Millsaps Introduction to American Politics: rights

Showing posts with label rights. Show all posts

Sunday, April 15, 2007

Reaction Papers on Rights

This is the next to last week. Any thoughts on Civil Rights and Gay Marriage should be posted here.

Here is an interesting and useful website for the debate on Friday: Gay Quiz

Here is a great site that more or less accurately reports the results of some studies on genetic influences on sexual orientation, but gives the exactly wrong definition of a "p-value": Gay Gene?

I have been looking for direct links to the studies of identical twins and sexual orientation but I have had no luck. I only know how to find political science articles. If anyone has any suggestions let me know or, better yet, post them yourself.

Monday, February 26, 2007

Lincoln and King

Rights for Lincoln and King

A good tool for understanding their disagreement is the distinction between process and substance, or means and ends. The process refers to the procedures that we follow in making and enforcing laws, our ‘means’ of making laws. The substance is the rightness of the content or outcome of those laws, the ‘ends’ of those laws.

This distinction between procedural and substantive justice is at the heart of many disagreements about rights and political conflict in general.

Lincoln argues that the process is more important than the substance of rights. He is almost callous in describing some of the criminals whose rights have been violated as being deserving of their fate and claiming that we are better off with them dead. The substance, the outcome, is not what concerns him, it is the procedure, or process, by which they ended up dead that is the problem. His concern is not with the guys getting hanged and burned, it is with the good citizen who, gradually, over time, starts to figure that the law is a sucker’s game. He is concerned with loyal citizens losing their affection for the law.

King is concerned with and argues mainly from the basis of the substance of the law. As Charles pointed out, he also makes a process argument, that the laws are illegitimate because the process excluded people that by the letter of the law had a right to vote. But his main objection is deeper and he would hardly be forced to change his argument if segregationist laws could win a fair vote (which in some places they could have). His claim is that the substance of these laws is unjust, regardless of the process by which they were made.

In Lincoln’s speech, obeying the law, even if, or especially if, it is unjust is the highest duty of the citizen. King turns this on its head. Doing the right thing, the just thing, even if, and especially if you know you will be punished for it, is the highest duty of a citizen. This is because it arouses the citizens to the unjustness of the law.

Lincoln’s speech could have been given in Rome without too much alteration. He argues that we should protect these rights out of fealty to our forefathers, to honor their sacrifices.

King makes an argument based more on a very un-classical idea, the idea that all men are equal in the sight of God.

Both of them use religion, and specifically, the Christian religion, in their argument.

King cites Augustine to put substantive justice, the justness of the laws outcome, over formal justice, the justice of the process by which the law was made.

Lincoln uses the Christian religion in a novel way to ask us to imagine seeing Washington on the day of the resurrection. He asks us to image being able to look Washington in the face and be able to say that we faithfully preserved our inheritance form him, our “father,” so to speak.

I find this a really interesting twist because it is essentially a pagan argument. The Roman’s justified everything in terms of living up to our ancestor’s expectations and explicitly deified illustrious ancestors and political leaders (like Caesar) to legitimate the laws and justify sacrifice. Lincoln uses a peculiarity of Christian doctrine to get an essentially pagan effect.

Lincoln’s is “it’s the law” and King’s is “it’s God’s will,” (or at least the Judeo-Christian God).

Friday, February 23, 2007

Monday

Post here on the essays by Lincoln and MLK about the nature and basis of rights.

Monday, October 17, 2005

lecture note links

Saturday, October 01, 2005

levitt

here is a link to the chapter from Levitt's book where he lays out his more abortion-->less crime argument.

http://home.millsaps.edu/reinhmr/WhereHaveAlltheCriminalsGone.pdf

Tuesday, September 27, 2005

Judicial Interpretation

Nice article on Justice Breyer's conception of the Constitution:
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/09/26/opinion/26mon4.html

An astute analysis of the current political situtation:
http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/opinion/2002522690_dionne27.html

An analysis of policy developments:
http://realclearpolitics.com/Commentary/com-9_26_05_MB.html

The last two articles are by political scientists.

Friday, September 23, 2005

interesting article

this is an interesting article on abortion and the role of the Supreme Court:

http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/commentary/la-oe-gelernter23sep23,0,1959549.story?coll=la-news-comment-opinions

Millsaps Introduction to American Politics