meaningful judicial check on executive power; the other as a legal proceeding in which the judiciary remains powerless to remedy unlawful executive action.

In Boumediene, the Supreme Court held that Congress’s effort to strip Guantanamo detainees of the right to habeas corpus violated the Constitution’s Suspension Clause and ordered the district courts to conduct prompt hearings into whether the petitioners were being lawfully held. Since then, district courts in Washington, D.C., have issued merits decisions in 59 habeas cases, finding no legal basis for the detention in 38 of them.

The D.C. Circuit, however, has taken increasingly narrow view of district court’s power to inquire into the government’s evidence, reversing or vacating and remanding habeas grants in three cases and affirming habeas denials in four of six cases (the other two denials were vacated and remanded). To date, the Circuit has not affirmed a district court grant of habeas nor outright reversed a district court denial.  Along the way, Randolph, along with Circuit Judge Janice Rogers Brown, have suggested that the government might satisfy its burden merely under a “some evidence” standard, as opposed to the higher, preponderance of the evidence standard the Department of Justice is advocating.

But it is Randolph’s evisceration of the judiciary’s remedial power that presents the most direct conflict with Boumediene. In Kiyemba v. Obama, Randolph held that district judges have no authority to order the release of a prisoner from Guantanamo even when there is no basis for the detention, no evidence he presents a danger to the U.S., and no other country to which he might go. Randolph thus reversed the district judge’s ruling ordering the release of the petitioners—seventeen Uighur refugees from China—into the United States when the government failed to justify their detention or resettle them elsewhere.

Randolph has minced no words in his contempt for Boumediene. In a speech last year, he compared the Boumediene justices to the characters in The Great Gatsby, “careless people, who smashed things up . . . and let other people clean up the mess they had made.”

Randolph previously wrote the lower court opinion in all three Supreme Court Guantanamo habeas decisions: Rasul v. Bush; Hamdan v. Rumsfeld; and Boumediene. The Court reversed him all three times.

In October 2009, the Supreme Court granted certiorari in Kiyemba. Prior to oral argument, however, the Obama administration secured offers of resettlement for all of the petitioners and resettled a number of them. The Court vacated the D.C. Circuit opinion and remanded to the appeals court to reconsider the case in light of these new developments. Three months later, Randolph reinstated his prior ruling that courts had no role to play in the release of detainees from Guantanamo.

The five remaining Kiyemba petitioners at Guantanamo are back again before the Court; their new certiorari petition is scheduled for conference on March 18. The posture of their cases—all have received offers of resettlement, although none has any such option today—makes certiorari difficult because it suggests that there is a viable alternative to their continued detention at Guantanamo, which was not the case when the D.C. Circuit first issued its opinion in Kiyemba. Additionally, those Justices who might otherwise be inclined to grant certiorari realize that Justice Kagan’s recusal eliminates a potential fifth vote needed for the petitioners to prevail on the merits.

Kiyemba, however, remains an affront to Boumediene regardless of what happens to the Uighurs because the holding is that it does not matter whether there is an available option: judges can never order release in any circumstance, and can do nothing other than accept the jailor’s representation that it is attempting a diplomatic solution.

Clearly Kiyemba was written not simply to control the Uighur cases but to control every habeas case, depriving district courts of any power to order or facilitate a judicial remedy. District court grants of habeas corpus thus read more like advisory opinions than judicial orders, imploring the government to use its best efforts to secure the petitioner’s release.  Additionally, detainees whom the government has administratively “cleared for release”–but whom it maintains are lawfully detained–cannot get habeas hearings because the district court can provide no remedy beyond urging diplomatic efforts.

The irony is that the D.C. Circuit has taken a landmark Supreme Court decision about constraining executive power and turned it on its head by restoring executive control over who leaves Guantanamo, and when. Sooner or later, the Court is bound to take notice.

In other words, these memos and notes reveal a woman whose approach to the law was as a [...]]]> After weeks of virtual silence, Republicans are stepping up their public attacks on Supreme Court nominee Elena Kagan. And they are using some rather strange arguments. The new line of attack is that Kagan is incapable of being impartial because of her political/policy role in the Clinton administration. Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, who on Sunday would not rule out a filibuster of Kagan, is leading the charge with a new narrative that Kagan is more of a “political operative” than a lawyerly type. McConnell cites memos that Kagan wrote about campaign finance reform while she worked for Clinton. Quoting McConnell from the Senate floor:

In other words, these memos and notes reveal a woman whose approach to the law was as a political advocate — the very opposite of what the American people expect in a judge.

Sen. McConnell’s logic would cast nearly every justice who ever served on the Court as an “advocate” seemingly incapable of being impartial. What Sen. McConnell — and frankly all senators, both Republican and Democrat — apparently needs to remember is that lawyers are supposed to be zealous advocates for their clients’ interests. While Kagan’s role in the Clinton White House was as a policy adviser and not as a lawyer, the role she played parallels the manner in which a lawyer represents a client. As Obama spokesman Ben LaBolt notes, Kagan simply gave Clinton advice “that reflected the president’s well-established views.” She worked to advance Pres. Clinton’s agenda, just like a lawyer works to advance his/her client’s interests. Most Supreme Court justices were lawyers who represented clients before they entered the judging profession.  They worked to advance their clients’ interests.

It is clear that Sen. McConnell and fellow Republicans are trying to dig up new criticisms of Kagan in the run-up to the confirmation hearings. But this line of attack is weak and would cast doubt on all of the sitting justices. Chief Justice Roberts and Justice Scalia worked to advance the interests of Republican presidents before they were judges. Justice Breyer was special counsel to the Senate Judiciary Committee, where he worked with then Chairman Sen. Ted Kennedy. And Justice Ginsburg worked to advance women’s rights as an ACLU litigator. All were simply doing their jobs — being advocates for their clients/bosses. Beyond these examples, several former justices, of course, served in explicitly political capacities, e.g., Justice O’Connor was a state legislator, some justices were senators prior to service on the Court, and Chief Justice Taft was president before joining the Court.

Photo credits:  Stephen Crowley/The New York Times

The big news last week concerning the fate of the federal health care legislation was not the entrance of new plaintiffs into the litigation challenging the statute or the government’s filing its opposition brief in the suit brought by Virginia.  The big news was United States v. Comstock and the continuing resurgence of the Necessary and Proper Clause of the Constitution (quoted above).

The constitutional challenges focus on the so-called individual mandate, taking effect [...]]]> The Congress shall have Power . . . To make all Laws which shall be necessary and proper for carrying into Execution the foregoing Powers, and all other Powers vested by this Constitution in the Government of the United States, or in any Department or Officer thereof.  U.S. Const. Art. I, § 8.

The big news last week concerning the fate of the federal health care legislation was not the entrance of new plaintiffs into the litigation challenging the statute or the government’s filing its opposition brief in the suit brought by Virginia.  The big news was United States v. Comstock and the continuing resurgence of the Necessary and Proper Clause of the Constitution (quoted above).

The constitutional challenges focus on the so-called individual mandate, taking effect in 2014, which will require that most people either own health insurance or pay a penalty.  Legally, the arguments against the legislation lack merit.  As I have argued elsewhere, under contemporary Commerce Clause doctrine, Congress can impose the individual mandate as part of its comprehensive regulation of the interstate market in health insurance.  Further, the provision is structured as a tax on those who fail to purchase insurance, thus falling within Congress’s even broader taxing authority.

Rhetorically, however, the opponents’ arguments may have some appeal.  How, the critics insist, can Congress’s constitutional authority to regulate interstate commerce extend to regulating the non-commercial activity of doing nothing (i.e., not buying insurance)?  Doing nothing is not commerce, the law’s opponents proclaim.  Can you make a federal case out of taking a nap?

The answer to this rhetoric comes from the Court’s great rhetorician, Justice Antonin Scalia.

The same argument was deployed in Gonzales v. Raich in 2005, the case challenging the federal regulation of medical marijuana.  The question there was whether Congress could criminalize growing marijuana for home use.  By a 6-3 vote, the Court answered yes.  In a separate opinion, concurring in the judgment, Justice Scalia reaffirmed a long line of Supreme Court authority upholding the regulation of activity without regard to whether it was commercial.  In defense of these cases, Scalia, the self-professed textualist, asserted that the real source of authority was the Necessary and Proper Clause of the Constitution, rather than the Commerce Clause alone.  This analysis led Scalia to the powerful conclusion that “Congress may regulate even noneconomic local activity if that regulation is a necessary part of a more general regulation of interstate commerce.”

In Justice Scalia’s conception, the ugly duckling of the Commerce Clause turns out to be the beautiful swan of the Necessary and Proper Clause.  Of course, it is the same bird, but the public relations makeover may be significant.

In Raich, Justice Scalia was writing for himself.  In United States v. Comstock, seven other Justices endorsed broad conceptions of the Necessary and Proper Clause.  Comstock addressed whether the federal government had the constitutional authority to detain mentally ill, sexually dangerous federal prisoners, even after their sentences ended.  In a 7-2 vote, with only Justices Scalia and Thomas dissenting, the Court upheld the program.  (The Court ducked any due process challenges to the scheme and focused solely on the foundation for the affirmative exercise of federal power.)

What was the source of federal authority in Comstock?  You got it, the Necessary and Proper Clause.  The five Justices who signed on to the majority opinion by Justice Breyer (Justices Stevens, Ginsburg, Sotomayor, and Roberts) took a very broad view of Congress’s power under this Clause.  Justices Kennedy and Alito each wrote separate opinions, concurring in the judgment, to offer only slightly narrower readings of the Clause.  While Justice Scalia dissented, he did not express any reservations about his position in Raich.

Comstock hardly resolves the health care issues, but it continues to chart a course toward a rhetorically appealing way to explain this exercise of federal authority.  As proponents and critics of health care reform both assert, the individual mandate is necessary for the legislation to succeed in guaranteeing insurance for everyone throughout the nation.  That is why opponents attack the mandate, but that it also why it is constitutional.

By the way, can the federal government regulate taking a nap?  How about if the one who slumbers is a pilot flying an airplane?  Sometimes doing nothing has just as big an impact as doing something.

President Obama and other supporters of Elena Kagan have argued that she has the capacity to form coalitions with conservatives, especially Justice Anthony Kennedy — the Supreme Court’s lone swing vote. There are a number of underlying assumptions to this argument, including that Kennedy’s opinions are malleable on a significant number of issues and that a colleague on the bench can push him on those malleable questions.

There is certainly some legitimacy to these assumptions. Political scientists who research the Court have found that ideological moderates are among the most malleable members of the bench. Furthermore, Sandra Day O’Connor and David Souter most likely influenced Kennedy in the influential case Planned Parenthood v. Casey, which upheld Roe v. [...]]]> [Note: This essay is cross-published on the blog Dissenting Justice.]

President Obama and other supporters of Elena Kagan have argued that she has the capacity to form coalitions with conservatives, especially Justice Anthony Kennedy — the Supreme Court’s lone swing vote. There are a number of underlying assumptions to this argument, including that Kennedy’s opinions are malleable on a significant number of issues and that a colleague on the bench can push him on those malleable questions.

There is certainly some legitimacy to these assumptions. Political scientists who research the Court have found that ideological moderates are among the most malleable members of the bench. Furthermore, Sandra Day O’Connor and David Souter most likely influenced Kennedy in the influential case Planned Parenthood v. Casey, which upheld Roe v. Wade– even as it opened the door to far more intrusive regulations of abortion. These observations, however, do not demonstrate that Kagan or any other future justice can wield influence upon Kennedy (or other conservatives).

First, it is unclear whether Kagan herself is a progressive or a political moderate, like Kennedy or O’Connor. Her academic writings just do not provide enough insight to place her definitively within a particular judicial camp.

Furthermore, supporters of the idea that Kagan can move Kennedy discount the substantial role that other factors play in shaping judicial opinion. The positions held by the Executive, Congress, social movements and voters all impact judicial decisionmaking, and according to the academic literature in this area, moderates are more susceptible to these external influences than others. Viewed in this light, Kennedy’s vote to uphold Roe could reflect the fact that a majority of voters believe in the right to terminate a pregnancy. Similarly, his vote against “partial-birth” abortion could relate to the fact that a majority of voters oppose late-term abortion.

Of course, Kennedy’s own ideology, Court precedent, the facts of each case, arguments of legal counsel, and debates with other justices likely influence Kennedy’s opinions as well. But the assertion that Kagan can serve as a consensus builder fails to acknowledge the host of other factors outside of debates with colleagues that substantially impact judicial opinion.

People who believe that Obama should appoint someone who can “flip” Kennedy have a limited understanding of the dynamics of judicial decisionmaking. They reduce it to an intellectual exercise where the “best argument” combined with grace and warmth dictate outcomes. Also, as Dalia Lithwick argues, liberal advocates of a Kennedy pal affirm a myth that “conservative judges closely read the Constitution and apply the law, while liberals stick a finger in the wind and then work the room.” Both camps, however, are motivated by ideology and external political factors. This reality makes the search for someone who can sway Kennedy a bizarre calculation for a nominee to the Supreme Court.

Note: Other legal commentators have made similar arguments. See:

Is Kennedy Easily Manipulated

Asking “Who can sway Kennedy?” is no way to pick Justice Stevens’ replacement.

Around Mile 11, I was hurting and turned from a combination of Irish rock and random songs to some pod casts. After some short New York Times and NPR pod casts, I remembered that I had downloaded a series of C-Span interviews with [...]]]> Here is a sentence I never expected to write. So there I was on Monday in the middle of running the Dublin Marathon when I decided to listen on my Ipod to a C-Span podcast interview with Justice Stevens. I had traveled to Dublin to run the actual Dublin marathon and to co-host Antitrust Marathon IV: Marathon with Authority, a round table discussion co-hosted with the British Institute of International and Comparative Law and the Irish Competition Authority.

Around Mile 11, I was hurting and turned from a combination of Irish rock and random songs to some pod casts. After some short New York Times and NPR pod casts, I remembered that I had downloaded a series of C-Span interviews with the current Justices and Sandra Day O’Connor.

I have a special fondness for Justice Stevens. We are both Chicagoans, Cub Fans, and Northwestern Law grads. More improbably, we even had the same antitrust professor (James Rahl) at Northwestern, albeit about 35 years apart. That plus the fact he was primarily an antitrust litigator before going on the bench was enough to get me to devote the next 30 some minutes, and about 3 miles, to the Stevens interview.

A lot of it was a fluffy discussion of his chambers and personal history. But mixed among the fluff and the questions for non-lawyers (What is certiorari?), there were a handful of interesting tidbits. Justice Stevens talked about the reasons and impact of not participating in the cert pool, the importance of writing his own first drafts, and his interest in having the court hear a few more cases than its current docket. There are no smoking guns or shocking revelations, but Justice Stevens does mention the need for Justices from diverse legal backgrounds, such as veterans and litigators, as an important mix for the Court to have on the bench. Justice Stevens is of course both and as far as I know the only current Justice to actually have made his living as a litigator.

The main thing I came away with was the genuine niceness of the good Justice which was my impression from the only time I ever met him. In 1993, I taught in a summer program in Innsbruck, Austria where Justice Stevens was lecturing. Instead of staying for the three days as promised, he stayed and lectured the entire week and interacted warmly with the students and the rest of the faculty. At one point, a student asked him to sign the packet of course materials which he did after class. Because he did not want to play favorites, he then stayed and patiently signed for more than a hundred students.

In the pod cast interview, Stevens demurred on picking a most important or favorite case. But when asked about a most memorable experience, he didn’t hesitate and proudly mentioned throwing out the first pitch at Wrigley Field before a Cubs game at the age of 85.

With that, I grinned, quickened my pace a bit, and headed up the next of an endless series of hills on my way around Dublin on a surprisingly warm and sunny late October day.

I have not listened to the rest of the interviews. But if anyone else has, please post if there are particularly revealing or interesting moments.

Don’t believe me? Just look at the numbers, and you will see an existing, overwhelming pattern of decisionmaking based on race and gender. Here goes: For 180 years, every single person to sit on the Court was a white male. The list of Supreme Court justices between 1789 and 1967 is an unbroken chain of nearly 100 white men.

Since 1967, we’ve seen a total of two women and two Black men on the court. That is, four of the fifteen Justices since 1967 (27%) have been women or Black men, [...]]]> It is time to stop privileging gender and race in Supreme Court nominations. History shows a very clear and disturbing pattern of decisionmaking along gender and racial lines.

Don’t believe me? Just look at the numbers, and you will see an existing, overwhelming pattern of decisionmaking based on race and gender. Here goes: For 180 years, every single person to sit on the Court was a white male. The list of Supreme Court justices between 1789 and 1967 is an unbroken chain of nearly 100 white men.

Since 1967, we’ve seen a total of two women and two Black men on the court. That is, four of the fifteen Justices since 1967 (27%) have been women or Black men, while eleven of the fifteen (73%) have been white men.

Supreme Court history has been one of total domination by white men for 180 years, followed by a period of token representation for other groups, but always a large controlling majority of white men. Not bad for a demographic group which currently makes up only 1/3 of the U.S. population!

So please, don’t tell me that it’s a problem to consider race and gender in this decision; you’re preaching to the choir. I wholeheartedly agree. It is time to end the extra points which are clearly given to white males in this debate. (After all, what is the likelihood that not just the first, or second, or third best person for the court was white and male, but that meritocratic dice just happened to roll that way, ninety-five times in a row? Or even 73% of the time in the past 40 years?)

Supreme Court history shows that we *already* have a tradition of privileging one gender and race, overwhelmingly, in the nomination process. And it needs to stop.

Holmes said, “The life of the law has not been logic; it has been experience.” The experiences and background of the Justices really do matter (cf Justice Powell, the deciding vote in Bowers v Hardwick, stating that he had never known anyone who was homosexual). Would Chief Justice Taney have written Dred Scott if he had been an African-American? I doubt it. (See also James Gordon’s article on whether the first Justice Harlan had a Black brother, and whether that influenced his dissent in Plessy v. Ferguson.)

The experiences of women of color are completely unrepresented on the Court right now, and have been completely unrepresented in the entirety of United States history. There has *never* been a woman of color on the court, and even now, after barriers of race and gender have supposedly fallen, the court membership is still (coincidentally, of course!) composed 75% (6/8; it was 7/9 until last month) of white men. It’s silly to say “well, a white man couldn’t say something like that and get away with it.” White men are already represented (at twice their percent of the populace) on the Court, while women of color are not and never have been.

Do I think that a wise Latina would be more representative of the people of the country, more likely to draw on experiences that are underrepresented, than would yet-another-white-male? Do I think that a wise Latina would add a lot to the Court? Hell, yes.

Confirm her, already!