Justice Kennedy Goes to the Movies

smith goesThose industrious enough to reach the final paragraphs of the recent opinion of the Court in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission (2010) might have been surprised to find Justice Kennedy discussing Mr. Smith Goes to Washington (1939).  A Hollywood classic directed by Frank Capra, the film is the fictional story of a handpicked bumpkin Senator played by Jimmy Stewart, who sees the light, dramatically filibusters, and in the end teaches the Congress how to behave.  Justice Kennedy’s argument seems to be that if the campaign-related indictment of Hillary Clinton in the film titled Hillary: The Movie could be suppressed, the same fate could befall a beloved work such as Mr. Smith Goes to Washington.

The two films’ only similarity seems to be that they are indeed films.  One film is fictional, but the other attacks an actual Senator and Presidential candidate.  One is designed to entertain, but the other is designed to influence an election.  And most importantly, one is a work produced by the culture industry designed to make a profit, but the other is a work funded from corporate profits designed to change opinions. 

Are Justice Kennedy and the other members of the Supreme Court majority incredibly unsophisticated in their understanding of popular culture and politics, or is their analogy disingenuous?  Extending the inquiry, might a comparable question be posed regarding the Citizens United opinion as a whole?  The Supreme Court’s majority might be so oblivious as to think that corporations have the full panoply of First Amendment rights and that their financially self-serving broadsides are matters of free speech that enrich democracy.  Then, again, the majority might simply hope it can trick us into believing that.

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Does the ABA Do Good? (Part II)

The ABA has been the official federal accrediting body of law schools since 1952, a task it undertook informally after the issuance of the Root Committee Report in 1921. A law school approved by the ABA can remain in business because its students are eligible for federally guaranteed loans and because every state’s licensing authority has made graduates of ABA-approved law schools eligible to take its bar exam. Thus, a law school wants to please the ABA inspection teams that visit every seven years (and more often if the school is new) for a determination of whether to re-approve the school.

Has the existence of the ABA as accrediting body aided legal education?  Before 1995, the answer was a qualified yes. The ABA demanded law schools invest in resources that aided students (for example, requiring more full-time faculty), and inculcated a professionalism in legal education that provided for enhanced (though flawed) training of lawyers. The system had its faults, particularly the ABA’s use of its monopoly approval power to 1) push for faculty pay increases, 2) make demands regarding size of libraries and secure tenure status for librarians, and 3) make excessive capital demands of new law schools. On the whole, though, as Robert Stevens concluded in an article on American legal education, the ABA deserved two cheers.  See Robert Stevens, Two Cheers for 1870: The American Law School, in Law in American History 405 (Donald Fleming & Bernard Bailyn eds. 1971).

This ABA’s understanding of its role and its actions regarding it authority has changed markedly since the entry of the consent decree in the antitrust matter filed by the DOJ against the ABA. 

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Vincent Lyles: Taking the Positive Approach

“It can be done” – Vincent Lyles says that’s a lesson that successful economic development in Indianapolis can teach other urban centers around the country.

That phrase also sums up Lyles’ attitude about the work he does as president of M&I Community Development Corporation — and, in many ways, it summarizes Lyles’ personality.

Describing his work Wednesday at an “On the Issues with Mike Gousha” session at the Law School, Lyles said, “Part of our expectation in life is that tomorrow is going to be better, so let’s keep working.”

The community development arm of M&I Bank has a portfolio of about $100 million in investments in low- and middle-income communities, Lyles said, and makes about $15 to $20 million a year in new investments. “That’s not a big number, but it’s not a small number, either,” he said.

It is not a charity effort. 

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