Constitution
The Heckler’s Veto?
Posted by Sheila Kennedy in Constitution on January 1st, 2012
The Indiana Statehouse has been the focus of a lot of demonstrations over the years, and probably just as many efforts to abort–or at least minimize– those demonstrations. Remember when the KKK came to town? The argument was “We can’t let them use the Statehouse steps–people will riot and it will endanger public safety!” The [...]
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Wrong is Wrong
Posted by Sheila Kennedy in Constitution, Public Policy and Governance on December 17th, 2011
Since the election of Barack Obama, the GOP–aka “the party of no”–has shown impressive discipline, putting party orthodoxy ahead of both the common good and, frequently, sanity. The Democrats, on the other hand, have happily confirmed Will Rogers’ great line: “I’m not a member of any organized political party; I’m a Democrat.” The left wing [...]
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Why Do Gun Rights Trump All Other Rights?
Posted by Sheila Kennedy in Constitution on December 9th, 2011
As readers of this blog know, I’m a pretty rabid civil libertarian. But even I know that my right to free speech doesn’t mean I can stomp into your living room to harangue you. My right to free exercise of religion doesn’t include the right to impose that religion on students in my public university [...]
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The Body Politic
Posted by Sheila Kennedy in Constitution on November 10th, 2011
Tonight, I’ll chair a Spirit and Place Panel on “The Body Politic” at the Indiana Statehouse. I hope some of you can attend; for those who can’t, here are my introductory remarks. I’d like to introduce the panel: Eric Meslin is Associate Dean and Director of the Center for Bioethics at the IU School of [...]
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Intriguing–and Disquieting–Analysis of Citizens United
Posted by Sheila Kennedy in Constitution on June 7th, 2011
A paper delivered at the Law and Society conference I attended raised some interesting points about the Citizens United decision that I haven’t seen elsewhere. While there has been a lot of criticism of the Court’s classification of corporations as people, this presentation asked a more basic (albeit related) question: what was the “speech” that [...]
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