2010 PJP FELLOW JESSICA YELLIN NAMED CNN CHIEF WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT

Yellin, who also worked for ABC News, described her new position as a "dream job." You can read of her appointment here.

2010 PJP FELLOW CHANEL LEE EXPLAINS THE COURT'S DECISION ON THE SALE OF VIOLENT VIDEO GAMES TO MINORS

In a post at the website howstuffworks.com, where she is an editor, Chanel Lee writes: "Although the Court focused on the obscenity portion of the case during oral arguments, the decision itself largely left that question alone, saying only that the California law is too vague and broadly drawn to pass the Miller test necessary to meet the obscenity standard. Then again, Associate Justice Antonin J. Scalia, who wrote the majority opinion, seems to have had it up to here with those who want to define obscenity as anything they don’t like: 'The most basic principle — that government lacks the power to restrict expression because of its message, ideas, subject matter, or content — is subject to a few limited exceptions for historically unprotected speech, such as obscenity, incitement, and fighting words. But a legislature cannot create new categories of unprotected speech simply by weighing the value of a particular category against its social costs and then punishing it if it fails the test.' "


You can read her entire post here.

How Results-Oriented Reporting Distorts Readers' Understanding of the Court and the Constitution

by Todd Brewster

Here is the headline from Tuesday morning's New York Times: "Minors Can Buy Violent Video Games, Justices Decide." Okay, that is sort of true. It relates to the Court's decision to overturn a California law that regulated the sale of certain violent video games to minors. California had fashioned the law in such a way that it would mimic laws limiting the sale of pornographic literature to children, hoping that the Court would carve out a new class of exceptions to First Amendment protection around violent expression much as it has regarding obscenity. Instead, the Court demurred, determining, 7-2, that the Constitution protects the sale of even offensively violent "speech" to minors. Two justices dissented.

The Constitution in Your Medicine Cabinet

This is one insidious way in which the law penetrates your everyday life. Last week, the Supreme Court ruled unconstitutional a Vermont law that limited the access of pharmaceutical companies to data on which doctors prescribed which medications. The companies sought such information in order to target their marketing towards specific doctors, a multi-million dollar practice that presumably affects which medicines your doctor prescribes to you.

Why? What could the Constitution have to say about something so personal and private? Read the First Amendment, or, more precisely, read it the way that six justices read it. The Vermont law restricted a practice called "detailing" where drug companies buy prescription information showing them which doctors most prescribe which kinds of medicine. This information, gathered by data mining companies who pay the pharmacies for access to their records, could still be sold or otherwise made available to journalists and insurance companies, just not drug companies. So, argued Justice Anthony Kennedy, the law was in fact restricting the use of truthful information based upon the identity of the speaker (a drug company) and the contents of its speech (pharmaceutical records) and that, to Justices Kennedy, Sotomayor, Thomas, Alito, Scalia and Chief Justice John Roberts was enough to overturn the law. “If pharmaceutical marketing affects treatment decisions,” Kennedy wrote, “it does so because doctors find it persuasive. Absent circumstances far from those presented here, the fear that speech might persuade provides no lawful basis for quieting it.”

"DEAR VANCOUVER, I APOLOGIZE…"

WATCHING OUR ALL-TOO PUBLIC MEDIA HELP IDENTIFY THOSE WHO PARTICIPATED IN THE ALCOHOL-INDUCED RIOTS IN VANCOUVER, YOU HAD TO WONDER, IS THIS "ANOTHER FORM OF MOBBING"?

First, there was “Internet bullying.” Now, increasingly, we are facing "Internet mobbing." After the riots that followed the Vancouver Canucks defeat in the Stanley Cup hockey finals, a plethora of still pictures, home movies and cell phone snapshots posted on the Internet gave everyone the opportunity to be a detective. Who did it? Look, I know him! He's the water polo guy! And look over there, she's my office mate from work!

There is no denying that the rise of cell phone cameras, Tweets on Twitter and Facebook postings has given law enforcement new and invaluable tools for discovery and tabloid newspapers an unending source of material (just ask the disgraced Anthony Wiener), but you have to ask yourself, are we witnessing the return of a primitive, even barbaric, form of justice, one that provides plenty of satisfaction to those who enjoy watching public humiliations but which feels more like an electronic version of an Iranian town square stoning in the way that it skirts the principles of fairness and decency?

IGNORING THE WAR POWERS ACT? PJP PARTICIPANT BRUCE ACKERMAN SAYS OBAMA, WHO CRITICIZED BUSH, IS SETTING A WORSE PRECEDENT FOR ARBITRARY EXECUTIVE POWER THAN HIS PREDECESSOR

In an interesting Op-ed in the New York Times, Yale Law professor and PJP participant Bruce Ackerman argues that President Obama's decision to join in the NATO air strikes on Libya has been unfaithful to the War Powers Act of 1973 -- in particular, the part of that Act which requires the president to get Congressional approval of military actions within 60 days of Congressional notice (more than 90 days have already passed). Ackerman points the finger at White House counsel Robert Bauer whose office rejected the arguments of the Justice Department's Office of Legal Counsel after it declared that Obama needed to adhere to the Act's reporting and approval procedures. Obama, he asserts, is following a dangerous precedent established by his predecessor, President George W. Bush, whose White House counsel, Alberto Gonzales, led an "ad hoc war council' that put pressure on the Office of Legal Counsel to approve the "torture" of terrorism suspects: when the OLC doesn't give you the interpretation you want, the president simply declares his own interpretation of the law, an abuse of executive power.

Hitchens v. Mamet

The book is called "The Secret Wisdom" and, well, it's provocative. Here are some of the claims made by its author, the enormously successful playwright and essayist, David Mamet...

“America is a Christian country. Its Constitution is the distillation of the wisdom and experience of Christian men, in a tradition whose codification is the Bible.”

“the Israelis would like to live in peace within their borders; the Arabs would like to kill them all…”

“The federal government is merely the zoning board writ large…”

Affirmative Action is “as injust as chattel slavery,” comparable to Japanese internment and the Dred Scot decision


And here are a few reactions from a New York Times review by Vanity Fair contributing editor Christopher Hitchens:
"This is an extraordinarily irritating book, written by one of those people who smugly believe that, having lost their faith, they must ipso facto have found their reason."

"…you will not be surprised to know that Mamet regards global warming as a false alarm, and demands to be told “by what magical process” bumper stickers can “save whales, and free Tibet.” This again is not uncharacteristic of his pointlessly aggressive style: who on earth maintains that they can? If I were as prone to sloganizing as Mamet, I’d keep clear of bumper-sticker comparisons altogether."

"Mr. Beck is among those thanked in Mamet’s acknowledgments for helping free him from “the bemused and sad paternalism” of the liberal airwaves. Would that this were the only sign of the deep confusion that is all that alleviates Mamet’s commitment to the one-dimensional or the flat-out partisan."

"This is my dad's church!" exclaimed the eight-year old daughter of an evangelical minister as she walked through the hallways of a public school in New York City...

Responding to the Appeals Court decision referenced in the June 4 post by Jordan Lorence below, author Katherine Stewart's Op-ed in last Sunday's New York Times describes the situation at her own child's New York City school. Stewart writes that her child's school is just one of 60 in New York that are used for worship services, free of rent, in an attempt to not discriminate student "clubs" for their religious beliefs. She describes the plethora of New York public school church worship meetings as "the work of national 'church-planing' organizations attracted to New York by the combination of cheap space and the opportunity to save the city from its apparent godlessness." The recent decision by the Second Circuit Court of Appeals disallows such meetings as a violation of the religious establishment clause of the First Amendment. Stewart is the author of the forthcoming book, “The Good News Club: The Christian Right’s Stealth Assault on America’s Children.”

THE SUPREME COURT’S UNANIMOUS VERDICT IN AL-KIDD SAYS IT ALL: THE VICTIMS OF POST 9/11 SUSPICION STILL CAN’T GET THEIR DAY IN COURT

by Joe Pace, Featured Guest Blogger

If you told a lay person, unburdened by a law degree, that government officials could—without fear of legal consequence—scoop a law-abiding citizen off the streets without an iota of suspicion that they committed a crime, toss them into a high-security cell for two weeks, and subject them to daily humiliations like shackling and body-cavity searches, I suspect most people would be shocked. So the Supreme Court’s decision last week in Ashcroft v. al-Kidd—which held that former Attorney General John Ashcroft (pictured below) could not be sued for doing precisely that—makes for an edifying read.

"It’s very sad when government officials misinterpret the Constitution and attempt to kick such groups out...That is clearly not at all what the authors of the Constitution intended.”

Jordan Lorence, attorney for the Alliance Defense Fund, which represented the Bronx Household of Faith in a case heard before the Second Circuit Court of Appeals this term. The case was brought by the New York City Department of Education which sought to ban the church from holding "regular worship services" on public school property. Yesterday, the Second Circuit ruled against the church, arguing that while religious groups cannot be banned from meeting on school property, neither can they be allowed to conduct religious services there. Judge Pierre N. Leval, part of a three-judge panel, wrote that when services are conducted on school property “the place has, at least for a time, become the church,” adding that the city’s policy against services in the schools imposed “no restraint on the free expression of any point of view.” Rather, it applied only to “a certain type of activity — the conduct of worship services — and not to the free expression of religious views associated with it.” Judge John Walker dissented, arguing that the ban violated the free exercise clause of the First Amendment.

DID YOU KNOW?: RUSSIANS UNIMPRESSED BY DEMOCRACY

In a recent survey conducted by WorldPublicOpinion.org, only 16 percent of Russians said it was "important to live in a country governed by a democracy." By contrast, 72 percent of Americans, 70 percent of the Chinese, and 91 percent in Argentina agreed with the same statement. You can read more of their study here.

ACCEPTANCE OF ABORTION GROWS SLIGHTLY IN NEW GALLUP POLL, BUT IS STILL SHORT OF MAJORITY

In its annual poll of Americans' attitudes towards morally-charged subjects, the Gallup organization found that abortion rose in acceptance for the second year in a row (after hitting an all-time low in 2009.) The percentage of those who found abortion morally acceptable is now at 39 percent, still well below a majority. Among other constitutionally relevant issues that appeared on the poll, doctor-assisted suicide was the most divisive, with 45 percent finding it acceptable and 49 percent unacceptable. A full 62 percent were comfortable with stem cell research while only 12 percent found the cloning of a human being acceptable. You can view a summary of the findings here.

HERE'S ANOTHER TAKE ON THE IMPORTANCE OF DIVERSITY: DOES THE SUPREME COURT NEED A MILITARY VETERAN?

Until Justice Sandra Day O'Connor was nominated by President Ronald Reagan in 1981,no woman had served on the Supreme Court. Today, there are three women -- Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Justice Sonia Sotomayor (who is also the Court's first Latino justice) and Justice Elena Kagan. The first Jewish Justice was Louis Brandeis, nominated by President Woodrow Wilson in 1918, and today the Court has three Jewish justices -- Kagan, Ginsburg and Stephen Breyer -- as well as six Catholics (Chief Justice John Roberts, Justice Samuel Alito, Justice Clarence Thomas, Justice Antonin Scalia, Justice Anthony Kennedy, and Sotomayor). Of course, Justice Thurgood Marshall became the first African-American on the Court, nominated by President Lyndon Johnson in 1967 and there has been one other African-American, Justice Thomas. But when Justice John Paul Stevens retired last year, the Court lost its only Protestant (in a majority Protestant nation) and its only military veteran.