Category Archives: National Journal

Posted on

Legal Affairs – The Case for Curbing Civil Rights Lawsuits

by Stuart Taylor, Jr.

National Journal

A 5-4 Supreme Court decision on April 24 left standing a silly Alabama policy that makes life unnecessarily difficult for some foreign-born Americans by requiring that they take their driver’s license exam in English. More important, the Court’s decision made it harder for many other potential plaintiffs to sue for possible violations of a key provision of the 1964 Civil Rights Act, which bars public and private programs that receive federal financial assistance (as most do) from discriminating on the basis of race or national origin. The four more-liberal Justices, in a dissent by John Paul Stevens, called the decision "unfounded in our precedent and hostile to decades of settled expectations." The New York Times said that it "substantially limited the effectiveness" of the act’s ban against discrimination." The Washington Post called it "retrograde."

Posted on

Legal Affairs – Enact a Civilized Crime Bill, for a Change

by Stuart Taylor, Jr.

National Journal

Congress and the President have a chance this year to show that they care as much about avoiding the execution (and imprisonment) of innocent defendants as they do about punishing the guilty ones. They can adopt the Innocence Protection Act, a bipartisan proposal co-sponsored by death penalty supporters and opponents who agree that you can be tough on crime without punishing innocent people. The bill would give prisoners expanded access to possibly exculpatory DNA evidence. It would also deliver-if only in capital cases-on the Supreme Court’s long-broken 1963 promise to provide indigent criminal defendants with competent trial lawyers.

Posted on

Legal Affairs – Ban Racial Preferences, but Keep Affirmative Action

by Stuart Taylor, Jr.

National Journal

One of the toughest issues ever to face the Supreme Court is back on its doorstep, propelled by a deepening split among lower federal courts, and seemingly destined to produce a climactic ruling by 2003: Does the Constitution, which bars virtually all governmental discrimination against African-Americans and some other minorities, nonetheless permit universities to discriminate in their favor (and against whites and Asians) in order to choose student bodies that look more like America than they did in 1950 or 1960?

Posted on

Legal Affairs – Paying Reparations for Ancient Wrongs Is Not Right

by Stuart Taylor, Jr.

National Journal

Most Americans have an instinctive (if self-serving) feel for why it would not be a good idea to pay reparations to the descendants of slaves. As victims of one of history’s great crimes, the slaves themselves surely deserved reparations. So, in principle, do the many living victims of the century of legal apartheid that followed slavery. But while the legacy of slavery still plagues us, the passage of 138 years since the Emancipation Proclamation and 37 years since the 1964 Civil Rights Act has changed the landscape utterly, making it impossible to decide with any pretense of fairness which of today’s African-Americans should receive compensation and who should pay.

Posted on

Legal Affairs – How McCain-Feingold Would Constrict Speech

by Stuart Taylor, Jr.

National Journal

It all sounds so clean, so wholesome, so righteous: Close the loopholes in our campaign finance laws. End what Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., calls the "corrupting chase for `soft money.’ " Curb the influence of corporations and labor unions. Stop special interests from polluting our politics with "sham issue ads." Mandate greater public disclosure of political spending.

Posted on

Legal Affairs – Now Here’s A Cause: Those Poor, Poor Rich Folks

by Stuart Taylor, Jr.

National Journal

Listening to the Republican rhetoric, you might get the idea that making children of wealth work for a living is a radical, confiscatory assault on family farms, property rights, fairness, and the American way. In one of countless screeds in The Wall Street Journal, Melik Kaylan, of Forbes.com, likened the idea of taxing inherited wealth to "the Maoist notion of `perpetual revolution,’ where every generation must embrace the struggle anew," and noted approvingly that "the Renaissance was built on a society of dynastic privilege." Less-extravagant critics denounce what they call the "death tax" as a manifestation of class warfare.

Posted on

Legal Affairs – Bashing the SAT Won’t Make Life More Fair

by Stuart Taylor, Jr.

National Journal

In his much publicized Feb. 18 speech attacking the SAT, University of California President Richard C. Atkinson proposed that his university’s eight campuses stop using the test as an admissions requirement. The result, he said, would be to "help all students, especially low-income and minority students, determine their own educational destinies."

Posted on

Legal Affairs – How the Marc Rich Pardon Could Spawn a New Prosecution

by Stuart Taylor, Jr.

National Journal

Here we go again. Another criminal-congressional tag-team crew investigating Bill Clinton. This time, it’s to determine not whether he lied under oath about sex-which Clinton essentially admitted at long last on Jan. 19-but whether, on the very next day, he sold a pardon, or two, or a few before he left office.