On Wed, Jun 23, 2004 at 03:37:19PM -0400, Nathan Newman wrote:
> Calebresi is very establishment but ideosyncratic as hell. He's old and
> has lifetime tenure on the bench and so can have fun saying anything he
> wants. He was Dean of Yale Law School about a decade ago and did a lot of
> very progressive things then.
>
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: "Doug Henwood" <dhenwood at panix.com>
> To: "lbo-talk" <lbo-talk at lbo-talk.org>
> Sent: Wednesday, June 23, 2004 12:45 PM
> Subject: [lbo-talk] Calabresi: Bush's rise like Hitler's or Mussolini's
>
>
> [This guy is a serious ruling-class character, no?]
>
> New York Sun - June 21, 2004
>
> AUDIENCE GASPS AS JUDGE LIKENS ELECTION OF BUSH TO RISE OF IL DUCE
> 2nd Circuit's Calabresi Also Compares Bush's Rise to That of Hitler
>
> By JOSH GERSTEIN Staff Reporter of the Sun
>
> WASHINGTON - A prominent federal judge has told a conference of
> liberal lawyers that President Bush's rise to power was similar to
> the accession of dictators such as Mussolini and Hitler.
>
> "In a way that occurred before but is rare in the United
> States...somebody came to power as a result of the illegitimate acts
> of a legitimate institution that had the right to put somebody in
> power.That is what the Supreme Court did in Bush versus Gore. It put
> somebody in power," said Guido Calabresi, a judge on the 2nd Circuit
> Court of Appeals, which sits in Manhattan.
>
> "The reason I emphasize that is because that is exactly what happened
> when Mussolini was put in by the king of Italy," Judge Calabresi
> continued, as the allusion drew audible gasps from some in the
> luncheon crowd Saturday at the annual convention of the American
> Constitution Society.
>
> "The king of Italy had the right to put Mussolini in, though he had
> not won an election, and make him prime minister. That is what
> happened when Hindenburg put Hitler in. I am not suggesting for a
> moment that Bush is Hitler. I want to be clear on that, but it is a
> situation which is extremely unusual," the judge said.
>
> Judge Calabresi, a former dean of Yale Law School, said Mr. Bush has
> asserted the full prerogatives of his office, despite his lack of a
> compelling electoral mandate from the public.
>
> "When somebody has come in that way, they sometimes have tried not to
> exercise much power. In this case, like Mussolini, he has exercised
> extraordinary power. He has exercised power, claimed power for
> himself; that has not occurred since Franklin Roosevelt who, after
> all, was elected big and who did some of the same things with respect
> to assertions of power in times of crisis that this president is
> doing," he said.
>
> The 71-year-old judge declared that members of the public should,
> without regard to their political views, expel Mr. Bush from office
> in order to cleanse the democratic system.
>
> "That's got nothing to do with the politics of it. It's got to do
> with the structural reassertion of democracy," Judge Calabresi said.
>
> His remarks were met with rousing applause from the hundreds of
> lawyers and law students in attendance.
>
> Judge Calabresi was born in Milan. His family fled Mussolini in 1939
> and settled in America. In 1994, President Clinton appointed the law
> professor to the federal appeals court that hears cases from the
> states of New York, Connecticut, and Vermont.
>
> An opinion written by Judge Calabresi in 2000 rebuked Mayor
> Giuliani's administration for failing to respect First Amendment
> rights.
>
> "We would be ostriches if we failed to take judicial notice of the
> heavy stream of First Amendment litigation generated by New York in
> recent years," the judge wrote. Allies of the mayor denounced the
> opinion as a thinly veiled political attack on Mr. Giuliani, who was
> then a candidate for the Senate.
>
> Judge Calabresi made his comments from the floor during a
> question-and-answer period that was part of a panel discussion on the
> impact of the upcoming election on law and policy.
>
> "I'm a judge and so I'm not allowed to talk politics. So I'm not
> going to talk about some of the issues that were mentioned or what
> some have said is the extraordinary record of incompetence of this
> administration," he said.
>
> Two Republicans on the panel politely rejected Judge Calabresi's
> contention that Mr. Bush has overstepped his bounds.
>
> A White House counsel under President George H.W. Bush said Judge
> Calabresi suggested the war in Iraq was a bold and inappropriate use
> of power without noting that the president's policy initially enjoyed
> broad bipartisan support.
>
> "It was approved with a pretty solid vote from Congress," C. Boyden
> Gray said. Mr. Gray said conservatives believe Mr. Bush has been too
> cautious on issues like Medicare reform.
>
> "If anything, he's been too shy of doing things," the attorney said.
>
> A top Supreme Court litigator, Jay Sekulow, said it would be unwise
> to place limits on Mr. Bush's authority simply because he did not win
> the popular vote.
>
> "To say that a person who comes in under an Electoral College vote
> but not a majority of the popular vote and they're somehow relegated
> to president-minus,I think is a very dangerous precedent," said Mr.
> Sekulow,who is chief counsel for a conservative legal group,the
> American Center for Law and Justice.
>
> One of the Democrats on stage endorsed Judge Calabresi's comments.
>
> "I absolutely obviously agree with what Judge Calabresi was trying to
> get at," said a former chief of staff to Vice President Gore, Ronald
> Klain.
>
> On Friday evening, Justice Breyer addressed the group. His
> presentation was more restrained. He detailed his thinking on the
> affirmative action cases the court recently decided. However, most of
> his remarks consisted of a celebration of the respect that most
> Americans show for the high court's rulings.
>
> "Ignoring the court isn't done in this family," the justice said.
>
> During a session on corporate crime, a prominent class-action lawyer,
> Melvyn Weiss of Manhattan, warned that tort reform and similar
> measures could wipe out the plaintiffs' bar.
>
> Brandishing a copy of a Manhattan Institute report on trial lawyers,
> Mr. Weiss said, "This is what we're up against, ladies and gentlemen,
> and if we don't fight it, we're dead meat."
>
> Another panelist said stockholders who said little about corporate
> governance in the 1990s share some of the blame for the recent
> corporate scandals.
>
> "We were all making money. We weren't out there saying, 'Get 'em Mel.
> Go get 'em, Mel," said a former attorney general of Massachusetts and
> a former president of Common Cause, Scott Harshbarger. He praised New
> York's attorney general for his investigations.
>
> "Elliott Spitzer has not drilled a dry hole yet," Mr. Harshbarger said.
>
> At another discussion, liberal lawyers said it was hypocritical for
> Republicans to push federal caps on damages in state tort cases while
> maintaining that they favor limited federal government.
>
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-- Michael Perelman Economics Department California State University Chico, CA 95929
Tel. 530-898-5321 E-Mail michael at ecst.csuchico.edu