I can’t bite my tongue and let idiots rage on unfairly and inaccurately about important matters.
Earlier I noted the difficulties with reality at Texas Darlin’. The warden of the blog dropped by and suggested I should join the discussion there if I had something to say. It always ends badly. Someone there says something plug ugly stupid, and I note the facts. My posts get edited, or censored.
Some post linked there, and I looked. I couldn’t resist. The owner and commenters are flailing around like a bass in the boat, trying to make a case that Sonia Sotomayor shouldn’t be a justice of the Supreme Court. They have convinced themselves that she’s a racist, she’s sexist, she got where she is solely because of affirmative action and the Great Cabal that Runs the World. And they are stuffing tinfoil in their ears now — it makes their hats leak, but it keeps them from hearing anything that might upset them.
I expect they’ll remove my posts soon. If you care, I’ve made some defense of Sonia Sotomayor, and I copied the posts below the fold. Texas Darlin’ inmates correspondents repeat every canard about Sotomayor you can imagine. And some you can’t imagine.
Texas Darlin’ is neither.
I am persuaded to do a series of posts on the nomination of Sotomayor. In the interim, here’s my attempt to square things at Texas Darlin’, below the fold.
As a judge, Sotomayor has ruled in 100 cases that involve questions of racial discrimination of one sort or another. Tom Goldstein, Supreme Court advocate and founder of the leading Supreme Court blog, has read all of those decisions. He says that Sotomayor does not seem to put her thumb on the scale and has in fact, most of the time, ruled against those charging discrimination.
In only 1 of out 8 cases, he says, has she favored in some sense claims of discrimination.
“The fact that she so rarely upholds discrimination claims I think answers the idea that she is always angling for minorities,” he says.
And if the New Haven case is a harbinger in one direction, there are other cases that point the other way too. Sotomayor, for example, dissented when her colleagues allowed the New York City Police Department to fire one of its officers for sending hate mail on his own time. While the hate mail was patently offensive, hateful and insulting, Sotomayor wrote, it did not interfere with the operations of the police department, and, she observed, under our Constitution, even a white bigot has the right to speak his mind.
In another case involving a black couple bumped from an American Airlines international flight, Sotomayor said their race discrimination claim was clearly trumped by an international treaty governing airline rules. It matters not, she said, that her ruling might mean airlines could discriminate on a wholesale basis and that there would be no legal recourse. The treaty’s language is clear and it is not for the courts to make policy, she said, adding that if policy is to be changed, Congress or federal agencies must do it.
White bigots ought to study more and flap less.
Spread the word; friends don't allow friends to repeat history.
Yeah, it’s funny. But Taft didn’t serve in all three branches of the federal government. He was never a member of Congress. He served in the executive branch and the judicial branch, at least twice in each, but he never served in the legislative branch, in Congress.
Taft was collector of taxes for the IRS, Ohio state judge, Solicitor General of the U.S., judge on the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals for the U.S., chairman of the commission to organize a government for the Philippines after the Spanish-American War, and then Governor-General of the Philippines, Secretary of War for Teddy Roosevelt, Acting Secretary of State, Governor of Cuba, Co-chairman of the National War Labor Board in World War I, and then Chief Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court, but never a member of either the House of Representatives or the Senate.
What “bathtub trouble?” Well, yeah, we ought to explain that. The story is that Taft was so large — 330 pounds plus as president — that he once got stuck in a White House bathtub, and consequently had a much larger tub installed there. Is the story accurate?
CAPE MAY, N.J., June 18 [1915]. — Ex-President Taft, who came here yesterday as the guest of the Pennsylvania Bankers’ Association, took a bath in his apartments in the Hotel Cape May. He failed properly to consider the size of the average seashore hotel bathtub, however, with the result that when he got into the tub the water overflowed and trickled down upon the heads of the guests in the dining room.
And the White House? Here’s a photo of the specially-made Taft bathtub just before its installation at the White House, about 1911:
Four men show the size of President Tafts bathtub, 1911 - White House Museum.org photo
As evidence that William Howard Taft was the biggest man to serve as President of the United States, the exhibit presents the 1909 order for a bathtub and other items specially ordered to accommodate Taft’s 300-plus-pound frame. In January 1909, two months after being elected President (he was inaugurated on March 4, 1909), Taft boarded the USS North Carolina to set sail to inspect the Panama Canal construction zone. The ship was outfitted specially for him. The captain ordered the following items: “1 brass double bedstead of extra length; 1 superior spring mattress, extra strong; 1 bath tub, 5 feet 5 inches in length, over rolled rim and of extra width.” Later newspaper accounts (and a photograph) revealed that the bathtub was built on an even bigger scale—that it had “pondlike dimensions . . . [it] will hold four ordinary men and is the largest ever manufactured . . . the tub is 7 feet 1 inch long, 41 inches wide and weighs a ton.”
Soon after leaving the presidency, Taft lost 70 pounds, which he maintained throughout the remainder of his life. In 1921, Taft was appointed Chief Justice of the United States, becoming the only person to hold the highest office in both the executive and judicial branches.
Spread the word; friends don't allow friends to repeat history.
Judge Sotomayor would bring more federal judicial experience to the bench than any Supreme Court justice in 100 years. Over her three-decade career, she has served in a wide variety of legal roles, including as a prosecutor, litigator, and judge.
Judge Sotomayor is a trailblazer. She was the first Latina to serve on the Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit and was the youngest member of the court when appointed to the District Court for the Southern District of New York. If confirmed, she will be the first Hispanic to sit on the U.S. Supreme Court.
While on the bench, Judge Sotomayor has consistently protected the rights of working Americans, ruling in favor of health benefits and fair wages for workers in several cases.
Judge Sotomayor has shown strong support for First Amendment rights, including in cases of religious expression and the rights to assembly and free speech.
Judge Sotomayor has a strong record on civil rights cases, ruling for plaintiffs who had been discriminated against based on disability, sex and race.
Judge Sotomayor embodies the American dream. Born to Puerto Rican parents, she grew up in a South Bronx housing project and was raised from age nine by a single mother, excelling in school and working her way to graduate summa cum laude from Princeton University and to become an editor of the Law Journal at Yale Law School.
In 1995, Judge Sotomayor “saved baseball” when she stopped the owners from illegally changing their bargaining agreement with the players, thereby ending the longest professional sports walk-out in history.
Judge Sotomayor ruled in favor of the environment in a case of protecting aquatic life in the vicinity of power plants in 2007, a decision that was overturned by the Roberts Supreme Court.
In 1992, Judge Sotomayor was confirmed by the Senate without opposition after being appointed to the bench by George H.W. Bush.
Judge Sotomayor is a widely respected legal figure, having been described as “…an outstanding colleague with a keen legal mind,” “highly qualified for any position in which wisdom, intelligence, collegiality and good character would be assets,” and “a role model of aspiration, discipline, commitment, intellectual prowess and integrity.”
3. Cases: Archie v. Grand Cent. Partnership, 997 F. Supp. 504 (S.D.N.Y. 1998) and Marcella v. Capital Dist. Physicians’ Health Plan, Inc., 293 F.3d 42 (2d Cir. 2002).
4. Cases: Flamer v. White Plains, 841 F. Supp. 1365 (S.D.N.Y. 1993), Ford v. McGinnis, 352 F.3d 382 (2d Cir. 2003), and Campos v. Coughlin, 854 F. Supp. 194 (S.D.N.Y. 1994).
5b. Cases: Bartlett v. N.Y. State Board, 970 F. Supp. 1094 (S.D.N.Y. 1997), Greenbaum v. Svenska Hendelsbanken, 67 F.Supp.2d 228 (S.D.N.Y. 1999), Raniola v. Bratton, 243 F.3d 610 (2d Cir. 2001), and Gant v. Wallingford Board of Education, 195 F.3d 134 (2d Cir. 1999).
10c. Honorary Degree Citation, Pace University School of Law, 2003 Commencement.
Judge Sotomayor is a widely respected legal figure, having been described as “…an outstanding colleague with a keen legal mind,” “highly qualified for any position in which wisdom, intelligence, collegiality and good character would be assets,” and “a role model of aspiration, discipline, commitment, intellectual prowess and integrity.”ere are the sources for the ten statements:
Spread the word; friends don't allow friends to repeat history.
Elena Kagan took the oath of office to be the nation’s top lawyer, the Solicitor General, last Friday. The Associated Press is running a story (here from the Sacramento Bee) on whether this is a tryout for the Supreme Court itself, “Obama could make top high court lawyer a justice.” (Isn’t that a tortured headline?)
Three justices may want to retire soon: Justice John Paul Stevens is 88 years old. Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg is 76, and back on the court in record time after surgery for pancreatic cancer. Justice David Souter is third oldest, at 69.
So, this AP story could be a good article for use in government classes. Consider these questions:
Is Solicitor General a stepping stone to the Supreme Court’s bench?
What is the role of the Solicitor General?
How important is Supreme Court experience, or experience in other courtrooms, to success in arguing before the Supreme Court?
What are some of the top cases before the Supreme Court this term, and what are the potential and likely results of these appeals?
What is the role of the U.S. Senate in selection of federal judges, and especially in the selection of Supreme Court justices?
Kagan clerked for Justice Thurgood Marshall. What do law clerks do for justices? What does her clerking suggest for Kagan’s advocacy of Voting Rights Act issues, since she worked with Justice Thurgood Marshall?
I’ve managed to get myself banned at that last website. I asked the author to make a case, to provide the evidence and arguments against Obama’s eligibility. Such an appearance of gravity and Newtonian physics scares the bejeebers out of these groups.
One of the most intrigueing questions now: What will the Bergites and Dononfrions do after inauguration?Are there enough of them that Pfizer is working on a treatment, or cure?
Spread the word; friends don't allow friends to repeat history.
Because we know Obama has a U.S. passport, we can be quite sure his draft status was verified before it was issued — which puts to bed any issue about his registering for the draft (which he wouldn’t have been required to do in any case until 1980 — draft registration had been suspended in 1973 until the Afghanistan/Soviet crisis).
Obama’s a lawyer; the National Conference of Bar Examiners, or the Illinois Bar, would have checked on any problems that surfaced when verifying his fitness to practice law.
Obama was a U.S. senator; as a matter of course, the FBI does a background check on every U.S. senator to verify they may view top secret material. Security clearances are absolutely necessary for members of the Intelligence Oversight Committee, the Foreign Relations Committee, and the Armed Services Committee. Obama was a member of the Foreign Relations Committee, chairing the subcommittee that deals with U.S. relations with NATO — a post that requires top secret clearances.
Obama has been getting the full national security briefing every day that the president gets; CIA and Homeland Security would have to verify his top secret clearances, and then some. There is absolutely no indication that this top, top check was not carried out.
Perhaps most important, Obama posted an image of his birth certificate on-line in June; experts who checked the actual document verify it is real, and therefore authoritative.
Each of these six circumstances creates a rebuttable presumption that Obama is a citizen, and a natural born citizen under the somewhat ambiguous requirements of Article II of the Constitution. In order to make a case that Obama is ineligible, contestants would need to make a strong showing, with clear evidence, to rebut the presumptions created by by these official actions.
Professional poker player Leo Donofrio has made no such evidentiary showing, anywhere, at any time. Nor has any other Obama critic presented any evidence to overcome any of these six presumptions.
Cort Wrotnowski alleged that Obama’s father’s British citizenship made Obama’s birth citizenship different from “natural born” citizenship as the Constitution says the president must be.
There was no comment on the case from the Court, just a note that the appeal was not taken.
Tinfoil hat concessionaires on Capitol Hill were disappointed.
In other news, electors are meeting today to elect Obama president.
Spread the word; friends don't allow friends to repeat history.
Responsible media, generally called in denigrating styel “mainstream media” by many of our more nutty nut cases, have held off in commenting on the Supreme Court’s position on the case against Obama’s election discussed in conference last Friday, December 5.
Generally the orders coming out of Friday conferences at the Supreme Court issue the following Monday. So, for Obama critics and dedicated Obama haters, there is still some hope that the Supreme Court might answer part of their wildest dreams. But it doesn’t look good for them.
[Saturday night update: Donofrio’s blog acknowledges the orders don’t include his case. He’s holding out for Monday. Technically, he’s right — the orders usually would issue Monday. But if Friday’s orders issued from Friday’s conference, it doesn’t speak well of the chances that an age discrimination case took precedence over a case challenging the election still in process. We won’t know for sure, until Monday.]
(writ of certiorari: [Law Latin “to be more fully informed”] An extraordinary writ issued by an appellate court, at its discretion, directing a lower court to deliver the record in the case for review. ♦ The U.S. Supreme Court uses certiorari to review most of the cases it decides to hear.) Black’s Law Dictionary, 7th ed. (Bryan Garner, ed.)
Assuming this listing to be accurate, the shotgun arguments against Obama’s eligibility appear to be dead issues. The electoral college balloting occurs on December 15 in 50 state capitals and the District of Columbia.
Short of a mass exodus of Obama electors in states where law does not bind them to vote as they pledged to vote, Obama’s selection by the electoral college appears to be fait accompli.
For thousands of people addicted to the tubes of the internet, this will pose interesting problems as to what they can whine about for the next several weeks.
In a conference today [December 5, 2008] the Supreme Court will reconsider together whether to take on a suit challenging the eligibility of Barack Obama to be president of the United States under a sometimes-arcane section of Article II of the Constitution.
Is Barack Obama a “natural born” citizen of the U.S.?
In the building where “Equal Justice Under Law” is engraved high over the front door, poker-player Leo Donofrio’s challenge will be examined to see whether at least four of the nine justices of the Court think he has enough of a case to actually merit a hearing. Justice David Souter rejected Donofrio’s case earlier, so this is a hail-Mary play on the part of Obama’s opponents.
Equal Justice Under Law, the West Pediment of the U.S. Supreme court. AAPF image
The Court takes seriously the principle engraved over the door, however. This is the same Court that ruled earlier this year an accused terrorist and all-around bad guy held at Guantanamo Bay has the right to a writ of habeas corpus over the objections of the Most Power Man in the World, U.S. President George W. Bush. The humble, gritty, or even unsavory history of litigants does not limit their rights under the law.
Leo Donofrio in his usual office. Leo Donofrio image
So the question is, what sort of case does Donofrio have against Obama’s eligibility?
Would Justice Clarence Thomas have agreed to bring this case to the conference if it doesn’t have a chance to succeed?
I’ve not lunched with Thomas in more than two decades, so I can’t speak with any inside knowledge. Historically, the Court, and indeed all the federal courts, have agreed to examine cases like this often simply to provide an authoritative close to the issue. In this case, the outright hysteria of the anti-Obama partisans suggests the issue should be put to bed if possible.
Under usual Court procedures, we won’t learn the results of the conference until Monday. I would not be surprised if the results are announced today, just to promote the settling of the issue.
Does Donofrio have a case?
I don’t see a case. It’s clear that Obama is a U.S. citizen now. Donofrio’s argument is rather strained, and sexist. He claims that Obama’s father having been a British subject in 1961 (Kenya was not yet independent), Obama had dual citizenship at birth — and, further, Donofrio alleges, this dual citizenship trumps both Obama’s birth on U.S. soil (which should be dispositive) AND Obama’s mother’s U.S. citizenship, conferring a special status that doesn’t meet the intentions of the framers of the Constitution.
Donofrio’s claim is odd in that it would grant a lesser-status to children of legal immigrants than is allowed by law to children of illegal immigrants, or temporary visitors. It also is bizarre, to me, in the way it dismisses Obama’s mother’s existence as a factor in Obama’s citizenship status — and while equal rights for women were not wholly obtained in 1961, no one has successfully argued that the citizenship of the father trumps that of the mother in citizenship cases.
Donofrio is arguing that Obama’s dual citizenship at birth disqualifies him from holding the presidency, technically, in a very narrow reading — though Obama would have absolutely every other right of a natural born citizen.
A couple of observations:
First, this is not an easy issue to litigate. Standing is the easiest way for a federal court to avoid a decision — what harm can a citizen claim from letting Obama be president? It’s difficult to find an injury even were Donofrio’s claims valid. No blood, no foul. No injury, no standing to sue. It is upon this basis that most of the cases against Obama’s eligibility have been tossed out, as Donofrio’s has been tossed, twice already.
Second, it is unclear what entity enforces the eligibility clause of the Constitution, or indeed, whether any entity can. For most of the summer Obama’s critics were pressuring the Federal Election Commission (FEC) to do something, even though the FEC lacks a quorum of members to do anything. More to the point, there is nothing in any law that confers on the FEC the function of checking the citizenship status of any candidate. Sometime in October they finally figured out that state secretaries of state might have a role, since they set up the ballots in each state.
I admit I thought that, until I reflected on the issue of the electoral college. In U.S. presidential elections, voters do not vote directly for president and vice president. Instead, we vote to elect people who will be the electors who decide — electors of the electoral college. The history of this institution can be found elsewhere. For the sake of these suits, however, it means that the secretaries of state have no role at all in the eligibility of the candidates. They rule on the eligibility of the electors, which is an entirely different kettle of fish. Some states even list the electors on the ballot.
But in any case, it means Donofrio is suing the wrong entity, even if we can’t tell him what the correct entity is.
Third and most important, Donofrio is asking for U.S. citizenship law to be overturned in a most inconvenient time and place. Dual citizenship is a bar to very little in American life. There is an assumption that people who hold that status are fully American citizens, absent a showing of contrary facts. There are no contrary facts in evidence from Donofrio, nor from anyone else, despite promises of the revelation of conspiracies.
In short, Donofrio is arguing that there is, somewhere, somehow, some information that Barack Obama is not the shining patriot his life story reveals. Donofrio doesn’t know what that information is, or where it might be found, but he thinks maybe the State of Hawaii is complicit in a conspiracy to hide this information, which is hidden on the hand-written records of Obama’s birth in 1961. You might think Donofrio has watched “National Treasure” a few too many times, and whether it’s that movie or some other source, you’d be right — paranoid suspicions of conspiracy are not the stuff good court cases are made of.
The dozen or more cases against Obama’s eligibility all suffer from this astounding, dramatic lack of evidence. Is there an affidavit from someone who alleges that Obama’s citizenship should be called into question? If so, they’ve not been presented to any court. (Obama tormentor Corsi claims to have interviewed Obama’s Kenyan grandmother, and he alleges she said through an interpreter that Obama was born in Kenya; oddly, he didn’t bother to get an affidavit from the woman, nor from anyone else — and others who listen to the tape think she thought Corsi was asking about the birth of her son, not grandson. This is not solid evidence.)
This is not an issue solely for the hysterical. Lawyers and scholars have looked at the issue through the years, and intensely this year, and arrived at the conclusion that Obama is perfectly eligible for the presidency.
BD-10A high frequency generator tester leak detector, from Electro-Technic Products. “BD10ASV OUTPUT: 10,000-50,000 volts at frequency of approx. 1/2 megahertz. Power 230 V, with a momentary ON/OFF switch”
As described at the company’s website:
Model BD-10A is the standard tester
Model BD-10AS features a momentary ON/OFF switch
OUTPUT: 10,000-50,000 volts at frequency of approx. 1/2 megahertz
Generally, this tester should not produce serious injury, even when misapplied. Standard middle school lab safety rules would suggest that it should never be used to “test” a human for leaks. Such voltages are designed to produce sparks. Sparks do not always behave as one expects, or hopes. High voltages may make cool looking sparks, but the effects of high voltage jolts differ from person to person. It may be harmful.
Cuzelis said he is not aware of anyone seriously hurt with the device and said that his company has never been sued for injuries.
What sort of lab safety rules did Freshwater have for other experiments?
If you discovered your child’s science teacher had this device, designed to produce high-voltage sparks to highlight holes in rubber and plastic liners of tanks, would you be concerned? If you know what should go on in a science class, you’d know there is probably little use for such a device in a classroom. It’s been described as a Tesla coil.
Tesla coils of extremely small voltages can be safe. They should be safe. But one occasionally finds a safety warning, such as this generalized note at Wikipedia:
Even lower power vacuum tube or solid state Tesla Coils can deliver RF currents that are capable of causing temporary internal tissue, nerve, or joint damage through Joule heating. In addition, an RF arc can carbonize flesh, causing a painful and dangerous bone-deep RF burn that may take months to heal. Because of these risks, knowledgeable experimenters avoid contact with streamers from all but the smallest systems. Professionals usually use other means of protection such as a Faraday cage or a chain mail suit to prevent dangerous currents from entering their body.
Freshwater was using a solid state Tesla coil, if I understand the news articles correctly. Knowing that these sparks can cause deep tissue and bone damage in extreme cases, I suspect that I would not allow students to experience shocks as a normal course of a science classroom, especially from an industrial device not designed with multiple safety escapes built in.
Freshwater had been zapping students for years.
Here is a classic photo of what a Tesla coil does, a much larger coil than that used by John Freshwater, and a photo not from any classroom; from Mega Volt:
Tesla coil in action, from Mike Tedesco
There is nothing in the Ohio science standards to suggest regular use of a Tesla coil in contact with students performs any educational function.
I offer this background to suggest that the normal classroom procedures designed to ensure the safety of students were not well enforced in Freshwater’s classrooms, nor was there adequate attention paid to the material that should have been taught in the class.
The teacher, John Freshwater, has been dismissed by his local school board. Freshwater supporters argue that this is a case of religious discrimination, because Freshwater kept a Bible on his desk.
Among the complaints are that he burned crosses onto the arms of students with the high-voltage leak detector shown above. This gives an entirely new and ironic meaning to the phrase “cross to bear.”
Amazingly, this misuse of an electrical device may not be the most controversial point. While you and I may think this physical abuse goes beyond the pale, Freshwater has defenders who claim he was just trying to instill Biblical morality in the kids, as if that would excuse any of these actions. Over at Cafe Philos, I’ve been trying to explain just why it is that Freshwater does not have a First Amendment right to teach religion in his science class. There is another commenter with the handle “Atheist” who acts for all the world like a sock puppet for anti-First Amendment forces, i.e., not exactly defending a rational atheist position.
Below the fold I reproduce one of my answers to questions Atheist posed. More resources at the end.
The issue in Baze v. Rees is whether lethal injection is cruel and unusual punishment, and therefore prohibited under the 8th Amendment to the Constitution. Plaintiffs Thomas Baze and Thomas K. Bowling argue that there is an impermissible chance of pain from the execution process.
Two lower courts ruled against the plaintiffs. In a rather surprise move, the Supreme Court granted a writ of certiorari on September 25 to hear the case, which some interpret as the Court’s willingness to review the cruel and unusual argument in the light of a majority of the states now refusing to use the death penalty, while others think it means the more conservative Roberts Court is willing to quash death penalty appeals with a ruling that injection is not cruel and unusual.
This highlights the 8th Amendment. Discussion of this topic may help students cement their knowledge of the amendment and Bill of Rights. News on this case generally highlights court procedures, procedures, legal and constitutional principles that students in government classes need to understand.
News on the arguments in this case should go into teacher scrapbooks for later classroom exercises. Teachers may want to note that the decision will come down before the Court adjourns in June, but it may come down before the end of the school year. Teachers may want to have students review information about the case and make predictions, which predictions can be checked with the decision issues.
LII operates off of contributions. I usually give $10 or so when I think of it — these resources are provided free. You should be using at least $10 worth of stuff in your classrooms — look for the donation link, and feel free to use it in the support of excellent legal library materials provided free of cost to teachers and students.
In 1940, Mr. Hill won his first civil rights case in Virginia, one that required equal pay for black and white teachers. Eight years later, he was the first black elected to the Richmond City Council since Reconstruction.
A lawsuit argued by Mr. Hill in 1951 on behalf of students protesting deplorable conditions at their high school for blacks in Farmville became one of five cases decided under Brown.
That case from Farmville offers students a more personal view of their own power in life. The case resulted from a student-led demonstration at Moton High School in Farmville. Moton was an all-black school, with facilities amazingly inferior to the new white high school in Farmville — no indoor plumbing, for example. While the Virginia NAACP failed at several similar cases earlier, and while the organization had a policy of taking no more school desegregation cases, the students’ earnestness and sincerity swayed Oliver Hill to try one more time:
On May 23, 1951, a NAACP lawyer filed suit in the federal district court in Richmond, VA, on behalf of 117 Moton High School, Prince Edward County, VA, students and their parents. The first plaintiff listed was Dorothy Davis, a 14-year old ninth grader; the case was titled Dorothy E. Davis, et al. v. County School Board of Prince Edward County, Virginia, et. al. It asked that the state law requiring segregated schools in Virginia be struck down.
Davis was consolidated with four other cases, from the District of Columbia, Delaware, South Carolina, and Brown from Kansas; it was argued in 1953, but the Court deadlocked on a decision. When Chief Justice Arthur Vinson died and was replaced by the (hoped-to-be) conservative Chief Justice Earl Warren, Warren got the Court to re-hear the case. Because he thought it was such an important case in education, Warren worked to get a solid majority. The Court which was deadlocked late in 1953, in May 1954 issued the Brown decision unanimously, overturning the separate-but-equal rule from Plessy v. Ferguson (1896)(167 U.S. 537).
Brown was the big boulder whose rolling off the hill of segregation gave power to the civil rights movement of the 1950s and 1960s. That decision and the horrible murder of Emmett Till in Mississippi in the summer of 1955 inspired civil rights worker Rosa Parks to take a stand, and take a seat for human rights on a Montgomery, Alabama city bus in December of 1955, which led to the 1956 Montgomery Bus Boycott, led by the new preacher in town, a young man named Martin Luther King, Jr. When the Supreme Court again chose civil rights over segregation in the bus case, the wake of the great ship of history clearly showed a change in course.
Oliver Hill was there, one of the navigators of that ship of history.
Spread the word; friends don't allow friends to repeat history.
Who served the shortest term as a justice on the U.S. Supreme Court?
There is a clue in this famous cartoon by Thomas Nast (okay — the cartoon really gives it away, doesn’t it?):
Cartoon depicting Democrats Thomas Nast, Live Jackass kicking a Dead Lion. Edwin Stanton was fired as Secretary of War by President Andrew Johnson, contrary to the Tenure of Office Act, and that action brought on the impeachment and trial of Johnson (who was acquitted by one vote). Later, President U. S. Grant appointed the financially and health ailing Stanton to the Supreme Court. Stanton was confirmed, but went home and died that night, December 24. Stanton’s opponents continued to try to smear him. Nast’s cartoon was the result. Harper’s Bazaar, January 15, 1870
Or, until that account is unsuspended by the forces supporting Donald Trump: Follow @FillmoreWhite, the account of the Millard Fillmore White House Library
We've been soaking in the Bathtub for several months, long enough that some of the links we've used have gone to the Great Internet in the Sky.
If you find a dead link, please leave a comment to that post, and tell us what link has expired.
Thanks!
Retired teacher of law, economics, history, AP government, psychology and science. Former speechwriter, press guy and legislative aide in U.S. Senate. Former Department of Education. Former airline real estate, telecom towers, Big 6 (that old!) consultant. Lab and field research in air pollution control.
My blog, Millard Fillmore's Bathtub, is a continuing experiment to test how to use blogs to improve and speed up learning processes for students, perhaps by making some of the courses actually interesting. It is a blog for teachers, to see if we can use blogs. It is for people interested in social studies and social studies education, to see if we can learn to get it right. It's a blog for science fans, to promote good science and good science policy. It's a blog for people interested in good government and how to achieve it.
BS in Mass Communication, University of Utah
Graduate study in Rhetoric and Speech Communication, University of Arizona
JD from the National Law Center, George Washington University
Posted by Ed Darrell 
Millard Fillmore's Bathtub 