Monday, November 11, 2024

Interrogating Ethnography: Now Available in Chinese

Simplified characters (PRC)

Interrogating Ethnography Chinese

Posted by Steve Lubet on November 11, 2024 at 04:12 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Saturday, November 09, 2024

Did Donald Trump Win the Election With “Abortion Federalism”? And Will He Really Keep His “Federalism Pledge”?

As I noted in an post written ten days before Trump won the presidency, Donald Trump invoked federalism to dodge the question of whether and how abortion ought to be regulated. In that post, I asked whether pro-choice voters would be reassured by Trump’s promise not to push for federal anti-abortion legislation but instead leave the question of a ban on abortion to the states. This promise took two forms: Trump tweeted a declaration that he “WOULD NOT SUPPORT A FEDERAL ABORTION BAN, UNDER ANY CIRCUMSTANCES, AND WOULD, IN FACT, VETO IT, BECAUSE IT IS UP TO THE STATES TO DECIDE BASED ON THE WILL OF THEIR VOTERS.” Trump also dumped the GOP’s 2016 platform plank that called for national legislation to protect fetal life, replacing it with a new abortion plank declaring that “the states…are free to protect those rights [to life].”

At least one commentator thinks that Trump’s victory on Tuesday answered my post’s question about whether federalism on abortion reassured voters. Over at the Atlantic, Elaine Godfrey argued that Trump’s success in states where pro-choice referenda were enacted by the voters suggests that Trump’s endorsing “abortion federalism” might have “neutralized” the abortion issue with pro-choice independents and Republicans.

If Godfrey is correct, then Trump’s achievement in using federalism to defuse a divisive issue is an extraordinary achievement. As I argue in a draft paper (posted on SSRN here, comments welcomed!), it is difficult to strike a compromise of bitterly contested issues through delegating that issue to state governments. My paper traces the history of the Democratic Party’s efforts to strike such compromises rooted in federalism from 1832 to 1932. I argue that most such efforts at federal compromise eventually failed. Van Buren, Stephen Douglas, and Grover Cleveland all tried to hold the Democratic Party together by sending divisive issues (banking, slavery, liquor regulation) to the states. Van Buren’s and Cleveland’s federalism formulae each succeeded for roughly three decades, but the former collapsed with the Civil War, while the latter collapsed with William Jennings Bryan’s evangelical takeover of the Democratic Party in 1896. Douglas’ “popular sovereignty” theory never even got off the ground, dying at the Democrats’ 1860 Charleston Convention

Trump’s initial success in using federalism to dodge the abortion question invites a predictive and a normative question, both of which I will discuss after the jump. First, will Trump do better than Douglas by holding the GOP together through his “federalism pledge”? Second, if Trump and the GOP actually stick with their federalism pledge and thereby reduce national conflict over abortion, then should we be reassured by a successful modus vivendi? Or is federalism just a dodge that ignores the importance of fundamental rights by allowing states to take different stances on a matter on which basic constitutional morality requires uniformity?

Continue reading "Did Donald Trump Win the Election With “Abortion Federalism”? And Will He Really Keep His “Federalism Pledge”?"

Posted by Rick Hills on November 9, 2024 at 05:22 PM | Permalink | Comments (9)

Saturday Music Post - A Rose Is a Rose

Today's post features Edith Piaf, Ben E. King, Linda Ronstadt, Patsy Cline, Neil Diamond, Gene Autry, Aretha Franklin, and more. The clips are at The Faculty Lounge.

Posted by Steve Lubet on November 9, 2024 at 06:36 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Thursday, November 07, 2024

JOTWELL: Michalski on non-adjudication

The new Courts Law essay comes from Roger Michalski (Oklahoma) reviewing Alexandra D. Lahav, Peter Siegelman, Charlotte Alexander, & Nathan Dahlberg, No Adjudication, on how much litigation resolves without a judicial determination and without the filing of more than initial pleadings.

Posted by Howard Wasserman on November 7, 2024 at 11:15 AM in Article Spotlight, Civil Procedure, Howard Wasserman | Permalink | Comments (0)

Trump victories and institutional statements

The Chronicle of Higher Ed (paywalled) notes the absence of statements from university leaders about the election of Donald Trump, compared with the dozens that followed the 2016 election. The story highlights new letters from the presidents of Wesleyan, American, Emerson, and Morgan State (an HBCU). It also notes that it has been two days--the big joint letter of more than 100 presidents came more than a week later.

The article speculates a bit about why. It points to the recent increase in schools adopting Chicago Principles and institutional neutrality.* I wonder if the size of Trump's victory and the nature of his expanded coalition matters. A message of "we stand with and support members of X group likely to be targets" does not fly when many members of X group voted for this. Nor can one frame a narrative of "the country does not want this and you are in office by fluke of a bizarre election mechanism"--national and EC majorities clearly do want this.

* It describes that shift as a "backlash to pointed statements from some presidents about protests over the war in Gaza." I question that framing. Many schools adopted neutrality in response to criticisms of their perceived failures to speak about October 7 and the events that followed--recognizing (for good or nefarious reasons) the bind that general political engagement had created for them and the need to escape the hurly-burly of politics.

A word on the statement from Wesleyan President Michael Roth (which we received via email yesterday). Roth opposes institutional neutrality and believes universities should take institutional positions. But a believer in institutional neutrality would be comfortable with and supportive of most of what Roth said here. Chicago principles do not require institutional silence; the Kalven Report said:

[f]rom time to time instances will arise in which the society, or segments of it, threaten the very mission of the university and its values of free inquiry. In such a crisis, it becomes the obligation of the university as an institution to oppose such measures and actively to defend its interests and its values.

Roth focuses on specific pieces of the college's mission and values that will be vulnerable in the coming political regime--recommitting to campus DEI efforts and to academic freedom. These concerns affect the college as an institution of higher ed, exactly what a president should highlight, discuss, and protect on behalf of his college. It goes beyond general politics and the generic "people throughout the country are scared, please reject hate and govern justly" that marked the 2016 joint letter. Roth includes some flowery stuff about democracy and the rule of law, but he ties it to core pieces of the higher-education endeavor.

Posted by Howard Wasserman on November 7, 2024 at 07:04 AM in Howard Wasserman, Law and Politics | Permalink | Comments (0)

Wednesday, November 06, 2024

Sports Election Predictors

My quadrennial post. As when Trump won in 2016, they failed badly:

World Series Missed: The National League Dodgers won the World Series (as they did in 2020, when Trump lost). This is now 18 for the past 30, 13 of 20 since the end of WW II, and 5 of 7 in the milenium (with Trump victories providing both misses).

Washington NFL Team Missed: The Washington Commanders beat the Bears in the final home game before the election (on October 27) on a last-play Hail Mary (that some were calling the Harris Hail Mary). As a predictor of a party retaining the White House, this is now 17/22, although wrong on the last four.

Ending Sports Droughts Hit: This favors Republicans. The Florida Panthers won their first Stanley Cup in franchise history and the New York Liberty won their first WNBA title. Each team has existed for less than 35 years (Panthers founded in 1993, Liberty in 1997) so these are short droughts compared with the Phillies winning the World Series for the first time after 97 years (Reagan in 1980) or the Cubs winning after 108 years ( Trump 2016) or the Red Sox after 86 years (W. 2004). Still "first title in franchise history" represents a milestone and breaks a meaningful drought regardless of how long a team has existed.

Finally, unrelated to sports but running through my mind this morning amid news of Trump's gains with Latino voters: The old saying was "Jews earn like Episcopalians but vote like Puerto Ricans." It turns out many Puerto Ricans do not vote like Puerto Ricans.

Posted by Howard Wasserman on November 6, 2024 at 12:08 PM in Howard Wasserman, Law and Politics, Sports | Permalink | Comments (0)

Saturday, November 02, 2024

Saturday Music Post - Do Right Woman, Do Right Man

"Do Right Woman, Do Right Man" was written for Aretha Franklin by Chips Morman and Dan Penn, and produced at the Atlantic Records studio in New York by Jerry Wexler. An earlier attempted recording at FAME Studio in Muscle Shoals was abandoned after an altercation between Franklin's manager (and husband) and the FAME producer. The release, with Franklin playing piano and her sisters singing backup, was listed as one of Rolling Stone's 500 greatest songs of all time.

Today's post has more audio clips than usual, because I couldn't resist. You can hear them at The Faculty Lounge.

Posted by Steve Lubet on November 2, 2024 at 05:25 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Friday, November 01, 2024

Conference on the Scholarship of Gordon Wood--Yale Law School (Nov. 22-23)

Join Professors Akhil Reed Amar and Steven G. Calabresi in celebration of the distinguished scholarship of Gordon S. Wood, Alva O. Way University Professor and Professor of History Emeritus at Brown University.

The panel speakers include:

The panels will focus on Professor Wood’s books:

  • “The Creation of the American Republic”
  • “The Radicalism of the American Revolution”
  • “Empire of Liberty”

Register by Nov. 15. For more information, view the Conference Agenda.

Sponsoring Organization(s)

Sponsored by The Oscar M. Ruebhausen Fund

Contact

Monika Piotrowicz

Posted by Gerard Magliocca on November 1, 2024 at 09:04 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)