There was a quote in Bret Stephens’ dreaded op-ed about campus kangaroo courts that struck me as extremely dubious (and more than a wee bit self-aggrandizing), and likely to whip up some backlash.

Kimberly Lau, an attorney at Warshaw Burstein, has represented over 100 defendants in campus sexual-assault cases. She described to me sitting with a client in a campus tribunal where she was forbidden from speaking. The accuser appeared via Skype but did not face the accused.

There are a handful of lawyers who have taken up the representation of the accused in Title IX campus sex hearings. They tend to be very self-promotional, some even shamelessly so. I don’t know Lau and don’t mean to impugn her at all.

I asked Lau how many of her cases were ultimately resolved through exoneration or a financial settlement. She estimated about 90 percent. But that, she adds, is the good fortune only of those who can afford high-powered representation.

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Like Andrew McCarthy, it was quite a surprise to me to read the commentary by former United States Attorneys Joyce Vance and Carter Stewart at National Review.

True to form, Attorney General Jeff Sessions has returned the Justice Department to the failed mindset of its past. In implementing his own tough-on-crime mantra, he has required prosecutors, in virtually all cases, to charge the most serious offenses and ask for the lengthiest prison sentences. Americans have seen this one-size-fits-all policy in action before. It doesn’t work.

And, of course, it doesn’t work. It fills prisons, destroys families and pacifies the groundlings who know little about criminal law and understand only that they don’t want crime to touch their world. Andy disputes this with the low-hanging fruit that is most easily digestible to the simpletons.

Doesn’t work? This directive, in effect with little variation until the Obama years, is one of several factors that contributed to historic decreases in crime. When bad guys are prosecuted and incarcerated, they are not preying on our communities.

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Ed. Note: In light of United States Rep. Anthony Brown’s (D-MD) proposed bill to prohibit “hate speech” on campus, Andrew King and Chris Seaton have agreed to debate whether Congress should craft “hate speech” prohibitions for colleges. This is Andrew’s argument:

Last year saw a number of political events end in violence, and this year that type of violence has mainly shifted to campuses. These violent protests disrupt normal operations, often result in damage to property and injury to people, and cost the colleges for additional security. It’s time, energy, and money that could instead be spent on offering more critical feminist theory classes on campus. And with all the media attention, it is inevitable that politicians would want to wade into this situation and solve the problem at the farthest distance possible from these problems—via Congress.

The federal government has a role in enforcing federal constitutional rights through preventing unlawful discrimination and ensuring equal protection. There have even been instances where that role has been effective. There’s a lot the federal government does wrong, but as the saying goes, even a blind squirrel finds a nut occasionally.

Maryland Representative Anthony Brown is introducing a bill aimed at fighting hate speech on campus. Here’s what he says it will do: Continue reading →

Ed. Note: In light of United States Rep. Anthony Brown’s (D-MD) proposed bill to prohibit “hate speech” on campus, Chris Seaton and Andrew King have agreed to debate whether Congress should craft “hate speech” prohibitions for colleges. This is Chris’ argument:

Before taking the law school plunge, I briefly toyed with the notion of becoming a psychologist. An elective class in sociology at the University of Tennessee introduced me to an atheist African-American professor who openly mocked me in class, claimed the attacks on September 11, 2001 were a “white man’s conspiracy,” and proudly professed a love of Fidel Castro.

At the course’s conclusion, this professor sent me an email with my grade and expressed her deep concern that I thought my classmates and the course material were “a load of crap.”

If the lunatics running the asylum students and faculty of today had their way, that professor could be punished for “hate speech.” We must stand boldly against people like Maryland’s Representative Anthony Brown and firmly say “Fuck you, we stand for the free exchange of all ideas.” Congress has no business regulating speech on college campuses, much less crafting bills to punish “hate speech.”* Continue reading →

Having no clue who Amber Tamblyn was, I asked my daughter (who knows such things) and she explained that she was in a movie called the Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants. I hadn’t seen it. Yet, this apparently made her sufficiently knowledgeable for the New York Times to publish her thoughts on believing the victim. After all, movie stars are often victims.

When I was 21, I went into the office of a producer of the television show I was starring in to discuss a big problem. By this point I had been acting for more than a decade, and the show was very successful and beloved. Still, I was nervous about facing the firing squad of Emmys that sat behind him and saying what I had to say.

Being the star of a TV show at 21 (sorry, but I have no clue what show it was) is kind of a big deal. One might suspect she’s neither marginalized nor vulnerable, but rather a hot property that some guy with a “firing squad of Emmys” would like to keep happy. Happy star, happy show and all. That she was nervous is surprising, though at 21 she was young. It was probably unusual for her to feel nervous, given the obsequious way people treat young stars. Maybe being nervous was traumatic in itself for her, not realizing feeling nervous was normal for lesser children. Continue reading →

It’s been a good run, Constitution, but today, Constitution Day, the New York Times says it’s over.

Exactly 230 years ago, on Sept. 17, 1787, a group of men in Philadelphia concluded a summer of sophisticated, impassioned debates about the fate of their fledgling nation. The document that emerged, our Constitution, is often thought of as part of an aristocratic counterrevolution that stands in contrast to the democratic revolution of 1776. But our Constitution has at least one radical feature: It isn’t designed for a society with economic inequality.

Someone thinks of the Constitution as an aristocratic counterrevolution? Often? Who knew, besides Vanderbilt lawprof Ganesh Sitaraman. I thought it was just a bunch of New England dry-goods merchants who hated watching their profits taxed to pay for the cost of their protection. But then, I’m no scholar.

But Sitaraman’s “radical feature” is kinda ass-backwards.  The colonies were up to their eyeballs in economic inequality, which makes the Constitution all the more remarkable as it somehow managed to not only accommodate it, but provide vast opportunity to overcome it. Equal protection, yo. Continue reading →

I remember the 1964 Worlds Fair in Queens, mostly because of the black felt hat with a huge bright purple feather coming out of it. The theme was “Peace Through Understanding”, dedicated to “Man’s Achievement on a Shrinking Globe in an Expanding Universe,” but to a kid, it was a vision of the future, all the cool things that would be our world.

A few years later, there was sex, drugs and rock ‘n roll, but no flying cars. The word “groovy” found its way into our lexicon. It’s not used much anymore.

Efforts to predict the future, and to promote the notion that we should dedicate our efforts to creating the infrastructure, both physical and intellectual, to support it, have not panned out well. The problem seems to be that people are remarkably opposed to having change rammed down their throats, and change happens, but in its own way and at its own pace. Change happens, whether we like it or not.

MIT urban design prof Alan Berger writes of his vision of the suburbia Millennials will desire. Continue reading →

Is Professor Michael Schlesinger a really big deal in the area of atmospheric science? Inside Higher Education says so, not that it really matters.

A famed atmospheric scientist at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign is on leave after refusing to heed administrators’ request that he give electronic lecture slides to a student with disabilities.

There is a gut reaction to this reference to a “student with disabilities,” since making reasonable accommodations is both the law and, well, a kind thing to do. Or, as most people will react, how can it hurt?

A dispute over electronic lecture slides and accommodations for a learning-disabled student may have ended the teaching career of Michael Schlesinger, a professor of atmospheric sciences at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.

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As the fight for due process on campus rages on, fools, liars and shameless self-promoters* have been desperately trying to salvage a viable argument against the rescission of the Title IX “guidance.” They cry, what about the Clery Act? What about the Violence Against Women Reauthorization Act? Notably, none of the proponents actually offer any substance as to what these laws have to do with anything. There’s nothing there.

If you wonder why not a single one of the now-64 adverse federal decisions holding that the Title IX guidance fails to provide due process to students ever mentions these laws, it’s because these are red herrings, some peripheral language that touches on campus sexual discipline, but irrelevant to the issue. The presumed expectation is that screaming, “Oh yeah, what about the Clery Act?” is good enough to shift the burden away from facts and law. It’s a fool’s game.

Lawyers who litigate the cases won’t play it because they don’t want judges to laugh at them for being idiots. Judges don’t play it because they know the law. The only people who try so very hard to play it are fools desperately trying to deflect attention away from the deprivation of due process on campus. Yet, this appeared to be the best effort those seeking to perpetuate a system of star chambers could muster.

Where, I asked, is an honest argument in favor of the cause?  It was rumored that Ezra Klein at Vox had made one, but it took the kind efforts of Amy Alkon to dredge it up. Granted, the specific subject wasn’t the Title IX kangaroo courts, but rather a step down the road to perdition, “yes means yes.” And to his credit, Vox’s Ezra Klein told the truth. Continue reading →

When it was mostly an internecine conflict, a judge from the Northern District of Ohio asking the Brethren of the Sixth Circuit why they think he’s crazy, as Judge Kopf explained, it all stemmed from a United States District Court judge doing the unthinkable: taking a mag to task.

I am going to be plain-spoken and provide you with a greatly condensed and summarized version of the facts. Judge Adams treated his colleagues very, very badly. He was especially nasty to magistrate judges. He improperly threatened an MJ with a contempt sanction for failing to get a report and recommendation on a Social Security case to the judge within the time required by the judge’s standing order. He isolated himself, despite good-faith efforts by his colleagues to patch things up, he refused to participate meaningfully in court governance and he childishly sniped at his colleagues. In a word, he was a jerk.

While federal judges may seem omnipotent from the outside, there are some institutional norms they don’t cross. Ever seen a federal judge direct the Bureau of Prisons to do something? Request? Sure. Implore. Maybe. But direct? Only in the rarest of instances, when something truly awful happens. Why not, when the judges certainly have the authority to do so, and they don’t need some screw’s permission to tell them not to serve Nutraloaf three times a day?

There’s a certain collegiality within the federal bureaucracy, unwritten but very much there. The various parts need each other to make the magic happen. Like any machine, if one gear refuses to mesh with another, it doesn’t work. No one involved in a bureaucracy doesn’t appreciate this. Except maybe Judge Adams. Continue reading →