Tuesday, December 24, 2002

 

mmm

Loaf without parole, about sniper suspect's vegetarian food in prison. An interesting tidbit: "Malvo's vegetarianism turns out to be more a matter of humanitarian preference than religious belief." Hunh?

Though, um, call me crazy, but the loaf doesn't sound that bad. Perhaps it's just the way they're preparing it.

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Thursday, December 19, 2002

 

bernard law, redux

Dahlia, in a column entitled "But Why Isn't Bernard Law in Jail?", concludes

Civil suits and cash reparations are just not enough. Church elders who unloosed monsters on suffering children for decades cannot be treated as though they were above the law.

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Tuesday, December 17, 2002

 

and in another forum

Dahlia writes about Justice Thomas's recent outburst at the oral argument for the cross-burning case. It's a serious article, not one of her more comedic ones. And there is one incredibly lucid section of her essay I'd like to point to:

But with his personal narrative, Justice Thomas changed the terms of the legal debate. After he spoke, members of the court took turns characterizing burning crosses as uniquely threatening symbolic speech — as threatening as a gun, according to Justice Antonin Scalia — and as therefore undeserving of First Amendment protection. The dynamic is familiar to any former law student: a criminal law class on the definition of "consent" in a rape case is paralyzed when a woman in the back row says she was raped. A policy debate about whether to try juvenile offenders as adults stops when a student blurts out that his brother was killed in a gang fight.

These awkward silences happen when legal analysis and personal narrative (often of victimization) collide. At these moments, law school professors are rendered speechless — and Supreme Court justices, evidently, jettison their three-part tests to reassure their distressed colleague that indeed burning crosses are uniquely symbolic of imminent violence.

The temptation is great, I'll have you know, to "hijack" the conversation, to blurt out one's personal narrative when there is a relevant one at hand. Or maybe temptation isn't even the right word--it's more like sometimes even one's dispassionate instincts can't keep it all in.

And maybe she's right, in her ultimate conclusion, that what's required for justice is something in between, when experiences are brought in to "apply the stark, linear analyses of the law." (I have an unfortunate and contradictory mix of preferences--preferring it when others bring experiences in, but preferring to keep my own personal experiences as far away from legal fora as possible.) But how does that work? How can we make that work? The problem with the detached legal paradigm is that it makes any input of personal experience all the more distracting--because it is so different from the norm. The problem with the experience-driven paradigm is that there will always be some perspectives left out. The problem with combining the two is that neither paradigm provides any guidance on how to do so.

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Wednesday, December 11, 2002

 

ooh!

Here's Dahlia's account of the cross-burning case that was argued in the Supreme Court today, which has "facts [that] read like outtakes from A Charlie Brown Redneck Christmas." She gives great descriptions of the various justices' concerns and lines of questioning.

And, of course, there are her price lines that Howard Bashman quotes too:

Out of nowhere booms the great, surprising "Luke-I-am-your-father" voice of He Who Never Speaks. Justice Clarence Thomas suddenly asks a question and everyone's head pops up and starts looking madly around, like the Muppets on Veterinarian Hospital. "Aren't you understating the effects ... of 100 years of lynching?" he booms. "This was a reign of terror, and the cross was a sign of that. ... It is unlike any symbol in our society. It was intended to cause fear, terrorize."

Dreeben, who fears he has somehow been insensitive, tries to recover. "It was used to intimidate minorities ..." he begins. "More than minorities," booms back The Voice. "Certain groups." It's not clear what, precisely, has set Thomas off about Dreeben's presentation or why he's attacking the deputy SG rather than the guy defending the Klansman. But as quickly as he wound up, he winds down, and resumes his standard posture of staring fixedly at the ceiling.

And, after watching the last two days of arguments, I can totally see Breyer "wax[ing] ontological." But having spent most of college studying chemistry rather than literature, I find it vaguely sexy rather than terrifying.

Meanwhile, a reader of How Appealing has suggested a joust to determine who's loves Dahlia more, me or Bashman. But while I appreciate Bashman's reference to me as "the world's most devoted fan of Dahlia Lithwick", I have to ask---why can't we all love Dahlia equally? Yes, all of us. That's what I'm sayin'. She is the bestest Supreme Court commentator, after all.

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Wednesday, December 04, 2002

 

in great form

Dahlia writes about the abortion-protest case that was argued today. Choice lines:

You'll see attorney Fay Clayton, and NOW President Kim Gandy on the steps of the high court, insisting that women seeking abortions were physically brutalized by pro-life protestors in the 1980s. You may even get to hear Operation Rescue protesters, heckling with such pithy lines as: "Babykiller!" and "Liar!" (One of my great frustrations about this case is that, with 30 years to invent better jeers, both sides of this debate keep shouting the same banal sound bites.) My eternal gratitude to the first Fraygrant who comes up with something more original than, "What about the dead babies" or, "It's my body."

and

Clayton argues that there is a clear line demarking protest and seizing property: "If my clients at NOW went into the Augusta Golf Course and started tearing up the green, that's extortion." Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg tries to bring up Carry Nation again, but Scalia interrupts to smirk, "Carry Nation, that notorious extortionist."

Wish I'd been there. But it's too goddamned cold to stand in line.

Oh yeah, and Dahlia admits she mispredicted terribly in re: the docket and the Justices. Oops.

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