Lincoln and JFK

JFK and LincolnPBS documentary Lincoln@Gettysburg paints a vivid picture of Lincoln and those close to him in the days surrounding his oration at Gettysburg. Lincoln’s wife Mary Todd begged him not to leave for Gettysburg because their young son Tad was seriously ill. He went anyway. Lincoln’s valet, William Johnson, an African-American free man, accompanied Lincoln to Gettysburg and listened to Lincoln practice his speech that morning. Lincoln left Gettysburg with a fever and came down with smallpox. Johnson died weeks later from smallpox after caring for Lincoln. Lincoln chose the inscription “Citizen” on Johnson’s tombstone, and Johnson was buried at Arlington cemetery.

And, Lincoln knew that his speech, just ten sentences long, would be transmitted by telegraph and printed in newspapers across the nation. Lincoln, in those ten sentences, was reaching out to the people at the Gettysburg ceremony, but he was also reaching out to the nation. It was unusual for presidents to give this type of speech in those days, but Lincoln accepted the invitation to speak at Gettysburg. Lincoln, it could be said, was a (social) media genius.

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The Gender Binary

Gender_signsWestern society has traditionally assumed a gender binary, classifying sex and gender as “male” or “female.” This binary is reflected in many aspects of our legal system. However in recent decades, the gender binary, and related assumptions about the fixed nature and unambiguous meaning of sex and gender, has been challenged by transsexual, transgendered and intersex people seeking legal recognition of their sex and/or gender identity and protection from discrimination based thereon.

In the US, the majority of states now permit alteration of sex on birth certificates for transsexual persons (whether sex-reassignment surgery is required varies from state to state), although a handful of states still take a “fixed from birth” approach to legal sex. The legal landscape in relation to marriage for transsexual people is similarly inconsistent and in flux.

Challenging the fixed nature of sex/gender is an important development, but in most jurisdictions, the gender binary has been kept legally intact. More recently, some jurisdictions are grappling with the question of “other-gendered” and “other-sexed” persons (the terms are not synonymous – the Norrie case, below, was framed as an issue of biological sex, not gender identity.) The issue has come to a head in Australia, where special leave to appeal to the High Court has been granted in a case involving a person who wishes to be recognized as legally genderless.

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Truth in Sentencing and Early Release: A Follow Up

Last week, I spoke on truth in sentencing at Marquette Law School as part of Mike Gousha’s “On the Issues” series.  My PowerPoint slides and a video of the event are available here.  Alan Borsuk summarized some of the key points in this blog post.

If you watch the video, you will see that time constraints caused me to skip over a couple of slides.  I’ll fill in those gaps here and then suggest where I would like to see Wisconsin go with early release.

First, I think one of the most interesting and puzzling aspects of our polling research is that many Wisconsin voters say they support both truth in sentencing (“TIS”) and release from prison when an offender can demonstrate that he is no longer a threat to public safety, even though these two policies are in tension with one another.  

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