Balkin [Yale]: Nuclear Politics Commentary
Balkin [Yale]: Nuclear Politics
Edited by: Bernard Hibbitts | JURIST Staff

Jack Balkin, Yale Law School:

"There are more hints (this from the Washington Post) that the Republicans in the Senate will try the "nuclear option" to end filibusters on judicial nominations.

The Republicans hold all the levers of power and now would like to leverage that power to kick away the last major support of minority rights. It's a tricky calculation for Republicans, because, flush with power, they have many different things they want to do all at once, and they will not be able to do them all. Do they want to entrench themselves in the courts for a generation more than they want to pass major legislative reforms like Social Security privatization or tax reform? If they use the nuclear option, the Democrats may prevent any significant legislation from passing in retaliation. On the other hand, if they want Democratic cooperation, the Republicans may have to accede to a more moderate policy on judicial nominations. And it would not have to be that much more moderate, in fact, because in the past four years the Democrats filibustered only about 10 of the President's 229 nominations.

The smart move would be not to stir up this particular hornet's nest. Judicial nominations are most important for cultural and religious conservatives, who have nowhere else to go. But one should never underestimate the temptation, among those who have recently become very powerful, to wield their power recklessly in order to demonstrate that they have it." [December 13, 2004; Balkinization has the post]

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THIS DAY @ LAW

Martin Luther King Jr. wrote his Letter from Birmingham Jail

On April 16, 1963, an incarcerated Martin Luther King, Jr. (arrested for demonstrating in defiance of a court order) wrote his Letter from Birmingham Jail in response to a published statement by eight fellow clergymen from Alabama.

Part of the letter read: We have waited for more than 340 years for our constitutional and God-given rights. The nations of Asia and Africa are moving with jetlike speed toward gaining political independence, but we stiff creep at horse-and-buggy pace toward gaining a cup of coffee at a lunch counter. Perhaps it is easy for those who have never felt the stinging dark of segregation to say, "Wait." But when you have seen vicious mobs lynch your mothers and fathers at will and drown your sisters and brothers at whim; when you have seen hate-filled policemen curse, kick and even kill your black brothers and sisters; when you see the vast majority of your twenty million Negro brothers smothering in an airtight cage of poverty in the midst of an affluent society; when you suddenly find your tongue twisted and your speech stammering as you seek to explain to your six-year-old daughter why she can't go to the public amusement park that has just been advertised on television, and see tears welling up in her eyes when she is told that Funtown is closed to colored children, and see ominous clouds of inferiority beginning to form in her little mental sky, and see her beginning to distort her personality by developing an unconscious bitterness toward white people; when you have to concoct an answer for a five-year-old son who is asking: "Daddy, why do white people treat colored people so mean?"; when you take a cross-county drive and find it necessary to sleep night after night in the uncomfortable corners of your automobile because no motel will accept you; when you are humiliated day in and day out by nagging signs reading "white" and "colored"; when your first name becomes "nigger," your middle name becomes "boy" (however old you are) and your last name becomes "John," and your wife and mother are never given the respected title "Mrs."; when you are harried by day and haunted by night by the fact that you are a Negro, living constantly at tiptoe stance, never quite knowing what to expect next, and are plagued with inner fears and outer resentments; when you are forever fighting a degenerating sense of "nobodiness" then you will understand why we find it difficult to wait. There comes a time when the cup of endurance runs over, and men are no longer willing to be plunged into the abyss of despair. I hope, sirs, you can understand our legitimate and unavoidable impatience. Read the full text of the Letter.

Former communist countries admitted for EU accession

On April 16, 2003, the 2003 Treaty of Accession was signed by 10 countries, admitting them for European Union (EU) ascension. After Malta and Cyprus, eight of the ten new EU nations (Poland, Hungary, Slovakia, the Czech Republic, Slovenia, Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania) were former communist countries. The signing of the treaty in Athens marked the first time that former members of the Soviet Bloc joined the EU.

Learn more about EU expansion from the organization's website.

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