Tuesday, March 07, 2006

Supreme Court Spanks Liberal Law Professors

It is a refreshing moment to see the high and mighty liberal elites get their collective intellects spanked. Just because Ivy League school professors cry foul does not validate their opinion. I pray this is the awesome beginning of Supreme Court decisions of the future. I am fairly certain abortion will be on that list thanks to South Dakota. Here is some commentary on the spanking from the The Scriptorium:
-------------------------------
The Scriptorium
Ben Rast
March 6, 2006

Unanimous Supreme Court Smacks Law Prof’s Over Military Recruiting

A group of pompous liberal law professors and Ivy League law schools had their ego’s backhanded by a unanimous U.S. Supreme Court decision. This organization of elitist law professors formed the Forum for Academic and Institutional Rights, Inc. (FAIR) and sued the Secretary of Defense over military recruiting on their campuses. They objected to the military recruiting due to the military’s “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy banning homosexuality. More specifically, they objected to the Solomon Amendment, which requires colleges to provide equal access to military recruiters as they do other recruiters, lest the college lose federal funding. FAIR cried “No fair!”, alleging that the Solomon Amendment violated their first amendment rights to free speech and freedom of association. Now FAIR is crying “No fair!” because their collective legal insights were deemed legal bunk by the Supreme Court. The unanimous ruling (that’s right folks, it’s not just the conservatives on the bench) overturned a ruling by the Third Circuit Court of Appeals and stated that the Solomon Amendment is quite constitutional. Shocking!! We legal neophytes could have told you that it is not unconstitutional to afford military recruiters the same rights on campuses as other employers’ recruiters. You can read the entire ruling here, but some excerpts of the opinion authored by new Chief Justice Roberts are worth repeating:
We have held that high school students can appreciate the difference between speech a school sponsors and speech the school permits because legally required to do so, pursuant to an equal access policy…. Surely students have not lost that ability by the time they get to law school
.…
Military recruiting promotes the substantial Government interest in raising and supporting the Armed Forces—an objective that would be
achieved less effectively if the military were forced to recruit on less
favorable terms than other employers. The Court of Appeals’ proposed alternative methods of recruitingare beside the point. The issue is not whether other means of raising an army and providing for a navy might be adequate. See id., at 689 (regulations are not “invalid simply because there is some imaginable alternative that might be less burdensome on speech”). That is a judgment for Congress, not the courts. [refreshing viewpoint from a non-activist court]


In this case, FAIR has attempted to stretch a number of First Amendment doctrines well beyond the sort of activities these doctrines protect. The law schools object to having to treat military recruiters like other recruiters, but that regulation of conduct does not violate the First Amendment. To the extent that the Solomon Amendment incidentally affects expression, the law schools’ effort to cast themselves as just like the schoolchildren in Barnette, the parade organizers in Hurley, and the Boy Scouts in Dale plainly overstates the expressive nature of their activity and the impact of the Solomon Amendment on it,while exaggerating the reach of our First Amendment precedents.

To those of you who think that something is so, just because some Harvard law professor says it is, take notice, and read the ruling.

No comments: