A Trend of Increasing Liberty?!

This Wednesday's Con Law class just floored me. We were talking about the "living tradition" idea enshrined in Griswold when Professor (D.) Williams put two graphs on the board, one representing the trend of liberty over the years, and other other totalitarianism. The idea was that the trends in areas such as these form patterns that judges can observe and make decisions that maintain the pattern. The totalitariansim graph was essentially constant, which, for purposes of the thought exercise in class, is fine with me. But he drew liberty as a steadily increasing trend.

I was completely shocked. My first instinct, without giving it a moment's thought, would have been to draw the line going down rather steadily. On further examination, and noting the particular years marked on the graph, his view can be reconciled in terms of the breadth of liberty. Things like the abolotion of slavery, the equal protection clause, and granting women the right to vote made the "liberty club" bigger. But, Griswold wasn't about giving someone freedom that didn't have it before, it was about recognizing how far that freedom went for the parties at issue. Except for incorporation, the trend for the depth of liberty in America has been decidedly downward.

This is so obvious that I didn't even originally consider the breadth of liberty argument. It's a truism that when the legislature is in session, liberty is in jeopardy, that legislation nearly always contracts a person's freedom rather than expands it (the law tells you what you CAN'T do), and that new laws are passed more quickly than the are repealed or struck down. The decrease of liberty over time is a systemic problem of any democracy.

But I suppose I should be more concrete. Let's bust out a more complete liberty timeline.

1824: Gibbons v. Ogden goes farther than is necessary to prevent states from interfering with interstate commerce, leaving only commerce "which does not affect" other states free from federal regulation.

1868: 14th amendment passed; through incorportation, most federal rights will now apply against the states. the only substantial expansion of the depth of liberty in US history

1914: Shreveport Case pushes the federal power/liberty front back a bit by holding that the effect on other states must be substantial

1930s: New Deal ends any remaining restrictions on the scope of Federal power; economic regulations work their way into most intrastate contract situations

1934: National firearms act passed, restricts possession of weapons useful for personal defense and militia purposes to only those rich enough to afford expensive licences

Post-1940's: With the end of World War II, wars are no longer "declared," but merely fought at the command of the executive; the removal of this authority from Congress insultates the decision to go to war, moving the decision farther away from the people who will bear the burden of the fighting (the liberty interests here are that of life and consent).

1960's: State restrictions on firearm ownership are on the rise; the Court declines to incorporate 2nd Amendment against the states

1970s: State restrictions on abortion on the rise; Roe v. Wade curtails some of this, but leaves enough wiggle room for states to burden abortion to the point of impracticality.

The government further intervenes in contract and takes a huge step backward from the passage of the 14th Amendment by requiring sexual and racial discrimination in hiring.

1980's-today: War on drugs leads to an unprecedented expansion of law enforcement search and seizure powers (not to mention curtails the autonomy one had in one's own body). No-knock searches result in frequent fatal shootings, while convictions for trivial offenses are used to curtial other rights.

1994: Brady Act further restricts possession of weapons and ammunition

1996: Lautenberg amendment provides for firearm ownership being restricted without due process of law

2001: USA-Patriot Act makes banks, libraries, etc. agents of the federal government and expands the government's power to spy on its citizens, in many cases without judicial oversight.

2002: McCain-Fiengold Act restricts the means of political speech, delivering a severe blow to the ability of people to gain access to the media. The Court is not swayed by the argument that a right to do something is meaningless if one is prohibited from the means to exercise it and upholds the law.

I don't intend for this to be anything close to an exhaustive list, but I think it's safe to say that the truisms are correct--liberty contracts over time, and will continue to do so without massive reforms. We've made great progress in making our polity more inclusive over the centuries, but to say that the "space" we have in which to live our lives in our own way free of interference has increased is absolutely ludicrous.

Finishing up the foreclosure project

Our second day of work was much better. We got an early start, skipping stopping at HQ competely and just got out there at 0900. We finished up one county before lunch and did another afterward. That county was rather interesting, since thier "courthouse" has actually a large park of air-conditioned trailers; apparently thier normal building was heavily damaged in the storm. We took part of the afternoon to take a trip out to the US-90 bridge. It was collapsed on the west side; each segment in that area had broken free and fallen at one end, with the top of the other side propped up against its support. It had the appearance of a concrete-and-rebar accordian. Think "True Lies," only worse.

On Wednesday, we finished up our last county, grabbed a newspaper for the other group, and then went back to the center to record all our data and compile it with the other groups. We got kicked out of the center around 5, which was definitely a good thing because I knew we were working harder than we had been on the previous days.

They actually managed to get me to go out on Wednesday night. Jen's group had been working on a historical survey in the local neighborhoods, and had apparently made good friends with a local bar owner. That paid off later at night, when our group visited the bar and got served some of the stiffest drinks we've ever had. Fortunately, I wan't too hung over the next day. =)

On Thursday, it was reassignment time. I worked a bit with Sue (Chicago Kent, with the other group on the project) for a bit on compiling the data and then did some clerical work for an apartment survey project. The letters were ready to go out friday morning. Hopefully, we kept a few people in their homes.

Day 3: Orientation and first assignments

Our HQ is the Mississippi Center for Justice in Biloxi. We drove down on US 90, but then had to detour north to I-10 because the bridge for 90 is out (I might have some pics later...). The damage in this area is severe, even months later. It looks like F3 damage on the Fujita scale. The beachfront homes are essentially all destroyed, although a few sturdy structures remain. There is also significant damage moving inland among low-cost residences that could not take the wind and storm surge. The Casinos along the shore are about 50% intact, which is to say that the bottom floors are blown out, leaving the stuctural supports alone in place, and tha the top halves mostly have subtaintial damage to the roofs, with some collapsed walls. This is on average, some are slightly worse or better. Some are mostly repaired and operating (a good thing, since the casinos are apparently the best source for employment in this area). The local rebuilding priority appears to be clearing out the beaches of debris, so there is heavy equipment sifting through the sand. It seems like an odd priority, but I guess it's important so that the casinos can be rebuilt.


The priority for the MSCJ is to get the public aware of the emergency aid funding of the state. Apparently, MS got X$ in federal disaster relief money, of which 75% had to be spend on low-income families that had lost their homes; Congress later docked the cap to 50%. But, there was a provision in the act which allowed the state discretion to drop the caps "for substantial need" or something like that, so the governor has decided that the money will be spent regarless of income, and will only be eligible to homeowners who had homeowners insurance (but not hurricane/flood insurance) and who did not live on a floodplane. OK, I can understand holding back on the peope living on the floodplane, but the requirement that it only go to people who already had homes and could afford insurance is a bit crackheaded. This is a middle- and upper-class recovery bill now that is leaving the most vulnerable to rot. So, the "plan" is basicly to go out and get people to know that this is happening so they bitch to their reps and get the plan stopped before it's too late. They have until the end of the week. Yes, not a very good plan.


My assignment for the first day is unrelated, though. Our job is to head out to the local courthouses and find notices of property forclosures. We copy down the info and bug the tax recorders to give us the addresses of the people being foreclosed on. The idea is for US to mail them to let them know what's happening. Why us, you ask? Because in this state, all due process requires is a notice on the bullitin board and an add in a newspaper, so a lot of these folks probably have no idea. Also, there is a moratorium on foreclosures in MS right now, but in order to prevent it, the person being forclosed on has to file some documents--and they're going to have a hard time doing that if they don't know they're being foreclosed on! So, we identify who these people are, and then we try to get them the information they need to keep them in their homes.


I wasn't happy with the amount of work we got done today. It took us forever to find the first courthouse, in part due to our own disorganization, and in part due to incomprehensible directions. We eventually got there and got to work...copying detailed property descriptions through glass proved very frustrating. The lack of internet access while away from HQ didn't help; we thought it would be best to try the white pages before using the tax assessors, but the white pages were a bust so we didn't get the addresses. We'll leave that for tomorrow.

Jen and Nancy finished off the cooking supplies; I was sent off to get cheese and ziplocks and that's about all the good I was. =( A bunch of people went out at night to drink again, but again I didn't quite feel up to it again so I chilled with Nancy, sue (Kent), Jen, and Erin pretty much all night. We got a lot of scandalous gossip in, mostly about Terry and Freya (Columbia) who had apparently taken a walk to the beach (the part that had been sifted, I assume), then broke up the meeting and turned in.

Day 2: Gulfport

After an hour-long drive to the east, and some wandering around semi-lost, we found our home for the week; the Long Beach 1st Methodist Church. We're staying in an annex building mostly used for youth groups. Several classrooms are now our bedrooms. We also have an excellent kitchen. The downside is that we don't have an on-site shower. We have to hop in a car and drive to the fire station where we use outdoor showers. They tell us the hot water supply is adequate. I'll hope that's true, but I have a feeling that Navy showers are in order.
The rest of our group seems very smart and friendly for the most part. We've got a large contingent of NYU students, two from Rutgers, one from Columbia, and two from Chicago-Kent. There may be others but I can't remember right now. It's a dominantly male group (sigh) but there are a few hotties for us to fight over.

Jen, Nancy (Rutger's), and I went across the street to the grocery store and bought salad ingredients, pasta, beef, and bread, and then made dinner for the whole group. I really did very little since I'm retarded around the kitchen, but hey, I try. We hit a bar afterward, the Lookout, but I wasn't much in the mood for drinking on a Sunday night, especially with our first day of work coming right up, so I went home early.

Days 1-2: NOLA

There are four of us represent'n IU on our trip to NOLA and Gulfport: Jen, Erin, me, and our 3-L driver, Terry. We made it from Bloomington to New Orleans in about 13 hours. We could tell we were getting close when, while driving through Mississippi, there wasn't a grouping of trees that hadn't taken quite a few casualties. Then the tarp roofs started, and then trees that were bent north instead of just snapped. Going into NOLA, the damage was unsettling. From the elevated highways, we looked down on the residential districts where the damage was severe. It was a story of quality of construction; most of the modern, well-build buildings had damage no more severe than the need for a tarp-roof, but most of the residences were old and dilapidated. These buildings still had no windows, and had sections of the wall or roof blown away. There were a few totally collapsed buildings. I'd guess about 25% were inhabited, and that not much more than that was inhabitable.

The downtown area wasn't so bad. The buisiness district was mostly boarded up and shut down. Some of the appeared to have taken wind damage, but in some areas the wind damage at high level seemed non-existant and the ground level windows were still boarded up. The most striking sight though, was the garbage. It was strewn about on the ground everywhere, and we watched the locals add to it as we waited to get our room at the Hotel Lasalle.

One we were situated, we headed down to the french quarter for dinner and drinking. There wasn't really any damage in that section of the city, but the amount of garbage was god-awful. The stink was everywhere, and we were there to eat! We eventually got pulled into a place with a courtyard by a very enthusiastic host and were seated amongst the smells of the kitchen instead of the outdoor landfill around us. I managed to eat half a dinner before getting a bit dizzy... probably from a combination of being cooped up in a truck all day and breathing garbage fumes. It really was good food though; I forgot what the name of it was, but I had a sandwich made of salami and genoa, slathered with provolone and with "olive salad" instead of lettuce.
We wandered around a bit and hit Pat O'Brien's, and took a seat at their piano bar. We ordered a round of Hurricanes and shot the shit for awhile. Jen kept leaving us, saying she was going to the bathroom, but the bathroom was the other way! I assumed she was taking shots. (It turns out she really was going to the bathroom, but wanted to pass by the bar on the way to see if guys would buy her shots--which fortunately did not happen) Terry was trying to get her to drink more despite my warning that it was a bad idea (in part due to my belief that she was leaving to take shots, but also due to the fact that these were very tall, very strong hurricanes. The fact that there would be four of us in one room together didn't deter Terry from getting his flirt on. Of course, it led nowhere, because most people don't like to fuck unless they have privacy, so if anything was going to happen he'd either need a new place or a target with different moral standards.

Day 2: We split up for breakfast, Terry and I found an open-air restaurant in an area of the French Quarter that had garbage service. (About half the Quarter reeked of garbage from the previous night). After eating, Terry hit the Cathedral for service and I wandered around for awhile. I eventually found someplace that sold fine cigars and purchased a Macanudo. It's amazing how differently people look at you when you're walking around chomping on a cigar...Mostly bums anyways, I guess they sense that you have money to burn. Oh well. I did feel a bit guilty though. I was among some tourists, but mostly other relief workers and residents. I was pretty well-dressed, and a lot of people around obviously were in various levels of financial distress. Oh well, I'd be getting to work the next day.

Out by Jackson Square, there was a woman selling some amazing art. They were painted in bright colors on black background, and depicted street musicians and the architecture and life of the French Quarter. They were, in a word, amazing. I don't often see things that I know I'd like at home as decorations, but these really captured me. There was just something incredibly alive and energetic about them. I'll be back when I graduate to get me some golden handcuffs (they cost "several hundred" dollars). Maybe I'll get one for a certain friend too. ; )

Off to Gulfport!

My spring break isn't really a break. I'm off to Gulfport, MS (about an hour away from New Orleans) to do some legal assistance for people and agencies affected by last Fall's hurricanes. I don't have a specific assignment yet, but it's been narrowed down to three possibilities:

1. Pre- and Post-Katrina Affordable Housing Inventory
Students are needed to conduct an inventory of housing needs including the following: (1) contact with and/or site visits of PHA, HUD multi-family, and Rural Development properties to tally how many were damaged and/or destroyed; (2) an inventory of available public and low income housing prior to the hurricane by tallying total units of PHA, Section 8 Vouchers, HUD and Rural Development properties; (3) an inventory of total housing prior to the hurricane; (4) collecting and analyzing FEMA data of total units damaged and destroyed by county; and (5) an analysis of 1990 and 2000 census data showing income levels of residents.

2. Justice Court Eviction Proceedings
The Mississippi Center for Justice needs students to observe Justice Court eviction proceedings and record specific information about case facts and rationales for granting or denying evictions. A training will be provided by housing attorney John Joppling and then students will work in teams attending hearings at courts in Biloxi, Ocean Springs, Gulfport, and other coastal courthouses. The information gathered will be used for a range of purposes including preparation of defenses and model pleadings, attorney trainings, identifying appropriate cases for appeal, media attention, and legislative advocacy.

3. Community historical/cultural profiles
We need teams of law students who can effectively interact with these communities, accessing the oral history, historical photographs or other artifacts, and help prepare a profile of these communities highlighting significant personalities from these areas, events in the struggle for civil rights, and cultural landmarks within these communities.

Well, I'm not sure I'm the "interacting with communities" type, but the others sound interesting. So, I'm off to do a good deed or two and maybe improve my chances of getting a job...

Thank you, Jen, for making this possible!

A Sport of Degradation and Humiliation

Today was the 1st Annual LRAP Dodgeball tournament. Nick was kind enough to let me slip onto his team. Unfortunately, I didn't pull my own weight. I managed to pick off a player early on the the first game only to be eliminated a second afterward; our team managed to eek by for the win that time (our opponents were The Learned (Hand) Jobs). After that, we were beaten by Blue and 7th-Story; both games I got nailed early and didn't even throw a ball. We never made it to the second round.

Overall, I was glad to have the opportunity to do something competitive and athletic. It's a part of my life that I've been missing lately, and maybe this will be the thing that gets me off my ass and back into some sort of competitive sport of some kind. On the other hand, they really needed to do a better job getting the rules out to the teams (a lot of people didn't know about being able to line-cross when 2 or less players were on each side, and then halfway through the they first started enforcing a rule that allowed a player to stay in after getting hit by a head shot) (EDIT: Waldie also had several legit complaints, including people playing on multiple teams, people who were both officials and players, and general bracket shadiness--all good points). I was also dissapointed with the amount of playing-on, false starts, and centerline crossing by my classmates; I had hoped that we were all above that sort of thing. Then again, I guess lawyers are known for trying to get away with whatever they can. On the other side of the coin, I would like to give out props to the Top Gunners and Cullen Sucks, who as far as I can tell, set the standard for sportsmanship throughout the tourney. And Pinkston, because he was just plain awesome. =)

Footnote: For the record, I don't think dodgeball is degrading or humilating, I just thought that line makes a cool title. I'm definitely not one of those whiney hippies that wants to end the great institution that is elementary school dodgeball, and would take great offense if anyone thought I was.

Commissioning Cermony

It's time to get this thing started. And what is this exactly? A waste of my time, probably. "Another one of my endless attempts to avoid responsibility." Mosty, I think I'll be using this to comment on various things, maybe even get a few discussions going. So I guess this is an outlet for my need to get up in people's faces and tell them why they're wrong. Plus, I might throw a few things about what's going on in my life, as long as it doesn't compromise myself or my friends (too much). Let's see where this takes me...