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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

God Talk with Fish on Eagleton, Dawkins, & Hitchens

Posted on May 04, 2009
Stanley Fish “reviews,” if that’s the proper term, Terry Eagleton’s latest book ?Reason, Faith and Revolution.” Apparently, (I have not read Eagleton’s book), Eagleton attempts to defend the faith of his fathers against the attacks of such irksome atheists as Richard Dawkins and Christopher Hitchens...

Specter?s Defection & the Separation of Powers

Posted on May 01, 2009
There’s a conventional understanding of why Arlen Specter defected. Basically, he defected because the Republican Party is on the cusp of imploding. There different versions of this story, one in which Specter is a cowardly villain the other which blames the contraction of the Republican Party...

Arlen Specter and a Postpartisan Landscape

Posted on April 29, 2009
The Democrats have gone from minority status to almost filibuster-proof majority status in the Senate with blazing speed, at least in political years. The essential switch in party affiliation by Sen. Arlen Specter coupled with the anticipated eventual victory of Al Franken in Minnesota has nearly made the transformation complete...

Who Will Save the Republicans?

Posted on April 28, 2009
The Republican Party risks imploding. With perverted ideologues like Kristol, obstructionists like Boehner, delusionals like Cantor, the comatose like Bachman, and the authentic loonies like Limbaugh, the Republicans are ripe for a person adhering to conservative principles, but a person of character, integrity of principle...

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Solow on Posner & the Market Failure Crisis

Posted on April 27, 2009
Throughout the course of systemic controversies, individuals line up on different sides of a controversy and typically remain there permanently. Sometimes there are defections, but usually not of major figures on either side. It is rarely that a major intellectual figure representing the gold standard on one side of the controversy switches sides...

Of Guns and Madness: Bob Herbert?s Account of Why America Tolerates the Posionous Pathology of Guns

Posted on April 25, 2009
Check out Bob Herbert’s recent piece on gun violence. Here’s a sample: I remember writing from Chicago two years ago about the nearly three dozen public school youngsters who were shot to death in a variety of circumstances around the city over the course of just one school year...

Of Men and Nations: Obama?s Wisdom in Releasing the Torture Memos

Posted on April 24, 2009
A relatively simple moral imperative requires the righteous to criticize their own conduct and when found wanting to admit and atone for the wrongdoing. Indeed, the capacity for moral correction and growth may just be the defining feature of being a person...

Do we Need More Women on The Supreme Court?

Posted on April 23, 2009
Throughout the entire history of the United States Supreme Court, only two women, Justices Sandra Day O’Connor and Ruth Bader Ginsburg, have ever served on that institution. Since O’Connor retired and was replaced by Samuel Alito, there is only one woman on the Court...

Prosecutorial Discretion and the Torture Memos

Posted on April 22, 2009
The discussion regarding what to do with the writers of the infamous torture memoranda continues to heat up. With President Obama arguably switching his position with respect to whether those responsible for the torture policy and the legal memoranda behind it will be allowed to be prosecuted, the controversy will not end quickly...

No, ?the U.S. Doesn?t Torture!?

Posted on April 21, 2009
According to recent reports: “The CIA waterboarded two al-Qaida terror suspects a total of 266 times, according to a report that suggests the use of the torture technique was much more extensive than previously thought. . . . The documents showed waterboarding was used 183 times on Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, who admitted planning the [...

?The Wire,? American Cities, & ?Cheating the Stats?

Posted on April 20, 2009
It is absolutely impossible to understand the decline of American cities and the marginalization of the inner city without appreciating how the performance of major institutions such as the police, the educational system, and the political structure are evaluated...

My Country, Right or Wrong & American Patriotism

Posted on April 17, 2009
Will those insisting that any public criticism of the United States is disloyal cease and desist? The idea that America must always be right or that her errors be ignored is antithetical to Hamilton’s dictum that what distinguishes the United States from any other nation is “reflection and choice, not “accident and force...

Equal Access to Justice

Posted on April 16, 2009
Our current economic crisis has caused thousands of people to face unemployment, home foreclosures, evictions, bankruptcies, domestic violence and other problems. However, too many people who find themselves in legal trouble cannot afford to hire a lawyer to help them - as many as 80% in some parts of the country...

Heat Pumps and the Stimulus Package Tax Credit

Posted on April 15, 2009
A friend of mine needs a heat pump. The heat pump is old and has died. Luckily, for him, Richmond is not so cold that he had to buy a new heat pump from the first salesman who gave him an estimate. Heat pump manufacturers do not provide the kind of detailed price information that [...

The Virginia Tech Massacre & Arming the Good Guys

Posted on April 14, 2009
With the second anniversary of the Virginia Tech massacre coming up and with the current increase of gun deaths, I am reprising an article posted in April 2007 about the massacre. It’s pertinent because we are again hearing the fallacious argument that arming the good guys will prevent or decrease gun deaths because armed good [...

American Exceptionalism, Arrogance, or Are They One and the Same?

Posted on April 13, 2009
Many conservative pundits condemn those who criticize–even fairly and justly–the United States as “the blame America first crowd.” Not only is this charge generally groundless, but the charge raises an important question about the soul of America...

Sunstein on the Federalist Papers

Posted on April 10, 2009
Check out Cass Sunstein’s essay on federalism and republicanism in the March 26th issue of the New York Review of Books. Here’s a sample. To many modern readers, the Federalist Papers seem formal, musty, old, and a bit tired?a little like a national holiday that celebrates events long past but lacks any sense of struggle and [...

Ted Stevens and Prosecutorial Misconduct

Posted on April 09, 2009
The scandal surrounding the prosecution of former Senator Ted Stevens continues. The claims are fairly simple. The prosecutors in the false statements case appear to have withheld exculpatory evidence from Stevens’ defense team. The problems are not of the supposedly “technical” variety...

Sunstein?s Take on the Federalist Papers

Posted on April 08, 2009
Check out Cass Sunstein’s essay on federalism and republicanism in the March 29th issue of the New York Review of Books. Here’s a sample. To many modern readers, the Federalist Papers seem formal, musty, old, and a bit tired?a little like a national holiday that celebrates events long past but lacks any sense of struggle and [...

Political Constitutionalism v. Legal Constitutionalism

Posted on April 07, 2009
Richard Bellamy has written a new book, Political Constitutionalism: A Republic Defence of the Constitutionality of Democracy (Cambridge University Press 2007) that promises to be an interesting read. Consider the initial statement of his argument. “I shall argue that ...

Fraud & Cover-Up in the Financial-Government Complex

Posted on April 06, 2009
Bill Moyers aired an absolutely “must-see” interview with William K. Black last Friday night. The financial industry brought the economy to its knees, but how did they get away with it? With the nation wondering how to hold the bankers accountable, Bill Moyers sits down with William K...

Choosing Equality: Brown After a Half-Century

Posted on April 03, 2009
Congratulations to Professors, Robert L. Hayman, Jr. and Leland Ware on the publication of their new book Choosing Equality: Essays and Narratives on the Desegregation Experience. Choosing Equality is an excellent collection of articles celebrating the fiftieth anniversary of Brown v...

The Truth about the Surge

Posted on March 31, 2009
Since the increase in American troops in Iraq, everyone–Republican and Democrat alike–insist that the “surge” is responsible for the decrease in violence in Iraq. The truth, of course, is that violence has decreased in Iraq only as a result of the United States buying off former Sunni insurgents who are part of “the Awakening...

The Ravages of the Mexican Drug Wars

Posted on March 30, 2009
The Mexican drug wars threaten potentially devastating consequences for both Mexico and the United States. Fueled by America’s pathological addiction to drugs and guns, the border has become riven with violence and death. The prohibition of drugs has failed even remotely to be effective just as prohibiting alcohol failed even remotely to be effective decades [...

Bruce Ackerman?s Proposal for a Truth Commission on Presidential Power

Posted on March 27, 2009
There are at least two reasons for a Truth Commission on the last eight years of executive malevolence. First, we need to know what happened so that the historical record will be complete. Second, completing the historical record makes it possible for guarding against the lawlessness of the past...

Judicial Non-Deference to the FDA

Posted on March 26, 2009
The Food and Drug Administration has been taking it on the chin in the courts - and for good reason. For years, it has been apparent that the FDA process for approving and evaluating drugs is flawed. Far too many drugs have been approved only to be recalled due to deadly side effects that were [...

AIG Bonuses and Treating the Public Like Grown-ups

Posted on March 25, 2009
The furor revolving around the AIG bonuses continues. Mention was made of the situation yesterday in President Obama’s second nighttime press conference. Though the press has continued to fan the flames and the Obama Administration has not done all it could to put the controversy to rest, blame for the continuing story should be laid [...

Was the Bush-Cheney Regime Guilty of Torture?

Posted on March 24, 2009
Occasionally, a literary piece emerges that provides poignant insight into some troubling issue in politics or culture. Mark Danner has written such a piece that every American should read before embracing any position of whether the United States under Bush-Cheney was guilty of flagrant war crimes, including torture...

Israeli War Crimes in Gaza

Posted on March 23, 2009
Last week, Haaretz.com reported extensive excerpts from a meeting of Israeli soldiers indicating their treatment of civilians in Gaza. Here’s a sample: I am squad commander of a company that is still in training, from the Givati Brigade. We went into a neighborhood in the southern part of Gaza City...

How is the Ordinary Citizen to Understand the President?s Recovery Program?

Posted on March 20, 2009
Consider James K. Gailbraith article on President Obama’s economic policies: “Barack Obama?s presidency began in hope and goodwill, but its test will be its success or failure on the economics. Did the president and his team correctly diagnose the problem? Did they act with sufficient imagination and force? And did they prevail [...

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