Trust Our Courts

America's strength lies in our deep-seated belief in the value of the rule of law. At the core of that belief is a faith that questions of guilt or innocence are best resolved in a court of law, run by a judge and adjudicated, in part, by a jury.

Now we have a number of Americans, many of whom consider themselves great patriots, who argue that our system of justice can't handle its fundamental purpose. For example, John McCain and Lindsey Graham say that terrorists and other criminals, like Dzhokar Tsarnaev, should not be tried, but should be held indefinitely as "enemy combatants." "Our goal at this critical juncture," they said in a joint release "should be to gather intelligence and protect our nation from further attacks." Graham later added, “The last thing we may want to do is read Boston suspect Miranda Rights telling him to 'remain silent.'" 

These comments reflect a serious -- and tragic -- misunderstanding of the principles of justice underlying our system. This is not "Law and Order," in which some heinous criminal goes free on an arbitrary ruling from a character actor. Federal judges know their business, and federal prosecutors seldom lose cases they pursue. Not only that, but the rights of the accused do not hinder prosecution or impede justice. Quite the opposite is true: by ensuring a fair trial, courts increase the likelihood that convictions will "stick" and that sentences will be fulfilled.

McCain's comments are especially sad. This is a man who, rightfully, has argued for years against the use of torture because it reflects badly on Americans and endangers our soldiers. Why can't he see the implications of his position here/

"Guns Don't Kill People, Immigrants Kill People"

Chuck Grassley wants us to be safe. To prevent the kind of behavior that led to the Boston Marathon bombings, he wants to change the way we regulate immigration. Speaking before the Senate Judiciary Committee this week, Senator Grassley wondered

How can individuals evade authorities and plan such attacks on our soil?How can we beef up security checks on people who wish to enter the U.S.? How do we ensure that people who wish to do us harm are not eligible for benefits under the immigration laws, including this new bill before us?

What we know now is that one of the suspected bombers was a nineteen-year-old who graduated from Cambridge Rindge and Latin, a remarkably successful public school. He was a college kid who tweeted about doing laundry. Grassley may not have been able to know these details when he made his comments, but that's no excuse for the silliness of his message.

The speech is silly because just before he delivered it, he helped kill the Obama Administration's proposed gun-control bill. Why? Because it would have made owning and trading assault rifles more difficult for "law abiding citizens."

Of course Dzhokar Tsarnaev was a law-abiding citizen right up to the moment when he filled a backpack with explosives, walked to Copley Square, and detonated a bomb that killed an eight-year-old boy, among others. And the police officers he killed did not die from the explosions. They died because Tsanaev and his brother had guns and ammunition designed to kill people.

Grassley and his ilk cannot have it both ways. If they support the 2nd Amendment, they must face the fact that, if the right to own guns is a fundamental right it is so because the founders wanted to permit occasionally violent dissent against the government. Place the 2nd Amendment between the 1st and the 3rd and take the group as seriously as Grassley and that whack-job Wayne LaPierre want to do, and you get armed opposition to the government.

Like the Tsarnaevs.

What Rutgers and Horace Mann Have in Common

There's no need for another voice condemning Rutgers men's basketball coach Mike Rice; he's been fired as a result of an enormous public outcry over his "coaching methods." In light of the recent revelations about long-standing sexual abuse at Horace Mann and other schools, however, it is time to start talking about how to hold teachers accountable for important stuff.

First and foremost, the best way is decidedly not to link teachers' evaluations to arbitrary statistical performance. Test scores do not make a teacher, and won-lost records do not make a coach. Both of these measures are arbitrary because they do not take into account "distance traveled" by the students in the charge of teachers and coaches. A good coach brings his players from one level of play to another; as players improve, they ought to win more games than before, but only if the schedule and other factors allow it. Won-lost records can measure the talent of players, and some test scores can measure the talent of students, but they are not good ways of assessing educators.

On the other hand, eccentricity and bizarreness are not teaching methods. Being self-involved and weird is neither necessary nor sufficient for good teaching. I don't buy the Dead Poets' Society model of excellence, in which the teacher inspires kids to "be themselves" by himself being entirely different from anyone else. High-quality instruction also requires patience, discipline, and hard work. Individuality, free-thinking, innovation, and a certain amount of quirkiness often do reflect and allow excellent teaching. Teachers have to dig new ground and push students beyond their comfort.

But both Horace Mann and Rutgers confused extremity with originality. Kicking kids is not quirky, it's violent, undisciplined and ineffective. Rutgers should have recognized that fact immediately. Athletic Director Tim Pernetti, also fired in the wake of the scandal, should not have entertained for a moment the idea that Rice was just "intense." Convincing kids that they only have value except insofar as they worship the teacher is not avant-garde, it's abusive and selfish. Horace Mann administrators chose to interpret clearly bent behavior as a "method," when it really was pathology. In both cases, the supervisors in question were lazy and unprofessional.

As a private school teacher myself, this stuff angers me personally. The number of comments I have seen recently suggesting that sexual abuse is rampant at prep schools, that only someone with similar pathologies would be interested in working at one, and that all students in such places are snot-nosed are not only unfair, but harmful. The comments come from the ignorant, but they are the responsibility of the bad teachers who created the impression.