I’m reading The Nine, by Jeffrey Toobin (of CNN fame). The subtitle is “Inside the Secret World of the Supreme Court,” and it is living up to expectations. Toobin does a great job of taking you inside the Court, artfully weaving historical decisions into present cases and currently sitting Justices. Regarding religion and patriotism, I found his comments on the WWII era Jehovah’s Witness cases particularly relevant to some of today’s discussions. He notes that the first case regarding the flag salute and pledge of allegiance, from 1940, found the Supreme Court siding with schools and their insistence that students participate. But then, within 3 years, the Supreme Court, perhaps in recognition of “what could happen in a society where loyalty is coerced and nonconformism punished” (i.e., seeing what was happening in Europe with the Nazis), switched sides. In 1943, the Witnesses won an almost identical case (West Virginia Board of Education v. Barnette). Toobin provides us with a quote from what he calls one of the most eloquent Supreme Court opinions. Justice Robert H. Jackson, in writing the majority opinion: “To believe that patriotism will not flourish if patriotic ceremonies are voluntary and spontaneous instead of a compulsory routine is to make an unflattering estimate of the appeal of our institutions to free minds…If there is any fixed star in our constitutional constellation, it is that no official, high or petty, can prescribe what shall be orthodox in politics, nationalism, religion, or other matters of opinion or force citizens to confess by word or act their faith therein. If there are any circumstances which permit an exception, they do not now occur to us.” It certainly makes one think.
Listen more and talk less
This is so simple and yet so hard to do in real life. A woman stopped by to see me the other day. She had moved out a ways on the age continuum. Our eyes connected as we took our seats in my conference room. Her face was full of life and she engaged me immediately. We exchanged a few words to set the stage. Her voice was clear and her words were carefully chosen. She spoke with a great precision, organizing her thoughts into efficient and powerful sentences. She sized me up and decided that I was safe.
What she said to me and the story she told is not important. That she spoke to me and that she told her story is. I listened and listened and then listened some more. I was fascinated and she was comfortable telling her story to me. I learned from her and about her.
So many times we feel compelled to speak, talking, I think, to hear ourselves talk. We should be listening more and talking less. We are missing the stories people will tell us if we just listen. Ask a question and then listen. Listen hard and you’ll be surprised by what you might hear.
I qualify as a professional talk show host and I’m an attorney, so yes, I have to be able to talk. Words are my life. I make my living dwelling in the house of the Word. And, yes indeed I do have to talk. But, my real job is listening. What’s yours?
Legal Line Broadcast September 8th, 2010
Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 1:14:46 — 68.4MB)
Legal Line Broadcast Sept. 1st, 2010
Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 52:43 — 48.3MB)
Bob talks with Corey Sulenes from Mobius Technical Solutions, then answers listener questions he received via email.
Dust off the Constitution
In light of all of the controversy over the building of a Mosque near Ground Zero, I picked up my copy of the Constitution and reread the First Amendment: Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances.
Post 9/11 days seem pretty frightening. I suspect they seemed scary during World War II, especially right after the bombing of Pearl Harbor. I did not live through World War II and so I don’t know how I would have reacted. But, I look back on what was done to U.S. Citizens in the forced removal and incarceration of Japanese Americans and wonder what history might teach us about today’s circumstances, recognizing, of course, that every situation has its own context and its own set of facts. We are not reliving the past, but what do we learn from the past that might help us deal with the present and the future that we will make for ourselves? I don’t pretend to know the answer. But, let’s all hold up the First Amendment, high above our heads, and recommit ourselves to upholding our Constitution and keeping the dialogue that was started more so many years ago alive and well.
We are working on a project for Legal Line on the Bill of Rights. Our Constitution really is an incredible document and the Bill of Rights is amazing. We will have a special podcast available in a few weeks that will present the Bill of Rights to us all again, in a very engaging way – stay tuned.