Posts from the ‘Old Print Archives’ Category

What Would Jackson Do? Some Old Advice for the New Attorney General

by Janet Reno and Geoffrey M. Klineberg

The new Attorney General will face a breathtakingly broad range of issues. From developing principles for criminal prosecutions and antitrust investigations and the enforcement of environmental and fair housing laws, to the coordination with and support of state and local law enforcement and the protection against and pursuit of terrorists in the post-September 11 world, the challenges have never been greater. In thinking about what advice we might reasonably offer to the new Attorney General, we have found ourselves repeatedly drawn to an unlikely source of guidance: in a series of remarkably eloquent speeches delivered in the middle of the last century, Robert H. Jackson, who served as President Roosevelt’s third Attorney General, addressed some fundamental questions with a wisdom that is as relevant today as it was then. Specifically, Jackson had much to say about three topics that continue to challenge us: how to ensure that federal prosecutors exercise their discretion both independently and responsibly, how to define the appropriate roles for federal and local law enforcement, and how to strike the proper balance between protecting civil liberties and maintaining national security. In addressing these questions, Jackson applied a degree of common sense and practical wisdom that remains astonishingly perceptive.

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Notes on Progressive National Water Policy

by JOHN LESHY

Water has long deeply resonated with Americans, especially in less humid parts of the country. Most do not regard it as just another commodity, or indeed as just another natural resource. Today our management and use of water face a fundamental challenge. Current patterns of water use, and the enormous infrastructure built to support them, are based on historic climate patterns as we have understood them, but a near-consensus among climatologists holds that our hydrologic future will not simply mimic the past. Parts of the nation are likely to see longer, steeper droughts and higher temperatures that could lead to more rain, less snow, earlier spring runoff, higher evaporation rates, and increased demand for water. Also, because of the historically tight connection between water and energy use, a carbon-sensitive energy policy will implicate water use, and vice versa.

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Hijacking the Privilege: Balancing Fairness and Security When Warrantless Wiretapping Threatens Attorney-Client Communications

by William Wetmore

Shakir Baloch is a family doctor with a wife and a fifteen-year-old daughter. A native of Pakistan from a politically prominent family that supports progressive secularism in that country, Baloch moved to Canada in 1989 and became a Canadian citizen in 1994. In April 2001, he came to the United States to find work. Shortly after the September 11, 2001 attacks, Baloch and several other Muslim men were arrested on immigration violations and transferred to the Metropolitan Detention Center (“MDC”) in Brooklyn. According to Baloch, he and the others were placed in MDC’s Administrative Maximum Special Housing Unit (“ADMAX SHU”) for more than twenty-three hours per day, where they were strip-searched, shackled when removed from their cells, and verbally and physically abused by prison guards for several months.

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Election Day Registration: Giving All Americans a Fair Chance to Vote

By BROOKE LIERMAN

In 2005, Americans watched as Iraqis participated in their first “free and fair elections.”  Several months later in his State of the Union address, President Bush praised the Iraqi citizens who voted.  But in doing so, he failed to draw attention to an irony in America’s exportation of democracy: not only did Iraq have a higher turnout in its election than the United States did in 2004, but Iraq’s turnout was made possible in part by a U.S.-sponsored system of automatic voter registration, precisely the type of registration system that most states in the United States have refused to adopt. With the aid of U.S. supervisors and funding, Iraq has joined the host of other democracies that use automatic voter registration, while the United States remains one of the few democracies in the world that places the entire burden of voter registration on each individual citizen. Is it time for the United States to adopt some form of automatic registration to make more of its eligible voters part of the democratic process?

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Public (Self)-Service: Illegal Trading on Confidential Congressional Information

by Andrew George

Senators, according to a recent study, make extraordinary investors. During the five-year period of the study, senators (and their spouses and dependent children) who traded securities beat market averages by more than 10% per year. That is an impressive number, considering that it is twice what another study found to be the average trading profits of corporate insiders. Barring a “sixth-investing-sense” among members of Congress, numbers such as these indicate that some members of Congress, across both political parties,4 are playing the stock market with a “stacked deck”—a deck they bring to the table. In other words, perhaps some members are trading securities on the basis of inside knowledge of upcoming legislative events.

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Things that We Would Like to Take for Granted: Minimum Standards for the Legal Framework of a Free and Democratic Society

by Joseph William Singer

In his satirical novel Jennifer Government, Max Barry describes a libertarian dystopia where deregulation has run amok.1 In Barry’s frightening portrait of the near future, the government has been privatized and people get the police protection for which they are willing and able to pay. Written contracts are enforced to the letter—no matter what they say. There are no limits on freedom of contract, and contracting parties are free to hire either private or public agents to enforce the terms of those contracts. The book begins when the hero signs an employment contract without reading it. That contract was dreamed up by the marketing department of his company, which believes that the company could sell more sneakers if consumers thought the sneakers were so cool that people were willing to kill— literally—to get a pair. The marketers drum up demand for the sneakers but severely limit the supply until their potential customers are chomping at the bit. They then dupe the hapless hero into signing a contract that requires him to kill a few customers to increase demand for the shoes even further. Because our hero has already signed the contract, he is bound by its penalties if he fails to perform—penalties so severe that they make Shylock look generous by comparison.

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Micro-Motives and State and Local Climate Change Initiatives

by Kristen H. Engel and Barak Y. Orbach

In November 2006, over eighty percent of the voters in Berkeley, California, endorsed Ballot Measure G, giving City authorities a sweeping mandate to regulate greenhouse gas emissions. Ballot Measure G proposed to authorize Berkeley’s Mayor to develop a plan to reduce the city’s greenhouse gas emissions by eighty percent by 2050 and by an unspecified smaller percentage within 10 years. The text of Ballot Measure G informed voters that the financial implications of the plan were unknown and “plan dependent.” Nevertheless, an overwhelming majority of Berkeley’s voters charged city officials with the task of beginning a process that could result in substantial costs to each household with little guaranteed benefit in terms of a reduction in the risks of global climate change.

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Fast, Clean, & Cheap: Cutting Global Warming's Gordian Knot

by Michael Shellenberger, Ted Nordaus, Jeff Navin, and Teryn Norris

In the Greek legend, King Midas used a complicated knot to tie his father’s ox cart to a post. An oracle prophesied that the one who untied the cart—which symbolized Apollo’s father, Zeus—would rule the kingdom. For many years the knot stymied all who attempted to untie it. Then, one day, rather than trying to untie the knot, the young Alexander simply cut the rope with his sword. Alexander went on to become a brilliant military commander and, eventually, King of Macedon.

The story is traditionally interpreted to mean that one can often solve seemingly impossible problems with a single and simple bold stroke. But there are two other morals to the story. First, to find solutions, one must see old problems in a new light. Alexander saw the problem as freeing the ox cart from the post, rather than untying the knot. Alexander’s new perspective— what is sometimes called a “gestalt shift”—was a prerequisite to cutting the Gordian Knot. Second, cutting the knot involved a kind of rebellion. The oracle’s prophecy specified that the knot be untied. In cutting the knot Alexander had to, paradoxically and audaciously, violate the conventional meaning of the oracle’s prophesy in order to realize it.

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