Can Courts Be Manipulated By Stuffing The Law Review Library?
October 17, 2008
The United States has the best legal system in the world. That does not make it perfect nor infallible. But is it possible to concoct a plan geared toward a lopsided creation of legal documents in order to manipulate future court decisions on major issues such as gun rights?
In my piece yesterday on Barack Obama’s history of non support of hunting and fishing opportunities and his blatant activism to rid his world of guns, I provided you a link to an article written by David T. Hardy of Pajamas Media. Hopefully you read that article.
Hardy’s focus was on the role Barack Obama played while a director of the Joyce Foundation, a non profit that spent millions of dollars opposing gun rights. A significant part of that article gave specifics on one program that was designed and implemented by the Joyce Foundation, while Obama was a director, that set out to create law articles that deliberately supported only a state’s right to keep and bear arms, opposing that of individuals, in order to influence future court decisions.
We legal illiterates might wonder how that could be done. First, Hardy explains this way:
When judges cannot rely upon past decisions, they sometimes turn to law review articles. Law reviews are impartial, and famed for meticulous cite-checking. They are also produced on a shoestring. Authors of articles receive no compensation; editors are law students who work for a tiny stipend.
My daughter was Editor and Chief of the Law Review at the college she attended. Editors, students and lawyers are encouraged, if not required, to write law articles and have their work published. These published law articles are often referenced in many ways, from use in educational settings and referenced in cases being argued.
According to Hardy, in 1999 the board of Joyce Foundation agreed to grant Chicago-Kent Law Review $84,000.00. The Review then published an issue that contained only articles opposing the individual right to keep and bear arms.
Something else that transpired during this grant period that is deemed unusual is the Chicago-Kent Law Review went outside the school and brought in a former director of Handgun Control, Inc., now the Brady Campaign, to be its editor.
The new editor actively sought only Law Review articles supporting the state’s right and opposing individual rights. He even paid some of these authors $5,000.00.
The intent here was obvious it seems. If the Joyce Foundation wanted to influence the courts and ultimately the U.S. Supreme Court, one way was to artificially stuff the ballot box so to speak and create an overwhelming, one-sided surplus of law articles that only opposed the individual right interpretation.
According to Hardy, this effort saw some success.
The plan worked smoothly. One court, in the course of ruling that there was no individual right to arms, cited the Chicago-Kent articles eight times.
Fortunately an appeals court saw thing differently and reversed that decision.
With Barack Obama still a director of the Joyce Foundation, they poured $400,000.00 into a new think tank at the Ohio State University. It was called the Second Amendment Research Center and was headed up by Saul Cornell, someone known to be an anti-individual gun rights person. Hardy tells us that the Second Amendment Research Center made it clear what’s its agenda was - to influence the courts and reverse previous rulings for individual rights to keep and bear arms.
The SARC continued filling up law reviews with only documents that supported the state’s right to form militia’s and denying individual rights. Once again, Hardy tells us that in the recent U.S. Supreme Court decision in District of Columbia v. Heller, even though the ruling went in favor of the individual right in a 5-4 decision, the dissenters of the case were influenced by this effort of the Joyce Foundation of which Barack Obama served as a director.
I find it not only disturbing but scary to think that anyone, whether opposing gun rights or any other right or established law, would work so dishonestly to manipulate our great legal system all for the purpose of promoting their personal ideals and agendas.
As I said previously, its easy for a politician to say anything they want to say and chances are they will get away with it if it is not true. Barack Obama has repeatedly said he supports an individual’s right interpretation of the Second Amendment and yet for 8 years as a director of the Joyce Foundation he supported the efforts to undermine and deceive our legal system in order to promote his agenda of removing guns from the hands of Americans.
Tom Remington
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Oh what a wicked web we weave… when we want something unrighteous….and I hope everyone finds out their wicked deeds, before the bastard gets elected!
Good article, Tom, and it throws a handfull of light on a dark corner of Obama’s recent performance…and hidden past! I hope people will open their eyes in time to see him in the light of it. Thanks!
Jes - You know most people know I’m not a great fan of John McCain. I have a real difficult time writing in support of him BUT, and this is a huge but…….
The alternative is really bad and I fear people don’t get it. The majority only pay attention to sound bites and base their decision on what’s “cool”, or “chic” or trendy and some even don’t want to be caught supporting someone different than friends.
All this without knowing a lick about this man’s past and plans for our future.
I may now be on the upper end of the age categories of those who vote and I am watching our country slide into socialism while Americans support a Marxist to head that movement. For me, that’s what thousands of Americans fought and died to prevent. Would it matter if I called it communism?
Both strip us of freedom. This is the God-given freedom our Creator gifted to us the day we, all humans, were born. We now officially have no knowledge or appreciation of that.
and while the National Review, one of the leading conservative publications which USED to be for intellectuals has been taken over by the redneck faction of the Republican party……… They are now silencing any dissenting voices….. stay tuned…………
Ladies and Gentlemen! The Battle of the Red Neck Factions: In this corner we have:
Six-term Sen. Joe Biden’s got some nerve going after citizen Joe the Plumber. But the entrenched politician from Delaware, who fancies himself the nation’s No. 1 Ordinary Joe, had no choice. Obama-Biden simply can’t tolerate an outspoken citizen successfully painting the Democratic ticket as socialist overlords. And so a dirty, desperate war against Joe Wurzelbacher is on. “Not A Real $250k Plumber!”
Bea I sure hope you keep posting. Some of the guys wish you would just “bugger off” but I like what your doing.
I never really grasped the extent of the blind visceral hatred dished out by the so called conservationists and the Anti crowds.
Not until I started researching your assertions did I realize how much of our right to hunt is being infringed upon. Reasonable activities in the pursuit of happiness is one of the core foundations of what being American is to me. Now I’m told I’m not a good American?
In the past in back of my mind I knew some thing was going on just by reading and listening to folks like Tom. But thanks to you I know know I have to ramp up my activism to protect my God given rights (within the law).
As for “ethics” the controlled nature of preserve hunts makes them well suited for introducing youngsters into ethical concepts such as recovering cripples, obeying rules, estimating range,how to shoot, zones of fire. (sadly, not observed by Dick Chaney I’m glad his friend is OK)
Also, State Game departments exist to MANAGE fish and wildlife, they are funded primarily by hunting and fishing dollars. How much are animal rights groups paying to support wildlife conservation?
So please, keep coming back, You have helped solidify and focus OUR resolve to protect our Nations Hunting Heritage and
Our personal freedoms. To fight for and restore a safe secure environment to raise our young.
George, I hope you don’t scare her off with “reverse psychology”, she seems to be pretty well entrenched, by now!
Fact is, we all need a goad sometimes to bring out the best in us…as long as it is “on the square”, and not vitriolic, we sometime both learn from our adversaries!
Now, where were we, Bea?
Oh, yes, on osmosis…….
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