The Yale-Harvard Supreme Court: Us versus Them

Over the past few weeks, the Supreme Court of the United States (SCOTUS) has rendered several major decisions. These have either been applauded or vilified depending on which side of the political spectrum one is on. Personally, I could care less about the decisions, which from my perspective have less to do with legalities than compared to the tactics of divide and conquer as practiced by Oligarchs for centuries. But what is disturbing, is the sever lack of universal representation that currently, and in the past has comprised the jurist that sit on this nine person corpus.

Since 1956, at any given time, there have NEVER been less than three justices from Harvard and/or Yale sitting on the SCOTUS. And since the appointment of Anthony Kennedy in 1988, Harvard and Yale graduates in concert have comprised a majority of the court. When Elena Kagan was confirmed, it made all sitting on the SCOTUS had either attended Yale (Clarence Thomas, Samuel A. Alito Jr., Sonia Sotomayor) or Harvard (John G. Roberts Jr., Antonin Scalia, Anthony Kennedy, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Stephen Breyer) for law schools. Can you say American aristocracy? 

I say this because in Washington of recent decades, it appears that the prevailing assumption as it pertains to the SCOTUS is that, the best minds and smartest people for the job graduate from either Yale or Harvard. Albeit a possibility of fanatical truism, in reality such never has, or will be the case. As such, unlike representative bodies like the Senate or the House of Representatives, the SCOTUS is not representative of AMERICA at all. Sure you got black and Latino persons, and some white men and white women, but that just doesn’t cut the cake and rather too simplistic in a diverse population inclusive of regional distinctions in thinking as ours.

This disproportionality in the number of justices from Harvard and Yale is frightening and should be to all. It is a form of legal aristocracy because there is none when it regards diversity of the legal educations of the folk who happen to be on the most important political body in our nation. I mean is it impossible to find a great and smart legal mind from the halls of Duke, Stanford, Northwestern, University of Virginia, William and Mary or the University of Tennessee? Nope, the Yaleharvarification of the SCOTUS aint about quality of the mind, but moreso of the Presidents whom appoint them and the legal field good ole boy network.

In simple terms, this is all about limited access networking. First, for the past 26 years every president has been a graduate of Yale or Harvard. This may be why among other things; all of the sitting members of the SCOTUS are either Catholic or Jewish. And it seems that all clerked on the Supreme Court once upon a time ago. If this constitutional republic is to function at full capacity and utility of its citizenry, diversity of education at the highest ranks of government, in particular the SCOTUS is paramount and a matter of survival.

When our elected officials, the folk who are responsible for making these sections and appointments to government positions we did not have a say of choosing and working on behalf of the citizenry, limit their pool to a small body, it works against the best interest of the nation. I mean, we saw what happened when African Americans and women were added, so why restrict the applicant pool in this instance?

The danger is that under the present results of this process, we get a narrower perspective on life because people in the restricted pool are reinforced to think the same and have more in common than different.

Imagine where our nation would be if we did this in all fields. Bill Gates dropped out of Harvard, Fred Smith of Federal Express attended the University of Memphis for his MBA, Steve Jobs dropped out of Reed College and Warren Buffet went to University of Nebraska. I guess if you are starting a business or not looking for a job there are different requirements compared to obtaining a SCOTUS appointment. Could you imagine a field of Business dominated by just two schools? Oh that is right, you can, and well argue the observation in the affirmative since it were the Harvard and Yale Finance MBA’s that blew up and crashed Wall Street and the national and global economies.

Where would we be if science, technology and medicine operated in this manner? This would mean no University of Tennessee Medical Center or St. Jude Hospital in Memphis, no John Hopkins, Duke, Stanford, Cornell, Chicago, Vanderbilt, Berkeley, Cal Tech, MIT and Washington University in St. Louis.

The entire ideal of just two schools running the decision that will impact the entire nation is feculent. It is clear that other factors may be involved that may not even benefit the citizenry but rather the government and corporations since they are people now legally as a consequence of several recent court decisions. Most should be able to detect how many modern SCOTUS decisions benefit global plutocrats more than us, and in concert with the media and the criminal behavior of bankers and financiers; like the other two branches of our government, the SCOTUS seem to repeat a narrative of a future that George Orwell would have described as being manufactured to serve the interest of all and everything except justice, truth, virtue, and liberty. If my corollary is correct, this will not result in anything good for America.

Fact: Health Insurance Doesn't Equal Better Health Care

Soon, very soon the SCOTUS will hear arguments for and against President Obama’s Health Care Law. The central target of debate will be the “minimum coverage requirement.” Most folk call it the “individual mandate.” Opponents assert that by requiring or mandating by law for people to have to buy a service or product such as insurance may lead to laws that will allow the government to make folk purchase anything.

When I first read the 2300 plus page proposal some call “Obamacare,” I did not read anything that really served to improve health outcomes. It did and still doesn’t include dental or eye care, which I find bazaar. Also, if anything is essential for improved health care it is nutrition (food) more so than having insurance.

On occasion, I spoke with folks regarding the President’s efforts in an attempt to facilitate a cogent discussion of his plan and its desired outcome. However, no one I came across had ever read the bill and knew nothing of its specifics. I agree that something needs to be done; especially in economic terms and given that the disparities in health in the US in terms of race and ethnicity are in dire need of serious action and attention. Moreover, the US Medicare/Medicaid budget has ballooned by most estimates from $600 billion in 2008 to $740 billion in 2010. Not to mention that long term unemployed without unemployment benefits become eligible for Medicaid currently. It is estimated that the US spends 16 percent of its GDP on health care alone – two times more than Japan and 60 percent more than German, yet we are less healthy than either of these nations. At this rate, morbidity and mortality aside, more than half (my math) of the federal budget will account for health care by 2020.

The logic is infallible. Obama’s plan, issues concerning liberty and the individual mandate aside, is not a health plan, doesn’t address issues of increased cost or affects improved health care or better outcomes. To assert the supposition it does is like saying having auto insurance decreases accidents. It is not an issue of health insurance because our entire health care delivery system is what needs fixing. Ample data suggest that even if people have insurance it will not deal with core problems like the fact that Americans spend more than $700 billion each year, or 5 percent of gross domestic product, on medical services of no discernible value – that are unnecessary. As I stated, “insurance is not the same as health care.” Successful reforms in health delivery must target providing incentives for doctors and patients to control costs and experiment with alternative, more effective ways to deliver health care. The logic that it is the growing population of the uninsured that are driving health care costs higher is not true. More impactful are raising costs and a health insurance market in which the people will continue to be the victims as opposed to the benefactors.

Obama’s plan, albeit an effort more to fix the problem than the GOP, doesn’t deal with cost at all; it only assures insurance companies make more money. It doesn’t obviate or change present practices that allow health care providers to make more money for poor delivery practices. It provides no incentives for the issuance of quality care although research documents that inefficient medical practices, including of asking for unneeded procedures only result in providers making higher profits and poor health outcomes for patients. Nothing in the bill “mandates” that cost is provided up front to patients for procedures before application (like paying a plumber up front to do work without knows what work will be done or even if it is required to fix the problem.)

Maybe it should be expected that the health insurance lobby would win out over the people on Main Street. Most of the Law’s support outside of democrats comes from big time K street lobbyist. These include Pharmaceutical Researchers and Manufacturers of America (which alone spent $26.1 million lobbying for Obamacare in 2009) and also paid for a multimillion dollar ad blitz in districts of potential swing Democrats to help secure passage and some of the largest health insurance providers in the country: UnitedHealth Group, WellPoint, Aetna, Humana and Cigna.

Ever since the healthcare debate began over a year ago, shares of Cigna, UnitedHealth Group and WellPoint have been up an average of 120%. When the bill passed and became law, health insurer’s stocks soared for Aetna (had a 52 week high) and Cigna (increased 375% compared to 46% for the stock market overall since November 2008). The same was true for Health provider corporations, seeing that just one day after the passage of the bill, shares of Health Management Associates, Tenet Healthcare and Community Health Systems all jumped 11%, 9%, and 6% respectively. But again, it only makes sense when America’s Health Insurance Plans (AHIP) - a national political advocacy and trade association for the health insurance industry favored universal coverage and supported the law.

Like I said, I applaud the President’s attempt, but rational folks should know that we are still not addressing the problem of rising out of control health care cost, issues with Medicare or Medicaid eventually insolvency and improving healthcare outcomes for American citizens. If anything, the singular certainty is that insurance and hospital corporations will get richer while we get sicker. To date, The World Health Report 2000, Health Systems: Improving Performance, ranked the U.S. health care system 37th in the world.

Six Supreme Court Cases African Americans Should Follow Closely

It is ironic, that after the death of Troy Davis, this upcoming Monday, the United States Supreme Court (SCOTUS) returns to the bench to address many issues, most of which deal with the criminal justice system. This may the first time in a while such a docket has presented itself in which outcomes may serve to deal with inequalities in criminal law that impact African Americans disproportionately. Three cases in particular may have greater impact on African Americans than any other racial ethnic group in America.

The United States v. Jones: In this case, FBI agents planted a GPS device on a car while it was on private property and then used it to track the position of the automobile every ten seconds for a full month, without securing a search warrant. The question is whether or not the police need a warrant to attach a tracking or GPS device to a car and track its movements over extended periods of time.

Florence V. Board of Freeholders: This case will examine whether a correctional facility violates the Fourth Amendment rights of arrestees charged with minor and non-indictable offenses by conducting strip searches and visual body cavity searches prior to being admitted to the general prison population. Albert Florence was arrested on a bench warrant from Essex County, New Jersey. The warrant charged Florence with the non-indictable offense of failure to pay a fine. Florence protested indicating that he had paid the fine and, after his arrest and detention, the charge was, in fact, dismissed. Florence was strip searched and subjected to a visual body cavity search upon his arrival at the Burlington County Jail, immediately after his arrest, and was strip searched and subjected to a visual body cavity search six days later upon his transfer to the Essex County Correctional Facility

Maples V. Thomas: Maples v. Thomas is an Alabama death penalty case. Cory R. Maples was a death row inmate who lost his chance to appeal a decision against him because his lawyers had missed a filling deadline. The two lawyers from the prestigious New York law firm who had agreed to represent him had quit some time before, without informing Mr. Maples. A clerk attempted to notify the lawyers of the court’s action, but the letters were returned unopened; Maples discovered that he had missed the deadline for appealing to the next level. The court will determine if the missed deadline due to the law firm and not the inmate should be suspended, when a representative of the court in the form of a clerk did nothing to inform other the court mail had be returned marked “return to sender.”

Perry V. New Hampshire: This case will deal with the question of what the Constitution has to say about the use of eyewitness evidence and due process protections against unreliable identification made under suggestive circumstances. Barion Perry is in prison for breaking into a car in 2008. A woman informed Nashua, N.H., police that she saw Perry from the window of her apartment taking things out of a parked car. She identified Perry at the scene but later could not pick him out of a photo lineup or describe him to police. Perry filed a motion to suppress the photo identification because it was "unnecessarily suggestive" that he was a criminal because he was in handcuffs. The New Hampshire Supreme Court upheld his conviction.

Connick V. Thompson: In 1985, John Thompson was convicted of murder in Louisiana already been convicted in a separate armed robbery case. He decided not to testify on his own behalf in his murder trial and was sentenced to death and spent 18 years in prison of which 14 he was in isolation on death row. A month before his scheduled execution, a lab report was discovered proving his innocence that the prosecutor withheld during his trial. Withholding exculpatory evidence is a criminal act thus a reviewing court vacated both convictions, and Thompson was found not guilty in a retrial on the murder charge. The issue and question the court will address regards does imposing failure-to-train liability on a district attorney's office for a single Brady violation?

Missouri V. Frye: In this case, Missouri prosecutors offered Galin E. Frye two deals while seeking his conviction for driving while his license was revoked. However, Frye’s lawyer never told him about the offers. Frye pleaded guilty to a felony charge and was sentenced to three years in prison. He appealed, saying his lawyer should have told him about the previous deals. A Missouri appeals court agreed. Prosecutors contend that not knowing about the deals they offered doesn't mean that Frye didn't know what he was doing when he decided to plead guilty. The question will be whether or not a defendant who validly pleads guilty asserts a claim of ineffective assistance of counsel by alleging that, but for counsel's error in failing to communicate a plea offer; he would have pleaded guilty with more favorable terms?