Post-Work Roundup

My first day of work was today. The law firm I'm interning at has a very large practice in Civil Rights and Anti-discrimination law. But they put me in securities. Securities! And I could just taste the Wal-Mart case too.

Anyway, I came home really drained for no good reason. So no post (maybe later tonight), just a roundup of other stuff.

A great look by the New York Times on how legalizing gay marriages would impact religious liberty (Heads up: The VC). I argued here and the article concedes that the prospect of judges forcing churches to perform gay marriages is minimal at best. But there is real potential for clash in terms of how churches with traditional opposition to homosexuality are treated via the new anti-discrimination regime.

Spencer Overton shows a perfect example of politicians picking their voters (and here I thought it was supposed to be the other way around?). The culprit is Florida.

A pair of good posts by Will Baude at Crescat Sententia. The first inquires into the relationship between stare decisis and cert decisions, within the specific context of a case called Almendarez-Torres, which apparently a majority of justices now believe is wrong. Justice Thomas wishes to go the traditional route and simply overrule it. But Justice Stevens argues that state courts can effectively nullify Supreme Court rulings which give too little protection to rights. I don't find Baude's 10th amendment attack on this principle convincing, but I admit the argument troubling (although to be fair, it is uncontroversial that state courts can interpret their state constitutions to give heightened protection over the federal constitution, even where they use similar or identical language. So this is kind of a pedantic debate, it seems).

The second post features a good response to the obnoxious fact that the 1st amendment states "Congress shall make no law" abridging all of its prohibitions. Theoretically, that means that the President can, right? But as Baude (quoting the ever-incredible Michael W. McConnell) notes, there are other amendments which protect "liberties" from being abridged without "due process of law." Only Congress can pass laws, and it can't pass a law that abridges (say) free speech. So if the executive decides to violate one's free speech rights, ipso facto they are exceeding their legally delegated powers (unless it acts within a few parameters narrowly defined [or if your the Bush administration, infinitely broadly defined] by Article II).

Michelle Adams gives an intriguing account of CRT-father Derrick Bell's student-centric teaching pedagogy, and follows up with her own defense of the Socratic method.

With Tester and Webb both winning their senate primaries, the netroots is starting to get some momentum (at least in Democratic primaries).

Tony Karon makes the case to root for Angola in this year's World Cup. I was already rooting for them to beat their former colonial overlord, Portugal (but they lost 1-0). Fellow cup fan Bitch Ph.D also comments and gets the pointer credit.

Rachel Sullivan makes an important point about the Duke Rape case. It seems like they're getting crushed in the court of public opinion recently, and I'd begun wondering about how strong the case really was. But Rachel reminds us that virtually all the new info has been leaked by the defense, which (of course) is leaking selectively. So it's too soon to jump to conclusions without the prosecution getting to state its case.

A solid post by J. David Velleman on the Guantanamo Bay suicides, from a moral (Kantian) perspective.