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Archive for September, 2011

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The Opposite of #Winning.

Thursday, September 29th, 2011

By Chris G.

As I sat down to write this blog post at roughly 7:00 p.m. on September 21, 2011, it sadly was all too easy and apparent what the focus should be.  Not to point fingers, but if nothing rang a bell, you’re either living under a rock, or you’re already way too consumed in briefing cases and prepping for class, but regardless, I won’t hold it against you.  This story concerns no film, no reality TV show, and definitely has nothing to do with Charlie Sheen.  Rather it is the story of Troy Davis, a man whose life, and oncoming death, are now controlled by the hand (and sadly, the needle) of the United States legal system.

On the night of August 18, 1989, a scuffle broke out between a group of individuals near a Burger King parking lot in Savannah, Georgia, that would forever change the lives of two men.  One man was a police officer by the name of Mark MacPhail, a guy who was simply doing his job, working security at the neighboring Burger King; the other man was supposedly 20 year old Troy Davis.  When Officer MacPhail saw a fight break out, he looked to intervene, and was sadly shot twice, once in the face and once in the chest, by a man witnesses described as “wearing a white shirt.” Witnesses put Troy Davis at the scene, and by November 1989, a grand jury indicted Mr. Davis for the murder of Officer MacPhail. On August 30, 1991, Troy Davis was sentenced to death. But who were these witnesses?  And more importantly, did their testimony give the prosecution and the jury enough evidence to sentence a man to death?

Fast forward to now, more than twenty years and three execution dates have passed, and once again Troy Davis still faces the dark cloud of death.  But one may wonder, why all this time and delayed executions? Well, it can certainly stem from the fact that seven of the nine witnesses against Troy Davis have either recanted or changed their statements. Or, the fact that this case has been marred by inconsistent witness statement, police coercion, a lack of physical evidence, and subsequently, major doubt as to whether Mr. Davis committed the crime.  These strong sentiments of doubt aren’t just from his family members, but rather some of the world’s most notable figures, from former president Jimmy Carter, to the former head of the FBI William Sessions, to Pope Benedict XVI.  Yes, even the Pope is watching, and you should be too.  In a case shrouded by doubt, mystery, and a lack of hard facts, a man is at the verge of execution, but did he even really do it?  With so many inconsistencies, a reasonable person might question how the United States could execute a man like Troy Davis, but then again, a reasonable man isn’t expected to save a drowning stranger, so who knows what is reasonable anymore.

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Posted in Culture Forum Blog, News | 2 Comments »

Thoughts On Collective Responsibility

Monday, September 26th, 2011

By Alicia Barber

I was puzzled by the groups used as examples for collective responsibility during a lecture by Forum Director Thane Rosenbaum. Jews responsible for the financial crisis. Blacks guilty for the crimes of inner city criminals. While I recognized it as a provocative rhetorical technique, I couldn’t help but see a manifestation of the very harm he was, I thought, trying to prevent. Of course, middle class and successful blacks do pay for the crimes of their disadvantaged counterparts in the “soft justice” of inaccurate stereotypes and sweeping generalizations, of which that lecture was certainly not my first painful reminder as a pre-professional in an often unconscious white business culture. Yes, it was an effective way to provoke and engage the audience, but also a way of perpetuating the lucrative narrative in the mainstream media of the dangerous minority, and perhaps the starkest example in the lecture of an opportunity for the collective to take responsibility.

We have to unpack this notion of the “collective” that must feel responsible by differentiating between those who incur a benefit from the sins of their group members, and those who continue to be undercut by false generalizations. One danger of applying the concept is to conflate collective responsibility—recognizing how you profit from, or condone by omission, the sins of your readily identifiable cohorts—with forcibly grouping people according to persistent stereotypes ingrained in our societal psyche—you are black and therefore responsible for inner city crime (but not rural or suburban crime?). Accurately identifying the group and the harm for which they are responsible is crucial in making this work. Fallacious arguments that we all, even seemingly underprivileged groups, have something for which to be sorry undermine the prospect of holding any one group accountable, and work against the justice we purport to be seeking.

Our legal attempts at collective responsibility have proven similarly inadequate because we allow into the discourse red herrings like Blacks are just as collectively responsible for perpetuating their socio-economic subjugation as are whites for initiating it. Nobody is responsible because everybody is responsible. The majority becomes overwhelmed with its responsibility to every minority—the frustration that made “political correctness” a pejorative—and stifles any progressive debate in favor of the more appealing notion of this utopian post-racial society.

The idea of the collective hand of the oppressed group suppressing their own achievement is a popular theme in our country’s politics—black on-black crime, women exploiting their sexuality, the reappropriation into accepted dialogue of the n-word, the b-word, and the f-word by blacks, women, and gays, respectively. Unwilling to see these as complicated responses to years of denigration, we hold these groups collectively responsible for their own frustrated existences and effectively sink the use of collective responsibility as a tool for uplifting the people our system has failed.

In order to use collective responsibility as a tool for bringing justice through legal and legislative means, we must first resist the temptation to declare that we are all guilty for something and allow that to be used as a mitigating tool in bringing the wrongdoer to justice.

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Posted in Culture Forum Blog | 1 Comment »

The First Holocaust Conference In The Middle East

Sunday, September 25th, 2011

By Hannah Furst

The news this month about Palestine’s bid to become a member of the United Nations is just the latest headlining story that reminds American Jews of the fraught tensions that exist in the Middle East between the Jewish and Muslim populations. However, even amidst this tense political backdrop, there are signs of progress and change. This week, the first Holocaust conference in the Arab world took place in Morocco.  To say that this was a momentous occasion would be an understatement. The conference was hosted by Al-Akhawayn University in Ifrane, Morocco and it featured three days of presentations and discussions about not only the Holocaust, but also about the relationship between Jews and Muslims in the Middle East.  Among the attendees were noted Holocaust scholars, like Dr. Michael Berenbaum, Holocaust survivors, and Muslim university students.

During World War II, Morocco’s king, Mohammed V, resisted the commands of the Vichy French occupation government to turn over the country’s Jews.  Today, unlike so many other Arab nations, Morocco has chosen to acknowledge the Holocaust and its atrocities.  Even more remarkable, last week’s conference was spear-headed by a young group of Muslim university students in Morocco who wanted to provide a forum in which the Holocaust could be discussed and remembered in the Middle East. In the face of so many Holocaust deniers, these students decided to take a bold and perhaps, unpopular stand.  Despite the fact that much of Morocco’s Jewish population has dispersed to other countries (the U.S., France, and Israel), this conference was about respecting Jewish history and contribution in Morocco.  To remember this history and more specifically, the Holocaust, is to finally accept and honor the history of the Jewish people.  Ultimately, politicians and zealots on both sides of the debates in the Middle East should take a cue from the mission of this conference; memorialization and acknowledgment must be among the first steps towards reconciliation.

Posted in Culture Forum Blog, News | 1 Comment »

One Man Is Murdered, One Man Is Executed

Sunday, September 25th, 2011

By Patricia Chang

At 11:08pm on September 21, 2011, Troy Davis was executed by injection for allegedly murdering Mark MacPhail by shooting him once in the heart and once in the face in August of 1989. Twenty-two years after the Savannah, Georgia murder, the story can now finally be put to rest. Or can it?

Davis maintained his innocence, even after receiving the death sentence following a convoluted murder trial in 1991. The sentence didn’t sit quite right with many people for numerous reasons. The murder occurred in the deep south during the 1980s; Davis was a young black man and Mark MacPhail was a white off-duty cop. The authorities never found the 0.38 caliber murder weapon. Seven of nine eyewitnesses who testified against Davis later signed affidavits recanting their testimony. Some witnesses said that the police intimidated them into giving false testimony implicating Davis. At least one witnesses said he was illiterate and couldn’t read the police statements he signed against Davis. Others implicated one of the witnesses, Sylvester “Redd” Coles, in the crime, and three witness signed affidavits claiming that Coles had confessed to the MacPhail murder.

Over the course of twenty years, Davis’s numerous appeals and requests on the state and federal levels were all denied, and his execution date was set and postponed four times: July 17, 2007; September 23, 2008; October 27, 2008; and September 21, 2011. By this time, Troy Davis and his case had received international media attention. His supporters ranged from organizations including Amnesty International, the Innocence Project, and the NAACP to renown figures such as the former President Jimmy Carter, Pope Benedict XVI, Al Sharpton, and Nobel Peace Prize winner Archbishop Desmond Tutu. Davis’s sister, Martina Correia, campaigned to have his story heard and to stop his execution. More than 630,000 petitions were sent to the Georgia State Board of Pardons and Parole to try to save Davis’s life.

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On September 21, 2011, execution day, the final countdown began to wind down. Yet another bid of clemency was denied just a day before. The Butts County Superior Court denied a request to halt the execution in the morning, and the Georgia Supreme Court denied the appeal. Hundreds of protesters gathered outside the prison, many of them carrying signs, some wearing t-shirts bearing the slogan, “I am Troy Davis.” At 7:10pm, ten minutes after the scheduled execution time, after Davis had spent four hours with his sister, nephew and niece, after he chose not to eat the last meal of “grilled cheeseburgers, oven browned potatoes, baked beans, coleslaw, cookies and grape beverage,” there was a brief but immense moment of hope when the Supreme Court ordered a temporary delay to consider a stay of the execution. But just hours later, at 11:08pm, Troy Davis, age 42, was “put on a gurney at the state prison in Jackson and administered a cocktail of lethal drugs.” Despite serious doubts about his guilt, Troy Davis was executed. Among his last words were addressed to members of the MacPhail family, who were present to witness the execution: “I was not responsible for what happened that night. I did not have a gun. I was not the one who took the life of your father, son, brother.”

After the execution, which lasted fifteen minutes, it is reported that some members of the MacPhail family left smiling.

If truth-seeking and storytelling are truly an essential part of remedying a moral injustice and of healing spiritual wounds, it calls into question whose story — Troy Davis’s or Mark MacPhail’s — should be heard. Whose story should be believed as the truth? Whose voice is louder — the voice of Davis’s hundreds of thousands of supporters worldwide, or the voice of the MacPhail family who still grieves the unjustifiable death of their son? Will Davis’s death heal the loss of MacPhail’s life?

“I’m kind of numb. I can’t believe that it’s really happened,” MacPhail’s mother, Anneliese MacPhail, said in an telephone interview after the execution. “All the feelings of relief and peace I’ve been waiting for all these years, they will come later. I certainly do want some peace.”

“He has had ample time to prove his innocence,” said MacPhail’s widow, Joan MacPhail-Harris, in an earlier interview. “And he is not innocent.”

NAACP President Benjamin Jealous tweeted, “In death, Troy Davis will live on as a reminder of a broken justice system that kills an innocent man while a murderer walks free.”

So — whose story should prevail?

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Posted in Culture Forum Blog, Law and Cultural Policy, News | 2 Comments »

10 Million Dollars And A Frown

Saturday, September 24th, 2011

By D.B.

Mann v. Ford, a documentary released by HBO this past summer, put a national spotlight on a troubling mass tort case that has been well publicized in New Jersey in recent years. The case involves allegations that in the 1960s and 1970s Ford Motor Company contractors dumped thousands of tons of paint sludge into mine shafts in an Upper Ringwood, New Jersey neighborhood populated by the Ramapough Mountain Indians. In the ensuing years an extremely high percentage of this community developed a variety of serious illnesses, which they claimed were related to exposure to the toxic chemicals.

Ford

Mann v. Ford sets the scene for the tribe’s day in court by giving us some background on Ford’s dumping activities and the problems with the clean up including the site’s addition to the Superfund list, its removal from the Superfund list after an initial clean up effort and an addition once again to the Superfund list after this clean up was found to be hugely deficient.

After years of efforts to organize this community and drag Ford into court to own up to the alleged consequences of its actions, the case was finally resolved. However the tribe never got their day in court. In the face of speculation that Ford might have been heading for bankruptcy as the auto industry nose dived and that they would have trouble proving the required level of causation in any case, the tribe agreed to settle. The local media said their sources told them that the settlement was around $10 million dollars and that it was to be split between over 600 plaintiffs from the community. Not only did the Ramapough Mountain Indians not get their day in court but also Ford did not admit any responsibility whatsoever.

In the days after the settlement, the Bergen Record quoted some members of the community as expressing confusion over why Ford would pay them at all if they were not responsible and downright shock that Ford could deny responsibility considering that community members remembered watching “trails of dump trucks pour liquid sludge down neighborhood hillsides and into old mining pits.”

So was justice done? Whatever small amount of comfort the settlement award brings to these people, it is clear that these people not only valued moral justice but that this type of justice was not provided. A settlement overlooks the moral justice that comes with getting the opportunity to tell your story. To stand up in court and have your wrongdoer acknowledge the harm they caused and tell you that they are sorry. The tribe’s comments in the aftermath of this settlement strongly displayed the importance of this undervalued interest in America’s conception of justice.

Although the tribe’s day in court never came, they can take some comfort in the fact that with the release of Mann v. Ford their story was finally told.

Posted in Culture Forum Blog, Movie Review | No Comments »

Palestinian Bid For Statehood

Friday, September 23rd, 2011

By Sharon Warhit

While over 120 countries currently recognize the proclaimed State of Palestine, many believe – including President Obama – that the Palestinian bid to appeal directly to the U.N. for statehood will only exacerbate the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Obama and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu are advocating direct peace talks, as such an emotionally charged issue hotly debated for decades can only be settled through deliberate negotiations, as opposed to a one-shot passionate plea to the world body. Surprisingly, even the House Majority Leader and Minority Whip have crossed party lines and united on the issue; in a joint op-ed in the New York Daily News, Cantor and Hoyer joined Obama and Netanyahu’s critique of Abbas’ actions stating that “it is time for Abbas to forgo his public relations battle and return to the negotiating table.” However, the Palestinians have become restless and believe that an appeal to the UN is their only viable option after decades of unsuccessful negotiations. Abbas is going down a risky path – he is not only violating previous agreements, but also diverting from the settled method of direct negotiations as the only viable way to obtain peace in the region. He has many critics, including the President of the United States, the Majority Leader and Minority Whip. Will his passionate plea to the UN merely aggravate the already divisive issue or will the UN lend a sympathetic ear and rally behind Abbas’ bid? Only time will tell…

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John Grisham Awarded The Harper Lee Prize For Legal Fiction

Friday, September 23rd, 2011

By Chrissie Cahill

Author John Grisham was awarded the inaugural 2011 Harper Lee Prize for Legal Fiction, a new literary award sponsored by The University of Alabama School of Law and the American Bar Association Journal, for his novel The Confession. This year’s award was given in conjunction with the Library of Congress National Book Festival and held at the National Press Club in Washington, D.C. Following the presentation, David Baldacci led a discussion of The Confession in relationship to Lee’s To Kill A Mockingbird, which included guest panelists Morris Dees of the Southern Poverty Law Center, former ABA president Robert J. Grey, Jr., Dahlia Lithwick, Senior Editor of Slate.com, and Thane Rosenbaum, John Whelan Distinguished Lecturer in Law and Director of the Forum on Law, Culture & Society at Fordham University School of Law.

(Photo by Jeffrey Vock/Getty Images)

The Harper Lee Prize for Legal Fiction was announced at a ceremony in 2010, commemorating the fiftieth anniversary of the publication of To Kill a Mockingbird. Lee, who attended the University of Alabama Law School, authorized the Prize. The Prize honors Lee for the role model she created for the legal profession, Atticus Finch, and for the extraordinary cultural phenomenon that her novel has become.

In the spirit of To Kill a Mockingbird, the Prize will be given annually to the published book-length work of fiction that best exemplifies the role of lawyers in society and their power to effect change. The winner will receive a signed copy of To Kill a Mockingbird.

The Confession was declared the 2011 winner by a distinguished Selection Committee, including novelists David Baldacci and Linda Fairstein, Morris Dees, and Robert J. Grey, Jr. In the Committee’s view, The Confession, which explores an attorney’s tireless efforts to save a local football hero from being executed for a crime he did not commit, most-deservedly embodies the spirit of the Harper Lee Prize.

Grisham, a former trial lawyer, has written 25 novels, all but four involving lawyers and the law. His next novel, The Litigators, will be published in October.

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Park 51 – Ground Zero Mosque

Thursday, September 22nd, 2011

By Alberto C-M

Ten days following the tenth anniversary of 9/11, the infamous mosque is finally opening. For most of its defenders, this is a sign of reconciliation of the misunderstandings of a specific religion and culture. It seems far from trendy and contemporary to have a disapproving and negative opinion towards the mentioned Mosque. Well, in that case, I’m comfortable and content to be conservative and outdated in this particular matter.

It is probably true that the immense majority of the Islamic World doesn’t approve what happened on that terrible day; the relation to that religious group though, is not only enormous but also inevitable. Those attacks were made under the context of a “Jihad,” commonly know as an Islamic “Holy War.” Scholars of Islamic Studies frequently disapprove this definition; nevertheless, the translation as “struggle” in the idiomatic expression “striving in the way of God (al-jihad fi sabil Allah)” is mostly accepted (as it is shown in several sources, as ordinary as Wikipedia). It has been proven that the perpetrators of those attacks referred to their intentions as part of the “Jihad” and moreover (in a stronger link to the present post’s topic), the Al Farooq Mosque in Brooklyn was used as a basement for meetings and planning for the horrendous massacre.

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I’m not pretending to deny to Muslims their right to have a place to worship, and, of course, not blaming them for such crimes, but Ground Zero is the place were many of most of the 9/11 victims’ families go to mourn their beloved who weren’t able to have a proper burial. From my perspective, there is too many negative connotations (either if those connotations are wrong) towards the Islamic world to establish a Mosque in that precise place.

I may sound controversial but from another perspective, would it be bearable for Cambodians to create formation centers in Communism were the Pol Pot massacres took place? I seriously doubt it. But is Communism responsible of the extreme interpretation of its doctrine of some followers? Most would say no, especially many of those who defend the Grand Zero Mosque. But those who defend the innocence of Karl Marx or Islam probably wouldn’t feel appropriate establishing communist academies in the Killing Fields of Cambodia or in the Gulags in Russia.

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11 Angry Men and the Reasonable Man

Wednesday, September 21st, 2011

By Graham Amodeo

With the release of a Blu-Ray version of 12 Angry Men, it is worth revisiting this film, which was part of last year‘s Forum Film Festival. U.S. Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor even said that this film had an incredible influence (click on the link and scroll down to her video) on her legal career.

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Sidney Lumet’s 12 Angry Men presents an interesting example of the points at which the law and morality diverge. The divergence occurs in what one might think would be an unlikely location: a jury deliberation room. In the film 12 strangers, pressed into public service as jurors, attempt to decide the fate of a young man who is accused of murdering his father. In the process, a legally “correct” result (12 jurors agreeing as to guilt or innocence) nearly results in a moral travesty, until the morally righteous (and nameless, until the very end of the film) protagonist intervenes.

Initially, all but one of the jurors have convinced themselves that the defendant is guilty, despite clearly having failed to weigh the evidence, being preoccupied with other matters, and allowing prejudice to guide their decision making. The nameless protagonist, portrayed by Henry Fonda, demonstrates considerable moral courage by insisting to his colleagues that they take the time to weigh the evidence properly, even as the crowd urges a quick verdict of guilty so that they can proceed with more important things (such as that night’s ball game).

If we assume that the law-school notion of the “reasonable man” test is accurate, and thus that in a given group of people, the majority of them will behave reasonably, then 12 Angry Men illustrates that the staple of law school torts classes is indeed a low bar to satisfy.

In this jury deliberation room, the majority of the people are arguably acting “reasonably” in that they are performing the task assigned to them with minimum effort. Only Fonda’s character, however, is willing to do the morally right thing; to thoroughly examine all the evidence to try to determine what happened on the night in question. In fact, Fonda’s character’s insistence on doing the right thing elicits complaints from his colleagues and suggestions that he is being UN-reasonable.

Of course, in a moral sense, Fonda’s character is the only one being reasonable, by refusing to convict a defendant based on flimsy evidence and prejudice, or at the very least, attempting to thoroughly delve into the case to determine the truth. Luckily for the defendant in this case, Fonda’s character is able to convince his cohorts to follow his lead. How often are similar scenes repeated in jury deliberation rooms, and how many times is a morally righteous individual absent?

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Posted in Culture Forum Blog, Events, Forum Guests, Movie Review, Past | 1 Comment »

Sony Plays Games With Its Terms Of Service

Tuesday, September 20th, 2011

By Ben Chynsky

Earlier this year Sony’s PlayStation Network was attacked by a string of hackers that compromised the private data of as many as 100 million many users’ accounts. Sony issued apologies, offered some compensation packages, and promised to strengthen its security network. At the same time, Sony was subject to a number of lawsuits including some class-action filings. One class action lawsuit filed against Sony in April could ultimately cost the company billions of dollars.

It is no coincidence that Sony quietly updated its PlayStation Network Terms of Service (“TOS”) agreement last week. The company added a new section to its TOS that will prevent users from joining together in the future in any class-action lawsuits against the company.  It also provides for binding arbitration as the sole means of dispute resolution with the company before any lawsuit is brought. The new section was not announced by publicly Sony. However, users on game forums and gaming blogs quickly voiced their discontent.

The new section requires users to agree that they will not join any class-action suits against Sony in the future. Furthermore, the new section states that if a user does file a suit against the company, it must be done on an individual basis through an arbitration procedure with a Sony-picked arbitrator. Any customers who do not want to agree to the new section must send Sony a written letter within 30 days. If users do not agree, then their PS3 will not be able to get online or purchase media content from Sony. A Sony spokesman stated that the section was designed to simply ensure adequate time and procedures to resolve future disputes.

The larger story here is that forced arbitration is increasingly utilized by large corporations as a means to avoid complicated class-action lawsuits Class-actions lawsuits are expensive for these corporations, take significant amounts of time and resources, and ultimately can result in large cash payouts. On the other hand, the loss of the ability to bring class actions suits is a significant detriment to the autonomy of these consumers. These consumers no longer have the same power to unite against a massive corporation, and instead must agree to binding arbitration in which they are undoubtedly at a disadvantage from the beginning. Then again as one user on a game forum put it, “I didn’t read it, I accepted it blindly. I am grateful to my Sony overlords for allowing me to buy and use their products.”

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Posted in Culture Forum Blog, News, Technology Policy | 3 Comments »

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