Big Question Key Post

 Weston Hill Theoharis

13 December 2021

FYS 1000

Big Question/Key Post

Speech, religion, the press, assembly, and the ability to petition the government are the five freedoms it safeguards. The people of the United States of America are the most free in the world because of these five guaranteed freedoms. The Founders of our democratic republic required that these freedoms be secured by an amendment to the original constitution – the First Amendment – before they agreed to accept the Constitution. There is no "legal age" at which you must reach in order to exercise your First Amendment rights. They are yours from the moment you are born. There is likewise no requirement for citizenship to be protected under the First Amendment. If you live in the United States, you have the right to freedom of expression, religion, press, assembly, and petition. The First Amendment is neither "liberal" nor "conservative." It can be used to either promote or resist social and political change. Everyone is protected by the First Amendment. https://constitutioncenter.org/interactive-constitution/amendment/amendment-i

The First Amendment protects us from government restrictions on our right to free speech, but it doesn't prevent a private company from establishing its own standards. The First Amendment protects you from being forced to say something you don't want to say, or from being prevented from hearing or reading what others have to say (even if you never speak out yourself, you have the right to receive information). Students have the right to pray in public schools in the United States as long as school activities are not disrupted and no government employees (teachers, coaches) are involved.

Judge Bernard Friedman's district court finding in Grutter v. Bollinger in March 2001 ordered the University of Michigan Law School to stop using race as a consideration in admissions, but the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals imposed a stay in April. In May 2002, the Supreme Court overturned the lower court's decision and upheld the school's use of race in admissions.

Since the Virginia Board in 1976, commercial discourse has gone a long way. Prior to that judgment, both the Supreme Court and constitutional academics gave short shrift to First Amendment protection for commercial speech, either due to a lack of serious consideration or veiled ideological animosity. Even while both the court and scholars assumed that other forms of expression about the relative qualities of commercial products or services should be given complete First Amendment protection, this was not the case. https://www.uscourts.gov/about-federal-courts/educational-resources/educational-activities/first-amendment-activities

Speakers' constitutional privileges are not limited in any other aspect of First Amendment law because of their self-interest, financially or otherwise. Our democratic system is often thought to be meant to defend citizens' rights to advance their personal or economic interests by persuading others to accept their arguments. Other than the ideological impulse to punish people who benefit from the capitalistic system, there is no rational foundation for categorically separating commercial speakers. Such explanation is pathologically incompatible with the First Amendment's very premises, which the argument professes to apply. https://www.cato.org/publications/policy-analysis/commercial-speech-values-free-expression#conclusion

Board V Regents//CONCLUDE

 Weston Hill Theoharis

7 December 2021

Fys 1000

BAKKE V. REGENTS OF THE UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA

The Supreme Court reversed a policy for admissions at the University of California in 1978.  While generally approving affirmative action programs. In 1973 and 1974, Allan Bakke, a white guy, was denied admission to the medical school at Davis. In both years, the school only accepted one hundred students, with sixteen spots set aside for minorities. Bakke filed a lawsuit, alleging "reverse discrimination" because some of the minorities accepted had worse grade point averages and MCAT scores than he did. Four justices wanted to abolish the program because it violated Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, but they didn't want to review the medical school's affirmative action program's validity. Four others requested the Court to decide that the program was legal and that the medical school had made the proper decision in rejecting Bakke. Justice Lewis Powell Jr. basically split the difference, arguing that fixed racial quota programs like the medical schools were illegal under the Civil Rights Act, but that a public school's admission criteria "may" include race as long as it was not the deciding factor. He contended that because it permitted educational institutions to foster cultural variety, it was constitutionally permissible under the First Amendment. Because it was determined on narrow statutory grounds, the Court's judgment, which only addressed affirmative action programs at schools receiving federal monies, did not resolve the matter of reverse discrimination. 

https://www.encyclopedia.com/history/dictionaries-thesauruses-pictures-and-press-releases/bakke-v-regents-university-california 

As opposition to affirmative action programs grew in the 1990s, the ruling became a flashpoint for debate. The University of California Board of Regents, for example, rejected the Bakke standard, which allowed "race as one of many considerations" in admissions choices, opting to bar UC campuses from utilizing "race, religion, sex, color, ethnicity, or national origin" in admissions decisions in July 1995. In Hop-wood v. State of Texas, the United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit ruled in favor of four white students who had been denied admission to the University of Texas Law School. The court found that the students had been subjected to reverse discrimination and deemed the use of race as one of numerous factors in admissions choices to be unlawful. The Supreme Court declined to hear the issue again, leaving Texas, Mississippi, and Louisiana to follow it as law. https://www.casebriefs.com/blog/law/constitutional-law/constitutional-law-keyed-to-chemerinsky/equal-protection/regents-of-the-university-of-california-v-bakke/

Judge Bernard Friedman's district court finding in Grutter v. Bollinger in March 2001 ordered the University of Michigan Law School to stop using race as a consideration in admissions, but the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals imposed a stay in April. In May 2002, the Supreme Court overturned the lower court's decision and upheld the school's use of race in admissions.

Voting rights act of 1965

Weston Hill Theoharis 

1 December 2021

FYS 1000

Voting Rights Of 1965

"The civil rights movement had galvanized the country by the 1950s." In 1957, 1960, and 1964, Congress passed Civil Rights Acts, but none of them were strong enough to prevent local officials from discriminating against voters. On March 7, 1965, Alabama state police attacked nonviolent voting rights demonstrators in Selma, Alabama. The violence was captured on camera by news crews on what became known as "Bloody Sunday." Many Americans and members of Congress began to question whether current civil rights laws would ever be successfully enforced by local governments. The subject before Congress was whether the federal government should assume the ability to register voters in order to secure the right to vote. Because voting qualifications were previously determined by state and local officials, federal voting rights protection constituted a substantial shift in the constitutional power balance between the states and the federal government. https://www.archives.gov/legislative/features/voting-rights-1965 

The Voting Rights Act of 1965 was created by Congress with the goal of increasing the number of persons registered to vote in places where there had been previous prejudice. In certain jurisdictions with a history of voting discrimination, the Act prohibited literacy tests and provided for the appointment of Federal examiners (with the power to register qualified persons to vote). Furthermore, without "preclearance" from the US Attorney General or the District Court for Washington, DC, local jurisdictions could not change voting policies or processes. The ability to register voters was transferred from state and municipal officials to the federal government under this law. https://kinginstitute.stanford.edu/encyclopedia/voting-rights-act-1965 

 

The Voting Rights Act of 1965 was quickly challenged in the courts because it was the most important statutory shift in the relationship between the federal and state governments in the domain of voting since the Reconstruction era. Several major Supreme Court opinions supporting the law's validity were made between 1965 and 1969. https://history.house.gov/Records-and-Research/Featured-Content/Engrossed-Bill/

 

The Voting Rights Act of 1965 shifted political power dynamics in the South. Over half a million Southern blacks had registered to vote by the middle of 1966, and nearly 400 black people had been elected to office by 1968.

 

Many white southerners began to switch to the Republicans when African Americans joined the Democratic Party. This trend was made by Richard Nixon's "Southern strategy," which was aimed to attract white Southerners to the Republican Party. As African Americans began to vote, some Southern Democrats, such as George Wallace, began to abandon their segregationist in order to appeal to black voters. At the federal level, President Johnson selected Robert C. Weaver, the first black cabinet member, as Secretary of Housing and Urban Development, and Thurgood Marshall, the first African American Supreme Court justice, in 1967.

 

By November, the county had 8,000 new black voters, not coincidentally, a new sheriff after the May elections, leaving Jim Clark behind. 

 

Though the repercussions were so severe, the new law had a similar effect wherever a white minority had pastly dominated with an big fist. The Justice Department could now dispatch examiners to any state or county if, as of the 1964 presidential election, a literacy test or other deterrent to black registration was in place, and turnout or registration for that election had fallen below 50% of the voting age population.