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The Legacy of The March on Washington: 50 Years Later

 

On Aug. 28, 1963, President John F. Kennedy in the White House with leaders of the civil rights "March on Washington." From left: Whitney Young; Dr. Martin Luther King; Rabbi Joachim Prinz; A. Philip Randolph; President Kennedy; Walter Reuther; and Roy Wilkins. Behind Reuther is Vice-President Lyndon Johnson. (Photo by Three Lions/Getty Images)

***

Wednesday marks the 50 year anniversary when more than 200,000 demonstrators took part in the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom in the nation’s capital. The event featured the sweet folksy sounds of Bob Dylan, Joan Baez, Peter Paul and Mary,  along with a galaxy of prominent speakers in front of the Lincoln Memorial, including: Bayard Rustin, Roy Wilkins, and John Lewis before Martin Luther King, Jr., stole the show with his gripping "I Have a Dream Speech."

The reason for the March was painfully obvious: In 1963, on the centennial of the Emancipation Proclamation, most of the goals of earlier protests voiced by members of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, the National Urban League, the National Catholic Conference for Interracial Justice, the National Council of the Churches of Christ in America, the United Auto Workers (UAW), and many others, still had not been realized with high levels of discrimination in employment, disenfranchisement of blacks from voting (most prominently in the South) and widespread discrimination in housing practices from coast-to-coast.

After the March, King and a host of Civil Rights leaders met with President Kennedy and Vice President Lyndon Johnson at the White House to discuss the need for swift legislative action in order to put their dream into action. Many attribute the March and Dr. King’s speech as being the seminal moment in propelling many of the Civil Rights acts that were passed later in the decade.

Not to steal Dr. King’s thunder, but not everyone agrees with that assessment.

Gary Orfield, professor of education, law, political science and urban planning at the UCLA Graduate School of Education and Information Studies and co-founder of The Civil Rights Project, (now called The Civil Rights Project/Proyecto Derechos Civiles) , believes President Kennedy’s Civil Rights speech (delivered on June 11, 1963  ) and the shocking violence (in front of a national television audience) ruthlesslymeted out by police during the Birmingham Demonstrations earlier that year were decidedly more significant than the March on Washington in terms of Civil Rights legislation. Orfield also believes the grass roots campaigns howled in churches along the highways and byways held more sway than the March on Washington.

Professor Orfield reminds me that the real breakthrough in Civil Rights wouldn’t be realized until the Lyndon Johnson Administration and his explosive influence in pushing through Congress, The Civil Rights Act (CRA) of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965. In fact, Orfield argues, LBJ was the last U.S. president to champion an aggressive urban policy to address many of the tenets Dr. King and his followers risked their lives for 50 years ago.  

Even President Barack Obama’s cautious agenda in addressing the plight of Urban America has disappointed many who considered themselves among the neglected, marginalized and left out.  All he [Obama] seems to talk about’’, Orfield says, is the middle class.’’

Professor Orfield, who was a student intern for the State Department (based in Washington D.C.) at the time of the March, didn’t think the stirring speeches and call for action on that momentous day were all that inspirational in person. In fact, he left before King’s speech to watch it on television. ``The speech’’, Orfield recalls, `` was much more impressive on television than was in person, especially since at the packed Memorial, it was hard to see anything, it was hot, unpleasant, and the sound system was not that perfect.’’

In other words, Orfield believes, King’s ``I Had a Dream’’ speech packed more of a punch with those who watched it in their own living rooms than those who actually made the long trek to Washington. Another overlooked aspect was that King was the last speaker of the day; it was late in the day and most reporters were already writing their stories for their fast approaching deadlines. Small wonder, then, that the``I Had a Dream’’ refrain or even a reference to Dr. King himself was not splashed across the front pages of many U.S. dailies, including The Washington Post.

Unlike other observers, the most powerful memory Orfield takes away from August 28, 1963, was that ``most people in Washington had tremendous fear that mobs of violence was sure to break out. Most of the streets were deserted (except for the Lincoln Memorial), the National Guard was everywhere.  People were ready for something awful, but it just became a joyful celebration.’’

One factor that can’t be disputed: though many of the protests and pleas of many African-Americans remain unfilled 50 years after the March on Washington, the legacy and profound impact of Dr. King on American political culture is stronger than ever.  According to Derek H. Alderman, Professor  & Head of the Department of Geography at the University of Tennessee, as of 2010, there were 893 places in the United States with a street named for Dr. King, while the number of roads is believed to be well above 900.

The progress that blacks have made since Dr. King delivered his rousing speech on a blistering summer day under the Lincoln Memorial remains momentous. According to the U.S. Census Bureau, the number of black elected officials in 1970 stood at 1,469; by 2011 it had leaped to 10,500. Additionally, the number of blacks with a bachelor's degree in 1964 was 365,000; in 2012, 5.1 million blacks held a college degree, while the poverty rate for blacks in 1966 was 41.8 percent, compared with 14.7 percent nationally; in 2011, the poverty rate for blacks stood at 27.6 percent compared with 15 percent, the national poverty rate for all races.

But clearly the most significant legacy of Dr. King and the March on Washington was the succession of Civil Rights legislation that would be passed in the halls of Congress, beginning in 1964.

What follows, then, is a summary of some of the most significant legislation.

• The Civil Rights Act (CRA) of 1964, enacted on July 2, 1964 outlawed major forms of discrimination against racial, ethnic, national and religious minorities, and women. Specifically, Title VII of the CRA prohibits discrimination in employment on the basis of race, color, religion, national origin, or sex, while Title VI of the CRA prohibits discrimination in federally funded programs or activities on the basis of race, color, or national origin.; Title II of the CRA prohibits discrimination on the basis of race, color, religion, or national origin in public accommodations.

• The Voting Rights Act of 1965, which was signed into law by President Lyndon Johnson on August 6, 1965, was designed to prevent the disenfranchisement of black voters in the South by prohibiting voting practices that discriminate on the basis of race, color, or membership in a language minority group. Section 2 of the Act, applied a nationwide prohibition against the denial or abridgment of the right to vote on the literacy tests on a nationwide basis.

• Age Discrimination in Employment Act of 1967, specifically enacted to promote the hiring of older workers based on their ability rather than their age, protects individuals who are 40 years of age or older from employment discrimination based on age. The protection extends to both employees and job applicants. It is additionally unlawful to retaliate against an individual for opposing employment practices that discriminate based on age or for filing an age discrimination charge, testifying, or participating in any way in an investigation, proceeding, or litigation under the ADEA.

• The Fair Housing Act (FHA), which was passed by Congress in April, 1968 (after some prodding by LBJ) prohibits discrimination in the sale or rental of housing on the basis of race, color, religion, national origin, sex, disability, or familial status. The statute applies to both public and private housing and may be enforced by the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD), DOJ, and individuals who file suit in federal court.

• The Education Amendments of 1972 was passed by Congress on June 8, 1972. President Nixon subsequently signed it into law on June 23rd. Among the Amendments most prominent provisions, Title IX prohibits discrimination on the basis of sex in federally funded education programs or activities, including a wide range of educational programs or activities, student admissions, scholarships, access to courses, along with the prohibition of sex discrimination in intercollegiate athletics.

• The Rehabilitation Act, enacted September 26, 1973, prohibits discrimination on the basis of disability in federally conducted and federally funded programs or activities, as well as in employment by the federal government and by federal contractors.

• The Equal Credit Opportunity Act (ECOA), which was enacted in 1974, prohibits creditors from discriminating against credit applicants on the basis of race, color, religion, national origin, sex, marital status, age, because an applicant receives income from a public assistance program, or because an applicant has in good faith exercised any right under the Consumer Credit Protection Act.

• The Equal Educational Opportunities Act (EEOA) of 1974 prohibits discrimination in educational opportunities on the basis of race, color, sex, or national origin. Specifically, the statute prohibits school segregation, as well as the failure of a school to take appropriate action to overcome students’ language barriers. The statute is enforced by the Department of Justice (DOJ).

• The Age Discrimination Act of 1975 prohibits discrimination on the basis of age in federally funded programs or activities, such as financial assistance to schools and colleges, provided by U.S. Department of Education.

• The Civil Service Reform Act of 1978 (CSRA) applies to labor organizations which represents employees in most agencies of the executive branch of the Federal Government. It prohibits discrimination in federal employment on the basis of race, color, national origin, religion, sex, age, disability, marital status, or political affiliation. Specifically, the statute prohibits discrimination in certain personnel practices, including, but not limited to, hiring, promotion, transfers, and pay and benefits. In addition, the statute prohibits discrimination on the basis of conduct that does not adversely affect the performance of an employee or job applicant. This provision has been interpreted to prohibit discrimination based on sexual orientation.

• The Immigration and Nationality Act (INA) of 1986 prohibits discrimination in employment on the basis of national origin or citizenship status. The Act, which prohibits discrimination against U.S. citizens and legal immigrants but not unauthorized aliens, also protects individuals from unfair documentary practices relating to the employment eligibility verification process. The statute is enforced by DOJ.

• Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990 (ADA) prohibits discrimination based on disability in employment, public services, public accommodations, transportation, and telecommunications.

• The Uniformed Services Employment and Reemployment Rights Act of 1994 (USERRA) protects service members' reemployment rights when returning from a period of service in the uniformed services, including those called up from the reserves or National Guard, and prohibits employer discrimination based on military service or obligation. The U.S. Department of Labor’s (DOL) Veterans’ Employment and Training Service (VETS) administers USERRA.
 
• The Genetic Information Nondiscrimination Act (GINA), enacted May 21, 2008, prohibits discrimination in group health plan coverage based on genetic information. The Act prohibits group health plans and health insurers from denying coverage to a healthy individual or charging that person higher premiums based solely on a genetic predisposition to developing a disease in the future. The Secretary of Health and Human Services (HHS) enforces the provisions relating to health insurers, while the remedies and enforcement mechanisms for the employment provisions are generally patterned on Title VII of the CRA.

Source: Congressional Research Service, U.S. Department of Labor, U.S. Department of Justice.

-Bill Lucey

[email protected]

August 26, 2013

  

Settling on Just the Right Title For a Book-Never an Easy Chore

Margaret Mitchell considered the title ``Tomorrow is Another Day'' among others,  before settling  on ``Gone With the Wind.''

****

So you if you can’t judge a book by its cover, can you judge it by its title?

If the early rumbling is any indication, a volcano has erupted over Mark Leibovich’s  new book ``This Town’’ , which takes a hard look inside the nation’s capital, where the streets are paved with gold; assuming, of course, you’re on the right talk shows, rub the right elbows, and dance in the most powerful circles D.C. has to offer. Such blatant cynicism extends to reporters, bloggers, cable shows and members of the new media, who rather than representing dispassionate observers have become co-opted into the celebrity culture or carnival atmosphere that has become so endemic in Washington these days.

Since the book was released, the chief national correspondent for The New York Times’ Magazine has faced heaps of biting criticism from his contemporaries and members of the Washington elite, questioning his audacity for exposing the unwritten rules or codes of Washington reporting when he’s a member of the club himself.

``Washington has been transformed by wealth and the new media more than any other city in the world’’, Leibovich recently told Charlie Rose. As long as you gain a reputation for being a Washington insider, Leibovich reasons, you can hawk your services to any lobbying firm or media outlet for a pretty penny.  Such a culture perpetuates a sense of mediocrity.

``This Town’’ doesn’t merely focus on reporters and the media but includes tough love critiques of the entire Washington elite, including the politicians themselves.

Washington is increasingly become a town where you come to get rich rather than devote yourself to a life of public service. This wasn’t true 20 or 30 years ago, Leibovich observed.  Citing one example to the PBS host, Leibovich offers up Robert Gibbs, the former press secretary to President Obama, who since leaving his post in 2011, has racked up about $2 million in speaking fees.

Explaining just how corrupted the culture of Washington can be for any new arrivals, Leibovitch points out that Barack Obama, the junior senator from Illinois, who came to Washington as the 44^th president of the United States, hoping to be an ``agent of change’’-in the end-fell victim to Washington changing him, more, much more, than Obama changed Washington.  An extremely poignant commentary on the crippling culture in the nation’s capital. And many wonder why voters have become so cynical of Washington.

``Washington has become extremely self-satisfied at a time when the country has become increasingly dissatisfied’’ Leibovich informed Rose.

During his Charlie Rose interview, Leibovich said he thought about a number of titles for the book before settling on ``This Town.’’ Curious what other titles he considered, I immediately shot off an email to the Times’ national correspondent. He replied, writing that he kicked around a few titles: ``One was “Suck Up City” “You’ll Always Eat Lunch in this Town Again” was another. And also “The Club.”

This got me to thinking of other famous books whose authors pondered several titles before deciding on that one magical title that eventually propelled them into national and international best sellers.

Here, then, are some of my favorites:

 

Original Title: ``At This Point in Time''

Published Title: ``All The President's Men’’ (1974)

Authors: Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein

 

Original Title: ``Tomorrow is Another Day''; also ``Tote the Weary Load'', ``Milestones’’, ``Jettison’’, ``Ba! Ba! Black Sheep’’, ``None so Blind’’, ``Not in Our Stars'' and ``Bugles Sang True''

Published Title: ``Gone with the Wind (1936)

Author: Margaret Mitchell

 

Original Title: ``Before This Anger''

Published Title: ``Roots’’ (1976)

Author: Alex Haley

 

Original Title: ``Great White, ``The Shark’’, ``Leviathan Rising’’, ``The Jaws of Death.’’

Published Title: ``Jaws’’ (1974)

Author: Peter Benchley

 

Original Title: ``Catch-18’’

Published Title: ``Catch-22’’ (1961)

Author: Joseph Heller

 

Original Title: ``Four-and-a Half Years of Struggle against Lies, Stupidity, and Cowardice.’’

Published Title: ``Mein Kampf’’ (My Struggle)-1925

Author: Adolf Hitler.

 

Original Title: "Beyond the Birds and Bees"

Published Title: "Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Sex’’ (But Were Afraid to Ask) -1969

Author:  Dr. David Reuben.

 

Original Title: ``All’s Well That Ends Well''

Published Title: ``War and Peace’’ (1866)

Author: Leo Tolstoy

 

Original Title: ``Incident at West Egg''; also ``Among Ash Heaps and Millionaires'', ``Trimalchio in West Egg'', ```On the Road to West Egg'', ``Gold-Hatted Gatsby'' and ``The High-Bounding Lover''

Published Titles: ``The Great Gatsby’’ (1925)

Author: F. Scott Fitzgerald

 

Original Title: ``First Impressions’’

Published Title: ``Pride and Prejudice’’ (1813)

Author: Jane Austen

 

Original Title of Play: ``The Moth’’ and ``The Poker Night’’

Published Title: ``A Streetcar Named Desire’’ (1947)

Author Tennessee Williams

 

Original Title: ``Mag's Diversion’’; also ``The Copperfield Disclosures’’, ``The Copperfield Records’’, ``The Copperfield Survey of the World as It Rolled’’ and ``Copperfield Complete’’

Published Title: David Copperfield (1849)

Author: Charles Dickens

 

Original Title: ``Alice's Adventures Underground’’

Published Title: ``Alice's Adventures in Wonderland’’ (1865)

Author: Lewis Carroll

 

Original Title: ``Paul Morel’’

Published Title: ``Sons and Lovers’’ (1913)

Author: D.H. Lawrence

 

Original Title: ``The Romantic Egotist’’

Published Title: ``This Side of Paradise’’ (1920)

Author: F. Scott Fitzgerald

 

Original Title: ``Fiesta''; also ``The Lost Generation'', ``River to the Sea'', `` Two Lie Together'', and ``The Old Leaven''

Published Title: ``The Sun Also Rises’’ (1926).

Author: Ernest Hemingway

 

Original Title: ``Salinas Valley’’

Published Title: `` East of Eden’’ (1952)

Author: John Steinbeck

 

Original Title: ``Proud Flesh’’

Published Title: ``All the King's Men'' (1946)

Author: Robert Penn Warren

 

Original Title: ``Something That Happened’’

Published Title: ``Of Mice and Men (1937)

Author: John Steinbeck

 

Original Title:  ``They Don't Build Statues to Businessmen’’

Published Title: ``Valley of the Dolls’’ (1966)

Author: Jacqueline Susann

 

Original Title of Poem: ``He Do The Police in Different Voices.’’

Published Title: ``The Waste Land’’ (1922)

Author: T.S. Eliot

 

Original Title: ``If Wishes Were Horses’’

Published Title: ``From Here to Eternity’’ (1951)

Author: James Jones

 

Original Title: ``Bar-B-Q?!’’

Final Title: The Postman Always Rings Twice (1934)

Author: James M. Cain

 

-Bill Lucey

July 18, 2013

[email protected]

 

All-Star Games Can Get a Little Hairy

Always the trendsetter, Abraham Lincoln.

Rollie Fingers, an All-Star and Hall-of-Famer, best remembered for his handlebar mustache.

***

As we prepare for another mid-season clash between the American and National Leagues in the 84^th annual All-Star game from Citi Field in Queens on Tuesday, some statistics are in order.

But unlike other general baseball stat facts, these might get a little hairy.

It was certainly a hair-raising experience (at least for me) to learn from STATS,  the world’s leading sports statistical analysis company, that facial hair is actually linked with player performance on the diamond; so much so that over the last decade, players with facial hair have clearly outperformed their clean-shaven counterparts during the All-Star games.

Just consider the following All-Star game facts that STATS so skillfully scooped up and fired our way:

• From 2003 through 2012, players with beards have a .287 batting average compared with non facial players who have batted a paltry .226.

 

• From 2003 through 2012, On Base Percentage for players with facial hair is .338 compared with .272 for those without facial hair.

 

• All six All-Star MVP‘s feature facial hair: Melky Cabrera, Prince Fielder, Brian McCann, Carl Crawford, J.D. Drew and Ichiro Suzuki.

 

• In seven out of the last eight All-Star games, players with facial hair batted higher than those without.

 

• Over the last four All-Star Games, clean-shaven players have gone 152 at-bats without bashing one out of the park.

 

Come to think of it, are these statistics really such a surprise?

Looking back through history, would the ``Great Emancipator’’, Abraham Lincoln, really have prevented the country from splitting into two over slavery had not 11-year old Grace Bedell of Westfield, New York, suggested to Mr. Lincoln he grow a beard? Lincoln was actually the real trend setter when it came to facial hair among U.S. presidents as he ushered in what was described as the ``Golden Age of Facial Hair.’’  From 1861 through 1913, all but two presidents (Andrew Johnson and William McKinley) were decorated with facial hair.  Three of those presidents had beards: (Rutherford B. Hayes, James Garfield, and Benjamin Harrison), three mustaches (Grover Cleveland, Theodore Roosevelt, and William Howard Taft) and one with sideburns, giant sideburns (Chester Arthur).

In light of this, you might be asking yourself, would the crushing defeats of Samuel Tilden (1876) and William Jennings Bryant (1896) turned out differently if they weren’t clean-shaven?

Beginning with Woodrow Wilson in 1913, facial hair would never be seen on a U.S. president again, most of it attributable to the mass production of the razor blade, beginning in 1901.  Additionally, unlike previous wars, U.S. serviceman in World War I were all required to shave.

Before Lincoln, of course, facial hair planted on prominent historical figures did pop up from time to time.  According to at least one historical account, Sir Thomas More, the Renaissance humanist, before laying his head on the block in 1535, pushed aside his beard and said to his executioner, ``My beard has not been guilty of treason; it would be an injustice to punish it.’’

Even Uncle Sam got with the program by having a beard added to his face by 1855.

Today, facial hair on a Pope is unthinkable; but Popes from Clement VII (1523) to Clement XI (1700) wore beards; and Robert Bellarmine (who died in 1621), was considered one of the last great bearded cardinals. He was eventually canonized as Saint Robert.

So forgive me if I can’t help but wonder how history would have been shaped differently, if the following figures had not sported a beard:

• Would God, for example, really have trusted Moses with two stone tablets bearing the 10 commandments on Mount Sinai, if the religious leader, lawgiver, and prophet weren’t wearing a beard much like the creator and sustainer of the universe?

 

• How much precious pearls of wisdom and Western Philosophy would have been passed on to us through the ages had Aristotle, the Greek philosopher, not grown a beard?

 

• I hate to think of all the magnificent literature we would have been deprived of if such accomplished writers like William Shakespeare, Charles Dickens, Henry Longfellow, Edgar Allan Poe, and Ernest Hemingway, to name just a few, would have been beardless. Would they have been as imaginative in wielding their pen?

 

• Would we even be talking about the mid-season Fall Classic right now had Christopher Columbus been beardless, beardless at least by some historical accounts?   Would the Italian explorer still have discovered America as a clean-shaven navigator?

 

• Would Rollie Fingers, the Oakland A’s and San Diego Padres flame-thrower have gone on to be only the second reliever elected to the National Baseball Hall of Fame without his signature waxed handlebar moustache?

 

To all these questions, I guess we’ll never really know.

 

The real moral of this story, however, is if any of the 30 MLB teams hope to advance to the post-season in October, they might give serious thought to throwing their straight edge razors and Remington electric shavers overboard and start growing out that facial hair. In the heat of a pennant race, any advantage you can muster goes a long way.

 

Ditto for the 2016 candidates, hoping to be considered presidential timber, including Hillary Clinton, who might go down in history as the first female U.S. president with a beard.

 

-Bill Lucey

[email protected]

July 16, 2013

 

Which Justices' Prose Reigns Supreme?

For passionate U.S. Supreme Court watchers, the last couple of weeks must have felt like Christmas came early; what with momentous decisions handed down on key social issues, including same- sex marriage, affirmative action and the highly explosive decision which struck down Section 4 of the Voting Rights Act of 1965.

Overall, in the latest U.S. Supreme Court term, which began on October 1, 2012 (and ends on Sunday, October 6, 2013), the justices have signed 73 opinions after oral arguments, according to the ScotusBlog, a private blog devoted to comprehensively covering the Supreme Court of the United States.

To get a sense just how much reading U.S. Supreme Court analysts and correspondents have had to wade through over the past several months, just consider there have been 169 opinions issued by the 9 justices, including 78 majority opinions, 39 concurring opinions, and 52 dissenting opinions.

All this adds up to a boatload of reading for the few, those lucky few, who are responsible for covering the U.S. Supreme Court and sifting through the thicket of opinions.

As you can imagine just by the breadth of issues covered and the monstrous size of the opinions released, this doesn’t exactly make for light reading. What’s more, if an individual justice has a predilection for writing long-winded rambling opinions, it must make the correspondents’ job all the more difficult.

Curious just how many of the current justices have a natural flair for writing with a fluid poetic style when composing their opinions; I thought I would check in with some U.S. Supreme Court correspondents. According to Adam Liptak, who covers the Court for The New York Times, `` There are three great writers on the Court: [John G.] Roberts and [Elena] Kagan are great explainers and debaters, and both can turn a phrase.’’ `` [Antonin] Scalia is also enormously readable’’, Liptak says, ``though his sarcasm is not to everyone's taste.’’

Hailing Roberts, Kagan, and Scalia as some of the more graceful writers on the present Court, as Liptak does (and most of his contemporaries would most likely agree) this led me to wonder how these justices stack up against their predecessors, dating back to 1789?

With that in mind, I consulted with some of the leading legal scholars in the country, to get their opinion which justices exhibited a natural gift for the written word.

What follows, then, are some answers that came back.

• ``I think you might find general agreement that Robert Jackson wrote the best prose of any of the justices -- eloquent without being florid, shrewdly realistic without being cynical. Like John Marshall, another great stylist, Jackson had a knack for expounding the structural design of the Constitution, and also the conflicts within that design.  For a sample, see his opinions in the Barnette and Gobitis (compulsory flag-salute) cases and his famous opinion in the steel seizure case.

Holmes had the most brilliant aphorisms, which is probably why he is the most quoted of all the justices ("great cases, like hard cases, make bad law", "general propositions do not decide concrete cases", etc.)and also was capable of great eloquence (see his dissents in the Abrams free-speech cases and the Schwimmer case of a woman denied immigration because she would not swear to bear arms.

My own favorite on the current Court is Ruth Ginsburg. Her style is spare and unadorned, without rhetorical flourishes or quotable soundbites, but it is tightly reasoned and always well supported by evidence and examples.  She reminds me of Justice Brandeis in her powerful intellect and keen perception of the real-life consequences of Supreme Court decisions.  Her concurring opinion in the Obamacare case and dissent in the recent Voting Rights case are virtuoso performances. They are (characteristically) understated, but efficiently grind up the opposing opinions into rubbish.  This small, frail lady has been doing valuable service to the republic.''

-Robert W. Gordon, Professor of Law at Stanford University; a preeminent legal historian, prolific scholar with expertise in American legal history is author of a number of key works on legal philosophy, including ``The Legacy of Oliver Wendell Holmes (1992), and `Storie Critiche del Diritto'' (Critical Legal Histories) (1995).

 

• ``Several earlier justices come to mind as notable prose stylists. Holmes and Brandeis were wonderful writers. Holmes gave us some wonderful language. For example, dissenting in Lochner v. New York, which struck down a state law limiting working hours, he tartly observed: "The Fourteenth Amendment does not enact Mr. Herbert Spencer's Social Statics." He also cautioned, in Schenck v. United States, that "the most stringent protection of free speech would not protect a man in falsely shouting fire in a crowded theatre and causing a panic." And his dissenting opinion in Abrams v. United States gave us the wonderful image of the marketplace of ideas as the basis of the First Amendment. There are many other examples.

As for Brandeis, I am particularly partial to this line from his opinion in Whitney v. California, which remains to my mind the most eloquent defense of freedom of speech ever articulated by anyone on the Supreme Court: "Men feared witches and burned women." Brandeis also observed that "in most matters it is more important that the applicable rule of law be settled than that it be settled right." Both of these lines came in dissenting opinions (well, as a technical point, the Whitney opinion is called a concurrence, but Brandeis rejected the Court's whole approach to the First Amendment issue yet reluctantly agreed with the result because of how the issue was presented in the lower courts).

A few other justices also come to mind. One is Robert Jackson, who in West Virginia State Board of Education v. Barnette observed that, "if there is any fixed star in our constitutional constellation, it is that no official, high or petty, can prescribe what shall be orthodox in politics, nationalism, religion, or other matters of opinion." Jackson also famously observed in Brown v. Allen: "We are not final because we are infallible, but we are infallible only because we are final."

Another is the second Justice John Marshall Harlan, who observed in Cohen v. California (a case that overturned the disorderly-conduct conviction of a man who at the height of the Vietnam War had a jacket emblazoned with "Fuck the Draft"): "While the particular four-letter word being litigated here is perhaps more distasteful than most others of its genre, it is nevertheless often true that one man's vulgarity is another's lyric."

Justice Stevens was no slouch as a stylist, either. One of my favorites from him comes from his opinion in Young v. American Mini Theatres, which upheld zoning restrictions on adult cinemas and bookstores: "Few of us would march our sons and daughters off to war to preserve the citizen's right to watch 'Specified Sexual Activities' in the theaters of our choice."

Finally, although I don't think he quite ranks with these others overall, Justice Souter produced a jaw-dropping line in a footnote during his first term on the Court. The case, American National Red Cross v. S.G., dealt with a very technical procedural issue. Responding to Justice Scalia's scathing dissent, Souter wrote: "The dissent accuses us of repeating what it announces as Chief Justice [John] Marshall's misunderstanding, in [Case 2], of his own previous opinion in [Case 1]. We are honored."

-Jonathan L. Entin,  Associate Dean for Academic Affairs; David L. Brennan Professor of Law, and Professor of Political Science at the Case Western Reserve University School of Law in Cleveland, Ohio, where he teaches Constitutional Law, Administrative Law, Courts, Public Policy, and Social Change, along with a Supreme Court Seminar.  Professor Entin clerked for Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg when she was on the U.S. court of Appeals.

 

• ``I like [Robert] Jackson, with his Barnette decision [Free Speech Clause of the First Amendment to the United States Constitution protected students from being forced to salute the American flag and say the Pledge of Allegiance in school]  being the classic example. [Oliver Wendell] Holmes is good also, but he tends to be a bit on the sarcastic side in his dissents. I think [Louis] Brandeis writes better and with more passion. Compare their two dissents in Olmstead. I think the first [John Marshall] Harlan wrote well, as shown in particular by his Plessy dissent. On the current Court, I think [Anthony] Kennedy writes very well—his recent decision in Windsor is a good example. ''

-Robert Langran, Professor in the Department of Political Science at Villanova University and author of ``The United States Supreme Court: An Historical and Political Analysis'' and ``The Supreme Court: A Concise History.''

 

• ``One's appreciation of writing style probably has something to do with one's agreement with the content.  In my opinion, Justice Scalia is the most rhetorically gifted member of the Court.  He is especially good at skewering obfuscation and pretension.  No doubt that is more winning if one is not the target.

For an example of Scalia's mature style, with all the features that excite both fans and critics, I don't think you can do better than Part I of his dissent in Windsor, the Defense of Marriage Act case decided last week.''

-John C. Jeffries, Jr., David and Marry Harrison Distinguished Professor Law at the University of Virginia Law School and author of a biography on Justice Lewis F. Powell, Jr., a justice he once clerked for soon after graduating from the University of Virginia Law School.

 

• `For [Robert] Jackson, it's hard to top his majority opinion in West Va School Bd v. Barnette and his dissent in Korematsu.  For [John]  Marshall, the classics are Marbury and McCulloch.  [Louis} Brandeis's dissents in Olmstead and Whitney top his list.  For Harlan, I'd go with the Plessy dissent.  And OMG, I left out Holmes, for whom the Abrams dissent, the Lochner dissent, and the majority in Missouri v. Holland would be my stylistic favorites.''

 

-Michael C. Dorf, Robert S. Stevens Professor of Law at Cornell University Law School, who has written over seventy law review articles and essays on constitutional law and related subjects and is the co-author (with Laurence Tribe) of ``On Reading the Constitution.''(Harvard University Press, 1991).

 

 ``John Marshall--Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.--Robert Jackson were certainly gifted writers but for a "poetic" style, I would go with Holmes who, in Grant Gilmore's words, "knew how to reduce an idea to its bare bones in a single, flashing phrase."

-Philip C. Bobbitt, Distinguished Senior Lecturer, School of Law at The University of Texas at Austin is one of the nation's leading constitutional theorists and author of six books, including: ``Constitutional Fate'' (1982) and ``Constitutional Interpretation'' (1991).

 

-Bill Lucey

[email protected]

July 1, 2013

Snowden Storm: How Much Damage to International Relations?

As Edward Snowden, the former technical contractor for the National Security Agency (NSA) and Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) employee awaits his fate in the transit lounge of Moscow's Sheremetyevo Airport; the extent of damage this 30-year old has done to strain relations between the United States and Russia and China remains an open question.

Working through the Guardian newspaper in London, beginning in May, Snowden exposed a number of classified documents gathered by the NSA, including the interception of U.S. and European telephone records and Internet surveillance programs, which touched off a heated debate about American privacy and civil liberties being violated. Of more concern to the U.S government, however, isn’t about Americans privacy being invaded; rather, their concern is the breadth of classified information that may have been passed on to the Chinese and Russian governments.

The U.S. government has charged Snowden with stealing government property, transmitting national security information without approval and willfully communicating classified data to unauthorized individuals, serious charges which violate the U.S. Espionage Act, and could result in a lengthy prison term for the Wilmington, N.C. native.

Before dashing off to Moscow, Snowden stayed in Hong Kong until he was given clearance to leave by the Chinese government.

The former CIA employee is believed to have sought asylum in Ecuador.  Despite his passport having been revoked by the U.S., he still would be able to board a plane.  

Passengers lacking border regulations are subject only to a fine of 1,000 rubles ($30), according to the Russia’s Administrative Code. Besides, Vladimir Putin has already stated that Snowden is free to travel at will, since he had ``committed no crime on Russian soil.’’

Since there are no direct flights to Quito, the capital of Ecuador, Snowden would have to fly to Havana first. The next flight to Havana from Moscow isn’t until Thursday.

Ecuador's foreign minister, Ricardo Patino, however, told the Associated Press, an asylum request could take up to two months to process, approximately the same amount of time it took Wikileaks founder Julian Assange to take refuge at Ecuador’s embassy in London.

In the meantime, John McCain, a senior member of the Senate Foreign Relations and Armed Services committees in meeting with reporters recently lashed out at both Russia and China, strongly asserting that Mr. Obama needs a "re-evaluation" of Washington's relationship with both Moscow and Beijing.

Beijing and Moscow countered with their own lashings. An editorial published in Xinhua, the state-owned Chinese news agency, argued that "the United States, which has long been trying to play innocent as a victim of cyberattacks, has turned out to be the biggest villain in our age.''

And Igor Morozov, a Russian lawmaker, wrote that the case exposed an American "policy of double standards."

All this couldn’t have come at a worse time for the U.S., especially with the war in Syria still unresolved.

Equally troubling, in July, the United States-China Strategic and Economic Dialogue begins in Washington in which a number of Chinese leaders are expected to attend to discuss, among other topics, the behavior of computers and online, while in September, President Obama is scheduled to travel to St Petersburg and Moscow to meet with Russian president Vladimir Putin.

So has the U.S. relationship with Moscow and Beijing taken a dramatic turn for the worse and could this hurricane potentially bring Russia and China closer together; or is this Snowden incident merely a mild thunderstorm, which will eventually blow over?

To answer these questions, I consulted with a number of Russian and Chinese scholars in order to get their assessment of the potential international repercussions.

Here, then, are some responses which came back:

• ``Neither Moscow nor Washington are ready for that Cold Shower having so many other problems.   But this case will deepen the mistrust between the two sides that exists already.''

-Lilia Shevtsova, Chairs the Russian Domestic Politics and Political Institutions Program at the Carnegie Moscow Center.

 

• ``For me, I wouldn’t think that this will strain US/China ties as the one country/two systems China/HK arrangement gives Beijing the ability to deny making the call on Snowden. I don’t have any idea if China’s agencies gathered whatever data Snowden may have. There’s little doubt that this incident has provided Americans, Chinese, and others with much more insight into NSA capabilities and practices. I do not know if Snowden has the ability to provide much more information or much more important information than he has already revealed.''

-Clayton Dube, Associate Director of the University of Southern California (USC) U.S.-China Institute.

 

• ``Relations between Russia and US have been "strained" and worse for quite some time - what with Magnitsky Act and Russia reciprocating with a ban on American adoption of Russian orphans; kicking out the USAID from Russia, strong disagreement over Syria - and  persistent anti-American rhetoric at home. The body language and facial expressions of both presidents at the G8 meeting in N Ireland gives one an idea of just how "strained" the relations have become.  I think possible cooperation between Russia and China on cyber issues should be disturbing to the US and - again, it can hardly do anything about it. ''

-Maria Lipman, Chair of the Carnegie Moscow Center’s Society and Regions Program and editor of the Pro et Contra journal published by the Carnegie Moscow Center.

 

• ``I would assume that Chinese and Russians copied all the materials Snowden has, so it is potentially a major intelligence leak for us depending on what he has.  I think the two sides will try to insulate the issues in the bilateral relationship from the Snowden case, although the Putin/Obama agreement last week to cooperate more on cybersecurity may take a hit.''

-Andrew C. Kuchins, senior fellow and director of the Center For Strategic & International Studies (CSIS) for its Russia and Eurasia Program.

 

• ``My sense is that there will be a brief flurry of bad feelings between Russia and the USA, and between China and the USA, but that the underlying importance of these relationships will force cooperation and a better tone in dialogue after a short while. Snowden may have helped the Chinese and Russians understand the extent of US surveillance operations, but the principal effect has been to inform the American public, which ironically doesn't seem to care that much.''

-Ronald Grigor Suny, Charles Tilly Collegiate Professor of Social and Political History at The University of Michigan.

 

• ``I think that this is a minor incident compared to all of the others that are worsening our relations with Russia (though it adds to the list of ways Russia enjoys feeling its sovereign difference). The more serious concerns is the crackdown on civil society and independent critical expression and conflicts over Syria.''

-Mark D. Steinberg, Professor in the Department of History at the University of Illinois and editor of the Slavic Review at UL.

                ***

 Bill Lucey
[email protected]
June 26, 2013

Even Press Photographers Were Wild About Harry

Right in the thick of his bruising presidential campaign, with the election less than six months away, The Los Angeles Times photography blog, Framework,  shared this truly historic snapshot of Harry Truman in June 14, 1948, posing with a gaggle of press photographers at Union Station, including staffers from The L.A. Times. Ray Graham to left of Truman, and Phil Bath on the right.

They Just Called Him ``Scoop'': Jack Nelson's Revealing Posthumous Memoir

Jack Nelson descending the steps of the Georgia Capitol circa 1960, the same year he won a Pulitzer.

Nelson with Paul Duke (center), of Washington Week in Review, and Charlie McDowell, like Jack, a regular on the show.

Nelson in China, on a trip with Ronald Reagan in 1984. 

*Photos courtesy of  Barbara Matusow

***

Do I have a scoop for you.

The memoirs of tenacious investigative reporter and Washington correspondent, Jack Nelson, who died in 2009 from pancreatic cancer are recounted in an enlightening book released in December , 2012: ``Scoop: The Evolution of a Southern Reporter,’’  published by University Press of Mississippi.

Mr. Nelson’s memoirs, which chronicles his reporting, beginning as a cub reporter in Biloxi, Mississippi, to earning a Pulitzer Prize at the Atlanta Constitution, to his aggressive and insightful reporting for The Los Angeles Times, covering civil rights to butting heads with the corrupt FBI chief J. Edgar Hoover- has met with a number of flattering reviews, including from investigative journalist and best-selling author Bob Woodward, describing it as ``a terrific memoir by one of American's toughest and greatest reporters."

Nelson died two years before his memoirs were completed; so his wife, Barbara Matusow, a veteran writer and television producer, and a contributing editor with Washingtonian magazine decided to conduct some of her own research to fill in the missing  pieces and publish the book posthumously.

Nelson was awarded a Pulitzer Prize in 1960 for a series of articles which exposed the unspeakable practices at a mental hospital in Milledgeville, Ga., which, among other shocking revelations, documented the use of experimental drugs on patients without their permission and surgeries performed by nurses when doctors were absent.

Two notable civil rights stories covered by Nelson included reporting on civil rights worker Viola Liuzzo, a 39-year-old white woman from Detroit who was shot and killed by Klan members after the 1965 Selma to Montgomery marches in Alabama; as well as chronicling three South Carolina State College students (all black) who were killed on Feb. 8, 1968, after state troopers opened fire on protesters upset about a segregated local bowling alley in what became infamously known as the Orangeburg Massacre.

Though Woodward and Carl Bernstein were largely responsible for uncovering the Watergate scandal, Nelson landed a scoop of his own in the midst of the highly publicized affair.

In his exclusive interview on June 17, 1972 with an F.B.I. agent who had been working for President Richard M. Nixon’s re-election campaign, Alfred Baldwin admitted to Nelson he had installed listening devices at a Howard Johnson hotel across from the Watergate weeks before the celebrated break-in.

 Nelson skillfully elicited specific names from Baldwin and it soon became a crucial first-person account of the operation in helping authorities unravel the scandal.

One of the more spicier slices of Nelson’s memoir is arguably his ongoing war with the director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation.  As reported by The Los Angeles Times,  Hoover was convinced that Nelson was preparing to report that the FBI director was a homosexual.  Hoover labeled the Times’ star reporter a drunk, tried to get him fired, another time attempted unsuccessfully to kill a page one story of Nelson’s and even went so far as to put him on the bureau's list of "untouchables," , that is, reporters who were to receive no cooperation.

The Talladega, Alabama native who began reporting for the L. A. Times in 1964, was named its Washington Bureau Chief in 1975, and remained in that position through 1995. He continued at the bureau as its chief Washington correspondent until his retirement in 2001. As a ringing endorsement of his brilliant journalism career, many credit Nelson with having catapulted the Times into national prominence as one of the most influential dailies in the country.

Away from the newsroom, he was for many years a fixture on the ``Washington Week in Review” on PBS.

In addition to being awarded a Pulitzer, Nelson was the recipient of the Drew Pearson Award for Investigative Reporting in 1975 and the Robert F. Kennedy Lifetime Achievement Award in 1999.

-Bill Lucey
[email protected]
February 10, 2013

 

A Historic Night for Shoe-Leather Reporting

                                                                                                  Photo Credit: Casey McNerthney,  Seattle P-I

Kristen Millares Young's editor, Chris Grygiel, at the Seattle Post-Intelligencer (when it was still printing) dispatches his prize reporter to the streets, specifically at 1st and Pike/Pine, right by Pike Place Market in downtown Seattle on election night, November 4, 2008 for voter reaction on this truly historic night.

Young says it was ``so much fun; the energy in the Seattle crowd was palpable.''

Former N.Y. Times War Correspondent Stephen Kinzer Still Hiding Behind Bushes

When I spoke over the phone recently with former New York Times reporter Stephen Kinzer [See his home page ], it became immediately clear to me this award winning war correspondent doesn’t cover Washington, or go on power runs with four star generals or hobnob with Tampa socialites; he’s more interested in journalism. Kinzer has spent the bulk of his reporting career, after all, hiding in bushes while being shot at, beaten by police, tear-gassed, bombed from the air, and even jailed while covering over 50 countries in five continents.

After spending over 20 years with The New York Times, mostly as a foreign correspondent, which included tours of duty in Nicaragua as bureau chief (1983-1989), chief of Times’ bureau in Germany (1990-1996; Berlin is where he met his wife), and chief of the newly opened bureau in Istanbul, Turkey (1996-2000), he decided to leave the newspaper business in 2006 to teach and devote more time to his real interests in hot spots spanning the globe.

Asked the biggest reason for leaving the Times, Kinzer said that he was unhappy and uncomfortable with the way the American press during the Iraq war was ``cheering up’’ the war effort.  At least in the early stages of the conflict, Kinzer thought the media coverage was ``one of the most shameful episodes in the history of the American press. We became handmaidens of power. We let Washington set our agenda for us, which I hate.’’

The other reason Kinzer left was that he was at the point in his career that he didn’t like getting bogged down in having to report on the flavor of the day; he was more interested in writing about what most interested him, which is incompatible with today’s journalism.  So when he was offered a teaching position at Northwestern University, he thought the stars were perfectly aligned for him to begin a new chapter in his career.

And that he did.

In 2006, Kinzer published ``Overthrow: America’s Century of Regime Change from Hawaii to Iraq’’ , which recounts the 14 times the U.S. has tried to overthrow governments.  He's also written, ``All the Shah’s Men:  An American Coup and the Roots of Middle East Terror’’ ; and most recently, ``Reset: Iran, Turkey, and America’s Future’’ , which sketches his vision for rebuilding America's strategic partnerships in the Middle East.

What Kinzer finds most troubling with so many news organizations shutting down foreign bureaus is that we seem to be only reporting on American foreign policy. ``Covering what’s going between the Pentagon and the State Department and the White House is one thing’’ Kinzer points out, ``but that’s not covering the world.’’

And speaking of covering the world, what does he think is the United State’s biggest foreign policy challenge as President Obama prepares to begin his second term in office?

Kinzer contends East Asia is where we ought to be focusing our attention. ``It’s going to be very difficult for us to deal with the rise of China,’’ Kinzer warns.  ``China is not our enemy, God forbid that it would ever become our enemy’’ he explains, `` it’s not really an ally. This might the biggest foreign policy challenge the U.S. has ever faced. We are not able to focus on it to the extent that we should because so much of our diplomatic and political focus is on the Middle East.’’ He believes strongly that the U.S. needs to lighten its footprint in the Middle East. 

In the Greater Middle East or Central Asia in particular, Kinzer, like many other harsh critics of U.S. foreign policy, argues that not only was little accomplished by the U.S’s efforts in Afghanistan, but we ended up with a situation which is far worse than when it started.   Kinzer has vehemently argued in the past that our biggest mistake or ``original sin’’ in Afghanistan was in arming and training jihadis to fight the Soviet Union in the 1980s, which ultimately created the Taliban as we know them today.  `` We effectively created the momentum that produced September 11th  and Al Qaeda.’’ ``Afghanistan’’, Kinzer argues, ``is a great example of how we [U.S. government] do things that might feel good in the short run, but actually undermines our national security in the long run.’’

So if he had President Obama’s ear, what diplomatic efforts should take priority in the international arena?

``It would be great if there could be another effort in the Middle East’’ Kinzer told me. `` We have to resist temptations to go back into Iraq and Afghanistan, those are bad temptations. I would like to see some new effort made on the Israel Palestine issue. There’s even been talk that Bill Clinton would be a good negotiator for that, which I think is probably true. ‘’ Most important, Kinzer maintains, it’s incumbent upon the U.S. to exhibit some prudence and lower the heat level in our rhetoric about Iran and not follow the war path like so many people in Washington. 

With Susan Rice facing blistering attacks about her initial assessment of the deadly attack on a diplomatic post in Benghazi, Libya, I asked Kinzer about the U.N. ambassador’s diplomatic skills. When asked if Rice would eventually be confirmed as the next secretary of state, Kinzer said simply, ``I hope not.’’

``She [Rice] is the hectorer in chief’’ Kinzer says. `` There isn’t a day that goes by that she doesn’t have some other country to criticize.  One doesn’t do enough for human rights, one is involved in sexual trafficking, another one is not doing enough to combat the drug trade, another doesn’t have enough religious freedom.’’ Rice’s diplomacy, according to Kinzer, is a classic example of someone exhibiting an American-centric view of the world.

Our conversation briefly turned toward the U.S. budget deficit.

With exploding debt to contend with, the White House and Congress are on the verge of approaching the dreaded ``fiscal cliff’’ unless a compromise is reached. The tone of the debate, as widely reported, has reached fever pitch over which programs will absorb the brunt of the budget cuts. In 2011, 20 percent of the U.S. budget, or $718 billion, paid for defense and security-related international activities. Interestingly, according the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, the same percentage, another 20 percent of the budget, or $731 billion, paid for Social Security, which provided retirement benefits averaging $1,229 per month to 35.6 million retired workers in December 2011.

Asked whether he thought the U.S. was overextended militarily, Kinzer answered with a resounding yes.  ``We have over 700 military bases around the world. We have way too many troops. We have way too many troops abroad. We have 60,000 troops in Germany; for what? What are we protecting them against?’’ `` We have 11 aircraft carriers’’, Kinzer calls attention to, `` no other country has more than one--and the personnel to run a single carrier group is larger than the total number of diplomats at the State Department.’’  According to Kinzer, we [the U.S.]  need to make significant reductions abroad, which would probably increase our security rather than harm it.

What grade, then, would he assign President Obama on his foreign policy initiatives up to this point? ``An incomplete,’’ Kinzer says.

As we wrapped our conversation, I asked this former newspaper veteran who spent over 20 years at a daily newspaper how disheartened he’s become witnessing so many print newspapers struggling to survive as the migration to the Internet picks up steam? ``There’s no reason to become emotional about it’’, Kinzer told me, ``because it’s a reality.’’

`` My general view’’ Kinzer explained further, `` is the delivery of news is changing in dramatic ways, and will continue to change into ways we can’t even predict.’’ ``At the end of the day’’, Kinzer stressed, ``there is still one function of journalism that cannot be computerized and that is reporters. You’re always going to need reporters. Reporters are going to have to maintain the same kind of standards and the same kind of interests, the same kind of work ethic. The fundamentals of what journalism is about don’t necessarily change. What will change is the delivery of news.’’

Before joining the Times as bureau chief in Nicaragua in 1983, Kinzer was a Latin America correspondent for the Boston Globe. He ended up writing two books about the region, ``Blood-Brothers: Life and War in Nicaragua and co-authored ``Bitter Fruit: The Story of the American Coup in Guatemala''

In 1988, Columbia University awarded Kinzer its Maria Moors Cabot prize for outstanding coverage of Latin America; and in 2009, Dominican University in River Forest, Illinois, awarded him an honorary doctorate. The University of Scranton additionally awarded Kinzer an honorary doctorate in 2010.

Kinzer and his wife Marianne, who have a grown daughter, live in Boston, where he now teaches in the Department of International Relations as a visiting professor at Boston University with a specialization in International Journalism, Intercultural Communication, U. S. Foreign Policy, and the politics of Turkey, Iran, Rwanda, and Central America.

In addition to writing books and teaching,  Kinzer contributes articles to the New York Review of Books, The Daily Beast, and writes a world affairs column for The Guardian.

-Bill Lucey
[email protected]
December 3, 2012