While we don’t quite get the personal touch that I often experienced at the Berkman, we still get a lot of great speakers and such passing through Columbia and the other New York area law schools. Today the president of the ACLU, Nadine Strossen, swung through for a brief lunch talk. I took sort of lousy notes, but a couple things jumped out at me. Note that there is liberal paraphrasing below, so please don’t take anything here as having come straight from her mouth.
- She complimented the Federalist Society, an activist conservative constitutional group, for raising the profile of constitutional law issues, even though she disagrees with many of their positions. She argues that they should be an inspiration to anyone entering law school, and posits that they are an example of the system at work- that anyone can take a legal issue, make it their own, and if it has substance, make it relevant. I think a cynic could easily spin this as ‘the system is great! single-issue lobbyists can make an impact!’, but it was refreshing to hear someone who has been so often stifled still express great optimism that individual effort can make an impact.
- She mentioned that we’re in a time of great interest for constitutional law scholars- Laurence Tribe, Harvard’s leading constitutional law scholar, actually stopped writing a treatise on constitutional law because he felt that the field had become so unsettled and so constantly changing that to write it now would be a waste of time.
- They’ve nearly doubled staff and membership since 9/11/2001, which is bittersweet- obviously good that people care, but obviously bad that civil liberties are in such bad shape that they draw this much attention. Says that ideally the ACLU would fade away.
- Finally, she went into great detail about how the ACLU is working with both sides of the political spectrum right now. She says that this has always been the case, but particularly at this time, given the dominance of the right in Congress, and the growing sympathy of libertarian-leaning Republicans to confront the Big Brother faction of their party, that they have worked often with both sides of the aisle. She had several good examples of this, including their defense of the reprehensible Fred Phelps of godhatesfags.com, and work with both parties on the Patriot Act. I unfortunately wasn’t able to get in a question before I had to leave, but what I really wanted to know what ‘If you’re so effectively bipartisan, why does one party still use ‘card carrying ACLU member’ as an epithet? Is it a failure of PR and of effective communication with one wing of the electorate? Or is the failure somewhere else?’ This seems like a critical problem for the ACLU’s effectiveness- if they weren’t so immediately and effectively demonized by so many people, often without factual basis, it seems like they might be likely to get a lot more done.
Anyway, interesting talk. I don’t always agree with their decisions of who to defend, but I’m glad they are there.
[IMG RSS] Planet Gnome Luis Villa: ACLU prez at the Law SchoolJames Willcox: Tangerine + MuineMiguel de Icaza: SplendidCRMHans Petter Jansson: HarvestJeff Waugh: Dell D420Morten Welinder: Quantum TrafficJeff Waugh: QoTD: Tony AbbottDave Neary: Away from email (mostly)
As far as the “card-carrying member” thing goes, I’d say this is more due to a higher tendency towards authoritarianism from one side. I dare say that it isn’t universal; Rush Limbaugh and Phelps certainly don’t seem to be perpetuating the divide these days, and indeed Tucker Carlson actually bothered issuing an apology on air after making comments about the ACLU’s alleged reticence in supporting Limbaugh during the Oxycontin thing.
(as an aside, the narrow spacing between letters on here makes things really hard to read with certain fonts. Any chance of removing the letter-spacing reules from your CSS?)
– Chris
I really want to redo the whole theme anyway, though I have no idea when I’ll get to it. Honestly, for ages I assumed all my readers came via RSS anyway.
As far as authoritarianism… I guess my baseline assumption here is that everyone is appreciative when someone does a favor to their tribe, perhaps especially authoritarians. But perhaps you’re right. I’ll have to ponder that one a bit longer.
My response on the question you didn’t have time to pose: one cannot control what others say, one can only control one’s own behavior. If you’re dealing with others who are, as you say, willing to ignore the facts, it’s our jobs as listeners to learn history so we won’t be fooled by those who ignore facts.
Republicans and Democrats are really more alike than disalike on money issues (a majority of both parties favor the invasion and occupation of Iraq, for instance) and there is plenty to find fault with in both corporate-funded parties. But since Republicans are the party you’re referring to here, and the party in power in the US right now, let me point out that this the same party that used to say they wanted a small government yet most Republicans approved creating a large expansion of government–the United States Department of Homeland Security–the third largest cabinet department in the US federal government.