ACS is having its first meeting of the semester at Shakespeare’s on Wednesday, September 2nd from 5-7pm!

We will discuss membership, upcoming activities, and social events taking place this semester (including the upcoming ACS/Federalist Society Kickball match, health care forum, and the Supreme Court series). It’s also a great opportunity to meet the rest of ACS and kickback for a bit.

We’ll be meeting in the private party area located by the bar in the middle of Shakespeare’s.

You can RSVP Here!

If you have any questions, please contact Jonathan Hutcheson.

Regarding the picture: This has nothing to do with our meeting, but apparently Harry Reid hates Papa John’s Pizza.  Who knew? Go here for more on the subject. Pizza has also been the subject of debate as Obama has indicated a couple of favorites, alienated a Chicago mainstay, and given some folks on the right something else to be mad about – see here, here, and here. McCain likes pizza too. People are serious about their pizza.

First, the Iowa Supreme Court goes out of its way to withhold even the most cursory of nods toward substantive due process “fundamental rights” jurisprudence in supporting its decision. This is notable because United States Supreme Court cases involving sexual orientation discrimination such as Bowers v. Hardwick (which was adverse to gay rights) and Lawrence v. Texas (which explicitly overturned Bowers) rested their reasoning very much on a substantive due process approach. Varnum’s reasoning rests entirely upon equal protection grounds.

Varnum is different from the Massachusetts gay marriage decision, Goodridge, as Goodridge can’t help itself but rest upon equal protection and substantive due process. This probably is because Goodridge uses a lot of the reasoning as Loving v. Virginia, the U.S. Supreme Court decision which struck down bans on interracial marriage. Loving too rested its decision upon both equal protection and substantive due process. I didn’t see the Iowa Supreme Court quote Loving even in passing.

Second, and related to the first obsevation, the Iowa Supreme Court very methodically develops its equal protection reasoning to determine that Iowa laws which discriminate based upon sexual orientation require at least “heightened scrutiny” by Iowa courts. In coming to this determination, the Iowa Supreme Court adopts and explicates the U.S. Supreme Court’s “four factor test” for determing whether a classification (i.e. sexual orientation) in a statute should be considered by a court to be suspect. Applying these four factors, the Iowa Supreme Court decides that statutory classifications based upon sexual orientation should be considered suspect.

What’s interesting about what the Iowa Supreme Court is doing in Varnum is that it’s sort of “rewinding” the legal issues over gay rights and putting them in a purely equal protection realm. Then, the Court is developing the equal protection jurisprudence to cover sexual orientation. One can read the Varnum opinion as instructions for what should have happened on the federal level: the issues of gay rights should have been argued and decided solely on equal protection grounds, and decided in the affirmative.

Finally, and related to the first and second observations, Varnum is a very reasoned and methodical opinion almost entirely free of rhetorical flourish. I think that much of this is due to the equal protection approach to the case rather than a substantive due process approach. Substantive due process jurisprudence, which necessarily concerns itself with concepts of rights and liberties, lends itself to soaring passages of rhetoric. The equal protection approach, on the other hand, is more of a “legal reasoning” approach.

That, and Iowans are kind of a humble and reasonable sort.

As somebody told me the day Varnum was announced, maybe the coasts should take some lessons from “flyover country.”

Food and drink will be provided and it’ll be a great opportunity to find out what some of the plans are for this semester, how to get more involved in putting together events, what the social calendar is looking like, how to apply for an open position on the exec board, and to unwind a bit while shooting the breeze with fellow ACSers.

We’ll be meeting in the private party area located by the bar.

You can RSVP here!

If you have any questions, please contact Jonathan Hutcheson.

Jonathan Hutcheson, president of the American Constitution Society at MU, said the debate was held in part because of the upcoming election but also for the sake of intellectual curiosity.

“It’s always healthy to discuss these issues openly in a way that’s structured and well informed,” Hutcheson said. “Instead of just getting snapshots here and there on these issues, it’s a little bit more of a focused discourse on the subject matter.”

Carolyn Hamilton, president of The Federalist Society at MU, said the goal was to represent different views and foster discussion.  

“Something that both of our groups strive to do is just open up everything for discussion,” she said. “Neither of us are political organizations. We just like to open up current topics.”

For more on this event, feel free to follow the link below to read the article online. 

Speakers discuss impact of presidential election on Supreme Court (Missourian)

For more background on our two distinguished speakers, please visit the following links:

For David C. Frederick, see http://www.utexas.edu/law/faculty/profile.php?id=dcf232
http://www.khhte.com/attorneys_view.php?id=88

For Stephen McAllister, see http://www.law.ku.edu/faculty/faculty/mcallister.shtml