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2009 January

 

This seems more about Barack Obama winning the presidency and the Republican Party implosion than it does about the GOP making racial progress; nevertheless, we must discuss the elephant in the room.  The GOP has elected Michael Steele to lead them during this challenging times.  He is the first African American to hold the post and can probably double the number of blacks attending the 2012 convention just by bringing his family along.  Look for a lot of blackbiting.  From the NYTimes:

 

[Steele] is likely to be, at least until the presidential race starts in two years, at the leading edge of his party as it makes its case against Mr. Obama.

Indeed, many Republicans said they were drawn to Mr. Steele because of his feisty public presence and television skills, and Mr. Steele made clear, from the moment he accepted the position after six rounds of voting that took up most of an afternoon, that he would move aggressively to take on the Democrats.

“It’s time for something completely different, and we’re going to bring it to them,” Mr. Steele said. “We’re going to bring this party to every corner, to every boardroom, to every neighborhood, to every community. And we’re going to say to friend and foe alike: ‘We want you to be a part of us. We want you to be with us, and for those of you who are going to obstruct, get ready to be knocked over.’ ”

Offering a hint of the tone he would take as his party’s spokesman, Mr. Steele said the Republican Party had been unfairly caricatured by Democrats “and the media” as racist and insensitive to the needs of ordinary Americans.

Joshua DuBois was settling into his first year at GULC when he opted to leave law school in order to campaign for then Senator Obama.  DuBois, pentecostal preacher, says that God lead him to find a way to merge his passion for ministry and public service.  According to the NYTimes, President Obama plans to name the 26-year-old to head the office of faith-based initiatives.  See, had you used God as your compass rather than having a 30 year relationship with student loan creditors, you too could be a friend of President Obama who had this to say about DuBois:

“Josh is a great friend and has really led the way for Democrats in terms of faith outreach,” Sen. Obama said in an email. “The grassroots conversations we’ve held across the country, our landmark evangelical meetings…are helping to change our nation, person by person.” - WSJ

From the BostonGlobe:

DuBois graduated cum laude from BU in 2003 with a bachelor’s degree in political science. From BU, he went to Princeton’s Woodrow Wilson School of Public and National Affairs, where he earned a master’s degree in public affairs in 2005. He then enrolled in the part-time program at Georgetown University Law School, but he left for the campaign.

DuBois got his feet wet working for Reps. Holt and Rangel, but all the while, he had his eyes fixed on Team Obama.

DuBois decided he wanted to work for Obama, then a candidate for the US Senate. He wrote to Obama’s campaign manager and got a form rejection. After Obama arrived in Washington, DuBois twice drove to his office but failed to get a job interview. After a third appeal, Obama hired him as a Senate aide. Part of his job was addressing faith issues.

 

We’ve reported before on the bright future that awaits SCOTUS clerks. Well, Danielle Gray’s star is on the rise.  A former clerk for Justice Stephen Breyer, Danielle took a leave of absence from Skadden to be Deputy National Policy Director for the Obama campaign.  Now she’s headed to the White House.  TheNewsReview has a great profile on Gray.

 

Here are some tidbits from UnderneathTheirRobes:

(a) after clerking for Big Pimpin’ Feeder Judge Merrick Garland, Danielle Gray worked on the policy staff of Barack Obama’s Senate campaign, then joined the Washington office of O’Melveny & Myers (her current place of employment);
(b) originally from Long Island, she went down south to Duke for college;
(c) not surprisingly, she is “an ardentBlue Devils fan,” who “adores J.J. Redickand most of all Coach K”;
(d) “she performed superbly in a 1L Ames [moot court] competition against two current members of the Elect, Michael Gottlieb and [Dorothy] Hien Tran (who were also outstanding, and who are now Danielle’s good friends)”;
(e) Danielle “came up with an incisive interpretation of Shaw v. Reno during a Law of Democracy class at Harvard Law School that was thereafter known as the ‘Gray Thesis’ (I’m not positive, but the Gray Thesis may have shown up on the exam)”;
(f) she was one of the three primary authors of the Harvard BLSA (Black Law Students Association) amicus brief in Grutter v. Bollinger;
(g) she was voted “most likely to be a Supreme Court justice” by the HLS class of 2003 (the honor won by future Stevens clerk Sam Spital in 2004);
(h) she has “a keen sense of humor”; and
(i) she is “an all-around delightful person,” “one of the most charming people you’ll ever meet” — “[i]f you don’t like Danielle, you are per se a bad person!”

OBABL searched high and low for a picture of Jason Green.  Though we were unable to find one, the facts we picked up–raised in the affluent black DC suburb of Prince George’s County, the son of a minister, his ease with the audience at an A.M.E. church–give us confidence that Green is indeed a brother.  A profile we found on Green suggests either Green is a genius or Yale isn’t as tough as one might think.  While attending YLS, the campaigner headed religious outreach efforts in PG County for now-Maryland Gov. O’Malley then spent his 3rd year mailing his law exams back to Yale from the Obama campaign trail.  Way to get your hustle on, son.  From LasVegasSun:

At First African Methodist Episcopal Church in North Las Vegas on Sunday, Green, in a conservative blue suit, grooved to the fast, virtuosic performance of the choir. Then when the Rev. Ralph Williamson introduced him and gave a taste of his bio, the crowd nodded their heads in deep approval. He stood poised in a front pew.

“Hello, church,” he said, which is the proper greeting at A.M.E.

“You know, these are turbulent times. We are in the midst of an escalating war. Economic reports show that we aren’t producing jobs at the rate we should. More than 47 million Americans don’t have health care. And here in our community children are senselessly shooting one another. And yet, despite these trials and tribulations, I know that we are on the precipice of great things - that we are on the verge of triumph. My friends, I know that we, as a people of faith, can visualize a brighter day. When others see turmoil we see an opportunity to uplift; when others see conflict we find synthesis; and when others look down we stand up!”

The crowd responded: “That’s right.”

“All the great social movements of American history began in the church - from the banning of the scourge of slavery from our shores to the enfranchisement of women to the civil rights movement.”

Mmmhmmm, said the crowd.

If Obama himself had been there, it’s not clear he would have won any more caucus votes than 26-year-old Green did.

This post comes to us via a tipster.  Connecticut Superior Court Judge E. Curtissa Cofield was arrested back in October on suspicion of drunk driving.  From the Courant:

About 10:45 p.m. on Oct. 9, Cofield, 60, was driving through a highway construction zone on Route 2 in Glastonbury when her car sideswiped a parked state police cruiser occupied by Trooper Michael Kowal. Prosecutor John Whalen said that the judge’s eyes were bloodshot and that she smelled of alcohol. Urine samples showed her blood alcohol content was 0.16 percent at 1 a.m. on Oct. 10 and 0.17 percent at 2:04 a.m., he said — twice the legal limit of 0.08 percent.

But that’s not the saddest part of this tale.  Just released video shows Judge Cofield going on a N-word rampage.

Here are some of her greatest hits:

Referring to the black police officers she asks, “Which one, the head n—– in charge? … Washington. OK. That’s H-N-I-G….”

Hearing that, Cofield interjects: “Oh, no. We don’t. We’re ghetto Negroes. We don’t have Triple-A.”

Earlier, when asked if she was injured, Cofield replied: “Yeah, I am. I’m humiliated by your f—–g attitude.”

Asked if she was ill, Cofield replied, “I’m sick of being treated like a freaking Negro from the ‘hood,” and added: “Write it down, write it. Did you hear what I just said?”

Asked what her illness was, Cofield said: “Negro-itis.”

“Do you need to take any medication now?” Washington asked.

“Yeah, I need to take anti-Negro, ummm …”

When he asked what she weighed, Cofield replied: “Why don’t you look at me, tell what you think?”

Tax Law Professor and TaxProf blogger, Paul Caron has compiled recent articles and conference lectures that question the judgement of students who spend $120,000 for an education that provides them with only a 10% chance of getting a return on their investment.  Some are now starting to judge the institutions that deceitfully recruit students to do so.

Some highlights:

Forbes:  The Great College Hoax

By the time they graduated [from law school] in 1995, the couple was $194,000 in debt. They eventually married and each landed a six-figure job. Yet even with Kellum moonlighting, they had to scrounge to come up with $145,000 in loan payments. With interest accruing at up to 12% a year, that whittled away only $21,000 in principal. Their remaining bill: $173,000 and counting.

Kellum and Coultas divorced last year. Each cites their struggle with law school debt as a major source of stress on their marriage. “Two people with this much debt just shouldn’t be together,” Kellum says.

AALS Committee on Research Program (Jan. 9, 2009), Citations, SSRN Downloads, U.S. News, Carnegie, Bar Passage, Careers: Competing Methods of Assessing Law Schools (podcast):

Bill Henderson (Indiana):

• 25:30: “Employment outcomes do not turn on your U.S. News ranking.”
• 25:55:  At 50 law schools, 20% of the students are either unemployed, flunked out, or are unknown, yet the ABA and LSAC disavow the use of data to rank law schools.

Richard Matasar (Dean, New York Law School):

• 1:21:20:  “We should be ashamed of ourselves.  We own our students’ outcomes. We took them. We took their money. We live on their money to pay to come to San Diego. And if they don’t have a good outcome in life, we’re exploiting them. 

Meanwhile, Slate offers some advice on how to avoid the Law-School Debt Trap.

NYTimes features, “Obama’s People,” but OBABL told you first. OBABL Posse List

Richard Parsons probably wasn’t feeling a salary freeze in an Obama Administration. He opts instead for Chairman of Citigroup. WSJ

Eric Holder still can’t exhale. TheRoot

Mayor Fenty and DC play staring roles in the inauguration. WaPo

Hill Harper can’t stop talking about President Obama and the inauguration. Perfspot

From now on black tie parties will have a fair share of black lawyers. WaPo 

 

This witty “courtoon” was provided to us by David Mills.  Check out his daily legal cartoons at Courtoons.

Martin Luther King, Jr. Day Edition

 

 

 

Welcome to the Martin Luther King, Jr. Day Edition of Blawg Review. OBABL is honored to be your host. For those of you visiting OBABL for the first time, welcome. We’re casual here, so feel free to take your shoes off and air out your ideas. We’re also family, so rather than polite conversation, brace yourself for some true talk. We are sometimes controversial, often snarky, and always relevant.We hope you have a good time and invite you to visit again.

As for our faithful readers, who may not be familiar with Blawg Review, allow me to turn you on to something really cool. Blawg Review is a weekly “Carnival” of law blogs. Each week Blawg Review’s editor picks a different blawg to host. Bloggers and fans of the Carnival send in blog posts for inclusion, and the Editor forwards the posts to the upcoming host, who combines those posts with posts of his or her choosing to create the Review. (Information about next Monday’s host is at the end of this post.)

Now, let’s get this party started! This years MLK Day Blawg Review theme is Dream Realized. We’ll begin with companion clips from the March on Washington and The Obama Inaugural Celebration at the Lincoln Memorial. Interestingly, the “I have a dream” riff from Dr. King’s 1963 speech was not an original component, but rather a general hook that he incorporated into many of his sermons. It has been said that the gospel singer, Mahalia Jackson, standing behind him on the stage urged, “Tell ‘em you have a dream.”

Dr. King would be proud of Mr. Obama for many reasons, among them, the President-elect’s oratory skills. Over at The Volokh Conspiracy, David Post, is hoping that Obama’s Inauguration speech is a blockbuster.

 …I cannot for the life of me remember a single inaugural address since Kennedy’s — and Kennedy’s, whatever else went wrong with his presidency (and plenty did), was a speech that nobody who heard it, live or on TV, would ever forget. Nothing makes me happier about Obama’s election than the fact that he has, single-handedly, brought serious oratory, and serious concern for our beloved English language, back into politics, from whence it has been missing for a long, long time.

The election of President-elect Barack Obama is only one of the ways in which Dr. King’s dream is becoming a reality. Here are some other examples.

I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.

Last year Above the Law held a reality blogging competition, in which readers selected ATL’s first ever black editor, Elie Mystal. We tip our hat to the ATL’s founding editor, David Lat, opted to allow his readers to decide their next editor, rather than simply tapping a friend (or frenemy) the way governors do.

New York’s governor, David Patterson, is catching heat for seeming to favor appointing Caroline Kennedy to replace Sen. Hillary Clinton. That Gov. Patterson is black and Kennedy a member of a political dynasty only adds to the drama.

George over at Employment Blawg has some interesting things to say about the heretofore wife, author and mother, Caroline Kennedy Schlossberg and her midlife crisis quest for Hillary Clinton’s senate seat. (And, yes, George, we must agree with your wife. You do seem a bit obsessed).

In a section called, “So What About Her Qualifications for the Senate Job?” George probes Sweet Caroline:

Amongst the millions of other Americans who remember Caroline as a little girl in such tragic circumstances, there is probably much good will and affection for her after all these decades. But that’s not a justification for handing her the job, is it?
Let’s look at her resume highlights (per wikipedia):
Radcliffe, A.B., 1979
Columbia Law, J.D., 1988 (consistently ranked among the top three U.S. law schools for academic reputation; among the most highly selective)
Mother of three children, currently 20, 18, and 15 years old
Commission on Presidential Debates, board of directors
NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, board of directors
Kennedy Library Foundation, President
Harvard Institute of Politics, adviser
American Ballet Theatre, honorary chairman
Coauthor, In Our Defense: The Bill of Rights In Action (1991), The Right to Privacy (1995)
So … impressive credentials in many respects; but not a close fit with conventional qualifications for a Senate seat, given the glaring absence of prior political office of any kind.

Illinois politics continues to dwarf that of New York, in spite of the Spitzer sex scandal. Thanks to the workings of a rogue impeached governor, Illinois has its third black Senator in two decades. Earlier this month, Michael Dorf had an interesting take on what the court would do if the Senate refused to seat Roland Burris.

There are reasons of etiquette and separation of powers why a court that is willing to declare Burris a Senator might nonetheless not go so far as to order that he be seated. Still, for my money, a Court that was willing to end the post-election Presidential contest in 2000 notwithstanding the Constitution’s pretty demonstrable commitment of the matter to Congress would likely be willing to order the Senate to seat Burris given that Powell expressly holds that the Constitution does not commit to Congress the right to make judgments beyond determining the qualifications spelled out in the text.

Some have suggested that Mr. Obama’s elevation to the most powerful man in the world ushers in the Post Racial era. History will judge whether this is indeed the beginning of such an evolution. Regardless, there is still work to do now.

The cell phone recordings of an Oakland police officer shooting a facedown-unarmed black man was incredibly disturbing; however, there is one constructive lesson to be taken from it according to TalkLeft’s The Citizen Witness As Video Journalist

After reading this, I fiddled around with my cell phone until I learned how to use the video camera. “The videotaped shooting death of Oscar Grant by a BART police officer on New Year’s Day marks how far technology has advanced since the 1991 videotaped beating of Rodney King. The cell phone video recorded by BART rider Katrina Vargas shows that Grant was unarmed, and that he apparently was not acting in a manner that would compel an officer to consider using a firearm. Grant’s death was recorded by several other cell phone video cameras, and may have been recorded by BART security cameras. The videos were posted immediately on the Internet, where they were seen by thousands, if not millions of people before being picked up by the Mainstream News Media.”

As Concurring Opinions  points out, immigrants continue to be treated unfairly.  From the post, Privacy’s Inegalitarian Path: Immigrants in a Post-9/11 World:

The concept of privacy is often invoked for inegalitarian purposes. For over two hundred years, a husband’s privacy and that of his household prevailed over a battered wife’s interests: wife beaters were immunized from prosecution because courts refused to look into the “home closet.” Today, immigrants increasingly fall prey to privacy intrusions. As Raquel Aldana, Anil Kalhan, and Michael Wishnie brought alive at the AALS panel on Defamation and Privacy, immigrants and noncitizens have few privacy protections in our post-9/11 environment. Raquel Aldana highlighted the various ways that privacy policies negatively impact immigrants. Private landlords, hospitals, employers, and welfare offices can demand information on an individual’s immigration and citizenship status, which can produce harassment and discrimination. The Department of Justice plans to add DNA from tens of thousands of immigrants to its CODIS database, which would remain on file permanently for immigration violators (whereas genetic profiles from arrestees could be removed from the CODIS database if they are not convicted). According to Blurring The Lines: A Profile of State and Local Policy Enforcement of Immigration Law Using the National Crime Information Center Database, 2002-2004, the FBI’s criminal history database known as NCIC now includes civil enforcement immigration records, ending a decades-long policy that NCIC only included criminal data. Because NCIC is filled with inaccurate civil immigration information, over 40% of NCIC immigration hits were false positives, leading to unecessary arrests and harassment especially of Latin American nationals.

Deliberations reviewed Clarence Darrow’s May 1936 article Esquire Magazine, “How to Pick a Jury,” and found that at least some of us seem to have moved on from believing the rigid stereotypes of old:

Sunday’s post here asked where on earth a New York prosecutor could have read, as the state claimed in a recent Second Circuit Batson case, that “that heavy-set people tend to be very sympathetic toward any defendant.” Lawyer and jury consultant Mark Stanziano wrote me wondering if Clarence Darrow might have said it. “Darrow had lots of thoughts about heavy set people, thin people, Baptists, Methodists, lots of stereotypes,” Mark wrote. “It was the way he saw the world and the people in it. Clearly, a different age, but one the prosecutor may have ‘read about.’”

Mark pointed me to an article Darrow wrote in the May 1936 issue of Esquire, called “How to Pick A Jury.” It’s set out in full as part of a Darrow site maintained by Prof. Douglas Linder of the University of Missouri-Kansas City School of Law. Overweight jurors aren’t mentioned in the article; but stereotypes definitely are.

One of the most productive things we can do to advance equality and erode stereotypes is to take Kevin O’Keefe’s advice and continue to share our differing perspectives in the blogosphere.

[I]t’s the context she offers that means a lot to the blogosphere conversation. The blogosphere would be a hell of a boring place if all we had were the people who had ‘made it’ exchanging ideas. The conversation on the blogosphere thrives because there’s the sharing of ideas, insight, and commentary from all sides.

Blawgs on Dr. King, the election and other related topics

 

 

 

From Manpower Employment Blawg:  

As we pause to reflect on Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and his profound impact on the world, here are some of his mightiest words of wisdom for us all to consider . . .

WORK:  All labor that uplifts humanity has dignity and importance and should be undertaken with painstaking excellence.
LEADERSHIP:  A genuine leader is not a searcher for consensus but a molder of consensus.
ETHICS:  Means we use must be as pure as the ends we seek.  The time is always right to do what is right.
SERVICE:  Life’s most persistent and urgent question is:  “What are you doing for others?
JUSTICE:  Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.
VALUES:  If we are to go forward, we must go back and rediscover those precious values — that all reality hinges on moral foundations and that all reality has spiritual control.
SOCIAL RESPONSIBILITY:  Every man must decide whether he will walk in the light of creative altruism or in the darkness of destructive selfishness.
CONFLICT RESOLUTION:  Man must evolve for all human conflict a method which rejects revenge, aggression and retaliation.  The foundation of such a method is love.  Love is the only force capable of transforming an enemy into a friend.
THE END OF DISCRIMINATION:  I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character.
PERSEVERANCE:  I just want to do God’s will.  And He’s allowed me to go to the mountain.  And I’ve looked over, and I’ve seen the promised land!  I may not get there with you, but I want you to know tonight that we as a people will get to the promised land.  (From Dr. King’s final speech the night before his assassination)

We’d like to give a shout out to Michael Lines over at Slaw who reported that, just in time for Monday’s holiday, Morehouse College has made available online its collection of Dr. King’s papers and books.

BlackProf, Bryan Adamson savors election day.

f/k/a Thanks you, America!

PrawfsBlawg discusses Civil Rights Legislation in the Obama Administration

Althouse shows picture of mostly white crowd shouting “USA” and “Yes We Can,” after Obama’s win. MLK dreamed that black children and white children could play together. Well, this scene is mostly white adults cheering for a black president is along the same lines.

Feminist Law Professors asks “What Will Whiteness Mean in the Obama Years?”

Ms. JD salutes the new First Lady, fellow lawyer, Michelle Obama.

Blawgs on MLK Day

Simple Justice:  MLK: It’s Over But It’s Not

A Public Defender: MLK Day doesn’t just mean another day off…

Blawgletter:  MLK asks, “How long will it take?”

What About Our Clients?:  American Signage: Bed-Stuy, Seattle and Johnstown PA

Above The Law: If you’re at work, be proud.

f/k/a: MLK & BHO: let’s make it a year, not a day, of service

 

I’ve had a wonderful time hosting Blawg Review’s MLK Day tribute.  I’m off to join millions of Americans in a day of service.  I’ll leave you with Louis Armstrong’s, “What a Wonderful World,” courtesy of Tammy over at Conflict Zen.

Blawg Review http://blawgreview.blogspot.com/ has information about next week’s host, and Instructions how to get your blawg posts reviewed in upcoming issues.

 

To commemorate MLK Day, Blawg Review has asked Yolanda Young to host Monday’s edition.  In addition to providing commentary and musings on this year’s celebration, she will include links to MLK stories from around the blawgosphere.  She’d love your help.  If you see a topic or article that you think would elevate our MLK Day experience, please submit the link using Carnival Blog’s submission page selecting “blawg review” from the top drop down menu.

Ben’s Chili Bowl just got put on!  Two moments in this video give us the tingles.  The first occurs after the cashier asks Mr. Obama if he’d like his change back, and the President-elect replies, “No.  We straight.”  The second is that soul-handshake/man-hug Obama and Mayor Fenty share before saying goodbye.

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