This week, the ACSBlog will be hosting a debate between Dan Polsby and William Eskridge on the Solomon Amendment case, FAIR v. Rumseld, wqhich will be argued on Dec. 6.
Dean Polsby leads off with “An Unremarkable Use of Congress’s Spending Power,” noting the breadth of the constitutional power to Raise and Support Armies. A snippet from his post:
The draft isn’t much thought about these days, but as a reminder, here is what was involved: The government can make you leave school or your family for years at a time, force you to live communally with lots of other men without a molecule of personal privacy, ship you overseas, censor your mail, order you into extreme personal danger and even certain death, and have you sent to prison or even executed if you refuse.
This is a broad power.
The Solomon Amendment arises under this power, and yet its exactions are slight. The Solomon Amendment does not require schools to give JAG Corps recruiters access to law schools on pain of criminal punishment. It does not – as constitutionally it might – simply draft all law professors into the armed services, as millions of other Americans have been drafted when their country needed them, where they could then be ordered to admit JAG recruiters and tried without a jury and punished under the UCMJ if they refused. It simply uses financial inducements to universities to encourage their law schools to allow the armed services equal access to law students.
It looks like Prof. Eskridge hasn’t posted yet–it looks like his riposte will either come later today or tomorrow.
Update:
Eskridge’s post is now up. I understand each person will be doing one a day for the rest of the week.
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