Thoughts from
San Diego on Law, Politics, and Culture

 
Law schools get permission to take courageous stand
By Tom Smith

The Third Circuit has apparently ruled that the Solomon Amendment is unconstitutional. That was the law that told law schools that if they would not allow military recruiters on campus, as a protest against the "don't ask, don't tell" policy on gay soldiers, they could do without federal money as well. Just to review, soldiers are the ones that do things like get their legs blown off by grenades so the rest of us can decide what the best kind of wine is with turkey, and law schools are the places where idealistic solons take brave stands right up until the moment they are threatened with losing some money if they do so. It would be interesting to know by how much one would have to reduce federal largess to get law schools to reluctantly agree that they must courageously decide to postpone their brave protests to a more opportune time. Completely eliminating federal largess always struck me as extreme, when you could probably have gotten schools to about face for much less. Would an amendment that said law schools would be docked, oh, $367,235.21 from their federal subsidies if they did not permit military recruiters on campus, cause the law school administrations to see that discretion was the better part of valor? Or, perhaps a better way to calculate it would be $5000 for each soldiers' limb or eye lost in Iraq, and $10,000 for each soldier's life, but maybe $20,000 per soldier who had the misfortune to be burned alive inside a tank. Oh, except, that would run into the millions. Would anyone dare ask a law school to make so costly a sacrifice upon the altar of freedom?

posted by thomas at 11/30/2004 08:22:00 AM