CRT Related Censorship and Tribalism Make Inroads into the American Legal System

Detailed article by Aaron Sibarium, writing at Common Sense, the Substack of Bari Weiss.  The title to the article is "The Takeover of America's Legal System: The kids didn't grow out of it." Here are a couple excerpts:

The adversarial legal system—in which both sides of a dispute are represented vigorously by attorneys with a vested interest in winning—is at the heart of the American constitutional order. Since time immemorial, law schools have tried to prepare their students to take part in that system.

Not so much anymore. Now, the politicization and tribalism of campus life have crowded out old-fashioned expectations about justice and neutrality. The imperatives of race, gender and identity are more important to more and more law students than due process, the presumption of innocence, and all the norms and values at the foundation of what we think of as the rule of law.

One more . . .

Trial verdicts that do not jibe with the new politics are seen as signs of an inextricable hate—and an illegitimate legal order. At the Santa Clara University School of Law, administrators emailed students that the acquittal of Kyle Rittenhouse—the 17-year-old who killed two men and wounded another during a riot, in Kenosha, Wisconsin—was “further evidence of the persistent racial injustice and systemic racism within our criminal justice system.” At UC Irvine, the university’s chief diversity officer emailed students that the acquittal “conveys a chilling message: Neither Black lives nor those of their allies’ matter.” (He later apologized for having “appeared to call into question a lawful trial verdict.”)

Professors say it is harder to lecture about cases in which accused rapists are acquitted, or a police officer is found not guilty of abusing his authority. One criminal law professor at a top law school told me he’s even stopped teaching theories of punishment because of how negatively students react to retributivism—the view that punishment is justified because criminals deserve to suffer.

“I got into this job because I liked to play devil’s advocate,” said the tenured professor, who identifies as a liberal. “I can’t do that anymore. I have a family.”

Other law professors—several of whom asked me not to identify their institution, their area of expertise, or even their state of residence—were similarly terrified.

Nadine Strossen, the first woman to head the American Civil Liberties Union and a professor at New York Law School, told me: “I massively self-censor."

Continue ReadingCRT Related Censorship and Tribalism Make Inroads into the American Legal System

Legal Services of Eastern Missouri (LSEM) Helps to Level the Playing Field for People who Cannot Afford Attorneys

How does Legal Services of Eastern Missouri help to level the playing field for people who cannot afford attorneys? Tim Cronin and I had the opportunity to discuss LSEM's ambitious and daunting mission with Karen Warren, Associate Director for Outreach and Administration and Dan Glazier, Executive Director & General Counsel. Episode I of the Simon Law podcast, "The Jury is Out" has already been released. Episode II will be released shortly.

Here is the most shocking thing I learned during these discussions. The entire annual national budget for ALL of the Legal Services offices nationwide is less than $500M. As Dan revealed in Episode I, that is the same amount of money that Americans spent last year on halloween costumes . . . for their pets. Please consider supporting LSEM financially. If you are an attorney in the STL area, they would also welcome your assistance as a volunteer.

Continue ReadingLegal Services of Eastern Missouri (LSEM) Helps to Level the Playing Field for People who Cannot Afford Attorneys

Social justice Is Compatible with Free Speech

Ira Glasser served as the fifth executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union from 1978 to 2001. The following is an excerpt from is recent article (at FIRE): "Social justice requires free speech."

Prevailing political power has always been antagonistic to social justice and has sought relentlessly to restrict speech advocating social justice. That is why social justice has always required speech to nurture and grow its movements.

That was true for the nascent labor movement in the early 20th century; the anti-war movement around 1917 (and again in the 1970s); the birth control movement around 1916, when Margaret Sanger distributed informational leaflets on the streets of New York; the movement to gain the right of women to vote; the anti-lynching movement when the crusading journalist Ida B. Wells (1862-1931) used the only weapons she had — articles and speeches — to rally opposition to the epidemic of lynching; and, in our time, the gay rights and civil rights movements. All of them and others depended critically on speech rights, and all would have been extinguished without speech rights. That is why John Lewis (1940-2020) said that “Without freedom of speech and the right to dissent, the Civil Rights movement would have been a bird without wings.”

Progressives forget that at their and our peril.

Continue ReadingSocial justice Is Compatible with Free Speech

In 2021, 111 Professors Were Targeted for Protected Speech

From the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE):

“Scholars Under Fire: 2021 Year in Review” documents last year’s attempts to penalize scholars for speech and research that, even when controversial, is protected by the First Amendment. FIRE documented 111 attempts to target scholars for their speech in 2021, all of which have been added to FIRE’s Scholars Under Fire Database. This reflects a dramatic increase from 30 attacks against scholars in 2015.

“Even one attack on free speech is one too many,” said FIRE Research Fellow Komi German, one of the report’s authors. “Our colleges should be built on the foundation that differences of opinion should give rise to debate and discussion — not sanctions and firings. If you asked someone which country had 111 scholars targeted in 2021, they might guess an authoritarian regime like China or Russia, not a democratic nation like the United States.”

Here is the executive summary.

Continue ReadingIn 2021, 111 Professors Were Targeted for Protected Speech

Ira Glasser: “Speech Restrictions Are Like Poison Gas.”

Ira Glasser served as the fifth executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union from 1978 to 2001. Here is an excerpt from his new article, "Social Justice Requires Free Speech."

"Hosannas for publishing Burt Neuborne’s scintillatingly clear and powerful piece on the danger of allowing universities to punish faculty for sloppy or obnoxious speech.

Along with David Cole’s excellent piece in The New York Review of Books, and Erwin Chemerinsky’s spirited piece on the Ilya Shapiro case at Georgetown, all three did a great job of explaining the distinction between supporting the right of someone to speak and disagreeing vigorously and loudly with what they say.

Free Speech For Me But Not For Thee book cover I have long regarded the failure to understand that distinction as one of the two major obstacles to widespread public support for free speech, and all three pieces do a superb job of explaining it."

Continue ReadingIra Glasser: “Speech Restrictions Are Like Poison Gas.”