Today the attorneys representing the law schools and the Pentagon clashed in oral arguments before the United States Supreme Court. This is one of Chief Justice Roberts’ first big cases. Apparently during oral arguments, the Justices made their tilt very clear, as they usually do by way of their questions. You can read how the Court usually goes about sliding daggers into counsel’s arguments through these transcripts. C-SPAN currently has the oral arguments on audio from the instant case, Rumsfeld v. FAIR, regarding the issue of military recruitment on the law campuses and federal funding for the schools.
It boils down to this: law schools claim they do not want to aid and abet discrimination by actually assisting the military recruiters. The recruiters may use their campuses, just not be aided by school resources. The Pentagon says that if they’re not going to be helped, then they don’t need federal funding.
Here’s a little breakdown of some facts:
The law schools, though, disagree with the military’s “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy prohibiting homosexuals from serving. Boston College Law School, for one, allowed recruiters on campus but kept the military’s brochures in the library instead of the career services center.
With the federal government currently providing universities $35 billion annually, the schools claim a threatened funding cutoff effectively squelches their speech. They also claim they are being forced to associate with those they don’t agree with.
“The schools are entitled to make their own decisions about what messages they will disseminate,” argued E. Joshua Rosenkranz, attorney for the Forum for Academic and Institutional Rights. Instead, “the schools are being forced to host the government’s message. (And) the message the universities are hearing is, ‘Join the military, but not if you’re gay.’ ”
Under the Pentagon’s policy, 2,970 openly homosexual members of the military were discharged between 2001 and 2003. The Forum for Academic and Institutional Rights includes faculty members from 36 public and private law schools, including Stanford, the University of San Francisco and the University of Minnesota.
Let’s make something clear: the law schools are not being forced to do anything. The liberals have gone so long arguing that these entitlements are like rights, and that when these rights are violated they are accordingly forced into things that they have lost the ability to distinguish between being forced to do something and being influenced. There’s no doubt that losing federal funding might be an influence. They’re allowed to do that. Just like the law schools, PRIVATE law schools, are allowed to try and influence things.
However, the issue is hardly one of force. That is, unless your name is Harold Koh. I watched him comment on C-SPAN today after oral arguments. Koh, a former Clinton Administration official, has attracted some attention of late for supporting legislation banning torture, doing so notably while attempting to smash Gonzalez’s nomination for Attorney General to the ground (please read this link if you think that Ivy League law school deans are smarter than anyone else).
After the arguments he said that private schools cannot function without federal money.
Are you kidding me? We need to invite Koh down to be the next head comedian at Gator Growl. He’ll save us a lot of money and send everyone home in stitches.
I loved this oral argument. Read until the punchline:
LOLOL!!
Well, insofar as the private schools rely on federal grants to attract top researchers (I don’t know if that affects law schools), I see how they couldn’t operate as normal without them. If those federal funds go away, then so will the researchers, and the schools will *gasp* have to teach to make a living!
I’m sure that the federal funding allows them to do things but they are private schools and I am quite sure that not only can they function without the money, they can function better than public universities. Their endowments are scary.
Their endowments are scary simply because federal funding allows them to pile all that money into them. Even Harvard will be reluctant to eat into its accumulated capital or even the annual return thereon, and probably not to the tune of $100 million annually.
no institution has an inalienable right to taxpayer money. if taxpayer money is going somewhere, it’s perfectly reasonable to expect them to play by the rules expressed by the taxpayers through their elected representatives.