Ratio of Rights to Responsiblities

This Sunday past, George Will had a fabulous Op-Ed in the Washington Post talking about the Supreme Court case dealing with the Solomon Amendment. For those who generally don't know or care for that matter, the Solomon Amendment essentially tells any college or university that takes federal money must allow military recruiters the same access to students as they do for other employers.

A group of law schools has challenged the amendment, arguing that by allowing military recruiters on campus, the law school must endorse the "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" policy the military maintains regarding gays in the military. Their case does not seem likely to carry the day as the Supreme Court was openly hostile to their argument.

But Will was seeking to expose the hypocrisy behind the law schools' argument. At the start of the article, Will coins the fabulous phrase, "ratio of rights to responsbilities."

The entitlement mentality produces petulant insistence on an ever-higher ratio of rights to responsibilities. Unsurprisingly, this mentality flourishes on campuses, where tenured faculty and privileged students live entitled lives supported by the taxes and generosity of others. The mentality was on vivid display in the Supreme Court on Tuesday when an association of 36 law schools and faculties asserted an audacious entitlement. (emphasis added)

snip

During oral arguments last week, the schools had many occasions to wince. Regarding the schools' theory that any conduct can be imbued with "communicative force," Justice Antonin Scalia wondered whether the schools might also justify banning military recruiters during a war the faculty disapproved of, because allowing the recruiters would be tantamount to the schools' endorsing the war.

Or because the professors object to the military's barring women from combat or using land mines. The possibilities are as numerous as the professors' reasons for interposing their moral sensibilities between Congress and its constitutional power to "raise and support armies."

Furthermore, more than four other justices probably share Scalia's incredulity concerning this implication of the schools' argument: When an individual or institution gives as a reason for violating the law the fact that he or it wants to send a message, the violation acquires First Amendment protection. By such reasoning, a school barring blacks from campus could say its conduct is infused with an expressive purpose, hence shielded by the First Amendment.

See the schools want to practice their own kind of "morally acceptable" discrimination by banning one government agency--the Departmet of Defense. All other government agencies are welcome of course, but just not the war-mongering military.

Whatever you may think about the Don't Ask, Don't Tell policy ( and I think it is a dumb policy), the fact that Congress has the right, routinely exercised, of attaching strings to the money it provides to states, universities and other institutions, remains the law of hte land. Arguing that it "compells one to endorse the policy" of a disfavored group is simply stupid--see even law professors can be dumb.

See these law schools want the "right" to continue to accept federal money and then discriminiate against the disfavored military. In Will's terms, they want the right to the money without the responsibility that goes along with it.

Even law schools have abadoned the idea that rights and responsiblities are two sides of the same coin. If our law schools, guardians of the development of the law in America, have forgotten this key lesson, how then do we expect others to remember that with the rights we have come responsibilities. If you want federal money, you have to follow federal rules, the money right carries with it the recruiting responsibility.

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