Posted on by rjonakait

First Sentences

“They watched as a dead man was brought to the hospital: a fractured skull, blood everywhere, ligaments ripped loose from their mooring—medics had hauled him there ‘in three buckets,’ a bystander remarked.” Reid Mitenbuler, Wanderlust: An Eccentric Explorer, an Epic Journey, a Lost Age.

“There was an old Jew who lived at the site of the old synagogue up on Chicken Hill in the town of Pottstown, Pa., and when Pennsylvania State Troopers found the skeleton at the bottom of an old well off Hayes Street, the old Jew’s house was the first place they went.” James McBride, The Heaven and Earth Grocery Store.

“Hold out your hands and let me lay upon them a sheaf of freshly picked sweetgrass, loose and flowing, like newly washed hair.” Robin Wall Kimmerer, Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge, and the Teachings of Plants.

“Everyone in Lamperdown knew that Mr. Behrens, who lived with his aunt at the Old Rectory and kept bees, and Mr. Calder, who lived in a cottage on the hilltop outside the village and was the owner of a deerhound called Rasselas, were the closest of close friends.” Michael Gilbert, Game Without Rules.

“In August 1945, after the United States dropped atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki and Japan surrendered, the soldiers, sailors, and airmen scheduled to participate in the invasion of Japan reacted as you might expect.” Evan Thomas, Road to Surrender: Three Men and the Countdown to the End of World War II.

“When people ask me what I do—taxi drivers, dental hygienists—I tell them I work in an office.” Gail Honeyman, Eleanor Oliphant is Completely Fine.

“Approaching the museum, ready to hunt, Stéphane Breitwieser clasps hands with his girlfriend, Anne-Catherine Kleinklau, and together they stroll to the front desk and say hello, a cute couple.” Michael Finkel, The Art Thief: A True Story of Love, Crime, and a Dangerous Obsession.

“Killing someone is easy.” Richard Osman, The Thursday Murder Club.

“For more than a decade, defenders of democracy have been issuing a stark warning: The world is in the midst of a ‘democratic recession,’ with sign of a turnaround on the horizon.” Sohrab Ahmari, Tyranny, Inc.: How Private Power Crushed American Liberty—and What to Do About It.

“Jacob Finch Bonner, the once promising author of the ‘New & Noteworthy’ (The New York Times Book Review) novel The Invention of Wonder, let himself into the office he’d been assigned on the second floor of Richard Peng Hall, set his beat-up leather satchel on the barren desk, and looked around in something akin to despair.” Jean Hanff Korelitz, The Plot.

“In January 1829, Abram Garfield emerged from a shack in Orange, Ohio, swiveled west, and started toward what passed for civilization on this frontier.” C.W. Goodyear, President Garfield: From Radical to Unifier.

Posted on by rjonakait

Laws Changed by the Few

In a pseudonymous essay written as the American colonies moved towards independence, John Adams wrote that a republic is a “government of laws, not of men.” He was contrasting a system with a despotic emperor who is “bound by no law or limitation but his own will.” In contrast, Adams wrote, a republic “is bound by fixed laws, which the people have a voice in making.”

Following Adams, we often proudly proclaim that the United States is a nation of laws, not of men. The Supreme Court is about to begin a new term. This should remind us that it is only partially true that we are a nation of fixed laws. Instead, our laws change through the actions of a handful of people who sit on the Supreme Court.

We have seen dramatic evidence of that recently, but this is not new. Franklin Roosevelt’s plan to expand the Supreme Court was triggered by the actions of Supreme Court men. (We didn’t believe in women justices in those days.) As Jeff Shesol writes in Supreme Power: Franklin Roosevelt vs. the Supreme Court (2010), between 1933 and 1936, the Court overturned congressional acts at ten times their traditional rate often citing long-neglected doctrines. The Court frequently breathed new life into obscure clauses of the Constitution in order to abolish the democratically enacted laws of the New Deal. Indeed, it was the Chief Justice at the time who made the statement affirming that our fundamental law is a law determined by a few. Charles Evans Hughes said, “We are under a Constitution, but the Constitution is what the judges say it is.” Evans could have said something similar about many of our laws.

It is fair to wonder whether the judges use neutral legal doctrines to alter our law or whether it is their politics or economic viewpoints (or what they ate for breakfast as one legal scholar has suggested). A study a few years after John Roberts became Chief Justice found that the Supreme Court under Chief Justice Earl Warren found in favor of businesses 28% of the time. That rate increased to 48% under the Burger Court; 54% under the Rehnquist Court; and 64% under the Roberts Court. (Justice Antonin Scalia voted for criminal defendants in non-white-collar crimes 7% of the time, but in white collar crimes 82% of the time. William Rehnquist voted 8% of the time for criminal defendants in non-white-collar crimes, but 62% of the time for white-collar defendants.)

Despite the slogan that we are a nation of laws, it is clear that we do not really believe that. Confirmation battles over Supreme Court nominations demonstrate this. We believe that people who constitute the Court can determine the law. (The myth is that ideological contention over Supreme Court nominations began with Robert Bork, forgetting that the earlier nomination of Abe Fortas as Chief Justice was the first Court nomination to be defeated by a filibuster. As I have written, Bork was not “borked,” but myths continue to live on even when false. See AJsdad.blog of September 3, 2018, “Borked! Really?”)

We have tended to focus on the United States Supreme Court when considering how a few individuals determine our law, but increasingly there are battles over state supreme courts as well. Several decades ago “tort reform” became a political issue. The law of torts governs who should pay and how much when someone is injured. With the claim that recoveries for injuries were harming both the economy and healthcare, business, manufacturers, medical institutions, and insurance companies targeted the nominations and elections of state supreme court judges. Money poured into the selection processes. What had been a backwater of our political system now saw contentious advertising and campaigns because the powerful knew that our laws were not immutable.

Today the battles over state supreme court nominees focus on abortion and gerrymandering. Last spring Wisconsin had a costly election for its supreme court. The court was viewed as equally split between conservatives and liberals, and the newly-elected judge was expected to be the deciding vote on abortion and gerrymandering. Pennsylvania has a similar election coming up this fall.

Even though our history shows otherwise, the statement is still often repeated that America is a nation of laws, not of men. Perhaps the powerless have always known that this is a myth. Thus, a character in James McBride’s new novel The Heaven and Earth Grocery Store utters a truism that goes beyond race: “‘White folks’ laws,’ Nate said softly, ‘The minute you leave the room, the next white fella comes along the law is how he says it is. And the next one comes along and the law is how he says it is.’”

The moneyed and the powerful try to shape supreme courts so that the few can alter the law in ways that the rich and powerful want. And these days, they are often successful.

Posted on by rjonakait

First Sentences

“Harry Truman needed a drink.” Chris Wallace with Mitch Weiss, Countdown 1945: The Extraordinary Story of the Atomic Bomb and 116 Days that Changed the World.

“Her name was Magda. Nobody will ever know who killed her. It wasn’t me. Here is her dead body.” Ottessa Moshfegh, Death in Her Hands.

“At exactly fifteen minutes past eight in the morning on August 6, 1945, Japanese time, at the moment when the atomic bomb flashed above Hiroshima, Miss Toshiko Sasaki, a clerk in the personnel department of the East Asia Tin Works, had just sat down at her place in the plant office and was turning her head to speak to the girl at the next desk.” John Hersey, Hiroshima.

“Late one evening toward the end of March, a teenager picked up a double-barreled shotgun, walked into the forest, put the gun to someone else’s forehead, and pulled the trigger.” Fredrick Backman, Beartown.

“It was no sensible place to build a great city.” Gary Krist, The Mirage Factory: Illusion, Imagination, and the Invention of Los Angeles.

“Deacon Cuffy Lambkin of Five Ends Baptist Church became a walking dead man on a cloudy September afternoon in 1969.” James McBride, Deacon King Kong.

“White people in North America live in a society that is deeply separate and unequal by race, and white people are the beneficiaries of that separation and inequality.” Robin DiAngelo, White Fragility: Why It’s So Hard for White People to Talk About Racism.

“Over twenty years ago a gentleman in Asbury Park, N. J. began manufacturing and advertising a preparation for the immediate and unfailing straightening of the most stubborn Negro hair.” George Schuyler, Black No More.

“William Moulton Marston, who believed women should rule the world, decided at the unnaturally early and altogether impetuous age of eighteen, that the time had come for him to die.” Jill Lepore, The Secret History of Wonder Woman.

“One of the very first bullets comes in through the open window above the toilet where Luca is standing.” Jeanine Cummins, American Dirt.

“In the late nineteen-sixties, I was working in rented space on Nassau Street up a flight of stairs and over Nathan Kasrel, Optometrist.” John McPhee, Draft No. 4: On the Writing Process.

Posted on by rjonakait

First Sentences

“Harry Truman needed a drink.” Chris Wallace with Mitch Weiss, Countdown 1945: The Extraordinary Story of the Atomic Bomb and 116 Days that Changed the World.

“Her name was Magda. Nobody will ever know who killed her. It wasn’t me. Here is her dead body.” Ottessa Moshfegh, Death in Her Hands.

“At exactly fifteen minutes past eight in the morning on August 6, 1945, Japanese time, at the moment when the atomic bomb flashed above Hiroshima, Miss Toshiko Sasaki, a clerk in the personnel department of the East Asia Tin Works, had just sat down at her place in the plant office and was turning her head to speak to the girl at the next desk.” John Hersey, Hiroshima.

“Late one evening toward the end of March, a teenager picked up a double-barreled shotgun, walked into the forest, put the gun to someone else’s forehead, and pulled the trigger.” Fredrick Backman, Beartown.

“It was no sensible place to build a great city.” Gary Krist, The Mirage Factory: Illusion, Imagination, and the Invention of Los Angeles.

“Deacon Cuffy Lambkin of Five Ends Baptist Church became a walking dead man on a cloudy September afternoon in 1969.” James McBride, Deacon King Kong.

“White people in North America live in a society that is deeply separate and unequal by race, and white people are the beneficiaries of that separation and inequality.” Robin DiAngelo, White Fragility: Why It’s So Hard for White People to Talk About Racism.

“Over twenty years ago a gentleman in Asbury Park, N. J. began manufacturing and advertising a preparation for the immediate and unfailing straightening of the most stubborn Negro hair.” George Schuyler, Black No More.

“William Moulton Marston, who believed women should rule the world, decided at the unnaturally early and altogether impetuous age of eighteen that the time had come for him to die.” Jill Lepore, The Secret History of Wonder Woman.

“One of the very first bullets comes in through the open window above the toilet where Luca is standing.” Jeanine Cummins, American Dirt.

“In the late nineteen-sixties, I was working in rented space on Nassau Street up a flight of stairs and over Nathan Kasrel, Optometrist.” John McPhee, Draft No. 4: On the Writing Process.

“The man in dark blue slacks and a forest green sportshirt waited impatiently in the line.” Patricia Highsmith, The Blunderers.