Do journalists and reporters ever read court decisions before reporting on them? I’ve learned never to voice an opinion about a court decision until I read it myself.
One of the most famous was the Bakke case where the Supreme Court found that the University of Michigan had denied Bakke equal protection of the law by the use of a ‘two-track’ program that allowed Blacks to gain admission with lower scores and grades than Whites. How did this case ever become seen as a victory for proponents of Affirmative Action, which the University of Michigan used to justify their later admissions policy that replaced the “two-track” program with a single program based on points. Under the new program Blacks got 20 extra points for being Black. For comparison, I believe that 8 points were awarded for perfect scores on your SAT’s.
I read the Bakke case and discovered that Justice Powell, in his concurring critical 5th vote for Bakke, talked about the importance of diversity, and as far as I could tell, basically said that discrimination is OK to promote diversity if all else is equal. (Sounds like 1 point to me, not 20)
How that came to justify giving Blacks or some other minority students enough extra points to almost guarantee admission over others, I don’t know. I didn’t read the opinion in Gratz v. Bollinger where the University of Michigan was again found to be in violation of the law. But I imagine it had something to do with upholding Bakke, despite it being proclaimed as a basis for points, quotas, preferences, etc.
This brings me to the recent Citizen’s United case, where the Supreme Court found that restrictions on corporations spending their own money for political campaign advertising violated the First Amendment free speech clause. This is the case that Obama used to admonish the Justices during his State of the Union address.
I was invited to a lecture last night given by a Constitutional Law Professor from Wayne State Univeristy dealing with this case. So, of course I thought it would be a good idea to read it. Despite this decision being severely criticized by the left, including the President, I discovered several things:
1. The President made a number of factual errors during his speech. In fact, while reading the opinion I realized that every claim he made about the decision was wrong. As a professor of Constitutional Law himself, you’d think he would also know the importance of reading something before commenting on it; particularly on national television during a major speech. I was going to write about it here, but in doing some research to support my recollections, I found this very thorough web link that explains his errors in more detail than I would.
http://blog.heritage.org/2010/01/28/the-truth-about-president-obama-and-citizens-united/
2. There was also a lot of discussion in the news as to how the Supreme Court could possibly consider a corporation a citizen, entitled to Free Speech under the First Amendment. Well, I re-read the First Amendment and it doesn’t say anything about free speech only applying to persons or citizens.
“Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.”
It just says that Congress can’t pass laws that abridge free speech. How do these absurd discussions even start?
3. It’s interesting that the left objected to an opinion that protects free speech. Particularly when you consider that the ACLU filed a brief in favor of the winner of this case. It seems to be further proof that the left has moved further and further away from the free speech days of Berkley. With protestors at Columbia University prohibiting border defenders in Arizona from speaking, protestors on other college campuses prohibiting conservative speakers from speaking, and now the left not supporting the rights of corporations to exercise free speech, it seems that they only support free speech that they like.
Which brings me to the Card Check issue. If you don’t know what this is I will explain. In order to organize a union, the employees must first sign cards asking for a vote. Then the vote is done by secret ballot. The purpose is obvious — so that fellow empl0yees or the employer don’t know how someone is voting and thus be able to threaten or influence them.
You would think that protecting access to a secret ballot would be important to everyone — particularly those on the left who protect rights, and even create rights where none exist. I assumed the ACLU would be all over this case to make sure that secret ballots were protected. I found that these are their policies regarding their own national elections:
Effective elections shall include but not be limited to the following elements:
1) Open and fair nominating process;
2) Secret ballots, honestly counted;
3) Restrictions on staff campaigning;
4) Prohibitions on the use of union funds on behalf of a particular slate or individual nominees;
5) Full and equal access to union publications and other means of reaching the membership;
6) The absence of coercion;
7) Sufficient time for the internal democratic process to be implemented and to provide assurances to the membership that elections will be fair, honest and free of coercion.
But the ACLU is not fighting supporters of Card Check legislation. Why should secret ballots be the policy for electing union representatives, but not for deciding if you want union representation in the first place?
In researching the ACLU’s involvement with the Citizen’s United case I found an interesting piece in the NYSUN by Joseph Goldstein.
He writes:
Debate on the question of money and politics has been percolating within the ACLU for years, long before the Supreme Court handed down its decision in Citizens United. “It is difficult to think of an issue that has generated more internal controversy,” an internal ACLU memo states.
Well, I imagine the Card Check debate has to be percolating also. Even George McGovern is against this legislation.
http://www.nrtw.org/blog/liberal-icon-george-mcgovern-08082008
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB124165379013293871.html
