"Justice Stevens and the tipping point"

You might be interested in this recent LA Times article which focuses on the following issue: "How the Supreme Court would look if its strongest liberal voice, now 87, were to exit may well depend on the presidential election."

Here is a link.

Grutter Overruled By the People: "Michigan Prefers Equality"

Abigail Thernstrom had an essay last year in the WSJ on the recent vote in Michigan to prohibit racial preferences by government. Here is a key excerpt:

"Ward Connerly has done it again: A striking 58% of Michigan voters gave the Michigan Civil Rights Initiative a thumbs up; only three counties voted against it.

The language of the MCRI closely tracks California's 1996 Proposition 209, also led by Mr. Connerly. It amends the Michigan Constitution to "ban public institutions from using affirmative-action programs that give preferential treatment to groups or individuals based on their race, gender, color, ethnicity or national origin for public employment, education or contracting purposes." The political and business establishments, pressure groups like the AARP, labor-union leaders, religious spokesmen, the professoriat, the major Detroit newspapers--all were opposed to MCRI. But a substantial majority of ordinary voters were thinking for themselves.

Patty Alspach was perhaps a typical supporter. A Democrat, she signed the petition putting the proposition on the ballot. Meanwhile, opponents loudly claimed that the measure was misleading, that voters were being duped, that it should be tossed off the ballot. "I read it," replied Ms. Alpach. "I understood it. I signed it. Now let me vote on it."

....

The modern-day survival of racial preferences depends on sympathetic judges willing to spin dubious arguments and ignore widely available data on the pernicious impact of such preferences. But, this time, the University of Michigan may find itself without judicial recourse. The Supreme Court has never said that universities are constitutionally obligated to institute "diversity" policies. Public universities are funded by taxpayers. And those taxpayers have spoken."

• By the way, the very same Civil Rights Initiative is being proposed in Nebraska and will probably be on the ballot in November of 2008.

"Taking Science on Faith"

Here is a very interesting editorial in, of all places, today's NYT. Here is a representative excerpt:

Clearly, then, both religion and science are founded on faith — namely, on
belief in the existence of something outside the universe, like an unexplained
God or an unexplained set of physical laws, maybe even a huge ensemble of unseen
universes, too. For that reason, both monotheistic religion and orthodox science
fail to provide a complete account of physical existence.

This shared failing is no surprise, because the very notion of physical law is a theological one in the first place, a fact that makes many scientists squirm. Isaac Newton first got the idea of absolute, universal, perfect, immutable laws from the
Christian doctrine that God created the world and ordered it in a rational way.
Christians envisage God as upholding the natural order from beyond the universe,
while physicists think of their laws as inhabiting an abstract transcendent
realm of perfect mathematical relationships.

And just as Christians claim that the world depends utterly on God for
its existence, while the converse is not the case, so physicists declare a
similar asymmetry: the universe is governed by eternal laws (or meta-laws), but
the laws are completely impervious to what happens in the universe.

It seems to me there is no hope of ever explaining why the physical
universe is as it is so long as we are fixated on immutable laws or meta-laws
that exist reasonlessly or are imposed by divine providence. The alternative is
to regard the laws of physics and the universe they govern as part and parcel of
a unitary system, and to be incorporated together within a common explanatory
scheme.

In other words, the laws should have an explanation from within the
universe and not involve appealing to an external agency. The specifics of that
explanation are a matter for future research. But until science comes up with a
testable theory of the laws of the universe, its claim to be free of faith is
manifestly bogus.

"Commentary: The government and gun rights"

Interesting commentary over at SCOTUSBLOG.

And here is another post--Court agrees to rule on gun case

And here is Linda Greenhouse's take from the NYT--Justices to Decide on Right to Keep Handgun

As the late great Warren Zevon would say--"Send lawyers, guns and money, the s--- has hit the fan."

2007 Assignments

Assignments: Fall 2007

1 Casebook p. 1-37; Handout No. 1
2 Handout No.2
3 Casebook p. 37-56
4 Casebook p. 56-74
5 Casebook p. 74-92; 2007 Supplement p.1-3
6 Casebook p. 92-123
7 Casebook p. 162-193; 2007 Supplement P. 5-20
8 Casebook p. 221-256
9 Casebook p. 256-269; Supplement P. 21; Bruning(Nebraska marriage case)(See link on blog)
10 Casebook p. 465-489; p. 1035-1045
11 Casebook p. 489-512;Linder on incorporation (link); Duncan Article ("Justice Thomas and Partial Incorporation" copies will be distributed in class)
12 Casebook p. 513-536; 2007 Supplement p. 26 sect.A
13 Casebook p. 582-597
14 Casebook p. 597-621
15 Casebook p. 621-633; Handout No. 3; Ely, The Wages of Crying Wolf, 82 Yale L.J. 920 (on reserve in Library); Olsen, Unraveling Compromise, 103 Harv. L.Rev. 105 (on reserve in Library)
16 Casebook p. 633-659; 2007 Supplement p. 37-53
17 Casebook p. 664-689
18 Casebook p. 690-730; 2007 Supplement p. 54-55
19 Casebook p. 754-800
20 Casebook p. 800-812; 825-835
21 Casebook p. 835-875
22 Casebook p. 876-901; 2007 Supplement p. 56-92
23 Casebook p. 901-936; re-read Bruning (Nebraska marriage case) (See link on blog)

Here is a link to the text of the Constitution of the United States

Why Allow Physician's to Help People Kill Themselves?

When there are professionals who can do it cheaper and more efficiently?