SEN. RICK SANTORUM V. SEN. BOB CASEY JR. – NOT MUCH DIFFERENCE ON WOMEN’S ISSUES AT ALL
February 23, 2012
Rather than engaging in ad hominem attacks on Sen. Santorum’s religion or on the Catholic Church, it behooves all of us to instead analyze the politics and electorate of Pennsylvania. Ad hominem attacks are an abusive form of argument; proper arguments should address the merits of an opponent’s position, and refute the merits thereof, rather than attacking either the person, or a straw man, e.g. a caricature of the person. Abusive argumentation has long been recognized, since the time of Aristotle, as a form of FALLACY, not entitled to serious logical consideration by rational minds. Consequently, let us engage in some rational discourse on the merits of the question at hand and cease from ABUSIVE and FALLACIOUS ARGUMENTATION techniques such as ad hominem attacks and attacking a straw man.
Sen. Arlen Specter of PA
Let us turn, then, to the Politics of Pennsylvania (“PA”), and why it produces such conservative politics and politicians, especially conservative male politicians, and particularly conservative male catholic politicians recently. It was for many years a bastion of moderate Republicanism, and indeed, until the 1930s, Philadelphia and the Union League were synonymous with the post-Civil War consensus that the Republican Party was the proper party for all educated persons to vote for in the Northeast. Indeed, the city was so identified with core national Republican values that the Athletics even adopted an elephant as their team logo in the early 1900s, a symbol retained to this day by the Oakland Athletics, though it is dubious they know what Connie Mack was thinking when he adopted the symbol 111 years ago.
This consensus began to break down after the Great Depression and FDR, though it lingered on for many years as the so-called “Rockefeller-Eisenhower-Nixon” wing of the party, which was Northeast and moderate, and bipartisan with the Democrats on foreign policy, social security, fiscal & monetary policy and many other fundamental issues. This consensus of course began to break down with the emergence of the Goldwater faction in 1964, which was opposed by the Scranton faction in 1964 (again led from PA), leading to Nixon re-assuming the reigns in 1968 and 1972. With Nixon’s resignation in 1974, Ford took over and Rockefeller became VP, leading to a bitter fight between the Reagan and Ford wings of the party in 1976, and another bitter fight between the Bush and Reagan wings in 1980, finally emerging in victory both in nomination and election for the conservative wing of the Republican Party in 1980 for Reagan and the conservatives. A new day had dawned in America. But to some degree, the bipartisan consensus which had existed since FDR between the Democrats and the moderate Republicans was now endangered.
Nowhere was this tension more dramatically played out the past forty years than in PA. PA was represented until 1991 by two stalwart moderate Republicans–Sen. Arlen Specter, a bipartisan member of the Warren Commission, and Sen. John Heinz, a moderate Republican loyal to the elderly and to Social Security. These two Senators were cornerstones of what was, up to that point, a still very strong Northeastern moderate wing of the Republican party. Both were solidly dedicated to bipartisanship, courtesy, gentlemanly behavior and getting things done on the Senate floor notwithstanding partisan differences.
This began to unravel slowly with the sudden airplane death in 1991 of Sen. John Heinz.
The Late Sen. John Heinz of PA
A sudden election was called in 1991 and an unknown political consultant was brought in from the South named James Carville to manage the campaign of an enormous
PA Sen. Harris Wofford with President John F. Kennedy in early 1960s
underdog, former University President and JFK kitchen cabinet member Harris Wofford, who was to stand election against former Governor Richard “Dick” Thornburgh. At
Gov. Dick Thornburgh visits Centralia PA to inspect its ongoing Mine Fires in the 1980s
the time, Thornburgh had something like a fifty point lead in the polls, and tons of money.
James Carville - Wofford's 1991 PA Political Consultant
Sen. Heinz’ widow Teresa Heinz, now heiress in part to the Heinz catsup fortune, would then go on to marry Mass. Sen. John Kerry, in effect making him an instant near-billionaire and projecting him to the front rank of presidential contenders for 2004. This nearly changed U.S. history, but Kerry’s bid failed. Looking back, it is all too likely that a John Heinz bid for President would ultimately have succeeded in the long run just where Kerry failed–he had the looks, the charm and the moderate views to win.
Sen & Mrs. John & Teresa Heinz prior to his untimely death in 1991
This might have changed the entire course of the Republican Party and US History.
Sen & Mrs. John Kerry & Teresa Heinz Kerry; Her Money Inherited from John Heinz's Death in 1991 Nearly Made Kerry President in 2004
Returning to the 1991 election, Carville made universal health care an issue, and Wofford shocked the nation by defeating Thornburgh, becoming the first Democratic Senator from PA in decades. At the same time, Carville’s work came to the attention of a bright young Governor from Arkansas with Presidential aspirations–one William Jefferson Clinton. Carville’s conjunction with Clinton, and with George Stephanopoulos, on the 1992 campaign, documented in THE WAR ROOM documentary film, is now legendary, but all of this began in PA with Carville and Wofford.
It was during the Wofford campaign in 1991 that Carville legendarily quipped that “between Pittsburgh and Philadelphia, Pennsylvania was Alabama in between,” referring to the fact that Pennsylvanians in all portions of the state except for Philadelphia & Allegheny county regions were pro-gun, pro-life, pro-death penalty, exceptionally elderly (the oldest voting population in the USA outside of Florida) and very church-going, as well as being one of the most demographically Catholic and ethnic voting populations. In addition, PA has the lowest % of college educated persons of any state in the Northeast corridor–it is the prototypical location of high school educated union card carrying labor, and many of those voters were either Nixon Republicans or Reagan Democrats, but definitely not liberal Democrats. Except of course for the two large cities, and even there, most of the male voters care more about football than about politics.
In 2008 Hilary Clinton carried nearly every county of PA v. Obama and won the PA Primary by running to the right of Obama
Fast forward to 1994. The Clinton Administration has badly failed on its health care initiative, and Sen. Wofford has to stand re-election in his own right. This time, he is the heavy favorite to win, but Carville is not working on the campaign. Wofford is facing an unknown challenger–Congressman Rick Santorum. No one, absolutely no one, is giving Santorum a chance of winning. In fact, Santorum is given less chance of winning than Wofford was given in 1991.
What happens next shocks not only the nation, but PA as a whole. Not only does the Republican Party and the Contract with America sweep the midterm elections in 1994, but Santorum runs unexpectedly strongly and defeats Wofford narrowly to win election to the United States Senate.
Part of the problem with Sen. Wofford is that he is intellectual, aloof and takes re-election for granted, whereas Santorum is hard-working, engaged, personable and likeable. The rest of the problem is that Santorum is pro-life, pro-gun, pro-death penalty, and a church-going fellow, whereas Sen. Wofford is a Northeast liberal who is none of these things–consequently it is Santorum who fits the mold of what PA voters want in their candidate (except for Pittsburgh and Philadelphia). However, since Santorum is FROM PITTSBURGH, the Western Part of the State votes for Santorum, especially as Wofford is from the Eastern Part of the State, thus negating any liberal sentiment emanating from Allegheny County.
Sen. Santorum wins re-election in 2000, and actually runs better in PA than does Pres. Bush, who loses the national popular vote as well as the popular vote and electoral vote in PA, while Santorum wins his election in PA, in effect demonstrating that Santorum as of 2000 is more popular than President Bush.
Now we fast forward to 2006, and to the election Santorum lost for Senate by a considerable margin, to Sen. Bob Casey, Jr.
Let’s examine why he lost this election.
First, Bob Casey, Jr. was and is the son of a popular, two term Governor of PA who was known throughout the state. Second, Bob Casey, Jr. was from a prominent Irish-Catholic political family as well-known in PA as the Kennedys’ are known in Massachusetts and nationally. According to wikipedia:
“Casey was born in Scranton, Pennsylvania, one of eight children of Ellen (née Harding) and Bob Casey, the 42nd governor of Pennsylvania. He is of Irish descent on both his mother’s[citation needed]and father’s side. Casey played basketball and graduated from Scranton Preparatory School in 1978. Following in his father’s footsteps, he graduated from the College of the Holy Cross in 1982, and received a Juris Doctor (J.D.) degree from the Columbus School of Law at The Catholic University of America in 1988. Between both college and law school, Casey served as a member of the Jesuit Volunteer Corps, and spent a year teaching 5th grade and coaching basketball at the Gesu School in inner city Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Casey practiced law in Scranton from 1991 until 1996.” http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bob_Casey,_Jr.
This is the most perfect Jesuit, Irish-Catholic resume you could possibly have for running for office in PA–Scranton Prep, Holy Cross, Catholic University, the Jesuit Volunteer Corps, and a year teaching at an inner city catholic mission school in Philadelphia. Sen. Casey is just the most perfect catholic prepster ever.
Next, Casey is pro-gun, pro-life, pro-death penalty, and as we see above, a church-going catholic just like Santorum–in fact, he’s Irish-Catholic, as opposed to Italian-Catholic, which in PA, is a real advantage politically, just as it is in Massachusetts and nationally.
Consequently, the same wedge issues that HELPED Santorum win in 1994 and 2000–the issues that appealed to the “Alabama” parts of PA that are pro-gun, pro-life, pro-death penalty, and church-going and conservative on social issues–were of no use running against Bob Casey, Jr. because Casey, if anything, ran to the right of Santorum on all those issues. As noted by Casey’s wiki bio:
“In the Democratic primary, Casey faced two Democrats with more liberal viewpoints: college professor Chuck Pennacchio and pension lawyer Alan Sandals. Both argued that Casey’s views on abortion and other social issues were too conservative for most Pennsylvania Democrats. However, Casey easily defeated both challengers in the May 16 primary, receiving 85% of the vote….Abortion….Casey, like his father did, identifies as pro-life. He has publicly stated his support for overturning Roe v. Wade.[29] From Casey’s election until Specter’s party switch in April 2009, Pennsylvania had the distinction of being represented in the Senate by a self-identified pro-life Democrat and a pro-choice Republican (Arlen Specter). He supports the Pregnant Women Support Act,[30] legislation that grew out of Democrats for Life of America‘s 95-10 Initiative. The Initiative and the Pregnant Women Support Act seek to reduce the abortion rate by providing support to women in unplanned pregnancies. He expressed support for the confirmation of both John Roberts[31] and Samuel Alito[32] for seats on the Supreme Court of the United States; these judges are believed to be in favor of overturning Roe v. Wade. Casey also opposes the funding of embryonic stem-cell research.[33] However, Casey voted against barring HHS grants to organizations that provide abortion services, though such services may often not be central to the organization’s chief purpose.[34] Casey also supports over-the-counter sale of emergency contraception,[35] and has voted to overturn the Mexico City policy, which bars the issuance of federal funds to overseas organizations that perform or refer for abortions.[36] The authenticity of Casey’s pro-life commitment has been questioned by some prolife sources.[36][37] In January 2010, a writer for CBN wrote, “I wouldn’t want to be Senator Bob Casey right about now. He is coming under enormous pressure from pro-life groups because they say the ‘Pro-life’ Democratic Senator has not stood strong on the abortion issue during the current healthcare debate.” Casey, according to the CBN writer, had recently gotten “an earful and then some from pro-lifers during a press conference held at the Pennsylvania Capitol.”[38] ….”
Id. Clearly, Casey ran to the RIGHT of both of his Democratic primary opponents, and then ran to the RIGHT of Santorum in the general election on the social issues, not to the LEFT as his past opponents had done. Casey was like the Democratic Santorum–only smarter, more conservative, more polished, and a better version, and even more socially conservative and catholic than Santorum was. Casey ran to the RIGHT of Santorum on the social issues, but to the LEFT of Santorum on the bread and butter, economic and labor issues.
This makes Casey’s election to the US Senate in 2006 very unique among all of the elections in 2006, even though it is clear that 2006 generally trended Democratic and it is pretty likely that Santorum faced an uphill battle in any event even if Casey had run as a traditional liberal. But Casey was no traditional liberal. No one on the editorial staff of the Huffington Post or the New York Times would endorse him for national office if they truly understood either his positions, or the positions of the PA electorate. In truth, the PA electorate holds positions at variance with the Northeast liberal elite and the West Coast elite, excepting Philadelphia, State College and Pittsburgh.
The results of Casey’s strategies were very clear; he ran well to the right of Santorum on social issues, but ran as a Democrat on union and bread and butter economic issues, while still remaining pro-gun, pro-death penalty, pro-life, pro-church, anti-abortion, anti-contraception, and pro-adoption.
In short, there isn’t a bucket’s worth of warm spit’s difference between these two candidates on women’s issues at all. In fact, PA has NEVER elected a women to the United States Senate. Ever. Not even close to ever.
Only two women have even been nominated to run for US Senate in PA History and both have lost, one back in 1964, and more recently Lynn Yeakel, who lost a relatively close race to incumbent Sen. Arlen Specter following the Anita Hill hearings in the 1990s, but still she lost and then rapidly faded from sight and power.
PA is clearly not a state conducive either to women’s issues or to women running for office. PA has never had a female governor, a female senator and only rarely has it had female congresspersons. According to the Huffington Post, as of 2009, there were only two women in its entire Congressional Delegation. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/senate-guru/pa-sen-the-potential-demo_b_187357.html. It is astonishing how limited women are in political power in PA.
PA is well to the right of NJ, NY, DE and all the other northeastern states with regards to women’s issues and specifically women’s reproductive health issues. The state legislature is overwhelmingly dominated by men, especially religious and catholic men, and the men who serve there are openly sexist and demeaning towards women who serve in the legislature and create what is in effect a hostile work environment for women who are elected and choose to serve their constituents there. Recently, one of the houses of the PA Legislature voted 2012 “The Year of the Bible” by nearly unanimous resolution, while also simultaneously voting to cut student financial aid and aid to all state universities by more than one-third in the very same session that they also authorized tens of millions of dollars to hire replacement football coaches to take over for Joe Paterno at Penn State. Apparently male legislators have their priorities in PA. And first rate Division I football in Happy Valley is really far higher of a priority than education for the poor or the middle class, apparently.
Sad to say, often the same holds true in many of the rural county courtrooms as well as many of the appellate courts, although there at least in the past few years, some progress has been made. However, in the major law firms of Philadelphia and Pittsburgh, men hold by far the reins of power and women simply do not have any share of either the partner proceeds or the political shares of power that lead to business and partner revenues.
In short, it is a boy’s club, and often, a man’s only club in PA, notwithstanding the lip service paid to equality and opportunity. Things in PA are NOTHING like NYC or Boston or DC. They are backwards by at least twenty to forty years. Many of the female partners who do make it in Philly prefer working over in New Jersey or up in NYC whenever possible–they find PA courts and clients to be very stifling and sexist in the extreme, and in any case most of the business is elsewhere.
Perhaps the reader imagines this is exaggeration, or opinion? Let us introduce some evidence!
This is an actual example of tactices used against a female candidate for office in Allentown PA reported in the Huffington Post which occurred in 2006 and again in 2008:
“When she ran for mayor of Allentown, PA in 2001, Siobhan “Sam” Bennett was already well-known in her hometown. A former PTA president, she was a pillar of the community, having founded, led, or served on the boards of various civic organizations. So she was completely taken aback by what happened during her first stump speech as a mayoral candidate. Standing before a room full of men, she began to deliver her remarks when the chair of the meeting interrupted her with a totally bizarre and inappropriate request: “Sam, I want to ask a question all the men in this room have been dying to ask you: Just what are your measurements?”
As Bennett wrote in the Huffington Post:
I was in disbelief. And if this wasn’t bad enough, a reporter who witnessed this unabashed display of sexism wrote an article about that stump speech–and didn’t even mention the incident.Unfortunately, that experience was only a hint of what would come my way….
The Opposition’s Vehemence
What came her way when she ran for Congress in 2008 was far worse. Bennett was facing a possible challenger in Pennsylvania State Senator Lisa Boscola, and Boscola’s chief of staff, Bernie Kieklak, was well known in political circles for posting no-holds-barred commentary in local blogs. The remarks he let fly about Bennett at one online site are indicative of the level of sexism and misogyny many women candidates face.
To convey the intensity of Kieklak’s over-the-top sexism regarding Bennett and his extreme vulgarity, his comments are reproduced in their entirety below with minimal censorship: Sammy Bennett is a phony political w_____e who gives good h_____d and makes cheap, blatant political opportunists look like Mother F***ing Teresa. Even her p___y is made of plastic.” [sic] [offensive language edited].”
Truly shocking, abusive behavior towards a female politician. But run of the mill for PA, sad to say. Welcome to the training grounds of Sens. Santorum, Casey et al.
In short, to be successful in politics as a female in PA, you have to be not twice as good, not three times as good, but about ten times as good as a man, and have a hide made of armor plated kevlar. Morever, many notable male politicians (including a prominent past governor) are well-known for their womanizing and aggrandizing tactics towards females, which can most generously be characterized as “Clintonesque”. Even though these matters have been reported, still they go on.
This is the environment from which both Sens. Santorum and Casey have emerged and from which they ran for office.
Here was the result of Sen. Casey’s running to the right of Sen. Santorum on Social Issues according to Sen. Casey’s wiki bio:
“On election night, Casey won the race with 59% of the vote, compared to 41% for incumbent Senator Rick Santorum. Casey’s margin of victory was the highest ever for a Democrat running for the United States Senate in Pennsylvania.[11]Casey’s 17.4-point victory margin was the largest victory margin for a challenger to an incumbent Senator since James Abdnor unseated George McGovern by 18.8 points in 1980.”
Id. However, the bio goes on to note that as Casey’s re-election approaches this year, he is beginning to distance himself openly from President Obama again in order to appeal to the conservative PA electorate, particularly with his blue-collar base in Wilkes-Barre and Scranton (Luzerne & Lackawanna Counties) who are very upset with the President’s performance on economic issues:
“Casey is up for re-election in 2012, and has stated that he intends to seek a second term in the Senate.[12][13] His re-election prospects are uncertain. Observers have noted that as the election approaches, Casey, an early supporter of Obama, has “started to oppose the president outright or developed more nuanced responses to events that differentiate him from Mr. Obama. Analysts say Mr. Casey wants to put some distance between himself and a president whose job approval ratings in Pennsylvania are poor.”[14] In October 2011, the National Journal noted that “the Scranton area is hugely important for 2012” for both Obama and Casey, but “the city has among the worst unemployment in the state, and it’s filled with the blue-collar Dems who weren’t very enthusiastic about Obama when he first ran for president. How Casey navigates his relationship with the president will speak volumes about his re-election prospects.”[15]“
One cannot get away from one’s positions–a candidate is what a candidate espouses. Sen. Santorum, like Sen. Casey, is a warm, charming and personable fellow. Both are married with a number of kids–Casey has four kids, and Santorum has even more, and both their wives are full time stay at home moms. Because that’s what they believe in, for the most part. That moms and wives should stay at home and take care of the kids, that is. And both of them are pro-gun, pro-second amendment, pro-death penalty, pro-life, pro-catholic, anti-abortion, anti-contraception, pro-adoption, and so on. Indeed, it is very difficult to measure their differences on women’s issues or women’s health issues at all.
This addresses the issues, as opposed to attacking ad hominem or creating a straw man. These candidates have espoused their positions and come to be what they are in large part, it is theorized and shown here, because of the electorate they spent a good deal of time cultivating–the uniquely conservative PA electorate. Whether appealing to that electorate will work nationally in either Republican primaries or a National Presidential Election remains to be seen. There has not been a President elected from PA since James Buchanan in 1856 (though Eisenhower famously took up residence near Gettysburg after he retired, and was considered an honorary PA resident, and his family still live in PA). Perhaps with good reason.
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REPLY TO BLOG BY PROF. KARLAN ON BRIAN LEITER’S BLOG
April 10, 2009
I read with interest the following post by Prof. Pamela Karlan to Brian Leiter’s Law School Reports Blog at
http://leiterlawschool.typepad.com/leiter/2006/04/high_gpas_at_to.html:
April 19, 2006
High Undergraduate GPAs at Top Law Schools: What Do They Mean and What Are Their Consequences for Legal Education?
Pamela Karlan, a distinguished expert on voting rights and civil procedure at Stanford Law School, writes:
I read, with both interest and a fair amount of distress, the 75th percentile LSAT rankings. The distress came from seeing the staggering 75th percentile GPAs.
These could reflect at least three states of the world, two of them unfortunate. First, and most optimistically, the 40 schools on your list could all be admitting kids with amazing undergraduate academic achievements. (A 3.96 means, for example a student with 34A’s and 2 B+’s as an undergraduate; a 3.85 could mean half A’s and half A-’s.)
Second, the GPA’s could reflect rampant grade inflation at undergraduate institutions. Leave aside the abstract debate over whether the current generation of students is so much abler than its predecessors that good students should never see a grade below A- or B+. Most law schools have mandatory means or curves, and I’m aware of none where that mean is over around 3.4. (Even at the schools that don’t have official means, I would guess the actual mean is no higher than that.) Thus, virtually all law students will have lower, substantially lower, GPA’s in law school than they had in college. (E.g., at my own institution, 25% of the students had GPAs equivalent to what the number 1 student in the normal graduating class is likely to have.) This drop has a number of unfortunate consequences. Many of us are familiar with a huge demoralization effect the day first-semester grades come out and people who’ve been told all their lives that they are “A’s” at everything that’s measured hear for the first time that they’re “B’s.” They give up, and simply float through the remaining five semesters. Many have a self-protective defensive reaction: if the law doesn’t love them, then they distance themselves from it. In addition, at law schools where there are course-selection strategies that allow students to manipulate their GPA’s, students are then drawn not to taking what’s good or useful for them, but rather what’s most likely to boost their GPAs back toward the range they’ve internalized as normal. The high UGPAs mean that many of our students have never really learned to bounce back from academic disappointment (the “C” I got my first semester of college is one of the best things that ever happened to me) and like learning to ride a bicycle, it’s harder to learn that the older you get.
Third, to get those astronomical UGPA’s, students necessarily had to be either (a) extraordinary across the board for their entire undergraduate career (the student who bombs the first year of college because she wasn’t yet ready for the work or who was planning to be a physicist before he realized he didn’t have the mathematical ability can’t get one of these sky-high GPAs) or (b) strategic and risk-averse, taking only the kinds of courses in which they’d get A’s, from the time they were 17 or 18 years old. I’d bet it’s more the latter than the former. One of the things I always though the U.S. had over many other advanced countries was that we didn’t expect students to specialize in only what they were good at when they were still teenagers. But in order to get a 3.9 UGPA, students really can’t take things well outside their comparative advantages. Many of us see the consequences of this in what our students do: they’re passive and non-entrepreneurial in their job choices, going to large firms not because that practice particularly attracts them, but because it seems less “risky” right out of law school than going to smaller firms or government jobs. Many of them haven’t exercised their intellectual imaginations in years. Many are in fact not particularly well educated, since the science majors took few writing courses, the humanities people took perhaps one semester of economics and flee any quantitative subject, and the social and hard scientists know no American (let alone world) history at all.
Now, of course, we’re talking here only about the 75th percentile. Perhaps we could find the students who are comfortable with risk, entrepreneurial, academically and intellectually adventurous, and resilient among the other three-quarters of the class. But even the 25th percentile at top 20 schools have staggering UGPAs. And that sets the tone for the student body.
I’m not sure, as long as US News drives so much of the world, that there’s anything to be done. But it’s frustrating if what we’re trying to do is to train imaginative, entrepreneurial, courageous, resilient lawyers with broad perspectives that one of the central criteria for admitting students undermines our chances of doing that.
(end of Prof. Karlan’s comments).
Now I actually knew Pam growing up–she was one of a circle of debaters I knew who grew up debating in connecticut (she went to Hopkins Grammar School and then to Yale) and she’s enjoyed a great deal of success as a law school academic, although she’s way too liberal for my tastes (what law school academic isn’t liberal?).
On the plus side, I don’t think she’s a communist, but if she is, i’m not down with that at all.
My father fought those jerks in the greek civil war, and they were rat bastards, the communists. I can’t believe the democrats are actually meeting with castro in cuba right now.
Anyway, here were my comments in reply to her post:
An addendum to the comment above on grade inflation and test scores.
1) it is well-known that the ETS re-normed the SATS, LSATs, GREs and MCATs at least one standard deviation approximately sixteen years ago. Consequently, our generation of the 1970s and 1980s had a mean on the SAT and other standardized tests that was one standardized deviation higher than the current generation of students–our IQ in short, averaged around 100, while theirs literally averages 85. If you pin the bell curve tail on the donkey, that makes the top 1/2 % of the current generation dumber than the top five % of the previous generation.
So the students aren’t getting smarter, they’re getting dumber. That’s what renorming the test means.
I worked teaching all of the standardized tests for more than twenty years and wrote the pilot materials for the LSAT for Princeton Review in the early 1990s.
2) Grade inflation ain’t so except in the courses where professors are giving easy grades. At colleges that are conservative like Drexel, William and Mary, Hamilton, and so forth, grades are given out fairly and with rigor. It’s at some of the humanities departments that standards have fallen, and as certain classics and history professors have noted, along with scholarship–you can hardly find an actual greek, latin or byzantine professor today in a major ivy league university. When I visited Harvard, Prof. Finley was lecturing on Ancient Athens. Today, you’re more likely to hear some humanities teacher deconstructing gender based issues in some unknown text from last week, or worse still, deconstructing something from the internet.
3) TV, the internet, cellphones and laptops have definitively made current law students stupider. They don’t know how to write, they don’t know how to read books, and their research skills are shallow and poor. Most important, they lack the skill of memorization. I used to know where every single book was in certain law libraries, just as I knew where they were in huge undergrad libraries for years. That was a lot more useful skill than Boolean searches, which are not a thorough method of seeking out facts unless you already know the subject matter at hand.
4) Westlaw and Lexis led us to the horror that is Google.
5) Google is driving the book and newspaper out of existence, leading us to a famous Asimov short story of science fiction in which (in the near future) everyone forgets how to read and do math because computers do it for us–until a nuclear war destroys the machines and we become helpless, until one day a boy re-discovers how to do math by hand, and is proclaimed a genius.
This is the orwellian place we are all headed.
In addition to the foregoing comments, I would have also pointed out that Prof. Karlan’s basic point is wrong.
She assumes that students get high grades in college, and then come to Stanford Law and get lower grades because the competition is tougher.
This is actually ass backwards. I know Pam from when she was 18 and kicking back beers at college debate tournaments, so I know she likes to pontificate without factual basis from time to time, so here are some facts;
1) except for the top ten law schools, most law school applicants don’t have a 3.90 GPA or a very high LSAT. The vast majority of law students and lawyers are trained at 2d, 3d and 4th quartile schools as rated by US News and World Report rankings, or at local state law schools. Those students make up the vast majority of the bar.
2) students who go to Stanford, Yale, Harvard law schools only rarely practice law in the “real”world. They usually become law professors, judges, politicians etc. or work for rarified law firms. It’s unusual to see these folks work with actual clients or appear in actual courtrooms. Pam is a perfect example of this. She’s spent her life in the classroom, not in the real world.
3) Pam admits to getting a C or two at Yale, and I admit to that with Harvard. Because those schools were hard, back in the day. They were not easy, there was no grade inflation and the competition was brutal in most of the classes. Plus I was a premed on the side. So my GPA in college was nothing pretty, although it was definitely higher than a B average and i was recommended for honors, had a cum laude on my thesis and a summa on my general exam.
4) When I went to law school, after working a while, I thought it was MUCH EASIER than college. To be honest, I barely cracked a book open, worked forty hours a week at law firms collecting cold hard cash, and found the work at law school to be trivial. It was in law school that i got racks of As and only a couple of Bs. It was funny how many As I got. I won Am Jur Awards and Best Paper Awards (best grade in my class) every single semester I was in law school. It became like a joke how smart I was in law school, and yet, I really wasn’t working 1/8th as hard as I did in college.
Consequently, I don’t really know what Pam is talking about, not at all. My grades were disappointing to me in college but I worked my ass off to get them; but my grades in law school were terrific, and I hardly broke a sweat.
Next, as far as training law students to be imaginative, entrepreneurial or creative, I think that’s a deeply flawed and dangerous thing to do.
The last thing I as a businessman want my lawyer to be is creative, imaginative or entrepreneurial. I want my lawyer to be a lawyer, that is, an unimaginative little nebbish who grinds out papers and hands them to my enemy at 5pm on friday afternoon, or gets deals done by smiling and being at peace and harmony with everyone in the bar.
Creativity, imagination and entrepreneurship, I’m afraid, is reserved for the Schumpeterians of the world, that is to say, the guys at Business School, and that’s why Wharton has a Center for Entrepreneurship, and why I and my colleagues at various Business Schools teach Entrepreneurship, Innovation and Creativity at Business Schools around the North east directly, rather than teaching the stultifying subject of law. Law by its nature cannot be innovative, because it is precedential and must be followed to the letter of the law; whereas an inventor or entrepreneur is not bound by precedent and can be innovative.
I actually find Pam’s notion of what a good lawyer is to be incomprehensible. A good lawyer should be boring, ethical and should be able to repeat a statute from front to back thirty times in a row. Not creative, not innovative, not entrepreneurial, but efficient like a swiss army knife or a swiss watch. Efficiency and practice make for good lawyering. Also long hours spent learning how to write briefs exactly like everyone else writes them. The last thing you want to do in a brief is to introduce anything new, creative or innovative. Judges hate that. They just want you to follow the 8,000 appellate rules they’ve set forth for how to write the brief.
Good lawyers, then, are basically automatons. Clever and hard working automatons, but robots, essentially. In another century, they will in fact be replaced by AI possessing machines for many of their tasks, I predict. They’re already being outsourced to India for much of their robotic work such as document discovery, which was once thought to require intelligence and training. See my point?
Whereas good businessmen are creative, innovative and entrepreneurial.
5) A logic, rhetoric, oratory, philosophy background gets you through law school very easily; math and science make it trivial. All law problems are basically logic puzzles, and all law essays are basically debate/oratory speeches made in a philsophy manner of analyzing each question from both sides. This was perfectly normal to me. Undergrad teachers kept trying to make a marxist out of me, so they didn’t like my impartiality. Law professors loved it.
6) Law exams are graded without your name on the paper. No favoritism can creep into the grading. Undergrad is rife with favoritism and bias towards certain undergrads that the professors play favorites towards.
7) My friend NS who went to school with Pam at Yale thought Stanford Law was a joke after Yale undergrad; he thought it was a vacation. We used to get together frequently in Cali and hang out. He never seemed to work too hard.
8) My friend DB who went to harvard with me and then to Stanford Med thought Stanford Law was a joke after harvard undergrad and stanford med. He worked 40 hours at a top patent firm and saved all his money. Again, he had plenty of free time, he hardly worked at law school.
9) Law Schools should require all incoming students to study the following;
semester of logic, semster of intro to western philosophy
semester of oratory/rhetoric/speech
do two semesters of competitive speech/rhetoric/debate/parli
do two semesters of mock trial
spend a summer working at a law firm
spend a summer working at legal aid
spend a summer working for a judge
spend two years minimum working in business or somewhere between college and law school. The armed forces would be the best of all.
give preferential admission to army veterans, ROTC and reservists and end their anti-military culture.
sharply curtail the number of attorneys taking the bar nationally. End all state bars and apply one national bar, and only pass around 5,000 persons into it annually, and make them travel to one of three reginal centers nationally to take the exam, such as SF, CA, Chicago and New York, and only give the exam once a year.
Require proficiency in Spanish for ALL attorneys, since Spanish is required to speak to most clients on both coasts.
10) Science and business grad school were much more challenging and interesting than law school or undergrad. I would NEVER recommend to my own children to attend law school, maybe take a law class in business school, but not attend law school. The best combination out there today is the MD-MBA combined program, which I think is ideal in today’s economy.
These are some of the practical changes I would make to the legal eduction process.
I would probably close all but a handful of the existing law schools in the united states. Or, perhaps, people could obtain law degrees for reasons other than being a lawyer–for academic or scholarly purposes, as in europe, but not to be a lawyer or to make money. I’d convert a lot of the programs to MBA programs, actually.
we have way too many lawyers in this country and we need to reform the legal profession, reform tort law, and sharply regulate the profession before it drives all of the doctors, drug makers and other competent businessmen out of this country for good.
One final note, and this is about Pam’s constitutional law book, which she authored with Cass Sunstein, Mark & Rebecca Tushnet, Louis Seidman & Geoffrey Stone. This casebook has been ranked one out of five stars by nearly everyone who ranked it on Amazon dot com. I happen to be a fan of Pam, of Cass Sunstein (except for his dumping Martha Nussbaum, who I’m a bigger fan of, for that stupid Irish younger woman professor at Harvard who’s the big Obama fan) and I really am a big fan of Mark and Rebecca Tushnet–Rebecca was one of Harvard’s best debaters ever in the 1990s–and Mark is a very smart guy–but apparently brains doesn’t mean you can write a casebook as good as Larry Tribe’s.
Here’s a sample comment from Amazon dot com;
3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:
1.0 out of 5 stars Terrible Casebook, December 13, 2008
By kiki (Baltimore, MD) – See all my reviews
It’s a casebook, so it’s not supposed to be great reading, but this one is by far the worst casebook I’ve ever had. The only thing a casebook needs to do to achieve mediocrity is contain cases. This doesn’t, not really. It gives you the cliff’s notes of important cases. One sentence blurbs about others. And pages and pages of rambling, aimless, academic debate. It may be a good book for Con Law professors and others who have already read all of the cases discussed. For someone trying to learn con law, it is useless. It is also organized very poorly. Any class organized around this book is doomed from the start. If your professor uses this book, take another class. If you can’t take another class, buy the Chemerinsky treatise and rely on that instead. Professors: DO NOT USE THIS BOOK.
the website address is above, if you want to check out the remarks and the book yourself. Perhaps there will be a revised edition. I realize that Pam writes and talks a lot. As I said, part of her strength, and her weakness, is that she talks and writes too much, and perhaps she spreads herself a little thin.
When I was a litigator, I litigated civil rights matters in the trenches, and won them. It’s not as hard as it seems. You need to have a firm grasp of the history of the United States from 1776 through about 1900 to understand the reconstruction and civil war era, in order to make some sense of what the 13th, 14th and 15th amendments mean.
I actually think Justice Scalia had some pertinent remarks on US v. Cruikshank in the recent gun rights case. He noted that the US Supreme Court in that 1874 case took the right of bearing arms away from african american militia men under the second amendment, because of white supremacist views which were going on at the time. the dispute was that armed militias of african americans and republicans were fighting ku klux klansmen in Mississippi and elsewhere in the south, and the african american plaintiffs claimed a second amendment right to bear arms as a militia.
The US Supreme Court said no, that’s only a federal right against the federal government, not against the states, ignoring incorporation under the 14th amendment.
Scalia basically says now that Cruikshank was wrong, and that african americans had the right to arm themselves as a militia in 1874 and defend themselves against the Klan in the 1870s.
I think that’s an interesting point of view. Of course, an armchair liberal like Karlan would never consider that Scalia would have anything interesting to say.
But here at the Sophist, we think there are two sides to every question.
–art kyriazis
philly/nj home of the world champion phillies
–art kyriazis
COMENT ON TIME’S COVER STORY ON STEM CELL RESEARCH OF FEBRUARY 9, 2009
February 10, 2009
Time Magazine just did a cover story on stem cell research, which is commendable. They also entitled the story “The Quest Resumes,” which is commendable, focusing on the fact that the Federal Government, under the Obama Administration, may finally allow (this may already have been approved by executive order) federal funds for stem-cell research at federally funded research institutions.
However, the subtitle of the article is “After eight years of political ostracism, stem-cell scientists like Harvard’s Douglas Melton are coming back into the light—and making discoveries that may soon bring lifesaving breakthroughs.” Time Feb 9, 2009 at p. 36.
Now, let’s examine that for a second—In Massachusetts, where Prof. Melton plies his craft, the Commonwealth and State of Massachusetts, like the State of California, has voted state support of stem-cell research at institutions of higher education. Therefore in Massachusetts, like California a bastion of biotechnology, the biotech lobby was able to secure state support for stem-cell research during the eight-year long federal ban on such research. So compared to the other 48 states, Prof. Melton was actually at an advantage because his lab was in Massachusetts.
Because of the federal funds ban, a great deal of stem cell-research has begun to spring up in places like Southeast Asia, as the Time Magazine article correctly notes, and as it well-known in the biotech industry. But a lot of it is also staying put in Cali and Mass due to those states putting up seed money for biotech research that is stem cell oriented.
Next, Prof. Melton works as co-director of the Harvard Stem Cell Institute (HSCI), which Harvard has committed substantial resources to supporting over the past eight years and well into the future. According to their 2008 report, their annual spending has grown in the past two years from just over $5 million to over $16 million in fiscal year 2008, most of that culled from private and corporate donations. HSCI currently has no less than eight ongoing challenge grant research projects sponsored for $75,000 each, all of them stem cell oriented.
Now I am a powerful supporter of stem-cell research, and I strongly advocate that the federal government support stem cell research. The question I have for Time Magazine is, and maybe perhaps for the Federal Government, is HSCI the most needy recipient for federal funds for stem cell research? The article omits that HSCI is well-funded by private donors, and omits that Massachusetts provides state support (it is not clear if HSCI accepts Massachusetts money) and therefore the article in Time is somewhat misleading.
The argument for funding HSCI federally has to be this; we, e.g. HSCI, made a good faith effort to get the ball rolling the past three years through private financing, we have already a lab in motion with research projects, so if you fund us, we will be three years closer to getting results than any other academic lab you choose to fun. Consequently, their NIH grant requests will carry a certain heft.
On the other hand, they are not as dramatically in need of the money as some other labs who don’t have any private funding at all.
A more useful article would have been to depict the overall situation in the rest of the United States, and some of the labs outside CA & MA.
This is an interesting issue and one on which arguments on both sides would and could be marshalled.
It should be pointed out that I strongly support the work of Prof. Melton and the work of HSCI. Those initiatives were put into place by then President Lawrence Summers, along with the Broad Institute initiative, a few years back, and clearly they have had the effect of putting Harvard back on the map in terms of genetics and molecular biology research.
The good news about the Time article is that the words “Stem Cells” made the cover, along with a nice bio-photo. If nothing else, Americans this week can forget about the economy and the war for a moment and realize that stem cell research is an answer to many of our problems that don’t involve boundaries and account balances and fumes spewing out of our cars.
–art kyriazis philly/south jersey
home of the world champion phillies
T-CELL SCIENCES, INC. – CASE STUDY – WHARTON SCHOOL CASE STUDY – 1994 – Arthur J. Kyriazis University of Pennsylvania April 22, 1994
January 26, 2009
this is an actual case study I did at Wharton about fifteen years ago for Steve Sammut’s class on advanced patent portfolio management theory. This case is of interest because it concerns a biotech company, and because, re-reading it after a long time, it actually reads very well. Even before I had all the experience I do now, I actually had a good feel for what to do with the management of a biotech company even back then, so here it is. And yes, I did get an “A” in the class, of course. Dr. Sammut used to run the tech transfer office for Penn during the 1990s.
–art k
ps enjoy!
T-CELL SCIENCES, INC. CASE
by Arthur J. Kyriazis
MGMT 898 – PROF. SAMMUT
Wharton School (WEMBA)
University of Pennsylvania
April 22, 1994
Issues
T-Cell Sciences, Inc. (“T-Cell”) is a 1983 Cambridge, MA biotech/pharmaceutical startup sired by Patrick Kung, a “recognized pioneer in immunological research.” The main issue appears to be defining T-Cell’s ultimate market niche even as it undergoes the process of transition from a venture-funded start-up to a more mature publicly held corporation. Specifically, in the coming months and years, should T-Cell (1) concentrate upon basic across the board immunological R&D; (2) concentrate upon basic immunological R&D with a focus on diagnostic drugs and product(s); or (3) focus upon strategic alliances with large pharmaceutical companies with an eye cast towards the development and delivery of therapeutic pharmaceutical drugs?
It would appear that until the arrival of James D. Grant as CEO in November of 1986, the main issue might well have been a different one altogether, namely whether T-Cell would reorganize or liquidate. In early 1986, T-Cell was a company in trouble and one which was not being particularly well-run or well-managed, even though it had brilliant scientists and innovative technologies full of commercial promise. Even though startups might be expected to lose money at the outset, T-Cell’s losses in 1985 and 1986 totalled nearly $2 million, compared with $5.5 million capitalization from December of 1983 throught January of 1986. This apparently necessitated a public offering in May of 1986, which raised $11.1 million, followed by the hiring of Mr. Grant in November of 1986, and his hiring of a well-heeled financial CFO immediately thereafter.
In addition, up through Grant’s arrival, T-Cell had only developed two products of any consequence, ACT-T-SET, and CELLFREE, and only two joint venture/research alliances/R&D contracts of any consequence, the Syntex USA contract and the Pfizer contract, and had failed to show any revenue from product sales through 1986, and only $13 million in revenue from contracts in 1986.
In brief, one may surmise from the case study that a great deal of money was spent at T-Cell, until Grant’s arrival, on basic immunological research, without a very well defined sense of where the research was going, or how it would be profitable or generate a return to the company and to the investors. This might have been a result of Dr. Kung’s diffuse vision of the company’s market niche as somehow doing R&D better or faster, and perhaps a touch of the academic fondness for the intrinsic value of broad based academic research as opposed to targeted research and strategic alliances directed to product development and ultimate profit.
Grant’s arrival placed T-Cell on a radically different footing and he appears to have turned the company around. Losses were reduced by nearly a million dolars from 1986 to 1987, and for the year ending in April of 1987, T-Cell reported positive product sales revenue of nearly $400,000 together with contract revenues of nearly $2 million. In addition, Grant apparently negotiated the deal with Yamanouchi Parmaceutical, which as he characterizes it places T-Cell on a sound cash flow footing for the foreseeable future. In addition, Grant has introduced a sound line of command and professionalized the management of the company by hiring a financial officer and a regulatory affairs officer, paying attention to patent management issues, and spending time painting a sound, attractive picture to shareholders, potential investors and to regulators. Finally, Grant’s status an a former FDA head bodes well for the regulatory hurdles awaiting T-Cell’s products.
T-Cell’s Strengths
T-Cell’s strengths are many. First, it has a distinguished corps of researchers led off by Dr. Kung, who appears to be a leader in the field of T cell research. It is situated in Cambridge, MA, in the heart of the Harvard-MIT research community, and can be expected to easily draw upon an outstanding technical scientific staff for its research needs. Also, the scientific advisory board includes people like Dr. Mark Davis and others who are world-recognized scientific leaders.
Second, T-Cell has introduced two product lines in 1986, the ACT-T-SET and CELLFREE technologies, which assuming patent protection and FDA approval, are potentially product mainstays for the company. These two products are expected to have applicability in the diagnosis of various stages of immune system stimulation and white blood cell activity. Dr. Kung and Mr. Grant expect R&D to eventually identify other new products in the same T cell related vein with applicability in the diagnostic field.
Third, T-Cell has two joint ventures, with Syntex and Pfizer, and now a third, with Yamanouchi, which promise to focus on specific product development, with the obvious potential of delivering a drug to market which can be of wide therapeutic applicability and therefore be a cash mainstay for the company. The Syntex and Pfizer ventures aim to produce therapeutic drugs targeted at common medical ailments, including breast cancer, type 1 diabetes, rheumatoid arthritis and cytomegalovirus. The Yamanouchi venture aims to develop products to diagnose rheumatoid arthritis and lung cancer. An added benefit is the global ability to develop and market products and drugs in Japan and the rest of the world while awaiting FDA approval for their sale in the United States.
Fourth, T-Cell now has James D. Grant, who must be reckoned as an important asset of the company at this juncture. His management skills have put T-Cell on a sound business footing; his contacts have resulted in new joint venture(s); and his FDA expertise should translate into FDA product approvals.
Which Fields or Options are Most Attractive for T-Cell?
The basic R&D approach is wrong for this size company. What the company needs to do is ultimately make a decision between developing diagnostic products/drugs on its own, or on developing them with partners. Grant appears to be committed to a strategy of hedging his bets by pursuing both options. He is willing to commit some money to R&D and to diagnostics, while courting and signing deals with large pharmaceuticals for strategic alliance(s) aimed at delivering specific types of therapeutic products/drugs. Grant also feels that the diagnostic(s) division, once profitable, should be spun off because of the competition in that field.
Recommendations
Grant probably has it right. The therapeutic emphasis is the best way for T-Cell to go right now. The joint venture/strategic alliance approach is a sound one. If successful, the development of even one drug marketed to a patient population as widespread as the breast cancer or lung cancer populations promises immediate payoff for T-Cell’s efforts and a handsome reward for its investors.
With diagnostic drugs on the other hand, even if approved and even if proprietary, it is hard to see how T-Cell will be able to exploit the discoveries, so that Grant is probably correct when he surmises that this division or these proprietary discoveries will ultimately be spun off. Of course, licensing and franchising are options we have discussed which absent from Grant’s discussion(s).
The best way for T-Cell to go would be to continue to solicity these contracts and joint ventures. T-Cell has recognized, proven scientific talent and recognized expertise in this very specific area of immunological research.
One specific recommendation is that the company hire a patent portfolio manager and begin to concentrate on patenting more of its discoveries, as well as concentrate on getting products to FDA submission stage. This manager must also concentrate on getting the researchers to recognize when a discovery may or might be patentable or commerciable in some respect. These two steps will make the company attractive to investors and a steady stream of patent application(s) and FDA approval applications are evidence that a company has been doing its homework.
These steps, if followed, should result in a successful new round of equity financing and/or an invitation to buy the company out altogether. In either event, the company will have attained a substantial goal. Finally, T-Cell should keep Grant around. Given the company’s history, investors could get extremely nervous if he were to depart suddenly or unexpectedly.
–Arthur J Kyriazis, 1994
THIS WAS AN ACTUAL CASE STUDY I WROTE FOR THE WHARTON SCHOOL IN THE SPRING OF 1994.
–art kyriazis
Philly/South Jersey
Home of the World Champion Philadelphia Phillies
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Making the Playoffs in 2008: The Sixers, the Flyers, the Phillies and the Eagles!
Happy New Year 2009
