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Academic

Essentially Contested America

Features commentary and news involving law, legal theory, politics and culture.
By Robert Justin Lipkin

Post Frequency: 1.5/day

Last Entry: July 29, 2009 at 08:44:38

Republican ?Political Discourse,? Hate, & Violence

Posted on June 12, 2009
Check out Paul Krugman’s insightful column–”The Big Hate”–in today the NY Times here. Absurd Right Wing claims, lies, and distortions–uncontradicted by mainstream Republicans–have a way of translating into to violence.

Domestic Terrorism

Posted on June 11, 2009
The attacks on our country on September 11, 2001 dramatically alterted our nation to the threat of international terrorism. Our lawmakers responded by authorizing attacks on the country that had harbored the 9/11 terrorists, and anti-immigration measures to keep the terrorists out...

Virginia Gubernatorial Election as Bellwether

Posted on June 10, 2009
RNC Chair Michael Steele and others have suggested that Virginia’s gubernatorial election this fall will be the next test of the President Obama’s strength. However, the race is not terribly likely to offer a proxy referendum on President Obama’s agenda...

The Impoverished Character of American Political Media

Posted on June 09, 2009
I’m posting an enormously important discussion of the poverty of American media aired on the Bill Moyers’s Journal one of the more important television programs on American politics and society.I wish I was able to post the entire video. June 5, 2009 ANNOUNCER: We now return to Bill Moyers in the studio...

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When Will the Republican Attack on Civil Discourse End?

Posted on June 09, 2009
Jon Voigt has joined the Republican distillers of venom and vitriol absent facts, arguments, and reasoning. Consider: “Are we supposed to sitting and waiting, watching for the possibility of a new Holocaust? Who?s going to take the responsibility to keep America, I mean Israel, safe...

When Will American Jews Insist on Peace between Israel & Palestine?

Posted on June 08, 2009
Recently, the Israeli government announced it would not accede to President Obama’s request to stop constructing settlements on the West Bank. This refusal indicates the new Israeli government will continue its obdurate intransigence which can only be explained by a rejection of justice and peace in favor of power and domination...

The Cowardice of the Fringe Anti-Abortion Movement

Posted on June 05, 2009
Why is it that the fringe anti-abortion movement target physicians who perform abortions at the request of woman, not the woman themselves. (Of Course, I’m not advocating targeting either.) The fringe movement calls these physicians “murders, ” “butchers,” “terrorists,” and so forth...

Sotomayor and Race

Posted on June 04, 2009
Given the years of virulent racism that minorities in our country have faced throughout our history, it is a bit shocking to see right wingers like Newt Gingrich and Rush Limbaugh accuse Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor, the first Hispanic ever nominated to that Court, of being a “racist,” based solely on one remark that she made in a [...

Pringles, Potato Chips and the Law

Posted on June 03, 2009
The internet is abuzz with the latest law-and-food question: Is a Pringles potato chip a real potato chip? A British Court of Appeal has decided that the Pringles chip is close enough to a potato chip to be taxed like one. The issue is important, as it was worth in excess of $100 million to [...

Taking Responisbility for Domestic Terrorism

Posted on June 02, 2009
Rachel Maddow’s interview with Frank Schaeffer deserves wide spread dissemination and consideration. Both Maddow and Schaeffer should be commended for their courage and insight. “Rachel Maddow Show: Frank Schaeffer on How Hate Speech Leads to Violent Acts By Heather Tuesday Jun 02, 2009 10:00am DOWNLOADS: (467) [...

Why Senate Confirmation Hearings Must be Reformed

Posted on June 01, 2009
The conventional justification for nominating and confirming federal judges, especially Supreme Court Justices with left tenure, is that this process provides some form of democratic accountability by having the elected branches selecting the members of the Court...

Why Sotomayor Is a Good Choice

Posted on May 28, 2009
There are three reasons why I think Sonia Sotomayor is a good choice to be the next Justice on the United States Supreme Court. First, her nomination is historic. If confirmed, Justice Sotomayor will be the first Latina, the first woman of color, and only the third woman to serve on the United States Supreme Court [...

Sotomayor, Roberts and Empathy

Posted on May 27, 2009
As Bobby has suggested in a few posts already, empathy is an important issue that ought to be properly understood. Empathy is, as my colleague has noted, the ability to put oneself in someone else’s shoes. Empathy can come from a mindset or a set of experiences...

Judge Sonia Sotomayor is President Obama?s Pick

Posted on May 26, 2009
The moderate second circuit court of appeals judge Sonia Sotomayor has been nominated to fill Justice Souter’s seat on the United States Supreme Court. While not a truly progressive choice, Judge Sotomayor is a qualified and competent judge whose confirmation is very likely...

Is ?Empathy? a Code Word for Judicial Liberalism?

Posted on May 25, 2009
When President Obama uses the term “empathy” as a virtue any desirable Supreme Court nominee should possess, it appears to some that he’s simply preparing the public for his choice of a liberal for the Supreme Court. But this is a radically misunderstanding of the nature of empathy as well as the President’s [...

Is Obama Proposing Preventive Detention?

Posted on May 22, 2009
Preventive detention is incarcerating someone considered too dangerous to be permitted walk freely in American society. Such an individual cannot be tried either because he or she has not committed a crime or because for one reason or other they cannot be convicted in a court of law...

Consider Single Payer

Posted on May 21, 2009
After years of woeful neglect, health care reform is now thankfully at the top of the national agenda. What’s missing from President Obama’s and Congress’ consideration? A single payer health care system. This omission is a huge mistake, since it is likely that only a single payer health care system can solve our nation’s health [...

Courting No Votes on a Supreme Court Nominee

Posted on May 20, 2009
A reasonable process for choosing a Supreme Court nominee is to find the intersection of the people a president wants to appoint and the people the president believes he can get through the Senate. Given the makeup of the Senate and the unlikelihood that President Obama’s would nominate someone out of the mainstream, President Obama [...

Elite Law Schools as a Prerequisite to the Supreme Court

Posted on May 19, 2009
Should Supreme Court Justices receive their legal education from an elite law schools? What about the thousands of graduates of non-elite law schools who arguably can bring diversity to the multi-faceted questions of social policy the Supreme court decides? The real question, in my mind, is this: Is it obviously the [...

Jusitice O?Connor?s Performance in the ?Bush v. Gore? Litigation: What Empathy is Certainly Not!

Posted on May 18, 2009
Ever since President Obama mentioned the horrid E-word as reflecting for a virtue he sought in Supreme Court nominees should possess, the Right-Wing Robo-Jurisprudes have been having a field day mocking him. By giving examples of what empathy is not we might get some idea of what it is...

Will She or Won?t She? Rachel Alexandra at the Preakness

Posted on May 16, 2009
Will this talented filly beat the Kentucky Derby winner Mine that Bird? Calvin Borell, Mine That Bird’s jockey in the Derby, has jumped ship, horses, that is. He’s chosen to ride the Kentucky Oaks winner, Rachel Alexandra. This horse is his regular mount and he was aboard when she won the Oaks...

How Long Can President Obama Remain Silent on Torture?

Posted on May 15, 2009
President Obama is treading dangerously on his support from the Left given the reversal of his own position on military commissions and his failure to vigorously support prosecution of the Bush administration’s alleged war crimes involving torture...

Victory Gardens

Posted on May 14, 2009
A beloved tradition from the World War II era, Victory Gardens are being revived throughout the country. This time, people are not planting those gardens to support victory over an enemy abroad, but instead to support our neighbors at home. In the Twenty-First Century, victory gardens are not about beating Nazis, but instead about defeating [...

Prosecutorial Discretion and the Torture Memos - Part II

Posted on May 13, 2009
A few weeks ago, I wrote about prosecutorial discretion and the torture memos. No new information has been revealed about the memos. However, former Vice President Dick Cheney has continued to talk about enhanced interrogation techniques (read torture) and the good information they supposedly produced...

A Letter to President Obama from a Palestinian Doctor

Posted on May 12, 2009
I’m reprinting this poignant letter I received in a Tikkun email. Dear President Obama: In approaching the task of addressing you directly about a personal issue, I feel daunted by the abyss that separates the two of us in status and power. I am a retired public health physician, attempting to maintain a hold [...

The Judicial Priesthood & Its Appointments Ritual

Posted on May 11, 2009
The judicial appointments ritual begins. It is a ritual designed to fill the seat of an Associate Justice of the Supreme Court and it goes far beyond the simple constitutional imperative that the President must appoint and the Senate must confirm an appointment to the Supreme Court...

What?s Empathy Got To Do With It?

Posted on May 08, 2009
It’s quite astonishing that President Obama’s mention of empathy as a virtue he seeks in Supreme Court Justices has caused such a commotion. The reason for the commotion is a commitment to a conventional, however preposterous, jurisprudential paradigm, namely, that law, or rules generally, must be understood simply in terms of the text they’re written [...

The Ideal Supreme Court Nominee

Posted on May 07, 2009
As a constitutional law professor who spends so much of my time analyzing Supreme Court opinions, I cannot resist opining on what I believe to be the most important qualifications of the next Supreme Court justice. First, the qualifications which don’t matter as much to me: I would not apply any litmus test on any [...

President Obama versus the Hedge Funds

Posted on May 06, 2009
In the wake of the failure to put together a plan to help Chrysler avoid bankruptcy, the recriminations have been flying. President Obama has suggested that the hedge funds that own senior Chrysler debt killed the deal with greed. He suggested that they should have taken the deal offered by the government that would have [...

Does Liberalism Move Conservative-Appointed Justices to the Left?

Posted on May 05, 2009
There’s an interesting article at the Boston Review on the shift of conservative liberals toward the Left. Here’s a sample: When Justices William Rehnquist and Sandra Day O?Connor left the bench last year, conservatives were in an anxious mood: though pleased at the prospect of shifting the Supreme Court to the right, they were [...

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