An interesting-seeming new scholarly paper.

It turns out that the Duke Law Journal also posts all its articles online, and also has back issues starting with March 1997. Good work for them; I was about to say that they beat the Virginia Law Review, about whose excellent site I blogged yesterday, but really both of them are beating everyone else.

For complex reasons, I had occasion to look up the biography of this fellow, who is generally said to be the first unambiguously Jewish Senator in U.S. history (UPDATE: for the ambiguous one, see here). It turns out that it's even more fascinating than I'd heard:

By 1852, Benjamin's reputation as a eloquent speaker and subtle legal mind was sufficient to win him selection by the [Louisiana] state legislature to the U.S. Senate; he took office on March 4, 1853. During his first year as a Senator, he challenged another young Senator, Jefferson Davis of Mississippi, to a duel over a perceived insult on the Senate floor; Davis apologized, and the two began a close friendship.

He quickly gained a reputation as one of the great orators of the Senate, and in 1854 Franklin Pierce offered him nomination to a seat on the Supreme Court, which he declined. He was a noted advocate of the interests of the South, and his most famous exchange on the Senate floor was related to both his religion and the issue of slavery: Benjamin Wade of Ohio accused him of being an "Israelite in Egyptian clothing," and he replied that, "It is true that I am a Jew, and when my ancestors were receiving their Ten Commandments from the immediate Deity, amidst the thundering and lightnings of Mt. Sinai, the ancestors of my opponent were herding swine in the forests of Great Britain." [UPDATE: Several people tell me that a similar quote has been credited to Benjamin Disraeli. I take no position on this important dispute.]

He was again selected to serve as Senator for the term beginning in 1859 . . . [and] resigned his seat on February 4, 1861, due to the secession of Louisiana from the Union. . . .

Davis appointed Benjamin to be the first Attorney General of the Confederacy on February 25, 1861, remarking later that he chose him for the position because he "had a very high reputation as a lawyer, and my acquaintance with him in the Senate had impressed me with the lucidity of his intellect, his systematic habits, and capacity for labor."

In September of the same year, he became the acting Secretary of War, and in November he was confirmed in the post. He became a lightning rod for popular discontent with the Confederacy's military situation, and came to quarrel particularly with the Confederate Generals P.G.T. Beauregard and Stonewall Jackson. The criticism came to a head over the loss of Roanoke Island to the Union without a fight in February 1862. Rather than publicly reveal the pressing shortage of military manpower that had led to the decision not to defend Roanoke, he accepted Congressional censure for the action without protest and resigned his position. As a reward for his loyalty, Davis appointed him Secretary of State in March 1862. . . .

In the immediate aftermath of the end of the war, an unfounded rumor, tinged with anti-Semitism, that Benjamin had masterminded the assassination of Abraham Lincoln through his intelligence apparatus became popular. Fearing that he could never receive a fair trial in the atmosphere of the time, he burnt his papers and fled to England under a false name.

In June 1866, he was called to the bar in England, the beginning of a successful and lucrative second career as a barrister. In 1868, he published Treatise on the Law of Sale of Personal Property, which came to be regarded as one of the classics of its field. . . .

I should say that I've never been big on deriving ethnic pride from the successes of fellow Jews, just as I don't think people should feel responsible for the misconduct of those who have shared their ethnicity. If I had derived such pride, I wouldn't derive it from Benjamin, because of his role in trying to maintain the slave-owning regime. (I don't know enough about the man to know how much moral condemnation he deserves, but I know enough to conclude that he doesn't deserve much praise.) Still, it strikes me as a very interesting story.

UPDATE: Mark Kleiman has more on pride in people who share one's ethnicity.

According to Wikipedia, it is "an extreme sport in which people take an ironing board to a remote location and iron a few items of clothing." "EI supposedly combines the excitement of an extreme sport with the satisfaction of freshly ironed clothes." Most importantly for our intelligently skeptical readers, "Though it seems a parody or hoax, many extreme ironers take their sport quite seriously."

Thanks to my friend Claire Hill for the pointer.

UPDATE: Rick Hasen points to the NPR story on the subject.

Seems like they are; their life expectancy at birth is 2.4 years higher for men and 3.6 years higher for women. My intuitive assumption was that it should be a little less than for non-Hispanic whites, since Hispanics tend to be poorer than non-Hispanic whites. Yet obviously my intuitive assumption is wrong.

I'm genuinely curious about this — if anyone has actual demographic or medical knowledge on this subject (as opposed to just seat-of-the-pants speculation), I'd love to hear it.

Thanks to Slate for the pointer.

UPDATE: Could it just be that they smoke less (16.7% vs. 23.6% for non-Hispanic whites)? On the other hand, Mexican-Americans are more likely to be overweight or obese than non-Hispanic whites. I've seen no statistics for non-Mexican-American obesity.

FURTHER UPDATE: Reader Gabriel Rossman tells me there's a name for this — the Hispanic Paradox. Here's a Washington Post article on the subject, with some conjecture; and here's the academic article that the Post seems to be discussing. Here are the conclusions:

1. The Hispanic adult mortality advantage is not "Hispanic." Rather, it is a feature only of foreign-born Other Hispanics and foreign-born Mexicans — not of Puerto Ricans or Cubans, whether born in the United States or abroad.

2. The foreign-born Mexican and Other Hispanic adult mortality advantage is not trivial. It amounts to experiencing mortality rates that are 35% to 47% lower than those experienced by non-Hispanic whites. In turn, these differences translate into approximately five to eight years of additional life expectancy at age 45.

3. The behavior of mortality slopes produces strong signs of return-migration effects [i.e., that when immigrants are seriously ill they go back to their home country] for foreign-born Mexicans but not for Other Hispanics. . . .

4. The observed advantage favoring Other Hispanics persists even after indirect consequences of healthy-migrant effects (duration of stay, state of residence) are accounted for and is resistant to age and slope effects, as well as to unmeasured heterogeneity. This does not mean that healthy-migrant effects [i.e., that healthy people are more likely than sick people to move here] are absent, but that, if they exist, they are not reflected strongly enough in the mechanisms we were able to identify (duration or residence effects).

5. The cultural hypotheses received no support. We uncovered effects suggesting that those who live in ethnically more cohesive communities have lower mortality, as one would expect from the cultural hypotheses. But these conditions do not account for the Hispanic advantage, nor do they alter the effects of membership in a group. It is not because foreign-born Mexicans or Other Hispanics have a higher propensity to live in cohesive communities that they experience lower mortality than do non-Hispanic whites. And it is not because there are extra gains accruing from residence in those communities among some Hispanics that there are mortality advantages.

This has been a partially successful exploration of the problem. We were able to justify a model that accounts for part of the advantage and attribute it to return-migration effects. However, the preferred model that spawned this interpretation neither rests on robust, uncontested grounds nor is complete, since part of the advantage — the part associated with Other Hispanics—remains thoroughly unexplained.

ANOTHER UPDATE: A demographer-lawyer reader writes that "The reasons for mortality differentials by race (and Hispanic ethnicity) are not well-understood, and there is a great deal of debate about it. However, there are reasons to think some of these differentials are due to data problems and differing methodologies." He points to this page for the technical background on the numbers quoted by the Slate article.

It takes two incidents, right? (One anecdote is data, two are a trend, three is proof.) I pointed Monday to Howard Dean's remarks about "brain-dead" Republicans, which either means he's saying the voters are brain-dead, or the people for whom the voters voted are brain-dead (even though they beat Dean's party handily at the federal level). Not the savviest political move, it seems to me.

Now a second politician is doing it: My fair city's own District Attorney Steve Cooley, who is quoted as saying that the jurors in the Robert Blake trial were "incredibly stupid." Yup, that will make voters feel really good about you: When you lose your case, you publicly blame citizens like them. Doesn't show a great ability to understand how your audience is going to react to your words, it seems to me. And, curiously, an ability to speak carefully and in a way that doesn't alienate your audience is a pretty important skill for a lawyer.

UPDATE: John Steele at Legal Ethics Forum discusses whether Cooley's comments violated legal ethics rules. I don't think they do, but given the political cost of such statements, I don't think there needs to be (or ought to be) any extra formal sanction for them.

by the German magazine Stern. The magazine ran a photo display s comparing various parts of American life (Democrat vs. Republican, Left vs. Right, Cynical vs. Romantic); for Black vs. White, the white is a Florida retiree and the black is Charles Ezeb, a felon serving a life sentence.

The display, as Medienkritik points out, seems aimed at showing Americans generally, or perhaps American conservatives, in a bad light. (These sorts of quote-picking exercises tell you more about the biases of the authors, and which quotes they wanted to pick, than about what the public actually thinks.) But the black vs. white item is just a shocker quite independently of that.

Oh, and check out Ezeb's quote:

"The USA is a pretty rotten country viewed from in here."
-- Charles Ezeb, serving life in the Louisiana State Penitentiary, Angola, Louisiana.

Makes one even more curious why Stern would choose this particular man for their black vs. white comparison, no?

(Incidentally, I did google, newspaper, and caselaw searches to see if I could find more about Ezeb's conviction; I found no information but also no evidence of any controversy about whether Ezeb may have been wrongfully convicted. As best I can tell, he's likely a pretty serious criminal who's rightly been locked up for his crimes.)

The Supreme Court has refused to hear it. But if you want to read the Senators' and Representatives' briefs, you can find them here.

The Democracy Project has read a draft version, and likes them; among other things, it praises this section:

No expenditure results where an individual, acting independently or as a volunteer, without receiving compensation, performs Internet activities using computer equipment and services that he or she personally owns for the purpose of influencing any Federal election, whether or not the individual’s activities are known to or coordinated with any candidate, authorized committee or party committee.

Now it's hard to tell for sure without reading the full proposal, but doesn't this seem quite narrow? I'm typing this on a UCLA computer right now; I don't personally own it. (I think UCLA doesn't object to academics using their office computers for drafting election-related materials, but let's set that aside for now; I'm sure that many universities permit such activity.) The material is being posted on a PowerBlogs host, which I also don't personally own. If the Conspiracy were organized as a corporation — as are most newspapers and magazines — that owned the computers and let the bloggers use them, then I wouldn't be using a computer that I personally own, either. Likewise if I were to blog from an Internet cafe, or from a friend's house, or from an office at a school at which I'm visiting.

I hope the FEC doesn't really mean to limit the rule to people who do their own hosting, and who compose everything solely on computers that they themselves own. And perhaps in context the final proposed rule will make that clear. But as written, this particular paragraph offers little cause for rejoicing.

UPDATE: The proposed rules can now be read in their entirety; the relevant part reads:

No contribution results where an individual, acting independently or as a volunteer, without receiving compensation, performs Internet activities using computer equipment and services that he or she personally owns for the purpose of influencing any Federal election, whether or not the individual’s activities are known to or coordinated with any candidate, authorized committee or party committee.

(2) No contribution results where an individual, acting independently or as a volunteer, without receiving compensation, performs Internet activities using computer equipment and services available at any public facility for the purpose of influencing any Federal election, whether or not the individual’s activities are known to or coordinated with any candidate, authorized committee or party committee. The term “public facility” within the meaning of this section shall include, but is not limited to, public libraries, public schools, community centers, and Internet cafes.

(3) No contribution results where an individual, acting independently or as a volunteer, without receiving compensation, performs Internet activities using computer equipment and services in his or her residential premises for the purpose of influencing any Federal election, whether or not the individual’s activities are known to or coordinated with any candidate, authorized committee or party committee.

Check out Juris Novus, a new aggregator for law blogs.

Their essay is available for download here; here's the abstract (paragraph breaks added):

Recent evidence suggests that capital punishment may have a significant deterrent effect, preventing as many as eighteen or more murders for each execution. This evidence greatly unsettles moral objections to the death penalty, because it suggests that a refusal to impose that penalty condemns numerous innocent people to death.

Capital punishment thus presents a life-life tradeoff, and a serious commitment to the sanctity of human life may well compel, rather than forbid, that form of punishment. Moral objections to the death penalty frequently depend on a distinction between acts and omissions, but that distinction is misleading in this context, because government is a special kind of moral agent.

The familiar problems with capital punishment -– potential error, irreversibility, arbitrariness, and racial skew -– do not argue in favor of abolition, because the world of homicide suffers from those same problems in even more acute form. The widespread failure to appreciate the life-life tradeoffs involved in capital punishment may depend on cognitive processes that fail to treat “statistical lives” with the seriousness that they deserve.

I've read the paper, and though I don't entirely agree with all the analysis in it, I think it makes some very important points, and will attract a lot of attention. What most intrigued me, incidentally, was its summary of the recent deterrence studies, which I hadn't known about. (I support the death penalty on retributive grounds, but obviously if it's a powerful deterrent, that would reinforce the retributivists' support and may also bring around many nonretributivists.) Here's their summary of the evidence; for footnotes, please see the paper itself:

For many years, the deterrent effect of capital punishment was sharply disputed. But a great deal of recent evidence strengthens the claim that capital punishment has large deterrent effects. The reason for the shift is that a wave of sophisticated econometric studies have exploited a newly-available form of data, so-called “panel data” that uses all information from a set of units (states or counties) and follows that data over an extended period of time. A leading study used county-level panel data from 3,054 U.S. counties between 1977 and 1996. The authors find that the murder rate is significantly reduced by both death sentences and executions. The most striking finding is that on average, each execution results in 18 fewer murders.

Other econometric studies also find a substantial deterrent effect. In two papers, Paul Zimmerman uses state-level panel data from 1978 onwards to measure the deterrent effect of execution rates and execution methods. He estimates that each execution deters an average of fourteen murders. Using state-level data from 1977 to 1997, Mocan and Gittings find that each execution deters five murders on average. They also find that increases in the murder rate come from removing people from death row and also from commutations in death sentences. Yet another study, based on state-level data from 1997-1999, finds that a death sentence deters 4.5 murders and an execution deters three murders. The same study investigates the question whether executions deter crimes of passion and murders by intimates. The answer is clear: these categories of murder are deterred by capital punishment. The deterrent effect of the death penalty is also found to be a function of the length of waits on death row, with a murder deterred for every 2.75 years of reduction in the period before execution.

In the period between 1972 and 1976, the Supreme Court produced an effective moratorium on capital punishment, and an extensive study exploits that fact to estimate the deterrent effect. Using state-level data from 1960-2000, the authors make before-and-after comparisons, focusing on the murder rate in each state before and after the death penalty was suspended and reinstated. The authors find a substantial deterrent effect. After suspending the death penalty, 91% of states faced an increase in homicides – and in 67% of states, the rate was decreased after reinstatement of capital punishment.

A recent study offers more refined findings. Disaggregating the data on a state by state basis, Joanna Shepherd finds that the nation-wide deterrent effect of capital punishment is entirely driven by only six states — and that no deterrent effect can be found in the twenty-one other states that have restored capital punishment. What distinguishes the six from the twenty-one? The answer lies in the fact that states showing a deterrent effect are executing more people than states that do not. In fact the data show a “threshold effect”: deterrence is found in states that had at least nine executions between 1977 and 1996. In states below that threshold, no deterrence can be found. This finding is intuitively plausible. Unless executions reach a certain level, murderers may act as if the death is so improbable as not to be worthy of concern. Her main lesson is that once the level of executions reaches a certain level, the deterrent effect of capital punishment is substantial.

All in all, the recent evidence of a deterrent effect from capital punishment seems impressive. But in studies of this kind, it is hard to control for confounding variables, and a degree of doubt inevitably remains. It remains possible that these findings will be exposed as statistical artifacts or will be found to rest on flawed econometric methods. More broadly, skeptics are likely to question the mechanisms by which capital punishment has a deterrent effect. On the skeptical view, many murderers lack a clear sense of the likelihood and perhaps even the existence of executions in their state; further problems for the deterrence claim are introduced by the fact that capital punishment is imposed infrequently and after long delays. In any case many murders are committed in a passionate state that does not lend itself to an all-things-considered analysis on the part of perpetrators.

As mentioned above, and as we discuss in Part IV, these suppositions are in some tension with existing evidence. But let us suppose that these doubts are reasonable. If so, should current findings be deemed irrelevant for purposes of policy and law? That would be an odd conclusion. In regulation as a whole, it is common to embrace some version of the Precautionary Principle -– the idea that steps should be taken to prevent significant harm even if cause-and-effect relationships remain unclear and even if the risk is not likely to come to fruition. Even if we reject strong versions of the Precautionary Principle, it hardly seems sensible that governments should ignore evidence demonstrating a significant possibility that a certain step will save large numbers of innocent lives.

For capital punishment, critics often seem to assume that evidence on deterrent effects should be ignored if reasonable questions can be raised about it. But as a general rule, this is implausible. In most contexts, the existence of reasonable questions is hardly an adequate reason to ignore evidence of severe harm. If it were, many environmental controls would be in serious jeopardy. We do not mean to suggest that government should commit what many people consider to be, prima facie, a serious moral wrong simply on the basis of speculation that this step will do some good. But a degree of reasonable doubt does not seem sufficient to doom capital punishment, if the evidence suggests that significant deterrence occurs.

In any event, as they say, read the whole thing — and, better yet, also read the studies it cites (something I plan to do shortly).

UPDATE: Reader Dan Markel points to other articles on the deterrence question, which appear to take a contrary view: Richard Berk, New Claims about Executions and General Deterrence: Deja Vu All Over Again?, J. Emp. L. Stud. (forthcoming) (March 11, 2005 draft); Ted Goertzel, Capital punishment and homicide: sociological realities and econometric illusions, Skeptical Inquirer (July-August, 2004).

Many law reviews these days are trying to limit the free availability of the articles they publish, since that gets them more money from WESTLAW, LEXIS, and HeinOnline.

The Virginia Law Review is doing better: It's making all its new articles (from 2004 on) available for free (and google-findable) on its Web site. Law reviews are nonprofit institutions, dedicated to the spread of legal knowledge (and in the process helping educate the students, and get them better credentials). Editors should want to get more readers -- and thus make their hard work yield more benefit -- and not more dollars.

Journals need money to operate, but my sense is that they generally get an adequate amount from a combination of law school subsidies and subscription revenues. (Not a princely amount, but they're not supposed to get a princely amount.) If they can afford it, and I think most journals can, they should follow the Virginia's lead.

William Saletan, in Slate, has this set of quotes:

"According to the teaching of Jesus, it is God who has joined man and woman together in the marital bond. Certainly this union takes place with the free consent of both parties, but this human consent concerns a plan that is divine. . . . To treat indissolubility not as a natural juridical norm but as a mere ideal empties of meaning the unequivocal declaration of Jesus Christ, who absolutely refused divorce because "from the beginning it was not so" . . . [P]rofessionals in the field of civil law should avoid being personally involved in anything that might imply a cooperation with divorce." [Emphasis in original.]

-- Address of John Paul II to the prelate auditors, officials and advocates of the Tribunal of the Roman Rota, Jan. 28, 2002

"The parents of Terri Schiavo asked a judge to allow the severely brain-damaged woman to divorce her husband—even if she dies—in one of a flurry of 11 new motions filed by the couple. In the divorce motion filed Monday, Bob and Mary Schindler accused Michael Schiavo of adultery and not acting in his wife's best interests."

-- Associated Press, March 1, 2005

"During the hearing in Tampa, the chief lawyer for Ms. Schiavo's parents . . . David Gibbs, also said Ms. Schiavo's religious beliefs as a Roman Catholic were being infringed because Pope John Paul II has deemed it unacceptable for Catholics to refuse food and water. 'We are now in a position where a court has ordered her to disobey her church and even jeopardize her eternal soul,' Mr. Gibbs said."

-- New York Times, March 22, 2005

Like many of these Slate quote-only items, this one gives no analysis or explanation. Still, my sense is that this is somehow trying to suggest that Ms. Schiavo's lawyer or parents are acting inconsistently, or that good Catholics should oppose their actions. Read it yourself and see whether that's your interpretation.

Yet if that's the claim, isn't there a pretty obvious response? I'm by no stretch of the imagination an expert on Catholicism, but I would think that Catholic teachings recognize that even really important principles (such as "no divorce") may have to yield when they run up against a more important principle (such as "preserve human life"). This doesn't mean that the first principle is wrong or insignificant, only that even important moral rules that are usually stated categorically might have some extraordinary exceptions.

My understanding, for instance, is that most Orthodox Jews believe that the commandment of not working on the Sabbath should be violated when such work is needed to save a life. Likewise, I'd guess that most Catholic scholars would conclude that if a divorce is really necessary to save a life, it would be proper. Divorces are almost never necessary to save a life, so the statements against divorce tend not to include such provisos; but it doesn't follow that it's somehow inconsistent or improper to recognize that such a proviso is implicit.

Please correct me if I'm mistaken as to the Catholic teachings, or if I'm misinterpreting the Slate column. Perhaps the author is simply making the point that I'm making, which is that even categorical rules sometimes have extraordinary exceptions (which are understandably not included when the rule is asserted, precisely because they are so extraordinary), and that sound religious reasoning must thus sometimes involve reconciling two contradictory rules. But if the author is trying to suggest an inconsistency, I think he's mistaken.

(None of this speaks to what should be the right result in the Schiavo case, of course; I'm making only the limited point I outline above.)

UPDATE: The author posted this on Slate's discussion board, "The Fray":

Subject: I changed the title of the item

from "Cafeteria Catholics" to "Religious Liberty."

I posted the quotes without editorial comment precisely because this is a profound and wrenching case. I just wanted to put the three pieces out there so people could seriously discuss the relationships and differences among them.

I ruined the spirit of that editorial silence by tacking on a headline that implied a conclusion and was more clever than wise. I apologize.

I much appreciate the author's apology, but it still seems to me that the mere juxtaposition of the quotes isn't really that helpful. This is a profound and wrenching case, but not, I think, because for Catholics it might require a violation of the rule against a divorce. I'd think that to a Catholic that would be an easy decision, given the countervailing interest — preserving a life. In fact, as various people have pointed out, the very same Papal address from which the Slate piece quotes also says, two paragraphs below the Slate-quoted material:

Lawyers, as independent professionals, should always decline the use of their profession for an end that is contrary to justice, as is divorce. They can only cooperate in this kind of activity when, in the intention of the client, it is not directed to the break-up of the marriage, but to the securing of other legitimate effects that can only be obtained through such a judicial process in the established legal order . . . .

FURTHER UPDATE: Steve Bainbridge has some Catholic philosophy thoughts on the subject.

Just wanted to pitch again our debate on the subject this week in the Legal Affairs Debate Club. There are now three posts from each of us; Geof is a very accomplished, intelligent, and interesting commentator, and it's always a pleasure for me to debate with him -- I hope it will likewise be a pleasure for you folks to read the debate.

For some reason, I was thinking recently about commonly used quotes that, when read in their original context, mean something quite different -- sometimes nearly the opposite -- of what many modern quoters use them to mean. For example, "East is East, and West is West, and never the twain shall meet" is usually used to suggest that two cultures are ultimately irreconcilable; but the full quote is very different:

OH, East is East, and West is West, and never the twain shall meet,
Till Earth and Sky stand presently at God’s great Judgment Seat;
But there is neither East nor West, Border, nor Breed, nor Birth,
When two strong men stand face to face, tho’ they come from the ends of the earth!

People of the same trade seldom meet together, even for merriment and diversion, but the conversation ends in a conspiracy against the public, or in some contrivance to raise prices. It is impossible indeed to prevent such meetings, by any law which either could be executed, or would be consistent with liberty and justice.

Similarly, "The first thing we do, let's kill all the lawyers," from Shakespeare's Henry VI, part 2, is said by a revolutionary who is not portrayed as a particular sensible character; shortly afterwards, Dick (who said the line) and Cade (who agreed with it) move on to condemn anyone who can write.

So my question: What other such quotes can people come up with? Again, I'm looking for quotes that (1) are pretty famous and (2) are often used to mean one thing, but where (3) the original work is saying nearly the exact opposite (either because the original line was facetious, or was followed by something of a "Yes, but," as in the Kipling or in the Smith quotes).

Please post your suggestions in the comments, and please stick within these three rules.

can have very different meanings. The goal of many emerging parliamentary democracies, I think, is for citizens to be able to say "The government has collapsed. Now, which movie do you want to go see tomorrow?," rather than "The government has collapsed; what street are the tanks coming down?" (or even "The government has collapsed; those 100,000 protesters on the main square did a great job").

I much hope that the Estonian government's collapse is of the (say) modern Western European variety. UPDATE: PubliusPundit says it is.

Thanks to InstaPundit for the pointer.

A blogger writes:

Howard Dean, on why we lose elections to Republicans in spite of our undeniably superior positions:

One major reason his party lost the 2004 race to the "brain-dead" Republicans is that it has a "tendency to explain every issue in half an hour of detail," [Howard] Dean told the semi-annual meeting of Democrats Abroad, which brought about 150 members from Canada and 30 other countries to the Toronto for two days.

Conservative law supporter (and contributor to the Bush campaigns to the tune of several thousand dollars) Eugene Volokh's response:

Hey, how's this for another possible major reason: Might politicians who assume their adversaries -- and tens of millions of voters -- aren't just mistaken but "brain-dead" not be very effective politicians?

He has a point there. Dean ignores the fact that many of the Republican voters are not stupid, but rather completely corrupt and utterly lacking in common decency. I'm not sure what political strategy I would advocate, if any, to appeal to them, though.

What a helpful perspective -- yes, Governor Dean, that would be a really great way to frame your political plans. Trust me on this one: Just say that, the Republicans are "brain-dead, completely corrupt, and utterly lacking in common decency" -- or if you think that's impolitic, just think it hard; no-one will ever know that this is your view. You'll be sure to win lots of elections against us awful Republicans if you do that. At the very least, if this approach doesn't persuade Republicans to treat them this way, it will surely persuade the center. Centrist voters just love it when one party condemns adherents of the other this way.

No, I'm not joking; its web site is nazi.org. The Minnesota high school murderer was apparently involved with this group; see this statement from the group (though I haven't independently checked its accuracy). "It's hard . . . being a Native American National Socialist," the killer apparently wrote.

Here is where the Green side of the party fits in. I should stress that some of the linked-to sites will likely be utterly horrified by these people, and are in no way responsible for the links. On the other hand, some of the endorsed views' world-war-is-good position seems to resonate well with Nazism.

Thanks to the eagle-eyed researchers at the Competitive Enterprise Institute for the information.

UPDATE: Jesse Walker at Hit & Run has more on this site -- whether it's serious, an esoteric joke, or some mixture of both.

I've found the recent debates about punishment and retribution very interesting — I may actually see whether there's anything left to write on the subject (despite the centuries of philosophy and legal thinking on the matter). This really is terribly important stuff. It's important if we retributivists are right (regardless of whether the retribution should come in the form of prison terms, death, pain, or whatever else), and it's important if we're wrong: Either sort of error may cause lots of needless suffering, whether to the criminals or to their victims.

For now, let me note one brief observation, which again is present even if one sets aside the death penalty, painless or painful. Many people have argued that it's wrong to derive pleasure from others' suffering, and I suppose I agree under some definitions of pleasure — we shouldn't take out the popcorn and settle in for a fun evening of contemplating the suffering inflicted on others. But I think that under many necessary and proper theories of punishment, it's quite proper to derive satisfaction from criminals' suffering. That sounds cruel, but it seems to me quite right, and here's why.

We can identify six main theories of punishment, though I'm sure there are others, and other ways of categorizing these ones:

1. Incapacitation: Lock someone up so he can't commit the crime again (or chemically castrate him or whatever else). I think this is quite right, though there may be limits on how long it's fair to lock people up. And this doesn't require that the person suffer: If we could cheaply incapacitate someone in ways that are perfectly pleasant for him, we'd still be fulfilling the goal of incapacitation. But incapacitation can't be the whole story; I take it, for instance, that if a rapist gets into a car accident after the rape and becomes paraplegic and practically highly unlikely to rape, we wouldn't just let him out.

2. Restitution: Make the person pay for the damage he did. This too is good, and it doesn't require that the person suffer. (The payment may make him suffer, but it need not; if Winona Ryder shoplifts something and then has to pay for it, the payment probably isn't enough to make her suffer, and yet the restitution function is entirely satisfied.) But while this can work well for purely financial crimes, it's much less satisfying for other crimes, and often the criminal doesn't have the money to pay.

3. Rehabilitation: Make the criminal change his ways. "Nice work if you can get it," I say — from what I hear, no-one quite knows how to do this reliably, and even the programs that seem to work the best tend not to be that effective. Still, in principle, if this were possible, it could be doable without the person's suffering (unless the rehabilitative technique relies on the person's suffering).

4. Norm-setting: Send a message to the public that something is wrong, and affect their moral judgments (and not just their cost-benefit analysis). Locking up drunk drivers, for instance, might lead people to recognize how bad this behavior is; some people hope that hate crimes laws may have a similar effect. Likewise, sternly punishing date rape might open some other people's eyes to how awful this crime is. It may do little to the serious sociopaths, but it may affect some people who have decent impulses as well as evil ones. And punishment of 60-year-old Nazis might serve as a reminder to the public about how evil Nazism is.

This, I think, generally requires that the punishment involve some suffering, precisely because the infliction of suffering is what helps set the norm. Just saying "drunk driving is bad" or "date rape is bad" might do something, but not much; the government says similar things all the time ("literring is bad"), and people tend to tune them out. I think that what makes the prosecution of these criminals noteworthy, and norm-reinforcing, is that the legal system finds the crime so serious that it's willing to inflict suffering as a result.

Again, consider the thought experiment from item 1: Imagine that one could come up with a "punishment" that inflicted no suffering; for instance, say that drunk drivers could be given a pill that keeps them from getting drunk (and assume that for most people that wouldn't cause suffering). The resulting penalty may make for quite effective incapacitation, but I doubt that such a suffering-free punishment would much affect moral norms.

5. Deterrence: Increase the cost of crime to the criminals, and thus scare them away from the crime. Now this necessarily involves inflicting suffering; if the punishment didn't include suffering of some sort, then criminals wouldn't be deterred by it.

What's more, if we take a deterrence perspective — or, say, a deterrence-incapacitation perspective, or some other mix that includes deterrence — then we should derive satisfaction from knowing that criminals will suffer. The satisfaction may be tinged with sorrow, regret, or even disgust at the suffering. Locking someone up for the rest of his life, or even for several years, is surely a harsh and even brutal punishment, and would be even if we eliminated the risk of prisoner-prisoner violence.

Nonetheless, if we believe in deterrence, we are deriving a benefit from this suffering: It is this suffering of the criminals that is making us and our children safer. And as a result we must presumably derive some (though not unmixed) satisfaction, as we would from anything that we think makes us safer, and is morally justified.

6. Retaliation: Punish criminals because they deserve to be punished for the evil things they did. This, as I've argued before, is the best explanation for the understandable and laudable campaign to punish 70-year-old Nazis.

Likewise, say that there were some entirely suffering-free way to incapacitate and deter rapists: For instance, assume for the sake of argument that there's a cheap (and constitutionally and morally permissible) form of chemical castration that can for some period of time take away their sex drive — which means that they won't even miss sex, forced or unforced — and say that reliable comparative studies show that this deters rape as well as other punishment does. (For instance, say that uncastrated men really don't want to be chemically castrated, but once they are they don't really suffer much, setting aside for a moment any possible social shame that might come from being uninterested in sex.) Would we think this is really enough? If the rape victim came to us and said, "So the trial was yesterday, and today I saw the man who brutally raped me walking down the street whistling," would we think that justice had been done?

If we wouldn't think so — if we think that justice requires some retaliatory punishment here, or as to the Nazis — then we are demanding that the criminal be made to suffer, even if just through the loss of liberty. And thus presumably when we hear about old Nazis or young rapists being convicted and thrown in prison, we derive satisfaction from knowing that the person is suffering.

So it seems to me that if we endorse theories 4, 5, or 6, or some mix of them and other theories (and I think most of us do endorse such a mix), we support deliberately inflicting suffering on criminals, and derive benefit and satisfaction from this infliction. Again, doubtless some moral rules limit the type and amount of suffering we can inflict on people for certain crimes. (Even if we really want to deter pickpockets, and the death penalty deterred them, I don't think the penalty would be a suitable punishment, though I won't go into the reasoning for that here.) And perhaps some moral rules categorically limit the type and amount of suffering we can inflict on people for any crime. Perhaps, for instance, it's proper to derive satisfaction from deprivation of liberty but categorically improper to derive satisfaction from deprivation of life or infliction of physical pain.

But unless we limit ourselves to theories 1, 2, and 3 — unless we renounce not only retribution but also deterrence and probably norm-setting — we must acknowledge that our criminal justice system is largely based on the infliction of suffering, and rightly so; and that we are therefore right to derive satisfaction (though not unmixed with regret and other emotions) from knowing that criminals are being made to suffer precisely for the sake of the moral and practical benefits that this suffering causes us. Maybe that's a reason to utterly reject deterrence and retaliation. But if we accept them, then what I say here seems to follow, not just as a matter of my moral judgment but as a matter of logic.

UPDATE: A reader writes, "[I]t seems to me that you can change the phrase 'suffering' to a less emotive phrase such as 'deprivation of liberty and/or property' and not change your analysis one whit. The problem with using 'suffering', as I see it, is that 'suffering' is usually equated to 'physical suffering', which evokes images of whips or torturing, etc., and the very idea of possibly being thought inhumane is anathema to the psyche of modern-day Liberals. Thus the use of the word 'suffering' clouds the minds of many people and inhibits rational analysis."

But I'm deliberately trying to draw the analogy. We're not talking about some abstract legal machinations, which is likely the first image that "deprivation of liberty and/or property" (especially with the "and/or") creates. Nor are we talking simply about deprivation of liberty and/or property -- as I mentioned in my discussion of the first three reasons for punishment, we can imagine deprivations of liberty that are set up to minimize suffering. To take a noncriminal example, if I'm quarantined because of a contagious illness -- a form of incapacitation, since my isolation will prevent me from inadvertently doing harm -- I hope the government will try to ease my suffering as much as possible.

Rather, I'm talking about inflicting suffering on people, suffering that may cause a great deal of psychic pain, and that is inflicted *precisely in order to inflict such pain*. Now maybe infliction of psychic suffering by locking people up is legitimate, and infliction of physical suffering by flogging them is illegitimate. But to clear our minds and engage in rational analysis, we have to acknowledge, I think, that both are forms of deliberately inflicted suffering.

Clayton Cramer reports, and participates.

Kevin Russell (SCOTUSblog) has a fascinating report on the Court's argument in the Religious Land Use and Institutionalized Persons Act case (Cutter v. Wilkinson); this will likely be a very important decision for the Court's church-state jurisprudence. My favorite snippet, though, is a nonsubstantive one:

International Law

The argument had its lighter moments. At one point, Justice Scalia interrupted respondent’s counsel to ask whether Satanism is a non-majoritarian religion. It is unclear why Justice Scalia cared, or whether he was just making a joke, but the question led to a bizarre colloquy in which Goldberger noted that the Royal Navy had promised to abide by a Satanist’s burial wishes. That one reference to international law was one reference too many for Justice Scalia. “Our Royal Navy?” he snarled, much to the amusement of the as-always easily amused Supreme Court audience.

I know nothing about the Schiavo matter, and despite that have no opinion. But I thought I'd pass along three items — (1) in favor of the Congressional action, an interview with Robert P. George, (2) in the middle, a post from my colleague Stephen Bainbridge, and (3) against the Congressional action, a post to a lawprof discussion list (reprinted with permission) from University of Michigan professor Rick Hills:

When in doubt, defer to the states. Consider two general criteria of "doubt" and an application of this point to Schiavo.

1. The criteria:

As a proponent of "strong" federalism, I have a pretty strong stomach for state experiments in policy-making that might arguably be offensive. Indeed, I think that the essence of being a conservative supporter of federalism is what I call Nagelism (after Bob Nagel's book on federalism): we should be willing to tolerate states' enacting laws that we would find pretty unpalatable on moral and political grounds. Moreover, we should be willing to tolerate state laws that come close to some constitutional line — that arguably violate a reasonable conception of the constitution — especially when the constitutional doctrine turns on difficult empirical or moral judgments about which reasonable people can differ.

In general, one can always raise the cry that some state decision burdens some constitutional right under one's favorite theory of the constitution. But I would urge us conservatives to have a stronger stomach for state diversity than our opponents on the Left. In general, I would urge us all to allow states to do what they like unless (1) the state's majority really looks like it is ganging up on some discrete and insular minority repeatedly across the board (Carlone Products note 4 and Federalist #10) or (2) the state has adopted a view squarely at odds with a national consensus on some basic liberty that has sunk into the popular consciousness as a Privilege & Immunity of national citizenship or as an aspect of national due process (Harlan's dissent in Poe v Ullman).

Remember: The 14th Amendment did not enact (1) Herbert Spencer; (2) Ronald Dworkin; (3) John Finnis; (4) Leon Kass; (5) Rawls; (6) Nozick; (7) Name your favorite political, moral, or constitutional theorists.... It was a provision to protect the freedmen and (at a higher level of abstraction) other racial groups suffering from caste legislation or enslavement, and it nationalized some traditional principles of common law concerning due process and probably some norms of constitutional liberty contained in the Bill of Rights and elsewhere in Article I, section 9. (On this last point, I follow Amar). By some big stretch, the 13th and 14th Amendment might also protect a republican principle of "free labor" from 'class legislation' and 'monopoly.' (On this last point, I follow Gillman and William nelson).

For these reasons, I would tolerate a state law that bans theology students from getting a state-financed scholarship, even though one might argue that such a law violates free exercise by discriminating against religious speech. As a voter in a state, I would vote to amend the state constitution to forbid such a prohibition. As a constitutional lawyer, I applaud Rehnquist for deciding Locke v Davey in favor of Governor Locke. Likewise, I support the University of Michigan's right to have broad discretion to enact affirmative action plans: Gratz was wrongly decided in my view, and Grutter was correct. This view is utterly independent of my views on the merits of affirmative action. Likewise, with vouchers: Zelman is correct. Likewise, with the right-to-die: Glucksberg was correct.

I am (personally) a follower of most of what Leon Kass defends in print. I was a student of his, many years ago at Chicago. Thus, physician-assisted suicide sickens me. But (in Holmes' phrase) it does not make me puke, because it violates no national consensus on the proper scope of private liberty. Thus, I would be appalled by a doctrine that said that the state's not prosecuting physicians for assisting in suicides was unconstitutional state action under the 14th Amendment. Such an expansion of the 14th Amendment WOULD make me puke, because it would invite counter-nationalization of the opposite rule by the Hemlock Society. For the sake of social peace, we should not nationalize every cause: That's what Westphalian federalism is all about: picking your battles, reserving the feds for those issues that, in all fairness, We the (National) People have genuinely resolved.

2. The application of these conservative principles to Schiavo:

On this view, the Schiavo bill is unconstitutional. Forget about originalism: The Schiavo bill is obviously DOA on any theory of originalism. But even by any remotely plausible NON-originalist view of the 14th Amendment, it is hard to see how the 14th Amendment's due process clause could bar a state judge acting as guardian from deferring to a comatose woman's spouse in deciding whether to terminate life support. But let's take each clause, one by one.

A. Equal Protection: Does anyone believe that Florida legislators are somehow biased against comatose people? Against parents of such people? Are we seriously comparing Schiavo to segregated school kids under Jim Crow — the suggestion of Alan Meese? Does Ms. Schiavo's parents really belong to a class of some discrete (meaning easily targeted) and insular (meaning incapable of making cross-group alliances) minority? Isn't it obvious that, in a different case, the positions of the parents and spouse of the comatose person could be reversed — that Florida has made a principled decision without bias towards any social group and, therefore, not remotely akin to Jim Crow?

B. Procedural Due Process: Is there some claim that state judges have a conflict of interest amounting to a denial of procedural due process when they serve both as guardians and as judges? This strikes me as truly odd. Maybe — MAYBE — a state judge might have a personal incentive to keep Ms. Schiavo alive to continue to get court fees as guardian. But, so far as I can tell, Ms. Schiavo's parents got a decision-maker biased in THEIR favor, if that decision-maker was biased at all.

C. Substantive Due Process/[Privileges and Immunities] clause: is there some national consensus out there, firmly entrenched in tradition, that state judges should not make these sorts of judgment calls? If you believe that, then you should applaud Roper v Simmons and agree that the US Supreme Court protected a national consensus against executing juvenile offenders.

D. The Thirteenth Amendment: the Schiavo case does not even come close to the core of the 13th Amendment, which, as Justice Miller notes in The Slaughterhouse Cases, is about protecting the freedmen and people in a similar position — say, Chinese coolie labor, Mexican peon labor, etc. — from enslavement. At the outer limits, I'd construe the 13th Amendment and the Necessary-and-Proper clause to allow Congress to forbid racial segregation designed to reduce Blacks to economic dependence (Alfred H. Jones). I'd even support enforcing the 13th Amendment to prevent private violence of any sort against any group that the violent actors wish to reduce to some form of servitude — say, a prohibition on certain types of domestic violence against women.

Now: remind me how, on any minimally plausible theory of the 13th Amendment, a state's good-faith delegation of power to state judges to resolve disputes about a comatose person's intentions constitutes involuntary servitude? Is the judge asking the comatose person to perform unpaid labor for him? Will the judge somehow get more dough if he terminates life support?

I repeat: So far as I can see, this case is a no-brainer for conservatives upset by Roper v Simmons, Roe v Wade, etc. If ever there were a case for deference to states, this is such a case. No prejudice against any litigant. A perfectly traditional state judicial procedure consistent with our traditions of liberty. No forced labor. Help me out here: what am I missing that justifies a national rule here? . . .

[An earlier post by Rick Hills said:]

The Schiavo business in Congress strikes me as an astonishing violation of the most purpose of federalism. In the same way, Ashcroft's attack on Oregon's Death with Dignity Act is a deep violation of principles of federalism. I say "deep violation" advisedly: I believe that a central purpose of federalism is Westphalian (after the famous treaty that ended the 30 Years War): We properly use federalism to defuse quasi-religious political controversies over the meaning of fundamental things — "life," "personhood," "consent to die," "familial autonomy," etc. Such issues are appropriately divisive: their resolution depends on one's acceptance of fundamental systems of belief — acceptance that will almost never admit of much compromise and that cannot be rationally resolved through positive social or "hard" science.

The Westphalian principle decentralizes these issues to lower levels of government to allow each side in the debate to get some chance for their reasonable, heartfelt position to prevail. To centralize such issues simply because one can muster a necessary majority in either Congress or the Supreme Court is repulsive to this view of federalism.

The usual response to this contention is to trot out a parade of horribles in which positions obviously foreclosed by the 14th Amendment are chosen by the states. Thus, Casey notes that the states could not force women to get abortions and then infers that the states cannot ban abortions under the same principle. (505 U.S. 833, 859). But this reasoning strikes me as specious: it is one thing to force someone to get an abortion or to have a baby: it is another thing entirely to prohibit someone from using one method of avoiding childbith when there are a myriad of other ways available (say, contraception). State liberty to define "consent, "personhood," "life," etc., has certain (or rather, uncertain) limits. I tend to favor some Harlan-esque theory rooted in slowly evolving national consensus. But regardless of how one wishes to limit the states, I do not think that there is a plausible theory of federalism that would allow Congress to intervene where the rule chosen by the state is a fairly ordinary rule of family governance: when in doubt, the surviving spouse decides.

I just finished teaching my Harvard students about Roe v Wade. I urge them to consider the position seriously that I happen (privately, of course: I don't foist my own constitutional principles on my students) to be correct — that the constitutionality of abortion, and more particularly the division between the fetus's personhood and lack thereof, is a political question, properly for the states to resolve. I was delighted that principled conservatives abandoned the President on the Federal Marriage amendment, as this amendment struck me as paradigmatically the sort of issue that should be decentralized under the Westphalian principle. One of the reasons why I am a Law Professor for Bush-Cheney is that I adhere to this strong view of federalism-to-prevent-national-cultural-wars.

the merits of whether Ms. Schiavo actually consented seem to me quite besides the point. Is there any reason to believe that some imperfection in Florida's political process has prevented the Florida legislature from properly considering those merits? Just as I would not constitutionalize the anti-abortion rule of Doe v. Bolton (which the West German Constitutional Court arguably did in its 1975 Abortion decision), so too, I would not constitutionalize any rule on guardians and comatose people's intent. All of the thoughtful arguments posted on this list about whether Florida's rule is a wise one, whether guardians can be trusted, what Ms. Schiavo actually wants are great arguments — but ones which can easily be made to the Florida legislature or, for that matter, the Florida people and the Florida courts, both who control the state constitution.

And now the Republicans pull an absurd stunt like this one. I confess that I am distraught. All that "let-the-states-decide-on-abortion" rhetoric has to seem like a bunch of empty hooey if this statute is deemed to be consistent with conservative principles of federalism.

UPDATE: In the original version of this post, I erroneously included a discussion list to which Rick was responding, and which was quoted in his message. Since I hadn't asked the author of that post for permission to republish it, I've deleted that section; my apologies for having inadvertently included it in the first place.

FURTHER UPDATE: Alan Meese, whose post Rick mentions above, responds:

Rick Hills says that I have compared Ms. Schiavo to school children under Jum Crow, and that I am wrong. I'd like to respond. . . .

First, I did not compare Ms Schiavo to school kids living under Jim Crow. Instead, I responded to Professor Hills' claim that Federalism required the National Government to defer to a "fairly ordinary rule of family governance: when in doubt, the surviving spouse decides." As I pointed out, Professor Hills' proposed principle --- that we defer to "fairly ordinary rules" applied by the states --- would have prevented a Senator from voting to ban the "fairly ordinary" practice of segregation in, say, 1945.

Was this a comparison of Jim Crow schoolkids to Ms. Schiavo? I don't think so. Instead, it was an example used to show that the principle I thought Professor Hills was advancing does not withstand analysis. Moreover, the example apparently led Professor Hills to abandon his initial position --- or at least my perception of his initial position --- and create a new one --- we should defer to "fairly ordinary" rules adopted by the states when we think the political process works well to protect the individuals in question. I don't fault Professor Hills for adjusting his position if, in fact, he has --- that's what dialogue is all about.

Second. What about this new position? It's a nice question, isn't it --- who has more political power --- Ms. Schiavo, or Jim Crow Schoolkids (and their parents). I doubt Ms. Schiavo votes or makes many campaign contributions. Maybe one could argue that her parents can protect her in the political process --- something they have been trying to do in the Florida courts. But, at any one time, very few parents have children in Ms. Schiavo's condition. And, very few anticipate that they will in the future. So, while parents have the ability, if they wish, to form organizations to lobby about these questions on a prospective basis, economic theory suggests that they will not. Time is very scarce, and most people have better things to do than engage in letter writing campaigns about issues that they most likely will never face.

But, I am willing to grant that Ms. Schiavo, her parents and people like them have somewhat more political power and realistic potential to exercise it than Jim Crow schoolkids. But, that doesn't really answer the question, which is "how much power must a certain group have before we will leave them at the mercy of the states," which Professor Hills would do here. When a life is at stake, and where physicians who have examined Ms. Schiavo disagree about whether she can recover, I would err in favor of extra review, which is what Congress has done here.

The Toronto Star reports (and I have no reason to doubt the accuracy of the report, though I realize that there's always a danger of reporter error):

One major reason his party lost the 2004 race to the "brain-dead" Republicans is that it has a "tendency to explain every issue in half an hour of detail," [Howard] Dean told the semi-annual meeting of Democrats Abroad, which brought about 150 members from Canada and 30 other countries to the Toronto for two days.

Hey, how's this for another possible major reason: Might politicians who assume their adversaries — and tens of millions of voters — aren't just mistaken but "brain-dead" not be very effective politicians?

Might they, for instance, underestimate the other side's savvy? Or perhaps let their contempt show in unappealing ways?

(Thanks to Opinion Journal for the pointer.)

UPDATE: A reader suggests that maybe Dean was referring to the Republican leadership as brain-dead rather than to the Republican voters. But while the reader thinks this is a mitigating circumstance for Dean, I don't see that: Surely believing that your political opponents, who had just pretty soundly defeated your party, are "brain-dead" is even more counterproductive than believing the same of the voters.

Reuters reports:

Tighter gun ownership laws [under which the police turn down 80% of gun license requests after an 18-month application process] are pushing South Africans to buy crossbows, spears, swords, knives and pepper sprays to protect themselves from violent crime. . . .

Despite official figures showing the murder rate falling 10 percent in the year to March 2004, South Africa's Arms and Ammunition Dealers Association says individuals face a one in 60 chance of being the victim of a violent crime in any given year. . . .

Thanks to reader Glenn Wright Bowen for the pointer.

Can any of you recommend a lawyer who knows something about California liquor license law? One of my favorite restaurants seems to be having problems with this, and the owner asked me for a referral. Please e-mail me at volokh at law.ucla.edu. In the name of tasty dinners and only slightly chemically stimulated conviviality, I thank you in advance.

A reader passes along this follow-up:

Yeshiva University decided to field a crew team. Unfortunately, they lost race after race. They practiced for hours every day, but never managed to come in any better than dead last.

The chief rabbi finally decided to send Yankel to spy on the Harvard team. So Yankel shlepped off to Cambridge and hid in the bullrushes off the Charles River, from where he carefully watched the Harvard team as they practiced.

Yankel finally returned to Yeshiva. "We had it backwards," he announced. "It's one guy shouting and eight guys rowing!"

in the Legal Affairs debate club. Geof's first post is up; my response (based in large part in what I've said in my forthcoming California Law Review article will be up later today. Geof, a lawprof and former provost at the University of Chicago, is one of the top First Amendment scholars in the country. His Perilous Times: Free Speech in Wartime has just been published.

I've looked at the items to which David points, and I share his concern. I haven't seen any real allegations of threatening behavior by the professor (for instance, express or implied threats that he'd somehow retaliate against students for their pro-Palestinian views). The only retaliation for viewpoints that I see is the retaliation against Professor Klocek. And if the Chicago Jewish News story is correct to say that Klocek is being charged in part for "verbally attack[ing]" the students for their "religious beliefs and ethnicity," "demean[ing] their ideas," "dishonor[ing] their perspective" and "press[ing] erroneous assertions," that is very bad indeed: It proves that DePaul really is going after him for expressing ideas that it disapproves of.

DePaul is a private university, and is thus not bound by the First Amendment. But as with most private institutions that aspire to being serious academic centers -- a status that necessarily involves people criticizing others' beliefs, sometimes in harsh ways (or in ways that are ambiguous but could be interpreted by one side as harsh) -- DePaul has voluntarily embraced academic freedom norms: "Academic freedom is guaranteed both as an integral part of the university’s scholarly and religious heritage, and as an essential condition of effective inquiry and instruction."

It is theoretically possible that a university could preserve academic freedom and still impose evenhanded rules that require debate to remain civil. Some such rules turn out to be necessary in the classroom, where, for instance, professors may refuse to call on students who have proven rude (or even mark them down for consistent rudeness, if there's a class performance component to the class); I think that administrators also must have some authority to stop professors from saying rude or personally insulting things when those things make it harder for students to effectively learn. That's necessary for the school to succeed in teaching students.

But outside the classroom, the rules do much more harm than good, precisely because the boundaries of civility are so vague, and these vague rules will necessary interfere with debate. What's a "verbal attack" on people for their "religious beliefs," and what's a forceful argument that some religious beliefs are wrong or evil? What's a "verbal attack" on their "ethnicity," and what's the delivery of unpleasant truths about the behavior of members of certain groups, whether Israelis or Palestinians? What's "demean[ing]" someone's "ideas," and what's simply arguing that those ideas are wrong? What's "dishonor[ing a] perspective" and what's a proper argument that some perspective is indeed dishonorable? And of course what's an "erroneous assertion[]" in debates where most of the assertions are about hotly contested moral questions and ambiguous empirical generalizations?

For this reason, I highly doubt that DePaul would routinely punish professors for harsh speech criticizing Republicans or Israel or pro-life or pro-choice forces. It is likewise quite wrong for DePaul to do so here.

Again, all this turns on the specifics of what Klocek said and why DePaul acted. If Klocek had, for instance, threatened the students' grades or bodies (as opposed to their psyches), and DePaul punished him for that, that would be quite proper. But the stories that David points to, and two others that I found when searching the DePaul student newspaper (see here and here), strongly suggest that DePaul is behaving wrongly here.

Finally, here's a striking item:

[Dean Suzanne] Dumbleton also emphasized the School of New Learning’s dedication to the core values of DePaul and that she was deeply saddened by the situation and the loss of intellectual empowerment the students suffered. “We do not respect the unfair use of faculty power over students,” she said.

I would think that one way of becoming intellectually empowered is by learning that when one is confronted with offensive ideas, the response is to argue against them, not to demand that the administration censor them. (The power to suppress bad ideas is indeed power, but it's not intellectual power.) And imagine what academic discourse would look like if academics could lose their jobs (or students their places in the school) when their speech causes "loss of intellectual empowerment."

I was recently reminded of the observation that, while we Jews seem to have some valuable cultural traits, a genius for effective self-government isn't one of them. This in turn reminded me of The Tale of the Two Brothers, which I'd noted two and a half years ago, but thought I might take the liberty to repeat.

The Talmud, I have heard, tells of two brothers who lived on opposite sides of the hill; one lived alone and the other with a large family. One day, the one who lived alone thought to himself: "Oh, my poor brother -- there he lives, with all those mouths that he has to feed; he must be barely surviving, though he tries to hide that. I, on the other hand, just have to feed myself, so I'm doing very well, and have plenty left over. Let me take some of my surplus tonight, and go over the hill to leave it in my brother's barn."

But that very day, the one who lived with the family thought to himself: "Oh, my poor brother -- there he lives, with no-one to help him; he must be barely surviving, though he tries to hide that. I, on the other hand, have all these children who help me, so I'm doing very well, and have plenty left over. Let me take some of my surplus tonight, and go over the hill to leave it in my brother's barn." So at the same hour of the night, the brothers walk up the hill with their sacks of food, meet, see what the other is doing, and embrace. And on that hill, the Temple was built.

Well, that's the Talmudic story (or so I am told). But, some say, there's another version of that story. Two brothers lived on opposite sides of the hill; one lived alone and the other with a large family. One day, the one who lived alone thought to himself: "Oh, that awful brother of mine -- there he lives, with all those children who can help him; he must be rolling in wealth, though he tries to hide that. I, on the other hand, live all by myself, and badly need more food. Let me go over the hill and take some of the surplus from my brother's barn."

But that very day, the one who lived with a family thought to himself: "Oh, that awful brother of mine -- there he lives, all alone, with no-one else on whom he has to spend money; he must be rolling in wealth, though he tries to hide that. I, on the other hand, have so many children to take care of, and badly need more food. Let me go over the hill and take some of the surplus from my brother's barn." So at the same hour of the night, the brothers walk to the other's barn, walk back up the hill with the sacks of food that they've taken, meet, see what the other is doing, and start punching each other. And on that hill, the Knesset was built.