Which Declaration of Independence?

800px-summerfest_2008_fireworks_70551When you are at your Fourth of July cookout or fireworks display this week, see if anyone mentions the Declaration of Independence.  If they do, ask “which Declaration of Independence?”  After all, there are more than one.

 In her 1997 book American Scripture: Making the Declaration of Independence, historian Pauline Maier describes the events leading up to July 4, 1776 and points to multiple “other” Declarations of Independence issued by local legislative bodies earlier that year.  Declarations were issued in a variety of places, including Buckingham County (Virginia), Charles County (Maryland), and Natick, Massachusetts.  In most cases, these “other” Declarations took the form of instructions from the citizens of a particular geographic area to their elected representatives in the state legislature or in the Continental Congress.  After recounting the unjustified treatment of the colonies by the Crown, these documents authorize the peoples’ representatives to vote in favor of severing ties with England.  However, some of these Declarations take a different form, such as a judge instructing a grand jury on the source of their legal authority in the absence of a Royal Governor.

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Michael Jackson v. Prince: Thinking About Copyright, Intellectual Property, and the Age of the Eighties

12-0135tIrene’s recent post on why we love intellectual property gets at its certain power–its ubiquity in everyday life. The recent death of Michael Jackson speaks to that particular ubiquity. What was necessarily powerful about his death was that for kids of a certain generation (maybe if you were born between 1972 and 1980?), his music served, as the pundits keep saying over and over, as the “soundtrack” of our lives. I remember one slumber party where all of the Michael Jackson videos played over and over and over for 24 hours (those poor parents). The summers of 1983 through 1985 were consumed in the great debate (forget US v. USSR) of the middle 1980s: who was better, Michael Jackson or Prince! I was a stone cold Prince fan, who marshaled my arguments as if I was getting ready for battle (Purple! Let’s Go Crazy!, Purple!). I was usually in the minority in that one, as no one could top Michael’s videos (did Prince dance with zombies (No!), could Prince moonwalk (No!), could Prince rock that awesome red jacket (No!)).

This “great” debate of the Eighties morphed, though, in the Nineties, into a more interesting debate about, strangely enough, the performance artist’s relationship to copyright.

Continue ReadingMichael Jackson v. Prince: Thinking About Copyright, Intellectual Property, and the Age of the Eighties

“Well, a satirical piece in the Times is one thing, but bricks and baseball bats really get right to the point.”

Nazis Highway

So said Woody Allen (as Isaac Davis in Manhattan) in response to the suggestion that a Nazi march was “devastated” by a mocking piece in the New York Times.

In Sunday’s  Times, there was an article about a group calling themselves “The Nationalist Socialist Movement – Springfield Unit.”  It has been allowed to participate in Missouri’s adopt-a highway program. Under the program, a group agrees to pick up trash along a stretch of roadside and, in return, a sign is erected at the onset of the “adopted” segment, acknowledging their participation. The Nazis apparently pick up litter in full regalia. 

What to do? Allen’s character suggested picking up bricks and baseball bats and going to “really explain things to them.” Let’s take that off the table.

There is no question that the Nazis have a right to participate. The Supreme Court has held that groups may not be excluded from such programs on the basis of their political beliefs. That case (also arising from Missouri) involved adoption of a highway by the Klu Klux Klan. State officials responded by renaming the road after Rosa Parks.

Legislators have proposed calling the highway on which the Nazis collect trash, the Abraham Joshua Heschel Memorial Highway after the prominent rabbi and philosopher.Although Heschel’s daughter is not happy with the proposal (and her wishes are entitled to great consideration), I sort of like it. Absent the preferred option, i.e., that such people not exist, there is something about having Nazis pick up the garbage on what is, symbolically, a Jew’s road. “Excuse me, there, Horst, but I think you missed that Toblerone wrapper. Be a good little Aryan and pick that up for me.”

I appreciate that people will look at the propriety of such a response in different ways. One argument would be, I suppose, that to do anything more draws attention to the Nazis. But fanatics have a way of drawing attention to themselves. I prefer to see honoring Heschel in the face of these jamokes as the wages of hatred. The Nazis are marginalized and Heschel, who barely escaped the charnel house, is honored.

But this is the faculty blog so let’s explore a legal point.

Continue Reading“Well, a satirical piece in the Times is one thing, but bricks and baseball bats really get right to the point.”
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