Musings!

Blog post from SCOTUSblog. Written by Lyle Denniston . Preclearance requirement sought for Texas on voting The Obama administration, seeking to salvage significant power to stop racial discrimination in voting even after a major defeat in the Supreme Court, will be asking federal courts to put the state of Texas under a continuing duty to get official permission in Washington for any changes it wants to make in its election laws or methods. Attorney General Eric Holder disclosed that plan Thursday in a speech to the annual meeting of the Urban League, in Philadelphia. Holder said the Justice Department will ask a federal district court in Texas to apply the “preclearance” requirement under the 1965 Voting Rights Act to Texas. That could only be done now, in the wake of the Supreme Court’s ruling last month in Shelby County v. Holder, by having a court apply the so-called “bail-in” provision of the 1965 law’s Section 3. That provision was left intact by the Supreme Court. ...

This article comes from Concurring Opinions  (a group blog on legal topics), posted by Kerry Abrams. Very interesting article/post concerning DOMA's invalidation of Section 3, and what it means for binational same-sex couples when it comes to their marriage and immigration. Marriage Equality, Immigration, and … Fraud? posted by Kerry Abrams The demise of DOMA may mean that same-sex married couples are now entitled to the same marriage-based immigration benefits as anyone else. But marriage equality also entails equal burdens. As I argued in Immigration Law and the Regulation of Marriage, 91 Minn. L. Rev. 1625 (2007), immigration law holds marriages involving immigrants to a higher standard than the law ordinarily demands, and this will now be true for same-sex couples. Under state family law, married people are not required to live together. They don’t have to open joint bank accounts, jointly own property, take extensive vacation photos, document which guests attended ...

From Plato,  Symposium  (180e-192e): (translation may vary from the video)   The sexes were not two as they are now, but originally three in number; there was man, woman, and the union of the two, having a name corresponding to this double nature, which had once a real existence, but is now lost, and the word "Androgynous" is only preserved as a term of reproach. In the second place, the primeval man was round, his back and sides forming a circle; and he had four hands and four feet, one head with two faces, looking opposite ways, set on a round neck and precisely alike; also four ears, two privy members, and the remainder to correspond. He could walk upright as men now do, backwards or forwards as he pleased, and he could also roll over and over at a great pace, turning on his four hands and four feet, eight in all, like tumblers going over and over with their legs in the air; this was when he wanted to run fast.  Now the sexes were three, and such as I have descr...

      Well then, now you’ve seen his arrogance,       make sure you never speak against the gods,       or give yourself ideas of your own grandeur,       if your strength of hand or heaped-up riches                                     [130]       should outweigh some other man’s. A single day       pulls down any human’s scale of fortune       or raises it once more.  But the gods love                              170       m...

Thetis’ lament is for her soon to be dead son, Achilles. After Achilles discovers that his best companion, Patroklos, has been killed in battle, she comes to console him, not only for his grief towards Patroklos but for hers as well; because the will of Zeus and fate are catching up to Achilles. When Patroklos dies, Zeus has finished carrying out the honor  (τιμή, timē)  that he promised to return to Achilles, but Achilles didn’t realize that it would mean the death of his best friend. The everlasting glory that Achilles achieves is through the Iliad’s kleos , which begins with the lament of the fallen hero. Thetis reminds Achilles that if he were to seek the revenge of his best friend’s death, it would mean his, and so he replies with, “I must die soon, then; since I was not to stand by my companion when he was killed.” ( Iliad 18: 94-100). At this moment in the narrative, Achilles’ menis is dead. By sending Patroklos into battle, disguised as Achilles , he has ...

On the last week of the Supreme Court's 2012 term, the Court ruled that the petitioners for Proposition 8 in Hollingsworth v. Perry (No. 12-144) --an initiative passed by Californians (in 2008) to amend the Californian constitution to define and limit marriage to that of only a man and a woman-- lacked Article III standing to bring forth the case before the Court. It was a 5-4 decision, written by Roberts, joined by Scalia, Ginsburg, Breyer, and Kagan. Justices Kennedy, Sotomayor, Alito, and Thomas dissented.  According to the majority's opinion, the petitioners (ProtectMarriage.com; the private "non-profit" entity defending Prop. 8 in the courts since the State of California had chosen not to appeal) not only had no jurisdictional standing before the Supreme Court, but had no standing when it came to appealing the district court's decision to the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals (COA). For that reason, the Court never got to the merits of the case, and vacated...

A criticism that Jean-Jacques Rousseau levies against John Locke and the liberal tradition, is the conceptual origin of man in the state of nature, in which he addresses the lack of pinpointing the true, natural man that has become the template for Locke and others in legitimizing the need of civil society. Rousseau makes the claim that that their “natural man” is nothing but a “social man” and that they have not gone further in time to make a legitimate assessment of the true, natural man. Rousseau boldly claims that Locke has misinterpreted social man as natural man, but even goes to great lengths to demonstrate that he has been able to discover the true attributes of man in nature, and develops his argument on the perversion that is the forming of the civil society and the implications on man. For Rousseau, natural man is broken down, to where he de-personifies man into a beast—the opposite for Locke and the liberal tradition, which creates a natural man with social elements, lik...

            Language plays an important role in Dante’s Inferno [1] , for it will be the means to assess not only Nimrod, but also Dante’s own transgression, seeing, as his journey through Hell also concerns the perverse use of language in his writings. The placement of Nimrod in the ninth circle of hell as a giant is a testament to the implications of using a perverse language to test the limits of man in pursuing the divinity of God. The Nimrod of hell, shares the name of the biblical Nimrod who erected the Tower of Babel, and instigated the schisms of language and caused confusion of man’s desire in reaching God. For Dante, writing the Inferno is to be able to recall and retell the events he witnessed, through language. The comparison I aim to make in this essay is that of Dante to Nimrod, seeing as they have both employed language to evoke the grace of God, whether that is by retelling a journey through Hell, or by physically trying to reach Go...

                The article concerns the political nature of not having a party that represents the values and beliefs of the workers, and that the Democratic and Republican parties only seek to serve the established capitalists and to pander their beliefs to emulate those of the common good. In trying to analyze and interpret why there is no socialism in America, is to look at various momentums in history that have tried to bring the issue to the forefront, and the reaction of the public and government. To be socialistic and have socialism is to have policies and a way of government that is equal in the treatment of the individuals, in public goods and power. However, the article notes that this type of turnover has met opposition throughout our history, and hints that politicizing the argument and struggle of the working class, through the formation of a party, is the key to get close to the goal. As mentioned in the introduction, the Un...

            “It is a truth universally acknowledged that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife,” [1] is the opening line of Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice . The opening line serves as a way to introduce to the reader the topic of the novel—marriage and the courting process. By beginning with this line, Austen has framed the environment that dictates the ‘means and ways’ of marriage in English society. However, what follows thereafter in the novel, provides an insight into the ‘state of marriage’ by having some couples who abide by the norm, and others who rebel against the convention. In the novel, four marriages occur, but for the purposes of this essay, only the marriages of Charlotte and Mr. Collins, Lydia and Wickham, and Elizabeth and Darcy will be addressed. In tackling the issue of marriage, Austen has crafted a picture where those who abide by the norm, end up in a state of marriage that is delusional. Wherea...