VIO | Blog Row

For anyone concerned with human rights and civil liberties, the developments in Georgia are extremely disconcerting. I find myself personally puzzled by the silence of many on this egregious demonstration of Russian strong-armed aggression. Although Georgia is certainly not without political skeletons, especially with regards to freedom of press — although I may add that Georgia has made some tremendous strides for a former Eastern Bloc country — the actions of Russia should horrify anyone who values liberty and popular democracy. It would be disingenuous to claim that Georgia has not made some grave miscalculations in their attempts to reincorporate South Ossetia, but this is almost besides the point. The invasion of a sovereign and democratic nation is a throw back to the days of authoritarianism. The West’s attempts to stand up for a fledging Eastern European nation have been feeble at best. John Bolton — not my favorite by any means, I may add — may have taken a bit of poetic license when he asserted that “the United States fiddled while Georgia burned,” but he was certainly on to something.

I highly recommend this article by Canadian columnist Andrew Coyne — one of the best commentators in Canada, according to my trusty Canadian matey Dan K. The column is a very effective rebuttal of the popular claim that the United States has no moral upper hand in this diplomatic crisis, having just invaded Iraq.

For anyone with an interest in constitutional case law or student rights issues, I highly recommend the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education’s Guide’s on student rights. There are five titles in all: Guide to Religious Liberty on Campus; Guide to Student Fees, Funding, and Legal Equality on Campus; Guide to Due Process and Fair Procedure on Campus; Guide to Free Speech on Campus; and Guide to First-Year Orientation and Thought Reform on Campus. Each one of these are well worth reading. The books are small, concise, entertaining, and extremely informative. Nothing empowers students more than a legal understanding of their rights as Americans.

The guides are free. All you need to do is fill out the form here.

I’m in transit all day tomorrow, but I hope to get up some good content sometime this weekend. There have been some really exciting student rights updates in the news recently, and they deserve full commentary. In the meantime, I direct you to this fantastic staff editorial in the Washington Times (not typically my favorite paper). Should quench your thirst for student rights commentary for a day or two.

After months of silence, I now break my extended pause from blogging. This week marks the end of my summer commitments, and now I can more thoughtfully turn my attention issues of student rights and the law. My post for today may veer outside my normal discourse on student rights issues, but it does relate to legal philosophy, a topic I hope to address frequently on this blog.

Yesterday at the annual meeting of the American Bar Association, Attorney General Michael Mukasey articulated his judicial philosophy justifying his recent decision not to persecute the two lawyers involved in the nasty Department of Justice firing scandal. Without getting into the politics of this highly charged topic, I’d like to take a moment to examine Mukasey’s comment and try to tease from it some sort of meaning:

“Not every wrong, or even every violation of the law, is a crime.”

To the extent any person can, I typically make a real effort evaluate arguments as intellectually sympathetic as possible. In the instance of Mukasey’s comments at ABA’s annual meeting, I am having a hard time discerning any sort of coherent philosophical justification of these comments and now believe that Mukasey merely misspoke. Granted, you’d be hard pressed to find someone more sympathetic to the charge that not every wrong is or even ought to be a crime than yours truly. However despite my best efforts, I can think of no grounds for the idea that not every violation of the law is a crime. One would think that a violation of the law is a crime, prima facie. Is this some sort of etymological gaffe, or nuanced judicial philosophy? If anyone can give me a sympathetic explanation of this quote, I am genuinely interested in hearing your interpretation.