So I have a two week seminar at my law school this semester taught by none other than William Rhenquist, Chief Injustice of the Supreme Court. I am registered for it. The question is "What Would Gandhi Do?"
Not only is Rhenquist the architect of the one of the most retrograde courts in American history, but he is one of the perpetrators of Bush v. Gore, that carbuncle on the ass of American jurisprudence. This guy is Nixon's and Reagan's sick joke on history. The very though of having to exist in a room with him, listening him to speak for two weeks gives me high blood pressure. I signed up for the course in a fit of morbid curiousity.
Personally, I think it is beneath even the rudest unaccredited law school to have this man as a guest scholar. Our aim (speaking for the liberal students whom I know will want to protest in some fashion) will be to get him to go away and never besmirch our alma mater by association with him ever again.
He will be lecturing on his book about the Supreme Court's history and his latest on civil rights "All the Laws But One." The thesis is that the Supreme Court has a duty to interpret enough flexibility into the Constitution to allow the government to assure the survival of the Union though times of crisis. By such sophistry does he justify allowing decisions which eviserate such rights as habeas corpus, the right to counsel, and right to a citizenship to stand. His thesis justifies alarmist restrictions on free speech and association of the red scares, the xenophobic and racist interment of Japanese Americans during WWII, and a criticism of judicial actions condemning Lincoln's suspension of habeas. Just about every action that lamentably infringed upon American's civil rights in times of crisis (or hysteria), Rhenquist seeks to rehabilitate as justifiable public policy.
Some Chief Justice, eh?
So the question is what to do about Billy Bum Quest? Do we picket, as we have done in prior years to little effect? Shall we heckle him? Bring our protest to the classroom in some way? Leave him be to lecture in peace? Enter into disputation with him in hopes of saving his black little soul?
What do you all think? What would you do, were you me? Remember he travels with a Secret Service agent and they are still working on TIA at DARPA, so don't suggest anything too extreme. After all, I just want him out of my law school, not 25 to life.