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Dear Abdul El-Sayed: A Letter to Michigan’s Gubernatorial Candidate
By Hira Baig Associate Editor, Volume 23 Dear Abdul El-Sayed, Life has been challenging for Muslims post 9/11 and has only gotten harder since the 2016 election. Hate crimes against Muslims are on the rise, and my neighborhood mosque now requires police security through the month of Ramadan and every Friday for our jummah prayers. My community is living with a heightened sense of fear since Donald Trump was elected and we are trying to figure out how to combat our country’s violent political landscape. Community conversations often conclude with realizations that we need to use our vote to change these circumstances. We are often left wondering, however, who should we vote for? I write this letter to you and all young Americans running for office because we want to support you; but we need some assurances first. Before I begin, I’d like to thank you. Our country needs you. We need more diverse legislatures on the local, state, and national levels and we appreciate your efforts. I just ask one thing: listen. Listen to the people in this country that need you, and don’t get swept up by power and greed that pervade politics. You don’t need to be bound to people with money and influence. Nearly all of our elected officials have already succumbed to these pressures. We need people like you in public office because it is only after we challenge the very foundation of our political structure will we be able to change public policy for the better. I’d like to share the words of Haney Lopez as you build your platform. Lopez tells us that the middle class is being used to propagate policy decisions that have ultimately hurt most Americans.[1] He writes that politicians use dog-whistles, or coded racial language, to gain white voters, motivating middle-class Americans to elect conservative politicians despite their own interests.[2]
Can They Do That? (Part 1): Shut Down Line 5
By John Spangler Associate Editor, Volume 23 In the era of the perpetual election cycle, it is no surprise that candidates are already declaring for 2018 races in Michigan. Michigan’s 4-year, off-presidential elections include the state senate, the governor, and the focus of this series, the attorney general. Thus begins our feature, “Can They Do That?,” where we explore the statutory authority of the attorney general’s office as it relates to campaign promises in our diverse state. Dana Nessel announces her bid for Michigan Attorney General in August 2017 Though the attorney general is nominated by their party and not by primary vote, it still helps a candidate to declare early and build a public profile. The first candidate to declare, and the first we will discuss, is Democrat Dana Nessel. Ms. Nessel is an attorney in private practice and former prosecutor whose most notable case was DeBoer v. Snyder[1], later Obergefell v. Hodges[2], the gay-marriage challenge that made it to the Supreme Court and won. At her August 15, 2017 event declaring her candidacy, Ms. Nessel’s speech covered a number of ideas to put in force should she be elected. One of those proposals was “On my first day, I will file to shut down Enbridge Line 5.”[3] So, can she do that? Line 5 is a pipeline that runs under the Straits of Mackinac, the narrowest point between Michigan’s Upper and Lower Peninsula. Built in 1953,[4] it has worried environmental activists for years and recently attracted a great deal of attention for issues like missing support struts,[5] unprotected pipe surfaces,[6] and the revelation that it was built for weaker currents than exist in the Straits.[7] An oil spill from Line 5 could spread over a vast area.[8] Enbridge also had the worst inland oil spill in U.S. history from a different pipeline in the Kalamazoo River in 2010,[9] raising further concerns about Enbridge’s safety record.
American Indian Political Representation: An Update on Congressional Races Across America
By Ben Cornelius Associate Editor, Volume 23 The highest achieving American Indian in U.S. politics was Kaw-Osage-Pottawatomie Charles Curtis. Curtis was the 31st Vice President of the United States serving with President Herbert Hoover.[1] Curtis started his career as a horse jockey, later attending law school, leading to his election to Congress. He eventually became a prominent member of the Republican party and was chosen as Hoover’s Vice-President.[2] Of the current 535 members of Congress, only two are members of federally recognized American Indian tribes. Tom Cole of the Chickasaw Nation is currently serving his 8th term as a Republican U.S. Representative for Oklahoma’s 4th District.[3] “Cole is an advocate for a strong national defense, a tireless advocate for taxpayers and small businesses and a leader on issues dealing with Native Americans and tribal governments.”[4] The other Ameircan Indian Congressman is Representative Markwayne Mullin, a Cherokee Republican representing Oklahoma’s 2nd Congressional District. Mullin is a businessman and a former professional Mixed Martial Arts fighter with a 3-0 record.[5] Given the dire circumstances on many reservations, increased Native American political representation is vital for the future of Indian Country. American Indians have a 28.3% poverty rate, compared to 15.5% for the nation as whole.[6] Lack of access to quality health care has led to huge disparities in health, for example the post neonatal death rate is over twice that of the U.S. white rate, 4.8 deaths per 1000 live births versus 2.2.[7] Education is another roadblock, as only 67% of American Indian students graduate from high school, compared to the national average of 80%.[8] Indian issues typically receive little attention in mainstream political dialogue. If there is any attention, it usually involves hostility to Tribal business ventures,[9] business that are vital to many tribes ability to support themselves and provide for tribal members.A Modest Memo
A Modest Memo is a satire in the form of a legal memo written for President-Elect Donald Trump circa November 2016. It counsels Mr. Trump to obtain Mexican funding for a United States-Mexico “Wall” via United Nations Security Council sanctions. These sanctions would freeze remittances (that is, “hold them hostage”) until Mexican President Enrique Peña Nieto wired the United States sufficient monies for construction. The memo, which is entirely the product of my imagination and legal study, contemplates one of the many possible worst case scenarios threatened by the Trump presidency. Through the arts of law and literature, I aim to show how the rule of law may so easily buckle and splinter beneath the increasing tide of United States, as well as global, nationalism and racism. I take inspiration, of course, from Jonathan Swift’s A Modest Proposal (1729), as well as the legal-literary experiments found in Derrick Bell’s Faces at the Bottom of the Well: The Permanence of Racism (1993) and Richard Delgado’s Storytelling for Oppositionists and Others: A Plea for Narrative, 87 Mich. L. Rev. 2411 (1989).The Resilience of Noxious Doctrine: The 2016 Election, the Marketplace of Ideas, and the Obstinacy of Bias
The Supreme Court has recognized the central role that free expression plays in our democratic enterprise. In his dissenting opinion in United States v. Abrams, Justice Holmes offered a theory of how free expression advances our search for truth and our cultivation of an informed electorate. That model—often called the “marketplace of ideas,” based upon the metaphor used by Holmes—has proven to be one of the most persistent and influential concepts in First Amendment jurisprudence. The marketplace of ideas model essentially holds that free expression serves our democratic goals by allowing differing proposed truths and versions of the facts to compete with each other for acceptance. The theory maintains that the best ideas and the most reliable information will emerge and prevail. The well-informed electorate that results from this process will then make better decisions in our participatory democracy. During the 2016 presidential election, however, it became apparent that a number of statements made by then-candidate Donald Trump proved difficult to rebut in the public dialogue, even though they were clearly and demonstrably false. Of particular concern, some of those statements fed into biases against and stereotypes of racial, ethnic, and religious minorities and women. This disinformation stubbornly resisted efforts at correction. This Article discusses the marketplace of ideas model and its underlying assumptions about how human beings process information and make decisions. It then proceeds to explain, through recent social science research, why the dynamic envisioned by the marketplace of ideas theory often fails to provide an effective counter-narrative to statements that reinforce racial, ethnic, religious, and gender biases and stereotypes. The Article concludes with some necessarily preliminary and exploratory thoughts about potential curative measures.Legacy in Paradise: Analyzing the Obama Administration’s Efforts of Reconciliation with Native Hawaiians
This Article analyzes President Barack Obama’s legacy for an indigenous people—nearly 125 years in the making—and how that legacy is now in considerable jeopardy with the election of Donald J. Trump. This Article is the first to specifically critique the hallmark of Obama’s reconciliatory legacy for Native Hawaiians: an administrative rule that establishes a process in which the United States would reestablish a government-to-government relationship with Native Hawaiians, the only indigenous people in America without a path toward federal recognition. In the Article, Obama’s rule—an attempt to provide Native Hawaiians with recognition and greater control over their own affairs to counter their negative socio-economic status—is analyzed within the historical and political context of a government coy to live up to its reconciliatory promises. The Article analyzes past attempts to establish a government-to-government relationship and considers new avenues for reaching this end. The Article concludes that although the rule brings the federal government closer to its ideals of justice, it does not go far enough to engender true social healing, specifically because of the uncertainty that the rule will be followed by a conservative Trump Administration that will likely be hostile toward Native Hawaiians and other indigenous communities.Deterrence and Democracy: Election Law After Preclearance
By Asma Husain Associate Editor, Vol. 22 In 2013, Chief Justice Roberts delivered the Court’s opinion in Shelby County v. Holder, which struck down key provisions of the Voting Rights Act. Considered the crown jewel of the Civil Rights Movement, the Voting Rights Act had, until that decision, required…Take a Knee: Athletes’ Newest Form of Protest and the Implications on the First Amendment
By Ali Boyd Associate Editor, Vol. 22 Over the years, many American athletes have used their position of fame and influence to make political statements. During the 1968 Mexico City Olympics, African-American sprinters Tommie Smith and John Carlos made headlines when they accepted their medals with raised fists in…The Tyranny of Small Things
In this legal-literary essay, I recount a day I spent watching criminal sentencings in an Alhambra, California courthouse, highlighting the sometimes mundane, sometimes despairing, imports of those proceedings. I note that my analysis resembles that of other scholars who tackle state over-criminalization and selective law enforcement. My original addition exists in the granular attention I pay to the moment-by-moment effects of a sometimes baffling state power on poor and minority people. In this approach, I align myself with advocates of the law and literature school of thought, who believe that the study (or, in this case, practice) of literature will encourage calls for justice by disclosing buried, yet critical, human experience and emotions.The Right to Bear Arms? Muslim Americans and Second Amendment Rights: Part 2
This piece is the second of a two-part series on Muslim Americans and Second Amendment rights. Read the first post here. By Serena Rabie Associate Editor, Vol. 21 Executive Editor, Vol. 22 In a previous piece I discussed the aftermath of the Pulse Nightclub shooting in Orlando, Florida and…