Obama's Constitution

            Barack Obama’s constitutionalism is not quite what anyone would have expected.  Far from embracing bold liberal notions of the Constitution and the Bill of Rights, much of his legal philosophy seems at home with his predecessor George Bush and Republicans.

            Ostensibly a liberal Democrat, one would have thought that Barack Obama would have been a civil libertarian, respectful of individual rights.  One would have also expected that he would have sought to use national power to its fullest to fulfill his agenda.  As a lawyer and former constitutional law professor, the belief was that he understood the law and would see how moving quickly and aggressively to fill the federal bench with his judicial nominees would be critical to securing his legal agenda and undoing the legal legacy that George Bush left.

            Such expectations were nurtured by presidential candidate Obama.  He sharply criticized the Bush administration for its support of torture and disregard for international law.  He promised to close Guantanamo Bay, and otherwise end the illegal operations of the war on terror and the presidential excesses of his predecessor.  Yet Obama has not turned out to be a constitutional liberal.

            To his credit, in the opening days of his presidency Obama did move to undo many of the practices of the Bush administration that he campaigned against.  He repealed legal opinions supporting torture and in his inaugural speech he committed his administration to transferring prisoners out of Gitmo and to closing the facility.  But Congress fought him on this initiative and Republicans have successfully stalled or filibustered judicial and other nominees.  But even accepting both as excuses, Obama’s constitutionalism is surprising.

            The Obama administration insists that it is within its constitutional authority to use drones to kill American citizens and to intercept and track telephone calls and internet traffic under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act and through the NSA Prism program.  Obama administration legal memos, some of which have yet to come to light, so far seem to rely upon the same assertions  about extra-constitutional presidential power as commander-in-chief or upon the same congressional ascent under the post-9/11 Authorization to Use Military Force that Bush invoked. The legal memo on drones makes the same legal contortions about presidential power that the John Yoo memo did when it came to torture.  Obama has used these legal rationales and the most extensive authority given to him under the Patriot Act and FISA to justify policies disregarding basic civil rights and liberties.

            His administration justifies the killing of American citizens without proof of guilt in court.  There is no regard to the Fourth Amendment rights against use of excessive force, no due process to contest a decision to make unilateral execution decisions.  His snooping on American citizens is done without warrant, or at least one with proof of particularized suspicion as required under the Fourth Amendment.  His administration's initial refusal to read the Boston Marathon Bomber his Miranda rights exploited a questionable legal loophole and ignored the Fifth Amendment.  And do not forget that the IRS targeting of political groups is also a violation of the First Amendment.

            But additionally the Obama administration has rode roughshod over many other parts of the Constitution.  Where is the respect for the First Amendment freedom of the press when comes to getting secret warrants to search reporters telephone conversations because they reported on news embarrassing to the Obama Administration?  Or where is the respect for First Amendment freedom of speech when it comes to one of the most aggressive administrations on record when it comes to prosecuting leaks and whistleblowers?

            But his constitutional contempt is matched by timidity.  Obama now supports same-sex marriage, but only as he was beginning to run for a second term in office and when the tide of public opinion had apparently shifted on the subject.  It took years for the Obama administration to reach the conclusion that don’t ask, don’t tell was unconstitutional but he never did anything to fight its enforcement.  The same with DOMA–he did eventually argue that it was unconstitutional but continued to enforce the law.  Even in his administration’s arguments before the Supreme Court, Obama has never embraced a view of the Equal Protection clause that fully argues that bans on same-sex marriage are unconstitutional. Nor have we seen Obama argue that the death penalty is unconstitutional, and we have not seen him take an aggressive stance in Court to argue that the Second Amendment decisions holding for an individual right to bear arms were wrong and should be reversed.

            Even with the Affordable Care Act–his signature issue–he has failed to act boldly.  His central justification for its constitutionality rested on the Commerce clause–an argument the Supreme Court ultimately rejected.   In passing the Act Obama capitulated on abortion rights and since its passage has failed to push aggressively on contraception, including until recently his refusal to go along with allowing women under 18 the right to purchase the morning after pill.  It took a federal court ruling his policy to be arbitrary and capricious to get him to change his mind.

            Finally, the Obama administration has moved slowly on judicial appointments, generally eschewing efforts to challenge Senate Republicans to reject his nominees who, for the most part, have been centrists and not liberals.

            Obama’s Constitution is hardly liberal.  It is supportive of strong presidential power resting upon dubious constitutional claims of unilateral authority to act.  It is a constitutionalism devoid of serious respect for individual rights, supportive of the national security state, and surveillance ahead of privacy.  It is a constitutionalism not of the kind one would have expected from him, but instead one that bears more resemblance to that of George Bush than it does of the liberal Democrat some thought he was.

Acting Legally, Behaving Ethically

The 1973 movie Paper Chase depicted the brutal image of law school as Professor Kingsfield (actor John Houseman) begins to interrogate students with the Socratic method.  Students are flustered and intimidated by questions, even the most simple ones. Bob Hudak was my 1L Contract law professor, old line and cut from the mold of Kingsfield.  Yet on the first day of class he turned to all of us and said there would be times when he would ask us questions and we would panic.  His advice was to take a deep breath, look us in the eye and then say what makes the most sense.  But more importantly he added, if that is not the right answer then there is something wrong with the law.  His comments forever resonated with me.
    What Hudak was talking about was about the relationship between the law and what political philosopher John Rawls would call our considered moral judgments.  Specifically, the law should in some way support or reflect our deeply held convictions about ethics and justice.  Hudak was not the first to argue that there should be a connection between law and morality.  St. Augustine contended that unjust laws are no laws at all.  Henry David Thoreau protested slavery laws by contending they were unjust, and Martin Luther King, Jr., similarly reached that conclusion when it came to segregation.  All three asserted that  unjust laws lacked a binding moral quality that often  justified civic disobedience.
    But there is a different facet to the relationship between law and morality and it comes in terms of doing the right thing.  It asks not when or whether one has a right to disobey an unjust law but instead whether the law empowers individuals to do what is ethically correct.  Often times individuals may wish to act ethically but are prevented by the law.
    Consider a classic scene from 1994 when the CEOS from the seven major tobacco companies  in the United States testified under oath before Congress.  When asked if cigarettes were unhealthy all said no.  We know they lied.  Internal documents from the tobacco industry proved that.  Yet they  have been legally require to lie.  Under state incorporation laws, they all were under an obligation  to serve the best interests of their business and maximize shareholder value.  Testifying under oath  at a time when thousands of law suits being filed, truthful testimony may have bankrupted their corporations. Lost would have been billions in shareholder value and pensions, untold jobs may have been lost, and many communities devastated.   I suggest to my students that in a perverse way, the law may have required them to lie to Congress.  Of course this is farcical, but it speaks to a gap between ethically what is the right thing to do and what the law may demand.
    But in may situations the law does not always encourage us to do what it ethically correct but instead create incentives to act unethically.  The legal norms of Nazi Germany are the most extreme example.  But across the board one can point to numerous less extreme examples.  For CEOs, decisions to outsource jobs to another country, close a factory and move to avoid pollution laws, taxes, or maximize revenues, or even to agree to a merger may not reflect what is in the best interests of a country, community, or people, but state corporate laws may demand it under threat of shareholder suits.  Public officials may be required to enforce laws they think are unfair, and those working in across many occupations may feel they have no choice but to act unethically because of  the possible legal sanctions that would follow if they were to do what society would regard as correct.
    Economist Milton Friedman most famous essay is his 1970 New York Times “The Social Responsibility of Business Is to Increase Its Profits.”  The title says it all.  Here he denies the capacity and obligation of businesses to act in a socially responsible fashion, instead arguing for the simple duty to maximize shareholder value.  The Friedman essay is one of the most read and influential articles in MBA programs across the United States.  It captures so well a narrow and wooden belief about what businesses should and should not do–and the law reflects those roles.  The law often fails to permit companies to be good corporate citizens and act in an ethical fashion.
    But why is all of this discussion of the law important here?  One of the most fascinating questions to ask is why good people and organizations do bad things?  Why do erstwhile or apparently ethical individuals suddenly act badly?  There are many reasons, but we should not forget the role that the law may play.  There may be circumstances where the law not only fails to support acting ethically but it also discourages it.   Case in point, the initial decision by the Obama administration not to read the accused Boston Marathon bomber his Miranda rights.  The law may have authorized the initial decision due to a Supreme Court created public safety exception, but had the FBI continued to press on with questioning without Mirandizing it would have run adrift of concepts of justice, fairness, and democracy that get dangerously close to the type of questioning many criticized the Bush administration as advocating. Maybe here the law did not necessitate doing the wrong thing, but it should not have facilitated it.
    The law affects behavior in a myriad of complex ways.  But it should not work to encourage unethical behavior.  This was the message that Bob Hudak gave all us law students. It is also a message we should remember when it comes to the construction and management of our society .

Miranda Warnings and the Boston Marathon Bomber: Why Obama is Wrong

The decision by the FBI not to read Dzhokhar A. Tsarnaev, the accused Boston Marathon bomber, his Miranda rights is wrong on at least two counts. The first is from a perspective of the law, the other by way of a broader principle regarding the rights of individuals in a democracy.

The Supreme Court ruled in Miranda v. Arizona that the police must advise individuals of their rights at that time they are taken into custodial arrest.  In effect, at the time they are detained and when police questioning turns from general information gathering of an individual to accusatorial interrogation, that is when the Miranda warnings must be given.  The warnings are a product of the Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination.

In  New York v. Quarles, 467 U.S. 649 (1984), the Supreme Court created a narrow exception to the Miranda warning requirement.  That case involved a situation where police chased a suspect into a store.  They apprehended and searched him, and then found an empty holster.  They suspected he had ditched a gun.  Before giving him his Miranda warnings they asked him where the gun was, he told him, and then they gave him his rights.  The Supreme Court upheld this as valid.  They ruled that police could question a suspect to address imminent threat to the safety of public or officer.  Once that threat was abated, then the police would need to offer Miranda warnings.  The public safety rule is not blanket exception to obtain evidence or testimonial information that may be used against individuals to convict them.

With Dzhokhar A. Tsarnaev, the police were within the Constitution not to read him his rights when they first apprehended him.  They needed to determine if he had bomb or other weapons that could threaten police or public safety.  Once that threat was addressed t hey should have Mirandized him.  It would have taken a few seconds and no harm would have followed form doing that.

There is little evidence that Mirandizing someone really hurts a police case, but not doing so can be significant.  In general information gathered in violation of the Miranda requirement cannot be used in Court to convict a person.  Thus, potentially information that the police gather on Dzhokhar A. Tsarnaev might not be allowed in court to prosecute him.  A review of post-Quarles cases does not make it clear what the public safety exception will allow in.

But would it not be better not to take a chance.  Why risk prosecution by not giving him his rights?  Depending on what he is charged with and what evidence there is, this decision could be legally damaging to the government’s case.

The second reason why not Mirandizing Tsarnaev is wrong more about the broader concept of democracy and human rights in a free society.  After 9/11 the Bush Administration invoked questionable legal doctrines about the rights of the president and the government to bypass the Constitution and international rights in the apprehending, detaining, and prosecution of suspected terrorists.  They concocted questionable theories about torture and tried to offshore illegal activities to places like Gitmo in Cuba.  (I have written extensively about this issue in my two articles “Defending American Presidential Authority in a Post 9-11 World: Examining the Justice Department Memoranda.”  Democracy and Society Volume 5, Issue 2 (May 2008) and “Democracy on Trial:  Terrorism, Crime, and National Security Policy in a Post 9-11 World,”38 Golden Gate Law Review, 195 (2008).)

For the most part, the Supreme Court rejected the Bush Administration’s questionable legal theories. In a series of cases most notably including  Hamdi v. Rumsfeld, 542 U.S. 507 (2004), the Court ruled that all individuals–not just American citizens–held within US territories, must receive the protection for their rights that the Constitution demands.  Yet despite these rulings, both Bush and now Obama have continued to press these flawed legal theories.  Most recently, the Obama Administration pressed the case to support Drone warfare, and now this use of the public safety exception with  Tsarnaev.

Presidents do not have extra-constitutional power.  Respect for our constitutional rights is not something we do when it is just convenient.  It is something that is required of a democratic free society.  It is what separates the US from non-democratic countries.  Tsarnaev is a US citizen arrested and accused of crimes in this country. There is no reason to exempt him from the Constitution.  In a free society the government carries the burden to prove guilt and it is required to play by the rules.  The rule should apply here to.