April 11, 2011, 8:30 pm
By STANLEY FISH
When Elena Kagan was nominated by President Obama to be an associate justice of the Supreme Court, some observers speculated that she might be the long-sought liberal counterweight to Antonin Scalia, noted for his intelligence, his wit and his prose style. Of course it’s too early to tell, but Kagan’s dissent (her first) in Arizona Christian School Tuition Organization v. Winn would seem to give those distressed by the Court’s current direction some hope. (Scalia honed his rhetorical skills as a dissenter earlier in his career.)
The opinion itself is a predictable extension of the conservative majority’s practice of money laundering when it comes to Establishment Clause cases that involve financial aid to sectarian schools. At issue was an Arizona program that provides tax credits up to $500 for contributions to school tuition organizations, organizations that then turn around and give the funds to private schools, “many of which,” Justice Anthony Kennedy (writing for the majority) concedes, “are religious.” That the intention of the program is to funnel funds to religious schools doesn’t seem to be in dispute. In her dissent Kagan notes that “One STO advertises that ‘[w]ith Arizona’s scholarship tax credit, you can send children to our community’s [religious] day schools and it won’t cost you a dime.’”
Well, it depends on who “you” are. If you are an Arizona citizen whose children go to public schools funded by your taxes, you might object to the additional tax (minute for any individual, but in the many millions in the aggregate) you pay because your religious neighbors are given a break.
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January 28, 2010, 12:14 am
By STANLEY FISH
He had us before he said hello. It was, in part, the look. Blue suit, but not the usual blue — subtler; red rep tie, white shirt, a skin color cosmetics and sun could never deliver, and, for much of the time, a big smile. It was the rock-star look in full Technicolor. Everyone else seemed to be in black and white. He dominated the screen and he did it with an ease that stopped just short of entitlement, an ease that said, in Chevy Chase fashion, “I’m the president and you’re not.”
Then there was the speech, soaring at the beginning and at the end, but in the middle a litany of specifics of the kind he did not offer in the long campaign of 2007-2008.
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June 7, 2009, 10:00 pm
Last week I was driving home listening to President Obama’s speech on the General Motors bankruptcy, and I heard the full emergence of a note that had been sounded only occasionally in the two-plus years since the announcement of his candidacy. It was the note of imperial possession, the accents and cadences of a man supremely aware of his authority and more than comfortable with its exercise.
Video: Speeches Mentioned in This Article
I was reminded of the last scene of “Godfather I,” when Michael Corleone, who begins the film as a young idealistic patriot, ends it by striking the pose of a Roman emperor as subordinates kiss his ring. Obama is still idealistic and a patriot, but he is now also an emperor and his speech shows it. “Language,” Ben Jonson says in Discoveries, “shows a man; speak that I may see thee.”
What Obama’s language showed when he began his campaign in February 2007 was a commitment to a project larger than his personal ambitions: ”It’s humbling to see a crowd like this, but in my heart I know you didn’t come here just for me.” He acknowledges that “there is a certain presumptuousness” to his candidacy and in the body of the speech he begins sentence after sentence (the rhetorical figure is “anaphora”) with this inclusive construction “Let us be the generation”: “Let us be the generation that reshapes our economy”; “Let us be the generation that ends poverty.” Later, he insists that “this campaign can’t only be about me; it must be about us.” Read more…
Stanley Fish on education, law and society.
