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Today in History (1862) - The U.S. government forbids all Union army officers from returning fugitive slaves, thus effectively annulling the Fugitive Slave Law of 1850 and setting the stage for the Emancipation Proclamation. On the same day in 1865, the Confederate Congress voted to enlist 300,000 black troops, granting them freedom with the consent of their owners. Lee surrendered a few weeks later. |
Following are excerpts from Justice Scalia's memorandum, followed by comment from the professors.
The article doesn't say whether any of these professors ultimately think Scalia made the right, or wrong decision [edit: Alan in comments points out what I overlooked: "Here's White of UVA: 'On balance, I think that it was appropriate for Scalia to decide not to recuse himself' "], but many of the comments are quite critical, so I'm guessing some of them do, in fact, question Scalia's impartiality. Read the whole thing if you've been following the issue.
(Link via Houston's Clear Thinkers via Professor Yin.)
Sounds sort-of like an Internet symposium on a current issue by bringing together legal scholars to talk about the issue . . .
Where'd I hear about such a thing? I can't quite place it . . .
Posted by: Chris Geidner at March 22, 2004 07:43 PMConsidering the expansive nature of intellectual property, maybe we should have looked into patenting or copyrighting the symposium, eh? But there's that pesky First Amendment....
Posted by: Nick Morgan at March 22, 2004 09:01 PMBig surprise that law professors, OF ALL PEOPLE, would disagree with Scalia. What a shocker!!!
Posted by: Billy Bob at March 22, 2004 09:48 PMActually Nick, one of the professors does say he thinks Scalia made the right decision. Here's White of UVA: "On balance, I think that it was appropriate for Scalia to decide not to recuse himself."
But the problem I had was with Prof. Gillers' statement about Scalia's criticism of the newspapers, "It's kind of a gotcha response to withhold information and then blame people for not getting information only he knew." But it's not a "gotcha response" to call people on presenting falsehoods as if they knew them to be facts, instead of saying that they just didn't know because Scalia wasn't talking. Both Gillers and Maureen Dowd seem appalled that anyone would have the gumption to call out the press over their botched, biased reporting of this entire incident.
Posted by: Alan Robinson at March 22, 2004 10:37 PMThanks for the pointer, Alan--I overlooked White's bit. I edited the post accordingly.
Posted by: Nick Morgan at March 23, 2004 12:05 AM"JE NE RECUSE!"
In that duck blind
Lady Justice unveils
Her traditional blindfold
For these bonding males:
Scalia and Cheney,
Shotguns at attack,
Taking aim at Justice,
"QUACK, QUACK, QUACK!"
Is that your poem, Shag? (It's funny.)
Posted by: Nick Morgan at March 23, 2004 01:19 PMNick,
Yes it is: rhyme with reason for a change. Spread the verse - it can't get any worse.