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Archive for April, 2017|Monthly archive page

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Civics Education and the Blackstone & Burke Center for Law & Liberty

In Academia, Civics, Conservatism, Humanities, Law, Law School, Legal Education & Pedagogy, liberal arts, Libertarianism, News and Current Events, Pedagogy, Philosophy, Politics, Scholarship, Teaching, The Academy, Western Civilization, Western Philosophy on April 26, 2017 at 10:49 am

A version of this piece will appear in Faulkner Magazine. 

Our country has suffered a decline in civic literacy.  From 2006 until 2011, the Intercollegiate Studies Institute (ISI) conducted annual studies that evaluated the civic literacy of students and citizens.

The results were discouraging. Most Americans were unable to pass a basic test consisting of straightforward, multiple-choice questions about American heritage, government, and law. One of the ISI studies suggested that students knew more about civics before they began college than they did after they graduated college.

It’s not just students and ordinary citizens displaying civic ignorance. Our political leaders have demonstrated that they lack the understanding of law and government befitting their high office.

Judge Arenda Wright Allen of the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia recently began an opinion by stating that the Constitution declared that “‘all men’ are created equal.” This line appears in the Declaration of Independence, not the Constitution.

Senator Chuck Schumer told CNN that the three branches of government were the House, the Senate, and the President. He not only failed to mention the judicial branch, but also treated the bicameral legislature in which he serves as if it were bifurcated into separate branches of government.

Congressman Sheila Jackson Lee, while criticizing the alleged unconstitutionality of proposed legislation, claimed that the Constitution was 400 years old.

These anecdotes suffice to show the extent to which Americans no longer respect their founding principles or the framework of government established in our Constitution.

That is why the Blackstone & Burke Center for Law & Liberty was founded at Thomas Goode Jones School of Law. We seek to promote the principles of the common-law tradition and American constitutionalism so that the next generation of civic leaders will make informed, thoughtful decisions about the future of our country.

Ordered liberty in the United States has rested on a commitment to religious faith and pluralism, fidelity to the rule of law, and ancient liberties grounded in the conviction that all humans are created equal and endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights. These values characterize the American experiment. Our society is built upon them, and its continued vitality depends upon maintaining and promoting our commitment to them.

Therefore, the Blackstone & Burke Center will educate students, teachers, judges, and political leaders in the areas of religious freedom, freedom of association, freedom of speech, and economic freedom. We will coordinate educational programs, research initiatives, and judicial conferences that examine the norms and nurture the institutions of ordered liberty.

We believe that the principles and ideas of the American Founding are worth conserving and celebrating. Our vision is to help renew an America where freedom, opportunity, prosperity, and civil society flourish.

The Blackstone & Burke Center has recruited of board of advisers consisting of internationally recognized thought-leaders such as Judge Andrew Napolitano, Senior Legal Analyst for Fox News; Dr. Robert P. George, McCormick Chair in Jurisprudence at Princeton University; Dr. James R. Stoner, Hermann Moyse Jr. Professor and Director of the Eric Voegelin Institute for American Renaissance Studies at Louisiana State University; Professor F. H. Buckley, George Mason University Foundation Professor at Antonin Scalia Law School; Dr. Don Devine, former Director of the U.S. Office of Personnel Management in the Reagan Administration and Senior Scholar at the Fund for American Studies; Dr. Ingrid Gregg, past president of the Earhart Foundation; and Dr. Daniel Mark, Vice Chairman of the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom and Professor at Villanova University.

In our first few months of operation, we organized and hosted a reception featuring a Library of Congress traveling Magna Cart exhibit, which was displayed in the rotunda of the Alabama Supreme Court for three weeks.  Judges, business and university leaders, lawyers, students, teachers, and the general public attended the reception to commemorate and learn about Magna Carta, and Acting Chief Justice Lyn Stuart of the Alabama Supreme Court and Judge William “Bill” Pryor of the Eleventh Circuit Court of Appeals delivered remarks about Magna Carta.

The Blackstone & Burke Center received a grant from Liberty Fund, Inc., to gift the entire Liberty Fund book and media catalog to the law library, as well as a grant from the Association for the Study of Free Institutions to bring a prominent speaker to our campus next fall.

The Blackstone & Burke Center also established a formal affiliation with Atlas Network and, through Atlas Network, partnerships with such organizations as the Acton Institute, American Enterprise Institute, American Legislative Exchange Council, Becket Fund for Religious Liberty, Cato Institute, Center for Competitive Politics, Claremont Institute, the Federalist Society, the Foundation for Economic Education, the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education, Freedom Foundation, the Goldwater Institute, the Heritage Foundation, the Hoover Institution, the Hudson Institute, the Independent Institute, Institute for Justice, Intercollegiate Studies Institute, the Law & Economics Center at George Mason University, Liberty Fund, Mackinac Center for Public Policy, Mont Pelerin Society, National Review Institute, Pacific Legal Foundation, the Philadelphia Society, the Pope Center for Higher Education Policy, Reason Foundation, State Policy Network, Students for Liberty, the Fund for American Studies, Young Americans for Liberty, and more.

Finally, the Blackstone & Burke Center received a grant from the Charles Koch Foundation under the auspices of the Philadelphia Society to direct a professional development conference on academic freedom at a meeting of the Philadelphia Society in Pennsylvania. Attendees included graduate students and university administrators from across the country who shared an abiding interest in the meaning, purpose, and characteristics of intellectual exchange in university settings.

We at the Blackstone & Burke Center look forward to a promising future as we inspire and educate new leaders in the principles and foundations of ordered liberty. To learn more about the Blackstone & Burke Center, visit our website at www.blackstone&burke.com.

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Session Four: Richard Bulliet on the History of the World

In Academia, Arts & Letters, Eastern Civilizaton, Historicism, History, Humanities, liberal arts, Pedagogy, Religion, Teaching on April 19, 2017 at 6:45 am
Here, in the fourth lecture of his course, The History of the World, Richard Bulliet discusses New Civilizations in the Eastern and Western Hemispheres (2200-250 B.C.E. Part I).

Book Review: “Historic Alabama Courthouses,” by Delos Hughes

In American History, Arts & Letters, Book Reviews, Books, History, Humanities, Law, Southern History on April 12, 2017 at 6:45 am

Julia Jordan Weller, a native of Montgomery, Alabama, attended Hollins University and obtained her undergraduate degree from the University of Alabama in 1985. She obtained her Juris Doctorate from Cumberland School of Law in 1988. Since that time, she has served as a law clerk to the Honorable Joel F. Dubina on both the United States District Court and the United States Eleventh Circuit Court of Appeals. Mrs. Weller practiced law with firms in both Montgomery and Birmingham where, in addition to handling litigation throughout the State, she also served as an Administrative Law Judge for the State Health Planning and Development Agency. In 1998, Mrs. Weller became an Assistant United States Attorney, eventually becoming the First Assistant United States Attorney (Chief of Staff) in the Middle District of Alabama. She later worked as the Chief Administrative Law Judge for the State Personnel Board and thereafter as the Chief Administrative Law Judge for the Office of Attorney General. She became the Clerk of the Supreme Court of Alabama on July 16, 2013. Mrs. Weller is married to Christopher W. Weller, Sr., a shareholder with the law firm of Capell and Howard in Montgomery, Alabama. The Wellers have two children, Christopher Weller, Jr. and Florence Weller, and attend St. Peter Catholic Church.

If the walls of courthouses could talk, they would whisper the experiences of those who worked, litigated, and governed over the last 150 years or more.  Some courtrooms have evolved from open air forums, such as those held in Wedowee until 1836, to some of the grand domed buildings that seem to radiate the authority of the court.

Author Delos Hughes escorts the reader through a journey stopping in each Alabama County, beginning from the outset of Alabama’s judicial history.  Hughes explores Alabama’s earliest architectural expressions of justice, ranging from log cabins to Neoclassical Revival.  He notes that courthouses often reflect through their architecture a sense of presence and the ideals of the communities which built them. These elements not only demonstrate the artistic preferences of the county, but also tell stories about the county’s politics, economies, class structures, and ethnic backgrounds.

Hughes writes, for instance, that the courthouse built in Baldwin County in Daphne, Alabama, and designed by the famous architects Frank Lockwood and Benjamin Bosworth Smith, “conveyed permanence, stability, seriousness—just the message that Bay Minette wanted to convey.”  Of the Bibb County 1902 Courthouse, Hughes states, “the building conveys an impression for ecclesiastical rather than governmental or administrative or political.”

Interestingly, in Centre, Alabama, in Cherokee County, fire consumed two courthouses: one in 1882 and, later, the successor that was built in 1895.  Thus, “befitting a facility so prone to burning, the commanding architectural feature” of the 1896 Cherokee County Courthouse included a bell tower to alert citizens of any further fire dangers.

A photograph of the Wilcox County Courthouse of 1859 depicts a grand Greek Revival building with fluted Doric columns and exterior iron stairs to the second floor courtroom.  In contrast, a simple white board fence surrounds the majestic building, apparently for the practical purpose of keeping the livestock, which roamed freely through the streets, from wandering into the courthouse.  The image creates an ironic contrast between the community ideals and perceptions against the backdrop of the county’s practical economic realities.

With witty dialogue and interesting insight, this collection of history and photographs is a must for any individual involved in litigation throughout this great state.  Having handled litigation in nearly every county, I can say what a treasure this book would have been in my earlier years of law practice.

Hughes’s book provides a new set of viewing glasses to observe the personality and expressions fused into Alabama’s earliest judicial architecture.  These historical backdrops shed both a serious and whimsical light on the buildings, some of which still exist, as well as on the tales of Alabamians—their roots, experiences and growth. Historic Alabama Courthouses is a delightful necessity for any Alabama lawyer and a guilty pleasure for lovers of the courtroom.

Dysfunction Always Travels

In Arts & Letters, Creative Writing, Fiction, Humanities, Literature, Short Story, Writing on April 5, 2017 at 6:45 am

John S. Maguire is a Telecommunications and FM Broadcast consultant living in Oklahoma City. He obtained a degree in English from Texas Christian University and at 53 years old went back to graduate school and obtained a Master in Fine Arts from Oklahoma City University. 

I didn’t sleep much the night before and awoke early to get ready. It was the first day of spring break of my first year in high school and it had been decided long ago that we would, as a family, drive to South Padre Island, Texas, one of the great southwest meccas of spring breakers, young and old. Specifically, everyone in my high school went to “Padre” for spring break. While I had been there before, this would be my first time as a high schooler and thus was particularly noteworthy, based on what was happening to the girls in my class. Their bodies had seemed to get slimmer, their legs got longer and some more important areas of their bodies were growing faster than I could keep track of. Daydreams of these girls and their new bodies shoehorned into tiny bikinis clouded my night and consumed my days as the date of our departure neared. Now that day was finally here and to say I woke up excited is not to fully explain what was going on in my body.

I hadn’t seen my father before I went to bed the night before and made the assumption that he was out drinking and would be slow to get up to pack the Ford Country Squire Wagon for the long 14-hour drive. I was wrong. He was up early, just after me, and when he saw me awake he yelled at me to come help him. I knew what he was calling me for. As with every other trip we had taken by car, I had to gather up all the bags that were packed the night before. I was one of the men in the house and that was what was expected of me.

As I gathered the suitcases, I pondered a question that has been asked since the first time man moved from place to place: Why do women pack so much more than men? I carried one suitcase after another out to the driveway as I saw my father mixing a screwdriver in the kitchen. He knew that it would take me fifteen minutes or so to get all of them out by the car, so he had time for a little hair of the dog. I reported back to him when I had them all ready for the pack and he swallowed the last bit of his drink, smiled and said: “Orange Juice, great way to start the day.” We both laughed as he led me outside to help him get the bags on the roof of the car. I handed each bag up to him as he placed them like puzzle pieces within the confines of the luggage rack. Sober, drunk or hungover, my father took great pride in packing the car. When he had completed packing for some trip or another he would always get down from the roof of the car to admire his work. It was, in fact, amazing that he could fit that much in that small of a space and have it be so well organized. The load on the car could not have been stacked better by the Egyptian pyramid builders.

“Who else could pack a car like that?” he stated proudly.

Next came the ropes.

“Son, go in the garage and get those tie downs,” my father told me.

We would be traveling on the highway and I was sure at speeds much higher than the limit of the law and possibly of the car itself, so the bags needed, no matter how perfectly they were packed, to be tied down.

I was there and back in seconds, wanting the praise of my father, but he was too busy mixing another screwdriver to get him through the tie-down process to come. After a quick chug of his drink he came back out and first tied one end of the rope to the front of the luggage rack and then, with my help, began to loop the rope though the railings from side to side until the rope was at the back end. He looped the rope twice around the back of the rack.

“Let’s leave the tie down loose for now as the girls might have some more to pack,” he said.

More to pack? More to pack? Were we going to tie granny’s rocking chair down so she could sit on the roof on the way to “swimming pools and movie stars”? The car already looked as if we were fleeing the dust bowl, but he was probably right.

He scurried back into the house for his third screwdriver. It was only 7:30 am. I followed him in and went to watch TV, as I knew, from experience, that it would be some time before the family girls would be ready. After about thirty minutes of TV time, I heard the rest of my family stirring and got up in anticipation of finally beginning our fourteen-hour pilgrimage to Padre Island for a week of sun, sand, and bikinis. In reality, it took another thirty minutes to get everything ready and in the car but finally we were driving out of our driveway, on the side roads and eventually onto I-35 toward the border of Oklahoma and Texas.

Once on the highway, my father handed me his prized doctor’s bag that held his whiskey, vodka, mixes, and glasses, asking me to pour him a small Chivas. I had been the “Keeper of the Bag” for a couple of years so I knew exactly what he wanted. A double shot of Chivas Regal scotch. He was ready to cover some ground and needed to get primed. I poured the drink and handed it up to him just as he accelerated far beyond the legal speed limit, finally feeling like himself again after the long night before.

First hour. First Scotch. At this pace it would not only be a long day, but night as well. I wasn’t concerned about our safety, as I had been mixing drinks for a while and had always arrived home safely. I assumed that he would not need a drink for a while so I dozed off to sleep, hoping that would make me stop thinking about the buxom bodies that would be wearing bikinis. Other than packing the car and mixing drinks, all I could think about was bikinis. It was hard to sit still in the cramped wagon, particularly as I had to shift positions regularly.

About an hour later, out of the corner of my eye, I saw something fly by the back window. I focused on what it was as it slid down the highway and finally came into view. It was a suitcase moving as fast north as we were south. In fact, it looked familiar.

“It couldn’t be,” I thought.

It was.

It was one of my mother’s suitcases and the cars behind us were dodging it as if they were playing some weird game of bumper cars. The last car didn’t quite make its swerve fast enough and clipped the suitcase, causing it to open—well, more correctly, to explode, as clothes flew through the air. Some of my mother’s clothes landed on that car’s windshield and blocked the view of its driver for a moment. I saw him reach out his driver’s window, grab the clothes and pull them inside.

I was panicked. Should I say something or act as if I were asleep? In our family, “kill the messenger” was a sport and I didn’t want to be sacrificed. I quickly put my head down and pretended to sleep. Safety first, I decided. Unfortunately, I hadn’t closed my eyes longer than ten seconds when I heard a loud squeal from my part of the car. I guessed that my sister had seen the bag, so I acted as though I were just then waking up and asked her what was going on.

“All of our bags are falling off the roof!” she screamed.

I looked back and feigned surprise as I saw bag after bag fly off the roof and onto the highway. Some exploded on contact; others were hit by oncoming cars and exploded. Clothes of every sort formed a huge cloud on the highway. As my father looked in the rear view mirror he spilled his drink.

“Son of a bitch!” he screamed more at his crotch being covered in scotch than at the luggage flying off the roof. “What in the fuck is going on?” I continued to stare as each bag hit the highway. I was sure this would be the cause of a huge pile up, but the cars successfully negotiated the flying debris with little trouble.

When my father finally pulled over to the side of the road to assess the situation my mother was screaming, crying and shouting.

“My clothes are all over the side of the road!” she shouted, between her sobs and screams.

Somewhere, somehow, my father was always able to tune my mother out, that is until he wasn’t able to and then took matters into his own hands, literally. My father got out of the car, looked down the highway to see the bags and looked up at the roof of the car to see a tie-down rope flying loosely in the wind.

“God damn it, John!” he screamed. “You didn’t tie the rope tight enough and it came loose.” At that moment everyone stared at me. If they could produce fire from their eyes I would have been incinerated. My brain went into overtime as I searched my memory for what had happened when we were packing the luggage on the car. Then it came to me. My father had not tied the rope off since he didn’t know if everything was packed yet. Happy that I had figured it out and it wasn’t my fault, I hadn’t considered that my father didn’t want it to be his fault either. I jumped out of the car to explain.

“Dad, remember when we were packing and you just looped the rope around the back rack to see if there was anything else that needed to go on the roof?” I asked.

“What? Don’t blame this on me, you son of a bitch,” he said as his left hand drew back, came forward, and hit me in the face. I fell on the ground as my cheek stung as though it had been burned in the sun for hours. I had become numb to the strikes but this time I wasn’t at fault. I knew I was right, but to go on would mean that this would get worse. I was so angry but couldn’t express it. All this emotion had to get out somehow so I started crying. That is how I dealt with my anger from that moment on. My father seemed to never hit me when I cried and it didn’t take me long to figure out the pattern.

“Now you get started down the highway picking up all the clothes you can find and bring them here. I’ll get the suitcases back to the car so you can repack everything,” he said. “Stop crying and get up and get moving.”

I got up slowly and started walking down the shoulder of the highway as cars whooshed by me at breakneck speed, some drivers honking and laughing as they saw the clothes and the suitcases. This was going to be embarrassing since I had to retrieve clothes belonging to my older and younger sister, as well as my mother. I was right to be concerned. The first piece of clothing I approached was one of my mother’s bras. I stared at it for a moment and wasn’t really sure how I felt about it. I knew then that this would be the first bra that I touched. Why did it have to be my mother’s? I grabbed it dutifully and went to the next. It seemed as though I were a magnet for undergarments; I soon had a handful of bras, panties and assorted underthings. I started back to the car with my first load and as I got close enough to the car for my sisters to see what I was carrying, they both screamed, ran at me, knocking me down and grabbing their panties and bras, leaving me with only my mother’s undergarments to place in the suitcase. If I wasn’t humiliated by then I certainly was now. I turned quickly to go back for more and saw that both sisters were on their way down the highway to get their own clothes so as not to risk my seeing their unmentionables. Fine with me. I would stick to the clothes and leave the rest for them.

As I arrived with my second load consisting mostly of my and my father’s clothes, I noticed my father sitting in the front seat of the wagon, car started and air conditioner on. He was pouring a drink, and I was pissed. All of this was his fault and yet I had to take the blame, risk my life on the shoulder of the highway and pick up clothes. I stared at him for a minute and then realized that I didn’t want another backhand so I turned to retrieve more clothes. After a couple of hours or so, and two drinks, we had finished collecting the clothes that could be found and had packed them back into their suitcases. My father stumbled out of the air-conditioned car, onto the hood, and up to the roof. I handed him up the bags and when I finished he tied them off.

“Get away from here, boy. You fucked it up last time. I’ll do it right this time,” he said just loud enough for everyone to hear. “Go sit in the car with the girls.” I did as I was told and wedged myself into the back vinyl seat. It was midday and getting hot so the vinyl had heated up and burned as I sat. My father got back in the car, mixed another drink on his own, not allowing me to mix it for him, put the car in drive, and we were on the road again. I lay my head down, pissed that I was blamed for something I didn’t do and tried with everything I had to remember the bikinis I had imagined on the beach and in the hotels and, well, just about everywhere, but all that kept coming to mind was the sight of my mom’s bra and me carrying it up the highway.