Birthday Thread: Had a great birthday last Friday & thought I'd share highlights - starting out of order w/my Jack LaLanne feat of dad strength at Columbia Law School Sculpture Three-Way Piece: Points by Henry Moore - (okay so it didn’t involve swimming while towing a barge!)
#AAPIHeritageMonth In 1912, when most Chinese were banned from entering America, 16-year old Mabel Ping-Hua Lee -on horseback - helped lead one of the largest suffragette marches of the time in NYC's Washington Square Park. (Her photo from the NY Tribune) newspapers.com/clip/54974276/…
Mabel Lee grew up in NYC's Chinatown - the daughter of a Chinese Protestant minister - it was a time when racist exclusion immigration laws made gender ratio of Chinese men/woman about 14:1 She attended @BarnardCollege & then @Columbia - 1st woman to receive PhD in Economics.
At age 18 she wrote for a student journal in which she argued that suffrage for women was necessary to a successful democracy - her speech "The Submerged Half" at invitation of the the Women's Political Union about the rights of woman in China was covered by the New York Times.
Chief Justice Roberts proclaiming that US Supreme Court is conducting an investigation into leaked Roe v. Wade opinion & Justice Clarence Thomas claiming SCOTUS won't be "bullied" both overly dramatic in their loud protestations of how SCOTUS will not be affected by the leak.
If they were so confident about how the leak has no effect upon them then there would be no need to publicly address it all - they both know SCOTUS is in deep trouble as an institution & trying to portray themselves as victims completely lacks credibility.
Chief Justice Roberts & Justice Clarence Thomas both so confident in how imperially impervious SCOTUS is that they both felt the need to address it publicly at a judicial conference...not exactly a show of strength.
#AAPIHeritageMonth My family was told by the military authorities that internment was for our own protection, but the machine guns and searchlights in the guard towers surrounding Heart Mountain, our internment camp in northern Wyoming, faced inward" - Norm Mineta 1931-2022
Remembering Norm Mineta who passed away this May 3 at age 90. Incarcerated by the U.S. Government as a little boy under Executive Order 9066 he grew up to become the first AAPI Mayor of a major US City, ten-term Congressman & first AAPI Cabinet member.
Norm Mineta was Secretary of Transportation on 9/11 & played an instrumental role in the crisis control of that day including grounding all air traffic within 2+ hrs. Ten days after the attacks he forbade all US airlines from racially profiling Middle Eastern & Muslim passengers.
#AAPIHeritageMonth Survivor Amanda Nguyen drafted the Sexual Assault Survivor's Bill of Rights in 2016 - it was signed into law by President Obama less than a year later as only the 21st bill in modern US history unanimously passed. Her organization @RiseNowUS has passed 40+ laws
helping to protect sexual assault survivors, including ensuring rape kits will not be destroyed before statute of limitations expirations. @RiseNowUS & @nguyen_amanda are working on a United Nations General Assembly resolution focused on sexual violence survivors' rights.
In 2018 Amanda Nguyen was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize in recognition of her work with Rise to pass the Sexual Assault Survivor's Bill of Rights - one of only 16 women to ever been nominated in the 117-year history of the prize. risenow.us
The Supreme Court's institutional flaws run far deeper than any one case or one justice. Sotamayor's warning that overruling #RoeVWade would cause a "stench" that SCOTUS likely could not survive recognized a loss of legitimacy that only expansion & term limits can hope to remedy.
Current system of confirmation is meaningless - all nominees are coached to avoid giving actual opinions about legal issues like #RoeVWade that will come before SCOTUS even as the Presidents who nominate them & Senate who confirms them blatantly brag about their nominees views.
At a more basic level Chief Justice John Roberts continues to refuse to have the Supreme Court adopt a code of judicial ethics - making them the only federal judges without a code of ethics.
As Chief Justice, John Roberts held the power to determine which SCOTUS justice would draft the opinion overturning #RoeVWade. He chose Justice Sam Alito to draft the opinion leaving no doubt that Roberts favors depriving women of their right to choose. Revisions will not matter.
SCOTUS justices take a quick vote shortly after oral arguments - ironically juries are cautioned to NOT take votes right away but to work their way through evidence first - and this vote doomed #RoeVWade from the start. Neither Sotomayor's expected dissent nor any concurrences
will matter - those typically are written for future cases to find authority for new lines of analysis BUT until the structure of the Supreme Court is changed none of that will matter because the legitimacy of SCOTUS is now beyond repair.