Today in Supreme Court History: August 27, 1948

8/27/1948: Chief Justice Charles Evans Hughes dies.

Chief Justice Charles Evans Hughes

Comments

[Dan Schiavetta]

In re Disbarment of N. Deday LaRene, 518 U.S. 1046 (decided August 27, 1996): criminal defense attorney disbarred after he got in with his gangster clients and was indicted for embezzlement and tax evasion (73 F.3d 64), though that didn’t slow him down: see his firm’s web site, http://www.lareneandkriger.com, which says he’s been a member of the Supreme Court bar since 1977, even though in fact he’s never been reinstated

[Jerry B.]

Ah. Misinformation on the internet. They were right.

[Dr. Ed 2]

This looks like the state reinstated him in 1998:http://data.adbmich.org/coveo/opinions/1998-02-11-96-286.pdf

Could the 1996 case have been about an attempt to get reinstated earlier than 1998?

[Rev. Arthur L. Kirkland]

Unless there is more than one David Safavian, the current general counsel of the American Conservative Union — which seems to be imploded consequent to yet more “conservative closet” issues — appears to be someone who has been disbarred (and Trump-pardoned, apparently in relation to the Abramoff scandal), yet brags about being an instructor on ethics in his online puffery.

The “law and order” party will, of course, pivot hard toward “racist law and order” to try to overcome these developments.

Carry on, clingers. But only so far and so long as better Americans — and, increasingly, prosecutors, juries, judges, and wardens — permit.

[Dr. Ed 2]

Kirkland, you want to know what happened to CPAC (ACU) -- I'll tell you because I was there in 2010 and 2011 when the whole thing went off the rails.

I was there in 2010 when the GOP establishment did absolutely everything it could to the fledgling TEA Party movement, including having an under-30-only after-event speech with Ann Coulter during the TEA Party's event.

And I was there in 2011 when GOPRIDE -- a made-up gay group -- destroyed it. CPAC's been dying a lingering death since then, living off its name much as Cadillac did in the 1970s, abandoning any pretense of a political cause in a relentless pursuit of cash. (It isn't even held in DC anymore...)

I'm not at all surprised by the allegations of sexual assault -- while I know nothing about this specific alleged perpetrator, I am not at all surprised. What I *am* sorta surprised about is that neither the Log Cabin Club nor GOPRIDE came out and publicly condemned any of this stuff a decade ago because it was happening then.

There *are* perfectly respectable gay men who would never do anything along these lines -- it's just that they aren't the gay men in the GOP establishment. Nor the straight men -- remember what then-Rep Madison Cawthorn (R-NC) said about DC? https://www.newsweek.com/questions-swirl-after-madison-cawthorns-washington-orgy-comments-1692662

There is a REAL schism between the GOP base and the GOP establishment, and stuff like sexual assault is only part of it.

But, Kirkland, you are celebrating the confirmation (in some contexts) that all gay men are rapists? Really?

[Dan Schiavetta]

today’s movie review: Lorna, 1964

I decided to use Sundays to post on “adult” films, and I suppose at some point I have to mention the toxic Russ Meyer. How someone could get the most wet-dream-bodied women, such as Lorna Maitland (the star here), Uschi Digard, etc., and put them to such poor use — and be a good friend of Roger Ebert! — is beyond me. Meyer started with “nudie” films with incredibly juvenile voiceovers and then graduated to “serious” films with erection-killing plots and dialog. It’s almost aversive therapy on the scale of A Clockwork Orange.

I don’t know if the juvenile mentality was Meyer himself (in his interviews he certainly sounded like a pig who valued women by the size of their breasts), or his idea of what an audience would go for. The fact is his films were hits, at least in places where they were allowed to be shown.

I don’t think that leering-13-year-old-boy mentality exists to that extent today, not even with 13-year-old boys. It’s because we are so much better informed. The pace of knowledge increased greatly with the internet — Bill Clinton and Al Gore were correct to introduce it as the “information superhighway” — but ignorance, particularly about sex, was already in retreat and it was due to the “sexual revolution” of the late 1960s and early 1970s. Vance Packard, in his investigation of sexual attitudes, found a married couple who didn’t know the facts of life. Which means there had to be others. Such a state of affairs was much less likely in 1980 than it was in 1960. Nowadays to be ignorant you have to make a real effort to tune things out.

And our attitude toward that knowledge has matured. In Anatomy of a Murder, 1959, the judge, after a careful discussion with attorneys in chambers, announces that the “article of clothing” found in the victim’s mouth were panties. The courtroom erupts in laughter and the judge admonishes them that this is a serious matter. That kind of juvenility would not happen today.

We can go further back, to the truly idiotic ideas in past ages. Thomas Aquinas believed that women were “defective and misbegotten”, that something went wrong in the womb to cause them to turn out female instead of male. Even allowing for the limited knowledge he had (nobody knew about sperm meeting egg until 1827, when the mammalian ovum was discovered in dogs) this is not a grown up way to look at things. I’m being a modernist here and not a post-modernist. I do believe we have basically solved the mysteries that caused our ancestors to go up so many blind alleys, and also that we have developed the societal maturity to treat that knowledge responsibly. As the German clergyman Dietrich Bonhoeffer put it, man has now “come of age” and in the process no longer needs fairy tales. This might seem odd to say with so much ignorance on display these days and so many people still believing in the old tales, but he wrote these words in a Nazi prison camp (where he was hanged on April 9, 1945) and in the main it is true.

[Mr. Bumble]

Do you even know what a movie review is?

[Krayt]

He should guest host Joe Bob Briggs' Last Drive-In.

His Ed McMahon is even a former porn star.

Wait. Is he Joe Bob Briggs?

[Dan Schiavetta]

Alas, no.

But I managed to start with Russ Meyer and end with Dietrich Bonhoeffer. That’s a good thing. Certainly better than going in the opposite direction.

[Magister]

Second that.

[ducksalad]

It's like the New York Review of Books, each article (4-5 pages of dense print on 11x17 paper) is ostensibly a book review but spends maybe two paragraphs on the book as the review author goes off on whatever.

The Captain is the New York Review of NC-17 rated movies.

[Dan Schiavetta]

I write these “reviews” to say things about a movie that AFAIK no one has said before. For example, Meyer’s juvenility ruining the visual appeal of his female stars. Yesterday I noted the strange audience laughter with She’s Gotta Have It; the day before, the mixed message of The Caine Mutiny. And I use those observations as points of departure.

[Syd Henderson]

He certainly doesn't tell us much about the movie except that Russ Meyer directed it. I rather like "Faster, Pussycat! Kill! Kill!" but don't really want to see much more of his work. I note that the sweet innocent who is not superendowed is the one who became a Playboy centerfold.

[Dr. Ed 2]

"I don’t think that leering-13-year-old-boy mentality exists to that extent today"

One of the things that were popular in the 1950s were pens that had a woman inside, and her clothes disappeared when you tipped it upside down. I can't see adult men being impressed with something like this today.

[Dan Schiavetta]

That’s the kind of thing I’m talking about.

Another example is breast feeding in public. Years ago even middle aged men would be distracted, thinking “titty! titty!”

[David Nieporent]

I don't think it has anything to do with "mentality," but simply the ubiquity of porn online. There's no reason to get worked up (pun intended) about that sort of trivial exposure when you can see much much (much much) more with a couple of taps on your phone.

People have noted this playing out the opposite way in terms of mainstream movies: they've got less sex in them. It used to be that there would be relatively gratuitous nudity and/or light softcore sex included in R-rated movies to titillate the audience. But there's far less need for that now; again: anyone can see as much as they want online. So unless it's actually important to the plot, it gets left out.

[Dan Schiavetta]

The mentality is the result of more knowledge. Or (similarly) more "exposure" to something.

[Michael P]

Counterpoint: On today's Slashdot post about the Large Hadron Collider, the first four comments (by timestamp) were all variants of the same puerile letter-transposition joke.

[Krayt]

Thomas Aquinas believed that women were “defective and misbegotten”, that something went wrong in the womb to cause them to turn out female instead of male

Which is ironic, because evolutionarily, it’s something went wrong that formed males. As only one of the two true hermaphroditic mates needed to get impregnated successfully, back in the, I don’t know, sea cucumber days, one could deviate a little and get away with it. In short order, they couldn’t get pregnant themselves, but still reproduced.

Everything since has been anger and fighting and cowing down the other males and feathering your nest.

Yay, God’s Grand Design!

[ducksalad]

It's true that we got a lucky break on being able to reproduce without the pregnancy part.

But a lot of the toxic male behavior is the females' fault. They kept picking the ones with the most colorful plumage.

[Magister]

Or they kept being picked by the ones with more size and strength, and willingness to use it violently.

[ducksalad]

“I do believe we have basically solved the mysteries that caused our ancestors to go up so many blind alleys, and also that we have developed the societal maturity to treat that knowledge responsibly.”

Wait. Your idea here is that the development of adult films since the bad old days of the 1960s demonstrates that we have reached maturity as a society?

Let me put a different spin on it. Some biologists have long warned us that intelligence, which we prize so highly, is just one of many traits arising from evolution and perhaps not a very useful one when it comes to survival and propagation of the species. We think we’re great because we’ve got civilizations and stuff, but those are biased measures. Other species win handily on more objective measures like number of individuals, total biomass, and proven ability to last tens of millions of years.

In fact, what we’ve got is a situation where the most “advanced” human societies in terms of education and sexual attitudes have by far the lowest birth rates, down to 1.2 births per woman and still dropping. We’ve literally reasoned our way out of reproducing.

Effective individual intelligence might be growing (at best) arithmetically but 1.2 gets you an exponential decrease in population once it reaches all parts of the world. The total amount of thinking going on, roughly speaking IQ times population, will peak in about 30-50 years and it’s all downhill after that for intelligence on the planet.

[Krychek_2]

Except for the minor detail that the planet is horribly overpopulated with humans, and a significant number of our political and social and ecological problems have as their root the fact that there are too many humans, all consuming a disproportionate amount of available resources. We’re in the middle of a massive species die-off as a result. So maybe we’ve reasoned ourselves into slowing the damage we’re doing.

[Mr. Bumble]

Did you just re-read The Population Bomb???

[The Margrave of Azilia]

So enlightenment has gone up...what role did movies, especially the dirty ones, play in this process?

[Dan Schiavetta]

Some, but not much. I think it was general discussion in the media, and more explicit books that became available. On the legal front, the First Amendment decisions on what was considered pornography. On the political front, maybe it began with the Port Huron Statement of 1962, and the inspiration of the Kennedy Administration in things like the Peace Corps. On the religious front, the convocation of Vatican II by Pope John also in 1962. Certainly “Second Wave” feminism. I don’t think there was any one cause.

Which is a boring answer, but I always go with the Rule of Boring. If there are several possible explanations, and you’ve got nothing else to go on, the most boring one is usually the correct one.

[The Margrave of Azilia]

The Port Huron statement is certainly very eloquent, but looking at the part about campus life, here’s the only allusion to sex I could find:

“”Students don’t even give a damn abut the apathy,” one has said. Apathy toward apathy begets a privately constructed universe, a place of systematic study schedules, two nights each week for beer, a girl or two, and early marriage; a framework infused with personality, warmth, and under control, no matter how unsatisfying otherwise.”

They didn’t really go into specifics as to the alternatives were to “a girl or two” and “early marriage.” Also, the dismissive reference to girls is offensive to coeds – I mean female students.

(Also, I wonder what alternatives they had in mind to beer? That part baffles me.)

[Dan Schiavetta]

Thanks for taking the time to read that document!

A lot of 60s activists were not exactly feminists. If you read Joan Baez’s autobiography you see that the antiwar activists — who were dedicated and sincere, including her husband who went to jail for it, as did a friend of mine, and imagine how the other inmates would treat someone with a reputation for refusing to fight! — restricted the women around them to making coffee and referred to women in general as “chicks”.

Maybe by picking 1962 I’m going back too early, but when you open the door to one kind of openness, other kinds tend to slip in with it.

The simplest way I can summarize the whole revolution is to compare the Beatles looking down that EMI stairwell in 1963 vs. in 1969.

[The Margrave of Azilia]

"Thanks for taking the time to read that document!"

Heavens, no, just the part about campus life. I skimmed the uber-serious bits about nukes and such.

"restricted the women around them to making coffee and referred to women in general as “chicks”."

Now, to be fair, the Weathermen had female leadership.

[Syd Henderson]

In "The Supreme Court" Rehnquist describes Hughes's beard as Jovian, which is apt. The man must have been impressive in person.

[Dan Schiavetta]

He's one of the great (white, male) lawgivers painted on the big mural you're forced to look at as you ascend the stairs to the second floor in Queens County (N.Y.) "Supreme" Court. He's standing on the steps of that Great Courthouse in the Sky, holding a piece of paper, apparently reading out from something he wrote.

The more I look at that beard the more I'm reminded of our miniature schnauzer. Lukas was the best dog that there ever was. In my mind at least the memory of both is complimented by the comparison.

[Kleppe]

"He’s one of the great (white, male) lawgivers [...]"

I pray one day all the bent leftists will be able to let go of their hatred and racism. As Obama said, "we will outstretch the hand if you will unclench your fist."

[Dan Schiavetta]

If you’re a black female attorney who has to pass that mural every day (it stares right at you the whole time you head for the stairs) you can’t ignore its implicit message. Certainly not if you bring your child to see where you work and she wonders why none of the people look like Momma.

[Mr. Bumble]

Why don’t you ask the to paint it over with your choice of a black hispanic lesbian jurist. Your choice you fucking racist. Spare us your white guilt.

[Syd Henderson]

It's kind of difficult given our nation's history not to have them white male lawgivers, and Hughes is certainly deserving. Nowadays, they might add Thurgood Marshall, unless they're all New York jurists. I don't know if Marshall appeared in New York Courts, though he did in Connecticut (as shown in the movie "Marshall."

[The Margrave of Azilia]

Is Hughes the one holding the tablets?

https://forgotten-ny.com/2015/11/queens-supreme-court-jamaica/

The author of the post didn’t photograph all the murals, but apparently they include “historic lawgivers Hammurabi, Confucius, Moses, Manu, Gaius, Mohammed, Edward I and Grotius.”

I don’t think Dazed and Confucius, Please Hammurabi Don’t Hurt 'Em, and Mickey Manu were white, though I’m always open to correction.

[Dan Schiavetta]

That's the mural! The photographer was not given freedom to move around so the photo doesn't show how prominent the mural is as you enter the first floor concourse.

Forgotten New York is a fascinating site.

[Mr. Bumble]

I've mentioned this before, but to my mind Hughes bear a striking resemblance to Robert Duvall, which leads me to a movie (actually TV miniseries) recommendation if you're not into crappy porno movies.
It happens that last night I found Lonesome Dove playing on TUBI (don't know if it's on any other platforms). I grew up when Westerns ruled television programming (there was even a pop song about the phenomena (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fxontg0irEQ) and always enjoyed Western films and TV shows.
In case you're unaware of it (it originally aired in 1989) it is the adaptation of Larry McMurtry's novel of the same name. Great ensemble cast including Duvall, Tommy Lee Jones, Robert Urich, Diane Lane, Angelica Houston, Chris Cooper and Ricky Schroeder.
If you're onto stories about the American West it's worth a watch or a re-watch.

[The Margrave of Azilia]

Hughes is the most Chief Justiciest looking of all the Chief Justices. He's even better in this respect than Warren Burger. Even if they weren't Chief Justice in real life, they'd be called upon to play the Chief Justice on TV (if Morgan Freeman wasn't available).

[Mr. Bumble]

A criminal, criminal defense attorney?

[Nige]

My Criminal Criminal Defense Attorney Needs A Criminal Defense Attorney.

[Magister]

Recursion is a powerful mathematical concept.

[Dan Schiavetta]

So I almost had a heart attack
Looking in the rear view mirror
I saw myself the next car back
Looking in the rear view mirror
About to have a heart attack,

[bernard11]

Stranger: Is there a criminal attorney in town?

Local resident: We think so, but we haven't been able to prove it.