A former student recently needed a copy of the syllabus I’d used in her graduate Law and Policy class back in 2010. When I reviewed it, I was struck by the changes effected by Trump, MAGA, and our current, corrupt Supreme Court majority. I became positively nostalgic for the legal environment of my time in the classrooom–nostalgic for the “black-letter law” and for precedents that were considered settled by my cohort of lawyers and law professors.
In that syllabus, I explained the course as follows:
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This course will examine the response of the American legal system, with its historic commitment to individual liberty and autonomy, to the growth of the administrative state and to an increasingly complex social environment characterized by pluralism and professional differentiation. We will discuss conflicting visions of American government and different approaches to public administration, and consider how those differences have affected the formation and implementation of public policy within our constitutional framework. Throughout, we will consider the constitutional and ethical responsibilities of public service—the origins of those responsibilities and their contemporary application.
While relatively few people will become public officials or public managers, all Americans are citizens, and most citizens will participate in the selection of public officials and will take positions on the policy issues of the day. Accordingly, this course is intended to introduce all students to the constituent documents that constrain public action and frame policy choices in the American system. These explorations will inevitably implicate political (although not necessarily partisan) beliefs about the proper role of the state, the health of civil society, and the operation of the market. To the extent possible, these theoretical and philosophical beliefs will be made explicit and their consequences for policy and public sector behavior examined. The goal is to help students understand why certain policy prescriptions and/or public actions attract or repel certain constituencies, and to recognize the ways in which these deeply held normative differences impact our ability to forge consensus around issues of public concern.
In the course of these inquiries, we will consider the implications of the accelerating pace of social change on issues of governance: globalization, especially as it affects considerations of legal jurisdiction; the increasing interdependence of nations, states, and local governmental units; the blurring of boundaries between government, for-profit and nonprofit organizations, and the effect of that blurring upon constitutional accountability; the role of technology; and the various challenges to law and public management posed by change and diversity, including the impact and importance of competing value structures to the formation of law and policy.
By the end of the semester, students should be able to recognize legal and constitutional constraints on public service and policy formation, and to identify areas where public policy or administration crosses permissible boundaries. They should be able to recognize and articulate the impact of law and legal premises on culture and value formation, and to understand and describe the complex interrelation that results.
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During my years on the faculty teaching law and policy, it never occurred to me that I would live in an America where a President and virtually everyone in his administration would find the foregoing paragraphs incomprehensible–where individuals in positions of authority would reject–indeed, be unfamiliar with– the very concept of Constitutional restraints, let alone the existence and importance of civil society and/or competing arguments about the proper role of government.
I certainly wouldn’t have anticipated that so many of the ambitious politicians serving in the House and Senate–men and women presumably concerned for the national interest– would neuter themselves in slavish submission to a man whose ignorance of government and policy and whose intellectual and moral deficits were impossible to ignore even before the emergence of unmistakable dementia.
I would have rejected as fanciful the notion that a duly constituted United States Supreme Court would substitute partisan ideology and Christian nationalism for the rule of law, upending years of settled precedents and thoughtful, considered jurisprudence, not to mention the Separation of Powers that lies at the very heart of our constitutional architecture.
And yet here we are.
Forgive this somewhat whiney post, but coming across my old syllabus has made me nostalgic for the legal world I once inhabited. It wasn’t perfect, but it was infinitely preferable to our current reality, and we need to recover, reinstate, and improve it.
I remember my brothers and I asking our mother several times to read our favorite fairy tales. One of our most favorite was The Three Little Pigs. The story is about resilience and wise choices win over expedience of building anything other than with design that applies stonework to lay the foundation. Professor, your syllabus is about design for stonework no wolf can blow down. We all will need to have the story told again during restoration after the wolf gives up.
Every weekend, Zeteo sends out a compiled list of what happened the previous week in a day-to-day format. What is evident is the large number of lawsuits that have just started or are ongoing. That was the chaos of Trump’s personal and business life rolling over into the White House.
Today, it was announced that Trump is suing the BBC for billions of dollars, and Historic Preservation is suing Trump to stop the construction of the Epstein Ballroom. It’s now considered a matter of “national security” because there is a bunker underneath the rubble. LOL Have you noticed that everything with this administration is a “matter of national security?” Previous presidents did the same, but Trump has expanded it to excessive and ridiculous proportions.
And let’s not let the FED get away with gaslighting us about the negative impact of AI on employment. Have you noticed this administration has eliminated job reports for the past several months? The excuse for not sharing that data is the government shutdown. Ah, bullshit!
Productivity is increasing while employment is declining. We all know that it will contribute to higher profits and stock prices. If the government doesn’t step in to divert corporate earnings into a “wealth fund” for Americans, all that profit will flow to shareholders rather than workers. That’s what has been happening since the 1970s.
Can workers file a class action lawsuit against the POTUS and oligarchs to capture that extra profit for the people?
Sheila,
As brilliant as our friend Morton was funny this morning. And Heather hit it out of the park today also.
Who are the “young people” we hear should be taking over from the current party members…of both parties…are they the former 18 year old teenagers who were given the vote to increase election numbers? The numbers increased and our civil and human rights dwindled away as they became active in politics and are now the fools appointed to high places in Trump’s Cabinet and administration who have no idea what they are doing, other than what Trump orders them to do to continue receiving his payoffs to get even with those he considers his enemies who disagree with his aging, deteriorating mind. His personal history is written in the history of Trump family support of the Hitler administration through businesses and business deals which helped make them rich enough to replenish Donnie’s lost funds in his numerous bad business deals, often illegal.
“Forgive this somewhat whiney post, but coming across my old syllabus has made me nostalgic for the legal world I once inhabited. It wasn’t perfect, but it was infinitely preferable to our current reality, and we need to recover, reinstate, and improve it.”
I remember pride at being an American and dealing with shortages of food, medication, the ability to repair vehicles and the few appliances available by helping one another. We are now being forced to use electronic devices for getting through our daily lives; there is no sign of peace in our future as the current government is killing people at random and stealing oil tankers on the open seas. Will you buy War Bonds to fund Trump’s announced War on Venezuela or help provide what is needed to produce military weapons created to destroy nations and leave nothing behind to be renovated or rebuilt in a world destroyed by nuclear power leaving no people to renovate or rebuild?
Our military is disbursed to American cities away from their home states leaving family, home and jobs behind without the trained military to protect their home states or be ready and available to provide protection against Trump’s enemies should they decide to attack on our home ground again. Warnings were ignored after the first strike on the Towers in New York City; making it easier increase the targets and to be totally successful in their second attack by those enemy pilots who were well trained in this country. All recent enough history for young people in government to remember; if those losses meant anything to them. The known ignorance of Trump during his first term led to the vast death count of American victims of the Covid-19 Pandemic; we now must fear childhood diseases such as the current return of measles in the southern states due to Trump and RFK, Jr., who is as mentally defective as his partner-in-crime of ending vaccines again.
In my uneducated opinion, the rule of law is totally dependent on who makes the rules and who enforces them. Equality before the law has always been aspirational, especially in minority communities. Again, who makes the rules and who enforces them? Dominance is the goal of sociopaths who would force those deemed “less than” into perpetual subservience. Their access to the levers of law
and enforcement provides the means of domination.
As previously posted on this blog, reading a biography of Garfield has shown that indeed history does not repeat itself but it does rhyme. The Reconstruction era was an example of who got to make and enforce the rules. The divisions in the federal government and the men (note, no women) who were elected to decide how the country would be governed going forward mirror what is going on today on steroids. The media being wholly controlled by billionaires, most of whom believe they are entitled to decide due to their wealth and its power, just magnifies how far apart the classes have become.
Those class divisions could become castes if the proposed new rules are put into law by the deciders with self-interest at their core.
Voting rights are critical to the decisions and subsequent enforcement of the laws. The successful efforts to oppress and suppress voting by the oligarchy/kleptocracy has to be resisted with all possible rigor. We, the People, must be the ones who make the decisions and facilitate enforcement. If we fail to resist, the future will be bleak for the 99% under the heal of the 1% dominant caste.
RESIST.
Questions we really need to answer are “How did we get here? Where, exactly are we? (There seems to be a debate about whether we’re already in a Constitutional crisis, or on the verge of one). Why could we see neither the dumbing down of the electorate nor the rise of nationalism?
STEM is a four letter word for crushing humanity. Emphasis on science and math with too little time for art, poetry, and civics has been a blow to our civilization. We not only saw it coming, we abetted it. We thought it would guarantee the next generations would have the skills to get jobs in the new economy. It didn’t work. The jobs aren’t here. They are in Asia, where wages are low enough to bring in the profit that shareholders demand. The fact that the profit also adds significantly to the wealth of the CEO, CFO, COO, and the Chairman of the Board doesn’t hurt.
Every time I watch a Ken Burns documentary, I’m struck by the prose of the lowest ranking soldiers’ letters home, or of the diaries of those same young men and women. When the next generation’s Ken Burns starts filming about us, what will our sons and daughters or nieces and nephews think? They will most likely look at our social media posts. We might all go down in history as the crank who was as nasty and thoughtless as possible. Think about that for a minute.
Just for the heck of it, I’d also like to say that IMHO Abigail Adams would have been a great President!
Not whiney, Sheila; I could go much further with the whineying. The current situation is so far beyond the pale regarding what is so obvious to so many, sans Congress unfortunately, that we end up conjuring all possibilities for repair post apocalypse. The best part of that scenario is that we can endeavor to “build it better,” addressing imperfections in the great experiment (unfortunately probably not the biggest, most important ones – Electoral College, gerrymandering, etc.) but of course the worst of it is that we have to rebuild at all. I’m sticking with the former, keeping the faith, so to speak. We all need that, and my daily dose of your blog is a blessing I wouldn’t miss for the world. Thanks for that.
R.I.P. Rob and Michelle. I moved into adulthood (5 years your senior) in Los Angeles watching you go from masterfully filling the meathead role on the seminal All In The Family, to directing iconic movies, especially When Harry Met Sally, A Few Good Men, Princess Bride and Stand By Me. Your public stances on progressive issues and speaking out against the atrocities of the current administration were inspirational. Your tragic passing breaks my heart and you will be remembered, with love, always, for your positive presence in our lives.
Omission: in my R.I.P. notes to Rob Reiner, I mentioned my favorite movies he directed, and left off one that I have always loved, The American President, with Michael Douglas and Annette Bening. (thanks HCR!).
“…we will consider the constitutional and ethical responsibilities of public service.”
the MAGAS, SCOTUS, POTUS, and the silent, rubber stamping congresspeople could not care less about these.
RIP: Rob Reiner, the Bronx has lost a favorite son.
RIP Rob and Michelle.
I am still disgusted and pissed over Trump’s social media post mocking Rob’s death, and MAGA influencers like Laura Boomer who spread his sickness.
Didn’t they all have a bloody meltdown when Charlie Kirk was shot? Didn’t our idiot AG make it illegal to speak ill of Charlie? Ball State actually fired a professor over her post about the racism and bigotry that Charlie espoused. SMDH
p.s. And Gil, I loved all those movies, and I’ll add Misery to the list.
Thanks for reminding about the AMERICAN PRESIDENT movie.
Love those sappy wonderful AMERICA, AMERICA movies.
Difficult to get out of a negative place these days.