Monday, November 12, 2018
C.J. Cregg = Sarah Sanders (Updated)
Attorney David Lurie argues in Slate that CNN should sue the Secret Service over revocation of reporter Jim Acosta's press credentials. He argues that CNN has a good case. D.C. Circuit precedent holds that reporters must receive process in the denial or revocation of credentials and that the basis for revocation cannot be that the reporter criticized the President or anyone else in the White House. And the President admitted that Acosta's credentials were revoked because he did not treat the presidency with "respect" and that he might do the same to other reporters.
Update: CNN and Acosta, represented by Gibson Dunn, has filed suit, claiming violations of the First and Fifth Amendments and the APA; named defendants are Trump, Kelly, Sanders, William Shine (Deputy Chief of Staff, the Secret Service, and the head of the Secret Service.
The incident brought to mind S3E4 of The West Wing, titled "On the Day Before." Press secretary C.J. Cregg gets pissed at a reporter who inaccurately reported on something that C.J. had done. C.J. tells the reporter that she is having the reporter's credentials revoked and that the reporter must call C.J.'s office every day so C.J. can decide if the reporter will be allowed into the press room. And this was played with C.J. as the hero, standing up and justly sanctioning the vapid, dishonest, and unethical reporter.
This is another illustration of Aaron Sorkin writing the Trump Administration in the Bartlet Administration, with much of the behavior and norm-breaking that we have seen the past two years; the difference is that Sorkin's characters did it in service of a liberal Democratic agenda, while the Trump Administration has done it in service of a very different agenda. There is no difference between Trump and Sarah Sanders stripping Acosta of his credential and C.J. doing the same to that fictional reporter--both are mad because the reporter treated them unfairly.
Posted by Howard Wasserman on November 12, 2018 at 08:44 PM in Culture, First Amendment, Howard Wasserman, Law and Politics | Permalink | Comments (7)
Friday, November 09, 2018
Teaching Con Law in the Current Moment
I'm starting to plan ahead for next semester, and would love to hear what other Con Law professors are doing in terms of folding the issues of the current moment--e.g., the Emoluments Clause, birthright citizenship, the ability to subpoena the president, executive privilege, the authority of the special counsel, appointment and removal power, the census--into their classes. I've always given some extra time to current issues, but in the past, it's been easier because they were natural outgrowths of the bread-and-butter 1L Con Law subjects (for example, both NFIB v. Sebelius and Obergefell build perfectly on Commerce Clause, Tenth Amendment, and Equal Protection doctrine). I'm finding several of the current topics more challenging to integrate into the syllabus since they are more specialized and there's not necessarily much case law (yet). To what extent are all of you generally sticking with your regular syllabi, versus significantly re-doing them in order to build these topics in? If the latter, what are the topics that you're dropping to make room for them?
Posted by Emily Gold Waldman on November 9, 2018 at 05:01 PM | Permalink | Comments (14)
Thursday, November 08, 2018
I am Spartawitz or Wearing a yarmulke after Pittsburgh
I began wearing a yarmulke the Tuesday after the October murder of eleven Jews at Pittsburgh’s Tree of Life Synagogue. I would have started sooner; the idea came to me almost immediately. But I wore a baseball hat on Sunday, so my head was covered. On Monday, I was late getting to work and forgot, as finding a head covering had not become my routine. I wore one to an inter-faith memorial service at my Reform temple near Miami on Monday evening, and it has remained.
This is new for me. I grew up in an unaffiliated Hebrew School that combined Conservative liturgy with a Reform commitment to justice; yarmulkes were reserved for services. I attended a public school district that was about 45% Jewish, but not one kid in my class wore one. I attend a Shabbat morning minyan, a small, joyous, informal service at which I wear a tallis and a baseball cap, usually bearing the logo of my daughter’s private, Episcopal-affiliated middle school (we both appreciate irony).
The deaths in Pittsburgh triggered a desire to publicly pronounce and announce my Jewishness. Not that this was not already obvious to anyone paying attention—my last name is Wasserman, I grew up in the suburbs of New Jersey, I work in academia, and I am obsessed with Jewish baseball players. This was different. I was challenging anti-Semites or other people who are uncomfortable around “different” Jews. As if saying hineni—“Here I am.”
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Posted by Howard Wasserman on November 8, 2018 at 09:31 AM in Howard Wasserman, Religion | Permalink | Comments (7)
Tuesday, November 06, 2018
Peter Schuck Replies to his Critics on Birthright Citizenship
[Note from Rick Hills: At Peter Schuck’s request, I am posting the following response written by Peter regarding recent discussion of his views on birthright citizenship]
To anyone who is interested in my actual position on birthright citizenship for the U.S.-born children of undocumented immigrants:
The flood of criticism, much of it on the Immprof listserv and Prawfsblawg, that has engulfed me (while traveling abroad, no less) and my co-author Rogers Smith deserves a reply. Fortunately, mine can be fairly brief as Rogers has already published his own series of replies on the Immprof listserv, with which I agree almost entirely. But here is where we differ: Rogers seems less troubled than I am by the toxic, corrosive, name-calling, motive-assuming, and debate-chilling tenor of a few of the published comments, typified by that of Paul Schmidt on Immprof, who stated (for instance) that “[s]omebody should take these characters [Rogers and myself] on and ‘out them’ for the race baiters that they truly are.” Rogers, fine scholar, idealist, and gentleman that he is, imagines that even this bombastic exercise in impugning the good faith and motives of two serious scholars who have long advocated more generous immigration policies will somehow advance the cause of egalitarian solidarity. To me, this is wishful thinking that can never justify such ad hominem comments among scholars about a genuinely difficult legal and policy issue. Far from coalition building, this kind of self-righteous intolerance can only confirm the worst suspicions of the coalition partners Rogers hopes to attract.
On to a few substantive points.
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Posted by Rick Hills on November 6, 2018 at 05:19 AM | Permalink | Comments (2)
Monday, November 05, 2018
JOTWELL: Levy on Re on Marks
The new Courts Law essay comes from Marin Levy (Duke), reviewing Richard Re, Beyond the Marks Rule (Harv. L. Rev., forthcoming), which critiques the Marks Rule and its (ineffective) efforts to create binding precedent absent a majority opinion.
Posted by Howard Wasserman on November 5, 2018 at 10:34 AM in Article Spotlight, Civil Procedure | Permalink | Comments (0)
Sunday, November 04, 2018
Perfection, athletic skills, and sports
This Deadpsin piece defends the scoring system in gymnastics, under which Simon Biles won the all-around despite falling in two events (her routines have such a higher degree of difficulty than everyone else that even large point deductions for falls do not bring her back to the pack.
The piece includes the following:
Gymnastics is is an aesthetic, performance-based sport. As such, its ideas of winning and perfection are deeply intertwined. The history of the sport suggest that victory and perfection often go hand in hand, and that you can’t have the former without the latter.
Ideas about “perfection” exist in other sports too. There is such a thing as a perfect game in baseball, and they are always the same—a pitcher faces 27 batters and gets them all out in order. Football’s quarterback ratings are notably, ridiculous obscure, but an upper boundary exists and a few dozen quarterbacks have hit it over the years. Perfection is as rare in those disciplines as it is anywhere else. It’s special, but by no means a guarantee of victory. A pitcher can be perfect through nine and watch his bullpen blow it in the tenth; a quarterback putting up a perfect 158.3 has given his team a chance to win, but only a chance.
This captures my line between sport and non-sport. Performing skills perfectly or well is intertwined with victory in non-sports, because victory is determined by a judgment on the internal value and quality of those skills. Victory in sport is extrinsic, determined by the outcome of the performance of the skills and not by the skills themselves. This is true not only for the aesthetic quality of the skill (how nice the jump shot looks or how hard the pitcher throws), but the overall performance of those skills, which still may not produce victory.
Posted by Howard Wasserman on November 4, 2018 at 09:31 AM in Howard Wasserman, Sports | Permalink | Comments (2)