I was just on CNN discussing the decision in Schuette v. BAMN, reversing the United States Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit and declaring that the citizens of Michigan have the constitutional authority to prohibit racial and other preferences in university admissions. We addressed this case this term in my Supreme Court class and the students voted not only in the same way as the majority today but predicted this result. What was surprising was the vote — 6-2. Only Justice Sotomayor and Ginsberg voted to upheld the Sixth Circuit.
This is clearly a breakthrough decision for those who have opposed racial and other preferences in admissions. In the past, these issues have inevitably ended up in the courts as the final arbiter of the constitutionality of affirmative action programs. Now, the Supreme Court is saying overwhelmingly that citizens can make these decisions for themselves. It creates a clear avenue by which affirmative action could be curtailed by direct action of the voters — bringing clarity that many have sought for decades of conflicted judicial rulings. Seven states have similar rules but this decision is likely to encourage others to follow suit.
Justice Kennedy wrote the main decision, which limited the political-process line of cases represented by Parents Involved in Community Schools v. Seattle School District. Kennedy stressed that “This case is not about how the debate about racial preferences should be resolved. It is about who may resolve it.” In the view of the majority “[t]here is no authority in the Constitution of the United States or in this court’s precedents for the judiciary to set aside Michigan laws that commit this policy determination to the voters. . . Democracy does not presume that some subjects are either too divisive or too profound for public debate.”
Justice Scalia wanted to go even further and get rid of much of that jurisprudence. However, this decision is potentially sweeping enough for most of the justices. Chief Justice Roberts and Alito joined Kennedy though Roberts filed a concurring opinion. Thomas joined with Scalia in his concurrence in arguing to go all the way in gutting the political-process line of cases. Justice Breyer concurred in the judgment while Justices Sotomayor and Ginsburg dissented. Justice Kagan probably would have joined in that dissent but recused herself. Even with Kagan however the vote would still have been lopsided at 6-3. Instead, it stands at 6-2. That is a sharp departure from the historically razor thin margins in cases like Grutter, Gratz, and others.
Sotomayor wrote a 58 page dissent (longer than all of the other opinions combined) and objected that the Court needed to limit voters because “without checks, democratically approved legislation can oppress minority groups.”
At 58 pages, Sotomayor’s dissent was longer than the combined length of the four opinions in support of the outcome.
In our vote, the Supreme Court seminar voted 11-4 in favor of reversing the Sixth Circuit and 11-4 in predicting that that “other Supreme Court” would also reverse. The United States Supreme Court (while producing multiple opinions) proved less ideologically divided in the outcome than the Sixth Circuit. On the lower court decision upholding the dismissal of the action, the eight judges in the majority were nominees by Democratic presidents while the seven judges in dissent were appointed by Republican presidents.
Here is the opinion.
buckeroo
I see a need for an amendment ….
I was referring to Today’s Winner of the Internets Challenge.
I loved the Ben Carson comment with the added fillip of the CV.
Goodness, there is an Internet challenge? And who gets to vote?
btw, what actual history are you planning to read?
Paul
The government GAVE them the land. It GAVE them government bonds for funding. Yes, they were all paid back with interest. And the railroad guys sold their own bonds, too. But how did they get the money to re-pay the government? Why they sold the land.
The three guys could not have done a damn thing without the land.
It is too idiotic to argue with such a dolt. I want to spend the rest of this evening reading some actual history. Why argue with a guy who has nothing but an agenda?
It is a subsidy regardless of how you deal with it. And they made a fortune, both companies. I don’t agree that it should have happened but it did. The government has subsidized other projects, but probably except for the Interstate Highway Act and NASA, has not spent as much money.
Bonds were issued and when they came due the government was on the hook for payment. Ask T Roosevelt, his family lost a fortune in that first crash of 1879 or so…. Then a few more notes came due and the FDR side lost 3/4 of its net worth. Hence one of the reasons for his views on banking, stocks and instance being interlinked.
In the end the US picked up all of the resulting debt of the railroads. As well as the begining of workers compensation.
Re: Transcontinental Railroad: from Wiki and much more is found there.
n addition to government bonds, a 400-foot (120 m) right-of-way corridor (along with additional lands needed for all sidings, stations, rail yards, maintenance stations,) etc. on which to build the railroad were made by the Congress. Extensive land grants of alternate sections (one section is one square mile) of government-owned lands along the tracks for 10 miles (16 km) on both sides of the track — 6,400 acres (2,600 ha) per mile (1.6 km) of track — were also granted to be used and/or sold by the companies. Grants were not allowed or given in cities or at rivers or on non-government property. While some of this land had potentially exploitable minerals, was good farm or forest land, and quite valuable, much of it was essentially valueless desert. Provisions in the Pacific Railroad Acts were made for the telegraph companies, who had just completed the First Transcontinental Telegraph in 1861, to combine their lines with the Railroad’s telegraph lines as they were built. Railroad-allocated land not sold in three years was to be sold at the prevailing government price for homesteads: $1.25 per 1 acre (0.40 ha) if there were any buyers. Had the bonds not been repaid (which they were with interest), the Acts provided that all remaining railroad property, including trains and tracks, were to revert to the U.S. government for disposal.
The massive amount of capital investment (over $100,000,000 in 1860 dollars) needed to build the railroad was obtained by selling government guaranteed bonds (granted per mile of completed track) and railroad company bonds and stock to interested private investors. The land grants, financial incentives and bonds would hopefully cover most of the massive initial capital investment needed to build the railroad. The bonds would be paid back by the sale of government granted land and prospective passenger and freight income. It was far from a given that the railroads to the thinly settled west would make enough money to repay for their construction and operation for a long time. In addition to the railroad land grants which the railroads sold at low cost to help pay back their government backed bonds (all were repaid) the 37th United States Congress (1861-1863) passed the Homestead Acts which were several United States federal laws that sold an applicant 160 acres (65 ha) of unclaimed government owned land, typically called a “homestead”, at low cost when the applicant did some prescribed work on it. There was now a strong and relatively low cost incentive for the settlement of the west which many thousands took advantage of. The railroads started new population growth and potential population growth induced many other railroads to be built and connected to the transcontinental railroad to serve communities and states off the original main track
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The whole story is a great one and echos the 2012 war cry about who built what.
RTC – the Postal Service paid private carriers to do what it could not.
buckaroo
Are you challenging Mr. Keebler?
Paul: You’re wron. The U.S. Postal Service made communication affordable and possible for people in the farthest reaches of this country to stay in contact. That’s precisely why the Founders put it into the Constitution.
To this day, even FedEx and UPS rely on the postal service to deliver to out of the way places that those companies have determined as uneconomical to service.
RTC
Please don’t give up. The information is wonderful.
I am awaiting Ben Carson to arrive on the political scene – then we shall have a
curriculum vitae of the highest order.
Paul,
Haven’t researched the railroads. Should I? The phrase Railroad Barons comes to mind. I do believe, but I’m not positive, the government GAVE ….wasn’t it Vanderbuilt…. all the land – lots of it. And then there is the matter of rails, and ties, and workers, engineers, tunnels through mountains, and engines, and rail cars, and golden spikes. Sounds like a big government job to me. I’ll go check it out.
OMG, really!? WTF is going on with this spam filter!!? It’s quickly becoming not worth the effort.
Paul , sorry you are wrong about the telegraph.
Early in the succeeding year, several other telegraph bills were introduced in the United States Senate. An examination of them in detail led to the conviction that no private company would be able to successfully build and maintain telegraphic communication across the continent, the cost of maintenance after the construction of the line being too great. Government aid was consequently considered absolutely necessary if the enterprise were to be carried out. A bill finally passed Congress appropriating $40,000 a year, for ten years, toward the construction and maintenance of a line of telegraph between the Atlantic and Pacific States. Within the appointed time the Secretary of the Treasury advertised for proposals. The Grand Confederated North American Association held a convention at New York, and agreed, as the Western Union Company had more at stake than any other Eastern company, to refer the whole matter to it and to the Placerville and St. Joseph Company. The Western Union Company resolved to put in a bid at the maximum price fixed by Congress, the bid to go in Hiram Sibley’s name, but if successful, all the California lines, so disposed were to share in the benefits. Several other competing companies made bids, but as before the time came around for giving the necessary bonds they had all withdrawn, the contract was awarded to the Western Union Company
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Actually the telegraph was subsidized like the solar energy and hybrid cars. They are still private. The Central Pacific was four CA men who went from Sacramento to whereever, getting paid by the mile, depending on whether it was uphill or flat. No government involved except for picking up the bill. They also got every other section, I believe, of land along the track. The Central Pacific set up a second company to do the building (basically paying themselves to build) and imported the Chinese to work on the railroad. The guy they hired to lay out the line died before they really got started building the line, but the path had been selected. Cannot remember who was involved coming from the East. Both railroads remained in the hands of the stockholders, not the government. It was not like Government Motors.
If you want to research it, it is interesting. On the Central Pacific side two names stick out, Huntington of the Huntington Library and Stanford of Stanford University (built for his son) fame.
Thanks, RTC.
Excellent.
Karen,
Read Fox. It wasn’t terrible. First half pretty informative. Laid out the facts. Second half is all opinion – and where it goes astray. If I were reading that when it was written, January ’09, it would have been alarming. And I believe they don’t miss an opportunity to develop a political POV, and their POV is very Right and they weren’t crazy about the new guy being sworn in in ten days. Europe (broad stroke on my part) did not fall – not even Greece. Spain and Italy held. Yes, new governments took power, but “the center held”. And I’ll take this opportunity to say ….because Obama!
Nato stuff interesting. And I think it did get crazy in Latvia but waay beyond my pay grade. Happened upon a Wayne Maston…Marston? report. Drove me crazy. He had on some economics professor from MO who was saying pretty crazy stuff.
We sure do live in some interesting times.
Thanks for the link.
RTC,
That was indeed funny. I hear Ernie and elfmiester are already taken.
Paul Schulte
I use Mr Keebler at Daily Kos
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Now that’s funny.
Karen: I don’t sympathize with ranchers. At all. They are among the most spoiled breed of Americans. They have seldom, if ever, earned their keep in this country.
They receive a substantial discount to graze their cattle on public lands. Might as well call that subsidy a govt handout. Another way to put it is that ranchers receive welfare.
That’s the way it’s been since the pioneer days. They received their land for free if they settled it. The Eastern states sent Federal troops out to vanquish the natives, financed their water supply, and built their roads. Incidentally, the U.S. Postal Service made communication possible for the West, but that’s a topic for another day. The point is that they have received more than their fair share of assistance and they pretend that they did it all without any help.
The generously low fees charged to ranchers were initially justified on the basis that the govt needed to encourage ranching in order to feed the growing cities of the East. I believe the contemporary thinking at the time was that ranching would flourish and would eventually no longer require any assistance. Instead, ranchers in the West look upon their handout as an entitlement.
The produce a product that’s essentially unhealthy. Their cattle destroy the land through grazing and trampling. The cattle also damage stream and river banks, reducing water quality. Many of them demand that bison be destroyed whenever and wherever they set foot outside of protected areas. Bison are perfectly suited to the environment and provide a healthier source of nutrition than cattle.
This guy Bundy, and ranchers like him, are the worst example of Americans: spoiled, ignorant, bullying jerks. In my opinion, they had the wrong animal in the hole when they buried those cattle.
RTC – Wells Fargo, the telegraph and the Pony Express made communication possible in the West. The train would replace all but the telegraph. These were all private concerns.
Since the feds hog all the land in the West ranchers do not have enough private land to graze cattle on. For instance, it takes 100 acres of grazing land for one cow in Montana. You have a 100 head you need a lot of acres and a 1000 head or 2000 head a lot more. People who live in the East or California do not really understand the West. They don’t still have round-ups because they have nothing to do with their spare time, they still need to round up the grazing cattle.
Protected speech under the internet educational act. Daily kos, help me there. Do you post there as well? What’s your name on the daily kos.
I use Mr Keebler at Daily Kos
Bundy court case?
Is Bundy suing the government, AGAIN?
Or is the government going to sue him, or better yet charge him for theft?
I sure as hell can’t keep up. Gotta get to Iceland…