Pardons in Mississippi: On the Role of the Supreme Court

In a 6-to-3 decision, the Mississippi Supreme Court ruled in 2012 that pardon procedures lay outside of its constitutional authority—that to interfere even in cases where those procedures were flouted would violate the separation of powers. Section 124 of Mississippi’s Constitution “gives pardon power exclusively to the governor, but also requires applicants to have their petitions for pardon ‘published for 30 days, in some newspaper in the county where the crime was committed.’”[1] This is constitutional language, and yet the Supreme Court refused to determine whether Haley Barbour had acted unconstitutionally in all but 22 of the 200 pardons he had granted in his last days in office. In other words, the Court’s function in interpreting the constitution is at odds with the principle wherein the three branches of the Mississippi government are separate—none being directed by any of the other two.

The full essay is at "Pardons in Mississippi."

1. Campbell Robertson, “Highest Court in Mississippi Upholds 9 Pardons,” The New York Times, March 9, 2012. 

The SPD in Germany: Holding the Euro Hostage

Because the so-called “fiscal pact” amendment that would strength the E.U.’s enforcement of state government deficits and debts involves a shift of more state sovereignty to the E.U. for the states that ratify the informal amendment, the ratification in Germany requires a two-thirds majority in both the Bundestag and the Bundesrat. The latter body represents the German regions, or Länder, which in Texas or California would be counties. Generally speaking, the process of European integration has involved a succession of shifts of governmental sovereignty both from county and state governments to the E.U. itself as a federal government that includes an executive branch, a parliament, a council or upper chamber, and a supreme court that has a supremacy clause.

The full essay is at "Essays on the E.U. Political Economy," available at Amazon.

Scott Walker’s Recall in Wisconsin: Mob Rule?

In early March, 2012, unions and conservative groups had already “turned Wisconsin’s battle over labor rights into a national, multimillion-dollar war.”[1] In 2011, the two sides had spent $44 million in it. The unions began an effort in that year to recall Scott Walker, the government’s figurehead and chief executive, and several senators in Wisconsin’s Senate “after they pushed through legislation restricting the collective-bargaining and organizing powers of workers belonging to government-employee unions.”[2] While this depiction is cogent—a battle over labor rights involving legislation restricting collective-bargaining rights for government employees—I contend that the assumed linkage between the battle and the recall is deeply flawed.

The full essay is at "Scott Walker's Recall in Wisconsin."

1. Alicia Mundy, “Wisconsin Recall Realigns Campaign Spending,” The Wall Street Journal, March 6, 2012.

2. Ibid.

Corporate Social Responsibility Countering Rush Limbaugh

On February 29, 2012—Leap Day—Radio political-commentator and entertainer Rush Limbaugh called a female law student at Georgetown a “slut” and “prostitute” simply because she had said that Georgetown’s student health insurance should cover birth-control—a staple for even 98% of sexually-active married and single Catholic women as of 2012. On the following day, Limbaugh went on to offer to pay for aspirin that the women at Georgetown could “put between their knees” in lieu of birth-control. If you are wondering how that even makes sense, I am with you on that one. What strikes me in particular is the extreme to which Limbaugh went in his rhetoric or appeal for a larger audience for his radio show (and attention on himself). That corporate social responsibility would function as the corrective also surprised me, for CSR is typically merely marketing, window-dressing, or for better public relations.

The full essay is at "Corporate Social Responsibility Countering Rush Limbaugh."

E.U. Staving Off War: Statehood for Serbia

On March 1, 2012 when Serbia formally became a candidate for statehood in the European Union, it had been over 50 years since a state was added to the U.S. So from an American standpoint, watching the E.U. expand “in real time” from “across the pond” might be like a person in our solar system watching the unfolding of a new solar system light-years away and thinking, “So that is how it must have looked when it happened here.” Of course, the accession of additional states in the E.U. reflects the distinct time and culture of twentieth and twenty-first century Europe rather than of the world in the late eighteenth century. Even so, certain commonalities can be discerned.

The complete essay is at Essays on Two Federal Empires.