Still An Issue

Students in several of my courses will study the landmark Brown v. Board of Education case. While forcing school districts to desegregate their schools via a court order seems like something from America's past, it turns out that such orders are still needed and handed down by courts in the United States. The law blog Jurist reports:

A judge in the US District Court for the Southern District of Mississippi [official website] on Tuesday ordered [DOJ press release] a southern Mississippi school district to end its practice of allowing students to transfer from their assigned schools and classroom groupings, resulting in a segregated school system.

You can read more about this case here.

A Forgotten Civil Rights Warrior

Yesterday's New York Times has an interesting piece on an important figure in the early history of the civil rights movement: Claudette Colvin. Who, you might ask. You and anyone else who has casually studied the American civil rights movement. Rosa Parks we know. It was her unwillingness to move to the back of the bus that sparked the modern civil rights movement. But Ms. Colvin did the exact same thing almost nine months earlier! Furthermore, her actions were also planned and defended by civil rights activists like Martin Luther King. The Times has more. It is well worth a read.

A True Groundbreaker

Brown v. Board of Education is often viewed as being the first major victory in court in the fight to end legal segregation of the races in America. While it most certainly did change the legal landscape concerning racial discrimination, it was not the first victory in this battle. That distinction goes to Lloyd Gaines. The New York Times explains that:

On Dec. 12, 1938, the Supreme Court ruled that the segregated University of Missouri Law School had to admit Lloyd Lionel Gaines, who was qualified except for the color of his skin, if there was no comparable legal education available to him within Missouri — and there was not.

The New York Times has more on this fascinating individual and case.

Still On The Books

Fresh on the heels of our discussion in my course "The Law and Social Change" comes this piece from the First Amendment Center in the United States:

Watch your language out there, because profanity and blasphemy could lead to criminal charges. We might hope that First Amendment-protected free speech lets us utter profanities, blasphemies and other choice phrases that occasionally slip from our intemperate tongues. After all, the U.S. Supreme Court protected a man who wore a jacket into a Los Angeles County Courthouse bearing the words "Fuck the Draft." That led to the famous Cohen v. California (1971) ruling in which Justice John Marshall Harlan — a conservative during the Warren Court years — uttered a phrase that has become First Amendment lore: "One man's vulgarity is another's lyric." But hold on. Yes, in a free society adult citizens outside of special contexts (jobs, military, school) can speak their minds in the open air. But if you think old laws punishing profanity and blasphemy no longer exist, you're wrong — a surprising number of state laws still prohibit such speech. Even though the laws are rarely enforced, they are still on the books.

You can read more here.

Welcome Back and Congrats to Medical Marijuana Users

After a long break, I will resume posting topics of interest to students in all of my classes on this blog. I'd like to start by revisiting a topic familiar to former students, and one that should be of interest to students in any of my classes where we discuss some aspect of the United States Government. As I wrote back in summer of 2008, medical marijuana users in states like California, where the use of pot for medical reasons was made legal under state law, were put in a bind several years back when the U.S. Supreme Court said that the federal government could arrest and prosecute people for using marijuana, a practice the Bush Administration was in favor of, because it violated federal law. Put another way, the use of medical marijuana was legal under state law but illegal under federal law. What was a medical pot user to do?

Unless you have been in a cave for the past year, you know that there has been a sea change in Washington D.C. with the election of President Obama, and it appears that this change is even reaching the medicinal pot users. How so? Well, the Department of Justice (the federal office responsible for enforcing the federal anti-pot laws) recently decided that the limited federal law enforcement resources may be better spent going after real criminals instead of people who are doing something perfectly legal under their state's law. They will no longer enforce federal law against medicinal pot users in states where the use of medical marijuana is legal.

For those new to this blog and/or this topic, this issue really illustrates: 1) how state and federal governments can have different laws, 2) how the laws can sometimes conflict, and 3) how a change in government can make a huge difference, among other things.

The More Things Change . . .

the more they stay the same, so the old saying goes. But is that true when it comes to spying on Americans? Put another way, did the election of Barack Obama as President change the surveillance tactics of the U.S. government? Not really, according to Wired's David Kravets.

Parting Thought

Posting has been light because of the semester break. I will resume posting in early April. As a parting shot, I wanted to share a little something from the website of my local paper, which recently had an insert on Barack Obama. The following survey question was on the website for the newspaper:

Gibt Obama auch Ihnen Zuversicht?

	Ja. Ich glaube, dass er überzeugende Antworten auf die globalen Probleme des 21. Jahrhunderts hat.
	Nein. Er wird sich wie fast alle US-Präsidenten um amerikanische Interessen kümmern - um nichts weiter.

So let me get this straight, Obama and all past Presidents are judged by how well they have tackled global problems? If they have instead opted to tackle the problems facing the people who actually elected them, they are seen as merely protecting American interests and nothing more? Is this really a fair question? Not surprisingly, 85% of respondents opted for "Nein."

King's Vision Fulfilled

Today is Martin Luther King Day in the United States. It is somehow fitting that the inauguration of the nation's first African-American President takes place a day after. I cannot help but wonder whether a recent CNN poll showing that 2/3 of African-Americans feel that King's vision has been fulfilled and the Obama's rise to the presidency are not somehow related. According to CNN:

The poll found 69 percent of blacks said King's vision has been fulfilled in the more than 45 years since his 1963 "I have a dream" speech -- roughly double the 34 percent who agreed with that assessment in a similar poll taken last March. But whites remain less optimistic, the survey found.

Thus, in one year the number of African-Americans who feel King's dreams have been achieved has doubled! Can the election of one man really have changed so many minds? Or is this just a case of people being swept away by the symbolic significance of what we will see tomorrow?

The S Word

No, not that S word. I am talking about the one conservatives in the United States like throw around when talking about those on the left side of the political spectrum: Socialist. Students in my Law and Society class may be a bit surprised that some in America still believe there is a Red menace in America. Didn't that become passe with the end of the McCarthy era? Apparently not, at least not for those who get their news from Fox News. Under the headline: "Obama Climate Czarina Was Member of Socialist Group's Environmental Commission," Fox tells it's readers that:

Carol Browner, President-elect Barack Obama's choice to be his climate czarina, served until last summer as a member of a socialist organization whose mission is to enact progressive government policies, including toward environmental concerns like climate change.

Can you imagine? The person soon-to-be President Obama wants to deal with climate issues aims to enact progressive policies regarding climate change. The nerve!

Police Chief Charged in Boy's Death at Gun Fair

Tragic news from Massachusetts illustrates how the crime of involuntary manslaughter works. A local police chief has been charged with involuntary manslaughter in the death of boy who attended a gun show put on by the police chief. The Boston Globe reports:

A small-town Massachusetts police chief who authorities say promoted, organized and profited from a firearms exposition where children were encouraged to shoot machine guns and where an 8-year-old killed himself with a Micro Uzi was charged Thursday with involuntary manslaughter.

Although the event was promoted as an opportunity for children to fire machine guns under the supervision of certified instructors, 8-year-old Christopher Bizilj had been supervised by a 15-year-old boy who was "knowledgeable about guns" but not certified as a firearms instructor, Hampden County District Attorney William M. Bennett said in outlining charges against Pelham Police Chief Edward B. Fleury and two others.

The elements of involuntary manslaughter under Massachusetts law are:

One can commit involuntary manslaughter through:
(1) an unintentional killing occasioned by an act which constitutes such a disregard of the probable harmful consequences to another as to be wanton or reckless; or
(2) an unintentional killing resulting from a battery.

Hate Crimes Against Arabs Down

Students in my "Law and Social Change" class were treated this past Monday to a presentation on the war on terrorism in America. Part of the presentation addressed how Arabs and Muslims were impacted in the United States after September 11. According to the Arab-American Anti-Discrimination Committee, hate crimes incidents against Arabs and Muslims have been steadily decreasing since 2003. This should not be totally unexpected. As with all things related to September 11, the farther away we get from the attacks, the more reasonable the government and people seem to be in their responses to it.

Gay Marriage and Direct Democracy

Is the United States a direct democracy? Surely not, at least at the federal level. The President is not elected by "the people" but by an Electoral College. There is no ability for citizen referendum or other direct citizen input at the federal level. And judges are appointed by politicians for life. These are just a few features of the federal government that make it anything but a version of direct democracy. But many states, especially California, do have governments that make them look closer to a direct democracy. In California, citizens can amend their constitution by referendum. Their judges can be voted out of office at the end of their term by the people, and politicians (including judges) can be removed in the middle of their term by recall.

How this idea of direct citizen participation and individual rights co-exist could be put to the test soon in California. Last year the California Supreme Court ruled that laws banning gay marriage violated the California Constitution. In response, opponents of gay marriage were able to get an anti-gay marriage referendum on the ballot. This referendum, which a majority of voters supported in the recent November election, amends the Constitution to prohibit what the Supreme Court said had to be allowed under the Constitution: gay marriage.

So a showdown down between the court and the people appears to be on the horizon. Why? Because the California Supreme Court has agreed to review whether the people's amendment to the Constitution violates the Constitution. And so how have supporters of the people's amendment responded? By saying that they will try to recall any judge who votes to overturn the people's amendment. Confused?

Let's recap. The legislature banned gay marriage. The Court said the ban violated the Constitution. The people then amended the Constitution, overruling the Court. Now the Court is going to rule whether the people's action violates the Constitution. And if they do rule that way, the people are threatening to remove the judges. Simple. Which begs the question. Is democracy, as it is practiced in California, a good idea?

Marriage Revisited

I have written in the past about the landmark decision of Loving v. Virginia in which the U.S. Supreme Court stuck down laws banning whites and blacks from marrying. I have also written about how the courts are becoming involved in the issue of gay marriage. But I have yet to suggest that these two cases raise the same issue, although I believe they may. Anna Quindlen of Newsweek has a nice short piece in this week's issue explaining how these cases are basically the same. Surprisingly, the question of whether this is a civil rights issue on par with issues raised by racial discrimination is somewhat controversial. And ironically polls show that a vast majority of African-Americans oppose gay marriage. So give this question some thought. Are laws prohibiting gay marriage the same as those which prohibited people of different races from marrying?