Notable Quotes, May-June 2006

Kenneth Abraham was quoted in a 5/6 International Herald Tribune article about a congressional deadlock over legislation that would limit recovery in medical malpractice cases. "We have a system that isn't very good, and we don't have any alternatives that are feasible," he said. "That's the dilemma." Because medical practices are "basically small retail businesses" that cannot pass along liability costs to patients, Abraham said he favors making hospitals and health maintenance organizations liable for malpractice.

Vincent Blasi appeared on the 5/29 NPR All Things Considered to discuss a new federal law that limits protests at military funerals, enacted to thwart the activities of a Kansas church that used military funerals to protest permissive attitudes towards homosexuality. Nothing that the law was likely too broad to withstand a court challenge, Blasi said "One of the strongest lessons from our past is that the First Amendment protects scoundrels. . . . To have this kind of prophylactic law that prohibits all protests in a very large area, that I think is what makes this a problematic law."

Richard Bonnie was quoted in several news articles about the planned execution of Percy Walton, a "floridly psychotic" Virginia inmate who has said that after his execution he expects to have a telephone, a motorcycle, and a job at Burger King. The 6/4 Richmond Times Dispatch noted that Bonnie helped draft a proposed ABA policy statement that says "that there has to be a meaningful understanding of what it means not to be living anymore." In the 6/8 Washington Post, Bonnie said that the rejection of Walton's appeal undermined the fundamental principle of capital punishment as retribution. "What we have to understand is that the death penalty is meant to be an example of personal responsibility through punishment," he said. "What that requires is that the subject of the punishment understand why he is being punished." After Governor Kaine postponed the execution, Bonnie said in the 6/10 Richmond Times Dispatch that the governor made "a sensible and thoughtful decision . . . It is entirely appropriate for the governor to use his clemency authority to uphold the basic constitutional principles prohibiting execution of people with mental retardation or severe mental illness."

In a 5/19 New York Times article about the indictment of Milberg Weiss, a class-action securities law firm, for making secret payments to individuals who served as plaintiffs, George Cohen noted that the indictment could also open the door to the prospect of civil suits against the firm by shareholders contending they did not receive enough in a settlement. "Could there be a class-action lawsuit against Milberg over this? It can happen," he said, but added that the personal assets of the partners would most likely be protected and that the firm itself probably does not have extensive assets.

Anne Coughlin was quoted in a 6/4 Denver Post article about sexual harassment cases. "Typically the cases that make their way to courts and get before juries are going to involve some pretty egregious facts," she said, adding that she viewed "recent victories for plaintiffs as a sign that consciousness-raising is working." Coughlin discussed the postponement of former White House aide Claude Allen's felony trial in the 6/30 Richmond Times Dispatch. She saw the postponement as a sign of negotiations toward a plea agreement to a lesser charge, but noted that even a misdemeanor conviction might lead to Allen's disbarment.

Michael Dooley was quoted in a 6/18 Arkansas Democrat-Gazette article about a Congressman's farm divestiture agreement using an unorthodox corporate structure that might not have withstood close scrutiny by agriculture and tax officials. "If the question is: Did he give up control? I think the answer is, he did not," he said. "It's pretty illusory."

Kim Forde-Mazrui was quoted in a 6/12 New York Times story on recent doubts raised about the strength of the prosecution's case in the alleged Duke lacrosse rape. "It is an extremely difficult kind of case," he said. "It's very difficult to win. It will turn so much on credibility."

A. E. Dick Howard was quoted in a 5/11 Wall Street Journal article about the resignation of Judge J. Michael Luttig and his final opinion questioning the Bush administration's approach to detention of terrorism suspects. "Luttig's parting shot as a judge may be the most defining opinion that he's written," he said. In a 6/9 Washington Post article on the Virginia budget crisis, Howard argued that running government is a "core purpose" of the Constitution. "It simply cannot be the case that if July 1st comes and there's no budget, the governor has to stand by and watch the commonwealth close up shop," he said. A 6/9 Richmond Times Dispatch editorial noted that Republicans interested in "original intent" of Virginia constitutional provisions could simply ask Howard, the document's principal author, for his view.

Paul Mahoney was quoted in a 6/27 Economist Global Agenda article about efforts to clean up America's financial markets. A recent SEC rule change required hedge-fund operators to disclose more information to the government, but a federal appeals court rejected the new rule as inconsistent with prior SEC pronouncements. Mahoney noted, however, that earlier cases hinged on a statutory provision that the owners of a mutual fund are its investors, not its managers or distributors. "The SEC's problem in regulating mutual funds," he observed, "is that this theory is totally inconsistent with the facts."

David Martin wrote a commentary for the 5/29 Legal Times in which he argued that changes to immigration law should focus less on the border and more on employment issues. He urged policy-makers to "eliminate the guest-worker program and meet genuine needs for imported labor through changes in permanent immigration. . . . On the world scene, guest-worker programs have stayed temporary only when implemented with a harshness that is (thankfully) far beyond this society's capacity," he explained. "Workers aren't just cogs in an economic machine. They are human beings, and humans naturally sink roots." In a 6/19 Legal Times about immigration judges, Martin noted that "it's usually a pretty secure job. . . . Immigration judges work hard, but they don't have to bill 2,100 hours or have clients calling them up on the weekend." In a 6/29 Miami Herald article about the deportation of a Haitian who lost his citizenship after being naturalized, Martin noted that the case was an exception. "I would still think this is a tiny fraction of naturalized citizens who would later be found to have committed a criminal act, before their naturalization," he said.

In a 5/15 Concord Monitor article about the University of New Hampshire's Center for Coastal and Ocean Mapping, John Norton Moore discussed the significance of the center's work, which could be the foundation of extending U.S. boundaries if the United States ratifies the Law of the Sea Convention. He called the Senate's failure to ratify the convention a "national embarrassment" and debunked claims that it would threaten U.S. sovereignty and turn much of the oceans over to the United Nations.

Robert O'Neil was quoted in a 5/11 Christian Science Monitor article about the denial or revocation of visas for prominent foreign scholars invited to speak in the U.S. "Nobody questions there are genuine national security concerns," he said, "but the seeming irrationality or inexplicability of this process is troubling - and potentially damaging to our country's image." In the 5/15 issue of Inside Higher Education, O'Neil commented on campus tensions between Jewish and Muslim students. "All of our institutions are just so much more complex than they used to be, and the tensions are very different," he said. "And right now, tensions about the Middle East happen to be most acute." He went on to explain that the risk in the Middle East context "is so high that what may appear to be a neutral, principled condemnation may appear to partisans on both sides to be taking sides in an inappropriate way." In the 5/31 Inside Higher Education, O'Neil commented on a Supreme Court decision narrowing the free speech rights of government employees. By seeming to grant First Amendment protection to speech that is not directly related to an employee's work but not to speech that is job-related, he said, the court has created a situation in which "the degree in protection varies inversely with the speaker's expertise and with the potential value to society and the government of having the benefit of such speech."

Richard Schragger was quoted in a 6/12 Virginian-Pilot article about a settlement that four of Portsmouth's city council members reached in a federal civil rights lawsuit. The settlement involved a transfer of 1.8 acres of city-owned land, but state and city laws appear to require that six out of seven council members agree to a property transfer. "It sounds to me like they thought they had authority that they didn't have," Schragger said. "That trumps any settlement for sure."

Robert Turner was quoted in a 5/11 article in the Cairo newspaper Al-Ahram about the verdict sparing the life of 9/11 conspirator Zacarias Moussaoui. "A lot of people wanted him executed, but justice prevailed over anger," he said. "The fact that the jury didn't go for the maximum punishment suggests that the jurors weighed the evidence and did not act on emotions." Turner wrote a commentary for the 5/14 Washington Times tracing the history of the executive branch's intelligence and wartime powers. "Despite this long history," he wrote, "we still have legislators who seem to believe the legislative power is unlimited. At some point, they must recognize Congress is but one of three coequal branches of our government. And it, too, must obey the law,' in this case the higher law of the Constitution." Turner also wrote a commentary for the 5/27 Wall Street Journal about congressional outrage over an FBI search of a member's office. "It is increasingly rare to find a spirit of bipartisanship in Congress these days," he wrote. "So a display of the spirit would have been a good thing to see--especially in a time of war--but for the fact that the issue now uniting Republican and Democratic leaders is an outrageous assertion that members of Congress are above the law, and that the Constitution immunizes legislators who betray their public trust in return for bribes from investigation by the executive branch."

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