A Hispanic male, George, marked a seventeen-year-old African American male, Trayvon, as suspicious in a gated community in Sanford, Florida.  George ignored the 911 dispatcher’s command to leave Trayvon alone; the police, the trained professionals in the use of deadly force would handle the situation.  Instead George continued to follow Trayvon.  A confrontation occurred.  Shots rang out.  Trayvon lay dead on the ground.  A series of events that unfolded merely because George thought that Trayvon, a black male wearing a black hooded sweatshirt looked “suspicious.”

Why is it that a young man whose skin tone ranges on the darker complexion be considered to be “suspicious” when on the other hand, if I put on the same hooded sweatshirt, I am not given those same suspicious stares?  When looking at us based on our skin complexion, the only reason why my skin tone is lighter than my African American classmates is seventy thousand years plus of changes in the amount of melanin in my skin after my genetic ancestors left the African homeland.  And yes, your ancestors also left the African homeland nearly seventy thousand years ago.

But it is that difference in the amount of melanin in the skin that has been the basis for all our racial tensions.  That ugly racial and ethnic history based all on the color of one’s skin is whitewashed in the textbooks sitting in American public schools.  That whitewashed history does not call out the guilty parties; it does not accurately the horror, the pain, and the evil; that whitewashed history makes it easy for people to simply state: “why can’t these people pick themselves up by their bootstraps?”  It is hard to pull one’s self up by bootstraps when you’ve been beaten by those bootstraps; when you’ve been strangled to death by those bootstraps; denied access to use of those bootstraps; and still arrogantly told to pull yourself up by those bootstraps.

All because someone had a darker complexion, in the minds of sixteenth century Europeans, those darker persons were not equal humans.  Either they were merely chattel property as was the case of African slaves.  Or they were subhuman in the case of the Indigenous Americans who stood in the way of Manifest Destiny and were treated like any other pest; worthy of extermination.  Or that their “brownness” was sufficient grounds to block any attempt to gain statehood until there was a nexus of whiteness to make them more acceptable; ignoring centuries of civilization and laws under the Aztec, Spanish Empire, and Mexican governments.

The ugly reality is that the American Republic’s power and wealth was built upon the scarred backs of slaves and rests upon the mass graves and stolen land of children of the Indigenous Americans.

All because someone had darker skin, it was unfathomable to the lily white man that a darker skinned person would have the ability to think, to write, to be equal in society.  The pseudoscience of phrenology was the racist’s tool in proving that it was impossible that blacks were intellectually equal to the white man merely by the size of their skulls.  In the minds of enlightened white men, African Americans were at first merely chattel, a skilled mule to till their fields; but once the 13th Amendment was passed, these racists had to support their claims that African Americans were incapable of being equal to whites; hence the explosion of pseudoscience to support their racist ideologies.

At the same time, these same racist pseudo-scientific theories worked hand-in-hand with the arrogant and racist concept of White Man’s Burden was carried in the vanguard of European and American imperialists into India, Asia, the Middle East, and Africa.  It didn’t matter than India was one of the cradles of civilization; it didn’t matter that it was the Muslim world that preserved the knowledge of Greek and Roman antiquity while Europe wallowed in backward ideology; it didn’t matter that these non-white people had century old societies and civilizations.  They were dark skinned; it was impossible for them to be equal to the superior white-European-Christian civilization.  All because Europeans had a diminished need of melanin because of the environment in the upper latitudes of Europe.

It is this ugly history that must be understood.  This history is just but one step to understanding the problems and to guide our actions in the future.  Without this history, we are doomed to continue to perpetuate stereotypes that young black or Hispanic men are to be feared as potential criminals.  If we don’t realize that our deeply seeded mindsets on race, on color are premised on intellectually bankrupt ideas of ignorant ghosts, we are doomed to perpetuate the terrible legacy they have bestowed upon us.  We are wiser than our ancestors.

In 1996, the Congress of the United States passed the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) and signed into law by President Clinton.  The law denied federal benefits -those normally afforded to married couples – to married homosexual couples.  It was a reaction to a decision by the Hawai’i Supreme Court in 1993 that same-sex couples could be married under the Hawai’ian constitution.  Congress’s reaction was that homosexuals were waging a war against traditional heterosexual marriage and something must be done to protect the “sacred institution” of heterosexual marriage.

Oh the irony that the twice-married House Speaker Newt Gingrich was in an affair with his soon to be third wife Callista Bisek while battling to protect the sacred institution of marriage from same-sex couples.

Now in the 21st century, President Obama declared that the Department of Justice would not defend Section 3 of DOMA and two federal district courts have ruled that DOMA is unconstitutional.  The opinion of U.S. District Judge Jeffery White stated that heightened scrutiny should be the standard when “reviewing statutory classification based on sexual orientation.”  But not everyone is convinced that DOMA is an outdated statute that should join the Jim Crow laws in the dumpster of history, as evidenced by many of the GOP presidential candidates.  I, on the other hand, find that DOMA should be end because of its denial of rights to homosexual service members in same-sex marriages that are afforded to service members in heterosexual marriages.

Since there are seven states that recognize and permit same-sex marriages, it is possible that a gay or lesbian service member could be married while serving.  Two states that are the home to many service members, California and New York permit same-sex marriage, with more to come.  Maryland’s legislature passed a bill permitting same-sex marriage and Illinois legislators have proposed a bill to permit same-sex marriage.  The right for homosexuals to serve in the military and their growing right to marry will have an impact not only on the same-sex spouse but will lead to challenges that may affect a command’s effectiveness to carry out its mission.

In the military, married personnel are able to list their dependents (e.g. their spouse, children) on their Page 2, which permits the dependents of the service member to be eligible for benefits permitted by the Department of Defense (DoD).  Those benefits would be: a DoD ID card which gives access to military installations, access to on-base housing, access to the PX and Commissary (the department store and groceries store on military bases), access to military health care through TRICARE (DoD health care), an increase in housing allowances, and the dependent to receive SGLI benefits upon the death of the service member spouse.

A gay or lesbian service member will not be able to list their same-sex spouse on their Page 2 because of DOMA.  Since DOMA applies to federal benefits, and DoD benefits are benefits conferred by the federal government, spouses of homosexual service members are denied those benefits.

Thanks to the brilliance of DOMA, spouses of homosexual service members would be denied those benefits afforded to the heterosexual married couples.  The effects of denying these rights range from the spouse not being able to attend functions such as promotion or retirement held on military bases to issues that arise even with heterosexual married couples when the service member deploys.  When a service member deploys, the dependents listed on the Page 2 will have access to the rights the DoD permits for dependents.  The spouse will not be able to get on base unless they are in the military or a DoD civilian employee to access those benefits.  Additionally, they will not be able to use TRICARE to assist with health care costs for use of off base health care facilities.  The strain of deployment is stressful enough for the deploying service member, but to add to that strain the concern that their spouse will not have the same benefits afforded to heterosexual spouses is unfair.  Further, and possibly the most heartless, the same-sex spouse would not be informed of the death of their spouse serving in the defense of our country.

These stresses and other issues work to undermine unit cohesion.  From what I’ve seen in the navy, sailors who are distracted with issues at home sometimes struggle with their performance, which does impact command readiness.   Apart from affecting their performance, this extra stress atop of the regular challenges service members face in deployments away from their families may lead to depression.  It may not apply to all service members, but it is pointless to continue with the policies of DOMA, which amounts to shooting ourselves in the foot.

For all the “chickenhawks” who love to wear the American flag pin and wax poetic about our military, they should consider the fact that their bigoted homophobia is actually a disservice to the homosexual service members; gay and lesbian American citizens who had the courage to enlist in the military.  Their continued homophobia does a disservice to the morale of the military.  It serves to weaken, not strengthen.

When I first saw Susan Casey’s “The Wave” at the local bookstore, I was amused but not willing to part with the money the hardcover.  I temped when flipping through the pages finding photos of Mike Parsons riding down a seventy-five foot face at Cortes Banks and Laird Hamilton dropping in on Pe’ahi.  There is something awe inspiring to the exploits of the big wave surfers roving the globe from Teahupo’o to Mavericks to Pe’ahi.  Awe inspiring to watch, and watch alone for me; I know my limits and it was an overhead wave that thrashed me about for foolishly trying to carve into its face with my log.

I can’t say that I have any greater experience with the ocean compared to some people, but after mucking about surfing and having spent some time on the high seas staring out the bridge of a few warships, I’m not completely inexperienced with the tempest of the ocean.  From the vantage point I had clinging to the pelorus, large seas are seldom fun the first time around.  Especially on a frigate that tends to move in the x, y, and z axis in rough seas.  There is a slight unnerving twitch the first time in big seas when the ship gets caught in the trough; the ship seems to plummet down into a dark blue valley, and shudders violently hitting the bottom of the crest.  Rough seas at night are less fun; you point the bow into the winds and hope that some rouge wave doesn’t clobber you out of the darkness.

All of those Dramamine, sea-sickness, walking on the bulkheads memories rose up while reading “The Wave.”  Apart from the stories of the big wave surfers dropping in on massive sixty foot waves the big take away was the concerns that the oceans in the future will become much more violent in the coming years.  The most striking fear is that the melting glaciers, which dilute the salinity of the ocean and change its temperature, may also have adverse seismic implications for humans.  While most persons think a rise of a few inches of the ocean is just another meaningless statistic, it is that increase of a couple of inches of water over thousands of square miles of ocean resting on the plates of drifting on the planet’s mantle that is important.  With a greater mass resting on these plates, it may lead to greater and unanticipated movement; movement of these plates generally means seismic activity.  Seismic activity generally entails earthquakes, tsunamis, and increased volcanism.

Those are just a sampling of the concerns involving the changing nature of the planets oceans.  Coastline cities, oil rigs, low lying islands, the vast amount of commerce traveling on the sea lanes of the world (90% of all non-bulk cargo; e.g. iPhones and Toyotas) are at risk with oceans that could be roiling violently at a greater rate.  The connection between global warming and the increasing tempest of the oceans is a relevant issue that needs greater consideration.

“We’re made of star stuff.  We are a way for the cosmos to know itself.”  The words of Carl Sagan in his series “Cosmos” may not have any relevance to the study of law let alone human rights, but it does have a specific relevance to our existence.  No matter our claimed ethnicity, nationality, religion, or political ideology, we are the heirs of start that went supernova four billion years ago that set our sun alight and jump-started the accretion of material that formed this planet.  Indeed, while we all carry the traits of our parents, we also carry in our bodies the history of the universe and our species.  When dwelling upon these ponderous topics, it seems senseless that human beings engage in visiting brutality and depredations upon others.

Why is it that humans whose melanin had been reduced because of the climate in the northern hemispheres feel it was legitimate to enslave our genetic brothers and sisters in Africa?  Why is it that humans residing in Europe who are made up of the same 46 chromosomes at the genetic level feel compelled to describe another group as subhuman and worthy of a cold and systematic extermination?

There is no legitimate reason.

Yet, in our recent history, humans have engaged in wholesale genocide of their fellow humans based on what could be best described as arbitrary reasons without legitimate basis.  Sitting in Professor Gaffney’s Empty Boxcars viewing tonight at the law school caused me to ponder on this topic.  How can I reconcile the study of law when it was legislation drafted by the German government that set the groundwork for the horror of the Shoah?  The Nuremberg Purity Laws of 1935 outlined who was Jewish and in the same breath, removed their civil rights.  Citizenship was stripped away, property rights eliminated, and the ability to hold a trade revoked.

In the American experience, one has to consider the slave-fugitive laws, and The Antelope and Dred Scott decisions.  Where the law protected the enslavement of Africans; namely that Africans were chattel property.  Chattel property as in the pen you use in class, the computer where you compose your outlines, and the car you drive to class.  That was the definition of a living, breathing human being according to the law, only because they or their ancestors lived on the African continent.   It was defending the right to keep this chattel that lead to the bloodiest war in American history.  Indeed, the Confederate flag is about heritage; the heritage to protect the right of the states to keep humans in lifelong enslavement, defined as chattel no different than the shovel or a hammer.

Yet, in the two examples above, the law was used to support and uphold these actions by other human beings.  In Nazi Germany, an army of lawyers was utilized by the Third Reich to plan and execute the Shoah.  Lawyers and legislators drafted and passed laws that eliminated the civil rights of Jews not only in Germany, but as Professor Gaffney’s Empty Boxcars illustrates, in Bulgaria.  It was through the collaboration of the legal profession that the Nazi war against the Jews was executed.  In our American context, lawyers represented slaveholders in suits to recover their “chattel.”  American jurists supported that “particular institution” in their opinions.

The realization that the law can be used for heinous purposes should cause students and practitioners of the law to sit up and take notice.  We should take note of both those who cooperated with and alternatively resisted the creation and implementation of laws that eliminate civil rights or that define humans merely as chattel.  Their actions provide important lessons: how the law can be co-opted for evil purposes, and how use of the law can overcome those insidious uses.  Just as we should be aware that we are all homo sapiens, heirs to billions of years of cosmological history, we should use this knowledge to apply the law in means to protect and not harm our fellow persons.

On March 11, at 2:45 JST, a 9.0 earthquake struck northeast Japan. Within minutes, large portions of human civilization were obliterated by the power of that earthquake and a tsunami that reached heights of thirty to ten feet.  Whole cities and towns were swept away such as Sendai, Ishinomaki, Miyako, and Soma.  All that remain are debris of homes, scattered vehicles, and empty areas where buildings once stood.

The images of floating houses, cars adrift, and debris aflame surging with the ocean water into the farmlands of Tohoku flashed across television screens across the world.   The images hit closer to home than the disasters that hit Haiti in 2009 and the regions along the Indian Ocean after the 2004 tsunami.  Having lived in Japan for three and a half years, seeing those devastated regions reminded me of the areas of Japan that I visited and lived.  Sleepy villages populated with fishermen, day workers, parents, children, grandparents along the coast.  Cities sitting on the coast, opening to the ocean through ports, with office workers milling through the streets to their offices or a noodle shop for a late lunch.

The current death toll estimates have reached 20,000 persons, with thousands still missing in several towns.

An illustration of this loss of life is captured in a photograph of backpacks collected in Ishinomaki, Miyagi prefecture.  There are red and blue backpacks, splattered with mud, many still have the small stuffed animals of the student’s favorite TV or comic characters attached.  The bright colors contrast with the sober scene of the piled packs with no children around.  Those students who once walked to their school, with their small charm’s bells jingling in the morning air are unseen; only 24 of the 84 students from Okawa Elementary School have been found.

Stripped of the particularities of one’s own culture, by the awesome power of the natural world, there are no differences among human beings.  There is a need to reunited with family or loved ones; a desire to return home; the need for shelter and warmth; a need for the basic necessities of food and water.

There is also the solidarity in humans reaching out to help their fellow human in time of disaster.  The international community reached out to Japan to assist; the United States launched Operation Tomodachi, a joint US Navy and Japanese Self Defense Forces operation to assist those in Tohoku; Korean, Chinese, British, and Californian firefighters trained in post-earthquake rescue operations flew to assist in searching for survivors; and donations to humanitarian organizations from those across the world.

Here at the Valparaiso University, efforts have begun to help raise money for those affected by the earthquake.  The Undergraduate students held a prayer service at the Chapel of Resurrection and collected donations during the Bach Collegum Japan concert.

How can the Law School community chip in to help?  Right now I along with other student organization leaders are planning several fund raising events, ranging from food sales, to collection jars, to collaborating with other planned events to help raise money for the Japanese victims.  One event coming up is collaboration with the VUSL Running Club’s annual Ambulance Chase.  If you are unable to donate money, understandable since we are all in the same debt boat together, there is still a need for around fifteen volunteers to help with various duties during the race.

Other ways one can help is to donate money to the American Red Cross: https://american.redcross.org/site/Donation2?idb=0&5052.donation=form1&df_id=5052Another is via a Google Donation directly to the Japanese Red Cross: http://www.google.co.jp/intl/en/crisisresponse/japanquake2011.htmlAnd another is via the Lions Clubs International: http://www.lionsclubs.org/EN/lci-foundation/disaster-relief/japan-update.php

Wisconsin’s state Capitol Building is one of the most beautiful structures in the United States. Inside, the Rotunda opens into the largest granite dome in the United States, with Fighting Bob LaFollette holding court from the East Wing.  Between the dome’s four arches are four pendentives: Legislation, Government, Justice, and Liberty.

Under the watchful eye of the four pendentives, for the past seven days, the people of Wisconsin have stood together to protect the collective bargaining rights of Wisconsin’s public union workers.  On the ground floor, a drum line beats out an endless rhythm to fuel chants and songs rising up to the upper levels filled with people holding signs and American flags, echoing a deafening chorus: “This is what Democracy looks like!”

Until the mobilization of the people of Wisconsin against Governor Scott Walker’s proposed budget, it appeared that the GOP, the Tea Party, and their billionaire backers were in the ascendancy.  Twenty-six state attorney generals filed suits against the 2010 Health Care Reform bill.  Immediate cuts for social safety nets were outlined.  Mitch McConnell’s goal was nakedly clear: to make President Barack Obama a one-term executive.

That was until Governor Walker pushed to end collective bargaining rights for Wisconsin public union workers, which include public school teachers.  That was the case until fourteen bold Wisconsin Democratic Senators, following in the footsteps of Abraham Lincoln circa 1840, left the state of Wisconsin to prevent a quorum.  That was until the people of Wisconsin converged on Madison, packing the Capitol Square.  They understood that if the public unions in Wisconsin fell, then all other unions would face elimination of collective bargaining rights from Wisconsin to across the United States.

Governor Walker attempted to support his bill as a means to balance Wisconsin’s budget, facing a $137 million budget gap.  But commentators have noted that eliminating collective bargaining rights for public union workers will not help bridge the budget gap.  Public unions were not the catalysis that led to the collapse of the US economy in 2008, leading to massive unemployment, which led to severe reduction in tax revenues, which contributed to the huge budget deficits in states across the US.

Just in case anyone didn’t know, that was courtesy of your benighted Wall Street Bankers.  None of which are in indefinite detention in some torture camp out of public sight.

Wisconsin prior to Walker pushing massive tax breaks to businesses within two days of his inauguration was looking at a $120 million surplus.   Walker claims that he must strip the public union collective bargaining rights in order to close that gap.   Those unions that supported Walker’s candidacy, the public safety unions who have higher salaries and benefits are exempted.

The public union workers of Wisconsin mobilized, joined by University of Wisconsin students, by their fellow citizens: both union and non-union, from across the US.  Well-wishers from across the US and the world purchased pies from Ian’s Pizza to sustain the energy of the protesters.  Union workers handed out bratwurst and water to protesters.  Egyptian Trade Unions issued a statement to Wisconsin: “We Stand With You as You Stood With Us.”

It was an honor to stand alongside my fellow badgers to protect worker’s rights in Wisconsin three days this week.  From the union worker handing out bratwurst to marching with other veterans to the bagpipers bringing down the house on the Capitol Square, it is a historic occasion that cannot be ignored.  Wisconsin is the first stand against the breaking of labor and the unchecked regressive policies of the Right Wing, brought to you by the Koch Brothers.  We cannot fail.