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Original Post:
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| Painting oral arguments as mere politics |
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| Student post |
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| Sun, April 26, 2009 |
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Dana Milbank's April 23 column "The Supremes Sing the Oldies" in the Washington Post is hardly what some would categorize as pure legal journalistic writing. In his column, Milbank pokes fun at the Supreme Court justices hearing the oral arguments of Ricci v. DeStefano. Twenty firefighters -- one Hispanic and 19 white -- in New Haven, Conn., sued the city on the basis of reverse discrimination for throwing out the results of an exam in 2003 that would have promoted some of them to lieutenant and captain positions.
Milbank sets his narrative in the framework of a highly politicized courtroom stage where the justices, not the lawyers and clients, are the main actors. He pits the liberals (Justices Souter, Ginsburg, Stevens, and Breyer) against the conservatives (Chief Justice Roberts and Justices Scalia, Alito, and Thomas) with Justice Kennedy playing Devil’s Advocate. Milbank’s rendition of the Supreme Court hearing has action, drama, and suspense: nine justices with a long history of petty squabbles and ideological conflicts and differences who are determined to fight each other out for the final votes until the bitter end … in June.
Readers will understand that Milbank’s column is subjective. The trouble arises when objective news reports like those in the Wall Street Journal, Christian Science Monitor, Hartford Courant, and USA Today choose to focus on the politics of the case instead of the actual case itself. In these articles, the writers focus on Kennedy and his swing vote. The CSM article included a deckhead about Kennedy’s deciding vote. The WSJ article had a sketch of Kennedy, highlighting his importance in the final vote. Very few of these articles explained in full detail the underlying legal principles and impacts that the results of the case could have on Title VII of the Civil Rights Act. Even Robert Barnes' news article in the Washington Post was awfully similar in content and perspective to Milbank’s opinion column.
These problems -- treating the case as just another political horse race -- get compounded when news reports essentially assume the outcome will be 5-4. Their only supporting evidence for this assertion was the 5-4 majority decision made in another civil rights case a year ago that struck down the use of race to determine the assignment of children to public schools, which again, pitted the liberal justices against the conservatives.
It is somewhat of a sad state of affairs when the biggest civil rights lawsuit this year has been watered down to whether liberals or conservatives will prevail, and even sadder to see that a swing vote is considered big news. At the end of the day, legal reporters should be focusing their efforts on finding out the legal implications of a case and its impact on the general public and not on the politics of the courtroom and its judges.
--Mimi Liu
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Posted at 04:07 PM
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There are 5 comments to this post:
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| John_Ch commented: |
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Politic just like two face of
sword, in one side is good and the other is "evil".
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Posted Tue, June 16, 2009 at 03:47 PM
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| commented: |
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| Very well said. I just read the Dana Milbank’s column |
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Very well said. I just read the Dana Milbank’s column. It’s well written no doubt about it. But the writing style is a bit cinematic with full of climax. Here the whole case has presented in political outline rather than legal viewpoint. As here business line commented on this post- ‘we cannot discriminate between politics and justice’. I do not agree with that. Justice is all about becoming neutral and politics is just the opposite. So a pure legal journalistic writing should not be dramatic and biased, and should not focus only on the final opinion. Rather it should explain the full detail of the underlying legal principles and all the evidence and procedures depending on which the final conclusion has been drawn. Thanks a lot for such insightful writing.
~John
I love Press Release Writing
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Posted Tue, June 16, 2009 at 01:47 PM
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| Politics and Justice |
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Politic and Justice like a coin..one in front and the other in backside, but its become together.
It's very complicated, we can't disparate between politic and justice.
Like case of Kennedy...can we find who's actor's behind the scene?? that is what i mean, we can't disparate between Politics and justice.
Business Line
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Posted Mon, June 08, 2009 at 12:50 PM
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| commented: |
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| Debate wont solve the problem |
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Sometime debate wont solve any problem, i think to best way to solve is by doing useful thing for any other people. By that way we could directly helping our community to get better quality of life.
Living Chair AptSoft Airport Shuttle Estate Women Mind
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Posted Mon, June 08, 2009 at 06:55 AM
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| commented: |
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| Politics are hard to planned |
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As we know that politic has its trick and ruthless, they are very difficult to forecast what will happened next. So we just need to be carefull being on politic, be smart and instincly. Cafe Marly
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Posted Fri, June 05, 2009 at 10:57 PM
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