In the Introduction to Climate Coup, the volume's editor Patrick Michaels describes how he leads his students through an dialog in which he links climate change to any subject of public significance that his students can name. Furthermore, he claims that the effects that it is having are in general deleterious. He writes that this "game" is enjoyable, but rather than giving "glib answers to insouciant students," Michaels decided "to consult some experts" regarding his views. The result is Climate Coup, a volume containing eight papers discussing law, politics, defense, peer-review, trade, economic development, health, and education and their relationship to climate change.
Of Michaels's eight experts, five have positions (along with Michaels) with the Cato Institute, a sixth has been frequently published by the Cato Institute, a seventh works (along with Michaels) at the University of Virginia, and an eighth is a co-author with Michaels. This is not to say that none of the authors is well-regarded or does not have views worth serious consideration, but merely that by selecting these authors, Michaels is not really testing his hypothesis. The volume is, instead, an effort to make his case by employing his ideological allies, In general, the wider community of experts does not support his case.
Broadly put, Michaels and his co-authors argue that the dangers posed by climate change are overstated and that continued economic development is our best remedy for the harms it poses, even if that means continuing to emit carbon into the atmosphere.
The first chapter on law by Roger Pilon and Evan Turgeon is among the best. It lays out the legislative and legal history of environmental regulation, arguing that the executive branch is relatively free to implement whatever regulations it deems appropriate to protect us from climate change. This is judged to be overweening state power that is in conflict with the principles of limited government established by the Constitution. The value of this chapter lies in its legal brief related to the executive's regulatory power. It does not, however, make a particularly strong case that these powers are unconstitutional nor does it address the argument that the Constitution is an evolving document to be interpreted differently by different generations. In the late 18th century, limiting the power of the Crown may well have been a necessary political goal to provide the benefits described in the Constitution's Preamble, but limiting the power of a more democratic government may not be so critical in the early 21st century, particularly as we now understand how common market failures are and how disasterous they can be.
The second chapter is written by Michaels himself. It is among the weakest. He attempts to describe the recent political circumstance related to climate change policies and regulations, but fails to provide any coherent story that sheds light on our politics. It is instead, a hodge podge of disjointed observations related to cap and trade legislation, the "climategate" emails, the 2009 Convention on Climate Change in Copenhagen, and the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.
The third chapter, by Ross McKitrick, is a critique of the peer review process used by scientific journals. This is something that climate change "skeptics" have been complaining about for quite some time. They argue that the peer review process is controlled by a small group of editors who dismiss any findings that contradict the editors' views about climate change. Consequently, the appearance of a consensus has formed around specific climate change hypotheses, when in fact many scientists disagree with the received opinions.
It is interesting to note that the hypotheses that journal editors have been said to have summarily dismissed have changed. At first, the skeptics asserted that there was no real consensus that the planet is warming, but such views could not be published. Eventually, they began accepting that the planet is warming, but that the warming was not a product of human actions. Today, they appear to be coming around to accepting that human actions -- at least in part -- is warming the planet, but that the consequences of this are not as grave as is being asserted by the experts. The only consistency in the skeptics' position is that we shouldn't worry about climate change and that we should continue to emit carbon at the rates we have been, lest our economy suffer.
It is hard not to read McKitrick's complaints about the peer review process as so much sour grapes for not seeing his and his ideological friends' papers accepted for publication. If their arguments were genuinely strong, a cabal of editors could not keep them from the scientific community. Today, science employs "pre-publication" databases; the most prominent of which is arXiv (see arXiv.org) which permits any academic or person sponsored by someone with posting privileges to post papers to the arXiv database. In many fields, particularly physics, publication in a peer reviewed journal will only occur after the paper has been posted to arXiv and has been favorably cited in arXiv by other researchers. Publication in a peer reviewed journal is becoming a way of archiving a finalized version of already well-received research. Pre-publication databases and other open source venues are eroding, if not destroying, the power of journal editors as gatekeepers of scientific research.
Ivan Eland's chapter is on U.S. security. Eland argues that the recent evaluations by the Defense Department overstate the dangers that climate change poses to U.S. strategic interests. His arguments are better than most in Climate Coup. Eland acknowledges that the most egregious effects of climate change are likely to affect Africa and southern Asia, but these regions historically have not been seen to be vital to US interests and, according to Eland, are not likely to be so in the future. More realistic threats to U.S. interests stem from the stationing of U.S. forces around the world. If these forces were brought home, the U.S. would not be blamed for the suffering that climate change might cause. Furthermore, the oceanic barriers that the U.S. enjoys will be sufficient to insulate the country from social and political upheavals in the rest of the world.
Eland's analysis is consistent with the growing isolationist tendency among libertarians and is compatible with the views of the peace movement of the American left. Furthermore, he indicts the Pentagon for exaggerating the security threat posed by climate change. Its motive is to justify continued or increased defense appropriations.
Among the better chapters in Climate Coup is Sallie James's article on international trade. James argues that any country that would unilaterally implement a policy to reduce carbon emissions will place itself in a competitive disadvantage vis-a-vis countries that do not implement comparable policies. In this respect, she particularly criticizes cap and trade policies. In principle, this sounds right; however, it isn't clear how significant the disadvantage would be nor whether a cap and trade policy might not stimulate the creation of alternative industries that would in the long run provide an economic advantage to a carbon regulating country. Furthermore, she does not entertain the possibility that were the United States to show international leadership by passing a meaningful carbon tax, this would create an economic climate that would allow others to follow suit without economic disadvantage.
James also considers the possible equalizing effective of a tariff placed on goods coming from countries that do not take measures to reduce their carbon emissions. She concludes that either these countries would merely take their business elsewhere or the tariffs would ignite retaliatory measure that would destroy the possibility for international cooperation which is necessary to tackle a global problem like climate change.
While one might take issue with some of James's conclusions, one must acknowledge the expertise of neo-liberals regarding the dynamics of international trade. The dangers, however, must be weighed against the costs (often externalized) of continuing to emit carbon.
In the sixth chapter, Indur M. Goklony addresses the consequences of climate change on developing nations. It is widely believed that developing nations are most vulnerable to the harms that climate change threatens, both because of their geographies and their poverty. Goklony argues that imposing emission controls on developing nations will cripple their economic growth which will be necessary for mitigating or adapting to the harms of climate change.
Goklony's arguments are reprised in Robert E. Davis's chapter on health. Davis challenges the claim that climate change has caused significant health problems and will in the future cause significant health problems; however, the claim about the interaction of climate change and health in the past is of little consequence as few people argue that climate change has yet had a significant effect on public health. Regarding future health threats, it is hard to believe that the dislocation of coastal populations, droughts, floods, wildfires, and transformed ecosystems will not have significant effects on human health. Davis argues that populations have dealt with all of these kinds of problems in the past and with continued economic growth, health indicators will continue to improve even in the face of climate change.
The final chapter by Neal McCluskey examines how climate change is portrayed in primary and secondary schools. It is so riddled with elementary fallacies that it is not really worth reviewing.
The recurrent appeal to the importance of economic growth for addressing climate change is at the heart of Climate Coup. As climate skeptics have progressively abandoned positions that they have held previously, their arguments are crystallizing around the view that the dangers of climate change are too slight to justify public regulation of the industry. This should come as no surprise as the skeptics rarely are climate scientists, but are more often economists, businessmen, and politicians. Their stake in the carbon industry has been revealed by many including Naomi Oreskes and Erik Conway in their excellent book, Merchants of Doubt, reviewed in this blog.
What is most worrying about the skeptics' public relations campaigns to stave off action to protect the planet is that as green house gases accumulate in the atmosphere, we genuinely risk reaching a tipping point that will propel the planet into a new stable state that makes civilization as we know it or even life itself impossible on the planet. To argue that we must continue down this path as the most effective way of escaping its dangers is a kind of brinksmanship that risks everything and it is based on scientific heterodoxy and a dubious economic theory.
At the same time, it is important to accurately assess the genuine dangers that climate change possess and not to overstate them, particularly as geo-engineering proposals are being seriously discussed. Geo-engineering would be enormously risky in that the unintended consequences of deliberately modifying the ecosystem to the extent that unprecedented climate change might be halted may cause greater problems still.
Showing posts with label Law. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Law. Show all posts
Wednesday, September 7, 2011
Saturday, December 11, 2010
The Constitutional and Political History of the United States, Vol. 1 / Hermann von Holst -- Chicago: Callaghan and Co., 1889
Von Holst describes his eight volume work The Constitutional and Political History of the United States as the work of a lifetime and after reading volume one and volume seven, I can say that it was a worthwhile life. The first volume, entitled State Sovereignty and Slavery traces the political currents of the period 1750-1833. Von Holst makes two clear and strong arguments. First, the fundamental constitutional question of the time was state sovereignty and second, either explicitly or implicitly, the status of slavery animated the dispute between federalists and states rights advocates. There is, however, a third mostly subtextual argument: specific political commitments usually trumped commitments to constitutional principles.
The volume begins by describing attitudes toward government and national identity in the colonial period through the period governed by the Articles of Confederation. The inadequacies of the Articles of Confederation led to the Constitutional Convention that resulted in the adoption of the Constitution. Von Holst's description of the negotiations leading to adoption is compelling.
The great bulk of the book, however, traces the political conflicts that strained the bonds of union. The imposition of a tax on wiskey led to threats of rebellion in Western Pennsylvania, which was suppressed by resolute proclamations from President Washington and a lessening of the tax. Later, in the wake of Genet's mission to the U.S., the "XYZ Affair," and the Alien and Sedition Laws during the Adams administration, Madison and Jefferson drafted the Virginia and Kentucky Resolutions, proclaiming the authority of the states to "interpose" (Madison) themselves between the federal government and the state or to "nullify" (Jefferson) federal laws. These resolutions served as the cornerstones for future secessionist arguments.
Seccessionist arguments came, however, from the federalists as well. During Jefferson's administration, the embargo against England rankled Northeastern commercial interests so much that talk of succession arose there. Jefferson needed to insist on the authority of the federal government to maintain the embargo against federalist objections. Later, during the War of 1812, anti-war sentiment rose so high in New England that Rhodes Island, Massachusetts, and Connecticut sent delegates to a convention in Hartford to discuss seccession. The report of the convention asserted the value of establishing a separate league of states for self protection and implicitly recognized the right of secession.
Von Holst's treatment of the period following the War of 1812 tends to be more political than constitutional. In particular, he examines the disputes over slavery, in particular the extension of slavery to Florida, the Alabama territory, and the territory of the Louisiana purchase. However, his analysis inevitably returns to assertions of the right of states to secede and these assertions invariably come from those states that appear to be losing the battle for or against slavery.
Perhaps the greatest threat to the union prior to the Civil War came during Jackson's administration. Though ostensibly a states rights Democrat, Jackson opposed South Carolina's attempt to nullify the federal tarrif. Holst presents this conflict compellingly. The result was a political win-win which solved nothing. South Carolina insisted upon the right to nullify federal law, Jackson declared that federal troops would enforce federal law, and the tarrif that was the source of the conflict was reduced to a level that South Carolina could accept. Consequently, neither side needed to assert its claim in practice.
The tarrif nullification crisis demonstrated that federalists and states rights advocates were willing to use consitutional principles to assert their political agendas, but that in the end, a political compromise was always better than pushing the issue to civil war -- that is, of course, until 1861.
What is most clearly revealed in this volume is how tenuous the bonds of union were in the first decades of the nation's history. One is left with the impression that the bulk of opinion, among all parties, was that the federal government had no right to compell states to remain in the union, but that presidents appealed to the minority opinion in favor of federal supremacy to further their objectives. All that kept the union intact were political compromises sufficient to stay rebellion.
The volume begins by describing attitudes toward government and national identity in the colonial period through the period governed by the Articles of Confederation. The inadequacies of the Articles of Confederation led to the Constitutional Convention that resulted in the adoption of the Constitution. Von Holst's description of the negotiations leading to adoption is compelling.
The great bulk of the book, however, traces the political conflicts that strained the bonds of union. The imposition of a tax on wiskey led to threats of rebellion in Western Pennsylvania, which was suppressed by resolute proclamations from President Washington and a lessening of the tax. Later, in the wake of Genet's mission to the U.S., the "XYZ Affair," and the Alien and Sedition Laws during the Adams administration, Madison and Jefferson drafted the Virginia and Kentucky Resolutions, proclaiming the authority of the states to "interpose" (Madison) themselves between the federal government and the state or to "nullify" (Jefferson) federal laws. These resolutions served as the cornerstones for future secessionist arguments.
Seccessionist arguments came, however, from the federalists as well. During Jefferson's administration, the embargo against England rankled Northeastern commercial interests so much that talk of succession arose there. Jefferson needed to insist on the authority of the federal government to maintain the embargo against federalist objections. Later, during the War of 1812, anti-war sentiment rose so high in New England that Rhodes Island, Massachusetts, and Connecticut sent delegates to a convention in Hartford to discuss seccession. The report of the convention asserted the value of establishing a separate league of states for self protection and implicitly recognized the right of secession.
Von Holst's treatment of the period following the War of 1812 tends to be more political than constitutional. In particular, he examines the disputes over slavery, in particular the extension of slavery to Florida, the Alabama territory, and the territory of the Louisiana purchase. However, his analysis inevitably returns to assertions of the right of states to secede and these assertions invariably come from those states that appear to be losing the battle for or against slavery.
Perhaps the greatest threat to the union prior to the Civil War came during Jackson's administration. Though ostensibly a states rights Democrat, Jackson opposed South Carolina's attempt to nullify the federal tarrif. Holst presents this conflict compellingly. The result was a political win-win which solved nothing. South Carolina insisted upon the right to nullify federal law, Jackson declared that federal troops would enforce federal law, and the tarrif that was the source of the conflict was reduced to a level that South Carolina could accept. Consequently, neither side needed to assert its claim in practice.
The tarrif nullification crisis demonstrated that federalists and states rights advocates were willing to use consitutional principles to assert their political agendas, but that in the end, a political compromise was always better than pushing the issue to civil war -- that is, of course, until 1861.
What is most clearly revealed in this volume is how tenuous the bonds of union were in the first decades of the nation's history. One is left with the impression that the bulk of opinion, among all parties, was that the federal government had no right to compell states to remain in the union, but that presidents appealed to the minority opinion in favor of federal supremacy to further their objectives. All that kept the union intact were political compromises sufficient to stay rebellion.
Friday, September 24, 2010
Library Ethics / Jean Preer -- Westport, Conn: Libraries Unlimited, 2008
The following review is scheduled to be published in The Library Quarterly, 81(1), 2011.
There are two common approaches to thinking about ethics: descriptive and normative. Descriptive ethics attempts to understand the ethical standards employed by a person, institution, or society. Normative ethics attempts to justify specific ethical standards. Jean Preer’s Library Ethics is mainly descriptive. She writes, “this book will examine how our understanding of library ethics has evolved along with the development of librarianship itself” (p. xiii) and “librarians developed rules in practice that were determined by institutions, customs, and local needs. Indeed, ethics relates to ‘custom,’ the word deriving from ethos, the way things are done” (p. 2.). Often works of descriptive ethics are inherently conservative. They guide us by describing prevailing practices. Preer’s work does a fair job of avoiding this trap by giving fair accounts of countervailing ethical tendencies. In the end, the reader gains a firm understanding of the main ethical challenges facing the profession as well as the evolving answers to those challenges as codified in the American Library Association (ALA) Code of Ethics, the ALA Library Bill of Rights, and other documents. Moreover, the reader is poised to consider these issues more deeply and with fresh eyes.
Early on, Preer addresses the professional aspirations of 19th and early 20th century librarians. A code of ethics is presented as an essential element of any profession. While the aspiration to professional status may seem self-serving, the 1938 ALA Code gave guidance to library workers who sought to understand what the profession expected of them. One year later, the ALA Library Bill of Rights was a promise to patrons, communities, and the world as to what they could expect from the profession.
In tracing the subsequent development of these documents, Preer describes a transformation of ethical imperatives from concrete obligations to broad assertions of professional values. Her history begins with statements by eminent librarians, most importantly Charles Knowles Bolton’s 1909 library code. Bolton prescribed library administrators’ obligations to the library’s board, staff, and patrons. The 1938 ALA Code of Ethics preserved Bolton’s approach with its implicit value of library service; however, according to Preer, the social conditions and the practice of librarianship gradually changed the profession’s ethical foundations. In 1975, the ALA adopted a Statement on Professional Ethics in which specific obligations gave way to an assertion of values; furthermore, the explicit value of access replaced the implicit value of service.
Preer presents the re-conceptualization of library ethics from obligations to values as an advance, but it is hard to see how this is so. To provide concrete help in behaving ethically, a code must not be couched in overly general, ambiguous statements of value, particularly when the code includes multiple conflicting values, e.g., freedom of information and respect for copyright. This is not to say that statements of value are useless, but they must be able to specify obligations that direct our actions. Perhaps a more useful way to think about this history is that the elements of a general formula have been emphasized differently over time. Consider the basic ethical formula: “Librarian A has an obligation to B (a patron, community, or society) to do or not do action X.” Bolton’s code and the 1938 ALA Code more or less explicitly specified the formula’s variables, but by 1975, the object of our obligations (B) had become amorphous and the substance of our obligations (X) had become abstract. Given these changes, we indeed might want to characterize our code as asserting “values.” On the other hand, we simply may have abandoned the difficult work of identifying our obligations in favor of bromides that will pass in the ALA Council.
The more consequential evolution that Preer identifies is our shift from valuing service to valuing access. In the 19th and early 20th century, our ability to provide access was relatively limited. We, therefore, emphasized our role as educators. Preer quotes Alvin Johnson, president of the New School, as observing, “Not buildings nor even book collections, but trained, intelligent, enterprising library service makes a real library” (p. 10); but as the publishing industry expanded, as our collections grew, and as we developed increasingly sophisticated tools for controlling information, our emphasis shifted toward helping each patron access whatever information she or he could identify. The role that information plays in a democratic society ennobled this effort, but when access is the paramount value, the librarian’s primary role is technocratic. We identify the requested item or meme and provide it, increasingly “just in time” rather than “just in case.” We become, essentially, unfiltered search engines.
It is noteworthy that with the expansion of free, full-text internet access to increasing shares of the information universe, access is slipping out of the hands of librarians and into the hands of advertisers, like Google. If our primary value is access, this trend will undermine our reason for being and potentially doom the profession. The following might be as self-serving as developing a “professional” code of ethics, but resurrecting the venerable value of service could give us a more lasting future. At the same time, it will resurrect important ethical problems that faded with the valorization of access.
When service is paramount, other ethical obligations arise. Preer describes an early role of librarians as educators who sought to raise the intellectual and cultural standards of the community. She quotes ALA President Arthur Bostwick’s 1909 presidential address, saying that the books to be collected “must be morally beneficial, contain accurate information or satisfy the esthetic sense in its broadest meaning” (p. 90). Today, most librarians recoil from a role that seems to objectify goodness, truth, and beauty, but this might be only because of our recent, overriding commitment to ostensibly neutral access. Against this, the explosion of readily available information and the commercial provision of this information leaves patrons in need informed advice about which information sources to take seriously and which to ignore. A new day may be dawning for the services of the reader advisor.
Clearly, a move back to valuing service over access would resurface numerous ethical issues. Many of these issues are valuably illuminated by Preer’s fourth and fifth chapters, “Access: What Information” and “Conflicts of Interest: Philosophical.” Her fourth chapter focuses on issues of censorship and obscenity, but it also discusses quality assessment and selection criteria. Separating the wheat from the chaff can be the service that librarians add to ready online access. In her fifth chapter, Preer addresses significant ethical pitfalls on this path. It is difficult to know how we can set aside our “personal” beliefs when selecting items for their goodness, truth, and beauty. Indeed, what counts as a “personal” belief and whether we should set them aside merits examination. Different criteria might be needed for writing general guides versus offering specific advice to individual patrons. In any case, the expertise of the librarian would certainly be at a premium with this restored educational role. We would no longer be technocratic experts in document delivery, but we would become qualified subject specialists whose task would be to provide our patrons with the best of what they want, not merely anything that approximates it. This would require knowing the subject matter, the available resources, and the specific needs of the patron. In school and academic libraries a certain amount of paternalism would be in order just as teachers have an obligation to use their expertise to guide the research of their students. The ethics of librarians would begin to look more like the ethics of teachers.
Preer’s eighth chapter, “Confidentiality,” deserves special attention. Preer notes that confidentiality (or privacy) initially appears in conflict with access, but she does an admirable job of explaining how freedom of expression is predicated on freedom of inquiry which in turn requires a safe environment for inquiry. This can only come about when researchers have reasonable assurances that their research will not be made known against their will. Preer goes on to apply this principle to several circumstances and patron populations. The chapter ends with a succinct discussion of privacy in the era following Sept. 11, 2001 and the advent and implications of the USA PATRIOT Act.
Throughout Library Ethics, Preer traces the ethical attitudes within the library profession and how these attitudes became expressed in codes, statements, and particular policies. It is, as she declares, an examination of library ethics based on practice. Preer largely escapes the conservativism of descriptive ethics through the depth and sensitivity of her treatment of the issues. One might say that Library Ethics begs the normative ethical questions in a good way. The reader is left understanding many of the ethical issues that have challenged librarians as well as understanding how and why ethics codes and statements were promulgated. Equipped with this knowledge, the reader is primed to ask the ultimately more important normative questions.
There are two common approaches to thinking about ethics: descriptive and normative. Descriptive ethics attempts to understand the ethical standards employed by a person, institution, or society. Normative ethics attempts to justify specific ethical standards. Jean Preer’s Library Ethics is mainly descriptive. She writes, “this book will examine how our understanding of library ethics has evolved along with the development of librarianship itself” (p. xiii) and “librarians developed rules in practice that were determined by institutions, customs, and local needs. Indeed, ethics relates to ‘custom,’ the word deriving from ethos, the way things are done” (p. 2.). Often works of descriptive ethics are inherently conservative. They guide us by describing prevailing practices. Preer’s work does a fair job of avoiding this trap by giving fair accounts of countervailing ethical tendencies. In the end, the reader gains a firm understanding of the main ethical challenges facing the profession as well as the evolving answers to those challenges as codified in the American Library Association (ALA) Code of Ethics, the ALA Library Bill of Rights, and other documents. Moreover, the reader is poised to consider these issues more deeply and with fresh eyes.
Early on, Preer addresses the professional aspirations of 19th and early 20th century librarians. A code of ethics is presented as an essential element of any profession. While the aspiration to professional status may seem self-serving, the 1938 ALA Code gave guidance to library workers who sought to understand what the profession expected of them. One year later, the ALA Library Bill of Rights was a promise to patrons, communities, and the world as to what they could expect from the profession.
In tracing the subsequent development of these documents, Preer describes a transformation of ethical imperatives from concrete obligations to broad assertions of professional values. Her history begins with statements by eminent librarians, most importantly Charles Knowles Bolton’s 1909 library code. Bolton prescribed library administrators’ obligations to the library’s board, staff, and patrons. The 1938 ALA Code of Ethics preserved Bolton’s approach with its implicit value of library service; however, according to Preer, the social conditions and the practice of librarianship gradually changed the profession’s ethical foundations. In 1975, the ALA adopted a Statement on Professional Ethics in which specific obligations gave way to an assertion of values; furthermore, the explicit value of access replaced the implicit value of service.
Preer presents the re-conceptualization of library ethics from obligations to values as an advance, but it is hard to see how this is so. To provide concrete help in behaving ethically, a code must not be couched in overly general, ambiguous statements of value, particularly when the code includes multiple conflicting values, e.g., freedom of information and respect for copyright. This is not to say that statements of value are useless, but they must be able to specify obligations that direct our actions. Perhaps a more useful way to think about this history is that the elements of a general formula have been emphasized differently over time. Consider the basic ethical formula: “Librarian A has an obligation to B (a patron, community, or society) to do or not do action X.” Bolton’s code and the 1938 ALA Code more or less explicitly specified the formula’s variables, but by 1975, the object of our obligations (B) had become amorphous and the substance of our obligations (X) had become abstract. Given these changes, we indeed might want to characterize our code as asserting “values.” On the other hand, we simply may have abandoned the difficult work of identifying our obligations in favor of bromides that will pass in the ALA Council.
The more consequential evolution that Preer identifies is our shift from valuing service to valuing access. In the 19th and early 20th century, our ability to provide access was relatively limited. We, therefore, emphasized our role as educators. Preer quotes Alvin Johnson, president of the New School, as observing, “Not buildings nor even book collections, but trained, intelligent, enterprising library service makes a real library” (p. 10); but as the publishing industry expanded, as our collections grew, and as we developed increasingly sophisticated tools for controlling information, our emphasis shifted toward helping each patron access whatever information she or he could identify. The role that information plays in a democratic society ennobled this effort, but when access is the paramount value, the librarian’s primary role is technocratic. We identify the requested item or meme and provide it, increasingly “just in time” rather than “just in case.” We become, essentially, unfiltered search engines.
It is noteworthy that with the expansion of free, full-text internet access to increasing shares of the information universe, access is slipping out of the hands of librarians and into the hands of advertisers, like Google. If our primary value is access, this trend will undermine our reason for being and potentially doom the profession. The following might be as self-serving as developing a “professional” code of ethics, but resurrecting the venerable value of service could give us a more lasting future. At the same time, it will resurrect important ethical problems that faded with the valorization of access.
When service is paramount, other ethical obligations arise. Preer describes an early role of librarians as educators who sought to raise the intellectual and cultural standards of the community. She quotes ALA President Arthur Bostwick’s 1909 presidential address, saying that the books to be collected “must be morally beneficial, contain accurate information or satisfy the esthetic sense in its broadest meaning” (p. 90). Today, most librarians recoil from a role that seems to objectify goodness, truth, and beauty, but this might be only because of our recent, overriding commitment to ostensibly neutral access. Against this, the explosion of readily available information and the commercial provision of this information leaves patrons in need informed advice about which information sources to take seriously and which to ignore. A new day may be dawning for the services of the reader advisor.
Clearly, a move back to valuing service over access would resurface numerous ethical issues. Many of these issues are valuably illuminated by Preer’s fourth and fifth chapters, “Access: What Information” and “Conflicts of Interest: Philosophical.” Her fourth chapter focuses on issues of censorship and obscenity, but it also discusses quality assessment and selection criteria. Separating the wheat from the chaff can be the service that librarians add to ready online access. In her fifth chapter, Preer addresses significant ethical pitfalls on this path. It is difficult to know how we can set aside our “personal” beliefs when selecting items for their goodness, truth, and beauty. Indeed, what counts as a “personal” belief and whether we should set them aside merits examination. Different criteria might be needed for writing general guides versus offering specific advice to individual patrons. In any case, the expertise of the librarian would certainly be at a premium with this restored educational role. We would no longer be technocratic experts in document delivery, but we would become qualified subject specialists whose task would be to provide our patrons with the best of what they want, not merely anything that approximates it. This would require knowing the subject matter, the available resources, and the specific needs of the patron. In school and academic libraries a certain amount of paternalism would be in order just as teachers have an obligation to use their expertise to guide the research of their students. The ethics of librarians would begin to look more like the ethics of teachers.
Preer’s eighth chapter, “Confidentiality,” deserves special attention. Preer notes that confidentiality (or privacy) initially appears in conflict with access, but she does an admirable job of explaining how freedom of expression is predicated on freedom of inquiry which in turn requires a safe environment for inquiry. This can only come about when researchers have reasonable assurances that their research will not be made known against their will. Preer goes on to apply this principle to several circumstances and patron populations. The chapter ends with a succinct discussion of privacy in the era following Sept. 11, 2001 and the advent and implications of the USA PATRIOT Act.
Throughout Library Ethics, Preer traces the ethical attitudes within the library profession and how these attitudes became expressed in codes, statements, and particular policies. It is, as she declares, an examination of library ethics based on practice. Preer largely escapes the conservativism of descriptive ethics through the depth and sensitivity of her treatment of the issues. One might say that Library Ethics begs the normative ethical questions in a good way. The reader is left understanding many of the ethical issues that have challenged librarians as well as understanding how and why ethics codes and statements were promulgated. Equipped with this knowledge, the reader is primed to ask the ultimately more important normative questions.
Thursday, September 9, 2010
The Kingdom of God Is Within You: Christianity Not as a Mysitical Teaching But as a New Concept of Life / Leo Tolstoy -- Farrar, Straus & Cudahy, 1961
Leo Tolstoy's reputation as a novelist much overshadows his reputation as an author of non-fiction, but a great deal of his literary output is non-fictional. He was particularly concerned in the later stages of his career to express his views on religion and non-violence. His two most important works in this regard are My Religion also known as What I Believe and The Kingdom of God Is Within You. What he attacks in Kingdom gives ample reason for understanding why his views have been dismissed.
The work begins with an exposition of what Tolstoy thought was the central philosophy of Christ, expressed in Mathew 5:39, "I say unto you, That ye resist not evil: but whosoever shall smite thee on thy right cheek, turn to him the other also" (KJV). From this, Tolstoy constructs the moral philosophy of "non-resistance to evil:" a radical rejection of violence in all of its forms. Not only does this imperative proscribe serving in the army, it rejects serving as a police officer, and enacting punishments of any kind.
Tolstoy recognizes that all governments depend upon the threat of punishment and so consequently, he rejects government. Equally, he criticizes revolutionists inspired by a sense of justice to commit acts of violence, but he saves his deepest scorn for leaders of the Christian churches, who he sees as distorting and rejecting true Christianity. As worldly powers, Christian churches have made accommodations with secular powers and even vigorously endorsed various forms of violence at least since Constantine. His criticisms go beyond established institutions and their leaders as Tolstoy hold accountable upper and middle class individuals who accept the benefits of violent economic, social, and political arrangements.
With the depth and breadth of his critique, it is no wonder that his books were banned by Czarist Russia, and that he found no meaningful support from other governments, revolutionary socialist parties, the Christian church, or many people in the literate classes. His reputation as a "crank" was all but assured by his uncompromising attachment to the principle of non-violence.
Nonetheless, it is difficult to find fault with the basic thrust of his arguments. If we are to understand the message of Christ to be of historical significance, it must depart from the political and moral compromises that putatively Christian institutions have made. Such institutions could have engaged in exactly the same behavior as they have while embracing any number of secular ideologies, and had Christ's message been consistent with these actions and arguments, his contribution to the history of moral ideas would not be noteworthy.
If there is a weakness in Tolstoy's critique of law and punishment, it lies in his failure to recognize the possibility that self-imposed laws can be legitimately enforced by self-imposed punishments. A truly democratic society may adopt rules for behavior and employ punishments to guard against the weakness of will that characterizes us all, though one might argue that each person must willingly accept the legitimacy of the governing institution.
In defense of Tolstoy's critique of even ostensibly democratic governments, one can point out that no actual government is born of institutions that can confer truly democratic legitimacy, certainly not the U.S. government with its plutocratic electoral system. Consequently, the legitimate use of violence by a government can only occur under hypothetical circumstances.
Tolstoy's moral demands are strict, but they establish an ideal that deserves the deepest respect.
The work begins with an exposition of what Tolstoy thought was the central philosophy of Christ, expressed in Mathew 5:39, "I say unto you, That ye resist not evil: but whosoever shall smite thee on thy right cheek, turn to him the other also" (KJV). From this, Tolstoy constructs the moral philosophy of "non-resistance to evil:" a radical rejection of violence in all of its forms. Not only does this imperative proscribe serving in the army, it rejects serving as a police officer, and enacting punishments of any kind.
Tolstoy recognizes that all governments depend upon the threat of punishment and so consequently, he rejects government. Equally, he criticizes revolutionists inspired by a sense of justice to commit acts of violence, but he saves his deepest scorn for leaders of the Christian churches, who he sees as distorting and rejecting true Christianity. As worldly powers, Christian churches have made accommodations with secular powers and even vigorously endorsed various forms of violence at least since Constantine. His criticisms go beyond established institutions and their leaders as Tolstoy hold accountable upper and middle class individuals who accept the benefits of violent economic, social, and political arrangements.
With the depth and breadth of his critique, it is no wonder that his books were banned by Czarist Russia, and that he found no meaningful support from other governments, revolutionary socialist parties, the Christian church, or many people in the literate classes. His reputation as a "crank" was all but assured by his uncompromising attachment to the principle of non-violence.
Nonetheless, it is difficult to find fault with the basic thrust of his arguments. If we are to understand the message of Christ to be of historical significance, it must depart from the political and moral compromises that putatively Christian institutions have made. Such institutions could have engaged in exactly the same behavior as they have while embracing any number of secular ideologies, and had Christ's message been consistent with these actions and arguments, his contribution to the history of moral ideas would not be noteworthy.
If there is a weakness in Tolstoy's critique of law and punishment, it lies in his failure to recognize the possibility that self-imposed laws can be legitimately enforced by self-imposed punishments. A truly democratic society may adopt rules for behavior and employ punishments to guard against the weakness of will that characterizes us all, though one might argue that each person must willingly accept the legitimacy of the governing institution.
In defense of Tolstoy's critique of even ostensibly democratic governments, one can point out that no actual government is born of institutions that can confer truly democratic legitimacy, certainly not the U.S. government with its plutocratic electoral system. Consequently, the legitimate use of violence by a government can only occur under hypothetical circumstances.
Tolstoy's moral demands are strict, but they establish an ideal that deserves the deepest respect.
Wednesday, April 28, 2010
Slavery and the Supreme Court, 1825-1861 / Earl M. Maltz -- Lawrence, Kan.: University Press of Kansas, 2009
In the decades preceding the Civil War, the question of slavery grew to be all consuming: morally, politically, socially, economically, and legally. Maltz's Slavery and the Supreme Court is a close analysis of the legal issues related to slavery. Often the cases that were before state and federal courts directly addressed a particular issue among a nexus of slavery issues, but more often jurists chose to skirt the central issue and argue their cases on the tangential grounds of jurisdiction and standing. Consequently, a study of the antebellum slavery cases is complex and technical. Maltz does not shy away from these details, making his work difficult and sometimes turgid for anyone without a legal background.
Despite the challenge, Slavery and the Supreme Court repays careful the attention of a lay reader. Four issues dominated the legal history of slavery: the international slave trade, the interstate slave trade, fugitive slave laws, and the territorial expansion of slavery. Among these, fugitive slave laws were the most contentious, though the issue of the expansion of slavery into the territories ultimately led to the war.
Maltz describes the suppression of the international slave trade and the 1825 Supreme Court case known as The Antelope which established the power of the federal government to enforce the Constitutional ban on the international slave trade. A more complex legal struggle followed in 1841 when the power of the federal government to regulate the interstate slave trade came before the Court in Groves v. Slaughter. Here the constitution of the state of Mississippi banned the importation of slaves, but nonetheless slaves were imported during the 1830s. So many so, that promissory notes were issued to pay for them. When the Mississippi economy collapsed, purchasers relied on the constitutional ban to renege on their promises. In a split and complicated set of opinions, the Court was understood to have denied the authority of the federal government to regulate the interstate slave trade and endorsed the power of states to regulate it; however, the Courts opinions indicated an unwillingness to deal directly with the central legal issues and instead the Court fashioned a decision that would avoid sectional conflict.
The issue of Fugitive Slaves was more complicated still. Ostensibly protected by a Constitutional guarantee, slave catchers were retrieving runaway slaves through out the North -- much to the disapproval of Northerners. By the 1820s, many free states had passed "personal liberty laws" requiring slave catchers to establish the identity of runaway slaves before a state court. Essentially, the legal obstacles would put them out of business. In Prigg v. Pennsylvania, these laws were put to the test. Again, the Court's opinion was based less on legal principle and more on political expedience. While striking down Pennsylvania's personal liberty law and allowing slave catchers to transport their captives back into slavery, Prigg v. Pennsylvania denied that the federal government or state governments had any obligation to assist in the capture of runaway slaves. In practice, this turned out to be a victory for the anti-slavery forces.
In 1850, Congress addressed the issue in the Fugitive Slave Act which was part of a set of compromise laws related to slavery. The Fugitive Slave Act required federal and state governments to assist in the capture of runaways. It even authorized the authorities to require private citizens to participate in the capture. Anti-slavery forces were, of course, outraged and often attempted to avoid abiding by this law. Among the most important cases that came of this resistance was Ableman v. Booth in which the Wisconsin Supreme Court attempted to nullify the 1850 Fugitive Slave Act and acquit Sherman Booth of assisting in the escape of a Joshua Glover, a runaway slave. The incident took place in 1854, but the case dragged on until 1859 with Wisconsin curiously rejecting the authority of the federal government to enforce federal law. Ultimately, the Supreme Court held in favor of federal authority.
While Ableman v. Booth was being litigated, the most famous Supreme Court slavery case, Dred Scott v. Sandford, was tried. Here the critical issue turned on the authority of the federal government to prohibit slavery in the territories. Famously, Chief Justice Roger Taney wrote for the majority of a divided court that the federal government had no such power. This clearly established a central aim of the pro-slavery forces, but according to Maltz, even this ruling was an attempt by the Court to fashion a solution that would end sectional strife, this time by taking a contentious issue out of the political arena. Of course it did nothing of the sort, and opposition to the Dred Scott decision was a powerful force leading to the election of Abraham Lincoln and other Republican law makers.
One last case, Kentucky v. Dennison (1860), that Maltz describes clearly expressed the dominant judicial view in the South just prior to secession. Here the Court ruled that the Governor of Ohio, William Dennison, was required to extradite a man accused of assisting the escape of a slave, but that the federal government had no power to enforce this mandate. This was precisely the view that leading Southerners and President Buchannan held with regard to secession. Southern states had no constitutional right to secede, but the federal government had no authority to take action against them if they did.
In all, the judicial issues related to slavery prior to the war turned on numerous judicial principles and constitutional issues that did not always speak directly to slavery: most important was the power of states vis-a-vis the federal government, but also the commerce clause, the comity clause, the relationship between the fugitive slave clause and the extradition clause, and the power of states to establish who among their residents would be citizens. Maltz's treatment of these issues makes it clear that the pro-slavery and anti-slavery advocates were willing to adopt any position on these issues that would further their cause and that the Supreme Court justices sought to avoid sectional conflict by issuing opinions that dubiously respected judicial and constitutional principles in favor of sectional harmony. Nonetheless, in the words of William Seward, the country was heading into and "irrepressible conflict," where antagonistic political forces would not be denied by Court rulings.
Despite the challenge, Slavery and the Supreme Court repays careful the attention of a lay reader. Four issues dominated the legal history of slavery: the international slave trade, the interstate slave trade, fugitive slave laws, and the territorial expansion of slavery. Among these, fugitive slave laws were the most contentious, though the issue of the expansion of slavery into the territories ultimately led to the war.
Maltz describes the suppression of the international slave trade and the 1825 Supreme Court case known as The Antelope which established the power of the federal government to enforce the Constitutional ban on the international slave trade. A more complex legal struggle followed in 1841 when the power of the federal government to regulate the interstate slave trade came before the Court in Groves v. Slaughter. Here the constitution of the state of Mississippi banned the importation of slaves, but nonetheless slaves were imported during the 1830s. So many so, that promissory notes were issued to pay for them. When the Mississippi economy collapsed, purchasers relied on the constitutional ban to renege on their promises. In a split and complicated set of opinions, the Court was understood to have denied the authority of the federal government to regulate the interstate slave trade and endorsed the power of states to regulate it; however, the Courts opinions indicated an unwillingness to deal directly with the central legal issues and instead the Court fashioned a decision that would avoid sectional conflict.
The issue of Fugitive Slaves was more complicated still. Ostensibly protected by a Constitutional guarantee, slave catchers were retrieving runaway slaves through out the North -- much to the disapproval of Northerners. By the 1820s, many free states had passed "personal liberty laws" requiring slave catchers to establish the identity of runaway slaves before a state court. Essentially, the legal obstacles would put them out of business. In Prigg v. Pennsylvania, these laws were put to the test. Again, the Court's opinion was based less on legal principle and more on political expedience. While striking down Pennsylvania's personal liberty law and allowing slave catchers to transport their captives back into slavery, Prigg v. Pennsylvania denied that the federal government or state governments had any obligation to assist in the capture of runaway slaves. In practice, this turned out to be a victory for the anti-slavery forces.
In 1850, Congress addressed the issue in the Fugitive Slave Act which was part of a set of compromise laws related to slavery. The Fugitive Slave Act required federal and state governments to assist in the capture of runaways. It even authorized the authorities to require private citizens to participate in the capture. Anti-slavery forces were, of course, outraged and often attempted to avoid abiding by this law. Among the most important cases that came of this resistance was Ableman v. Booth in which the Wisconsin Supreme Court attempted to nullify the 1850 Fugitive Slave Act and acquit Sherman Booth of assisting in the escape of a Joshua Glover, a runaway slave. The incident took place in 1854, but the case dragged on until 1859 with Wisconsin curiously rejecting the authority of the federal government to enforce federal law. Ultimately, the Supreme Court held in favor of federal authority.
While Ableman v. Booth was being litigated, the most famous Supreme Court slavery case, Dred Scott v. Sandford, was tried. Here the critical issue turned on the authority of the federal government to prohibit slavery in the territories. Famously, Chief Justice Roger Taney wrote for the majority of a divided court that the federal government had no such power. This clearly established a central aim of the pro-slavery forces, but according to Maltz, even this ruling was an attempt by the Court to fashion a solution that would end sectional strife, this time by taking a contentious issue out of the political arena. Of course it did nothing of the sort, and opposition to the Dred Scott decision was a powerful force leading to the election of Abraham Lincoln and other Republican law makers.
One last case, Kentucky v. Dennison (1860), that Maltz describes clearly expressed the dominant judicial view in the South just prior to secession. Here the Court ruled that the Governor of Ohio, William Dennison, was required to extradite a man accused of assisting the escape of a slave, but that the federal government had no power to enforce this mandate. This was precisely the view that leading Southerners and President Buchannan held with regard to secession. Southern states had no constitutional right to secede, but the federal government had no authority to take action against them if they did.
In all, the judicial issues related to slavery prior to the war turned on numerous judicial principles and constitutional issues that did not always speak directly to slavery: most important was the power of states vis-a-vis the federal government, but also the commerce clause, the comity clause, the relationship between the fugitive slave clause and the extradition clause, and the power of states to establish who among their residents would be citizens. Maltz's treatment of these issues makes it clear that the pro-slavery and anti-slavery advocates were willing to adopt any position on these issues that would further their cause and that the Supreme Court justices sought to avoid sectional conflict by issuing opinions that dubiously respected judicial and constitutional principles in favor of sectional harmony. Nonetheless, in the words of William Seward, the country was heading into and "irrepressible conflict," where antagonistic political forces would not be denied by Court rulings.
Monday, March 29, 2010
The Codes of Hammurabi and Moses with Copious Comments, Index, and Bible References / W.W. Davies -- Cincinnati: Jennings and Graham, 1905
More recent translations of The Code of Hammurabi are probably more reliable than Davies's 1905 translation, but the "copious comments, index, and Bible references" in this translation make it well worth perusing. Davies writes in his introduction that Hammurabi flourished about 2250 BC. More recent historians place him 500 years later (see Gerda Lerner's The Creation of Patriarchy and The Ancient Near East, Vol 1, edited by James B. Pritchard); but even this later date places his Code well before Mosaic Law, and so it is interesting to see what in Mosaic Law is prefigured in Hammurabi's Code. Davies's volume goes beyond annotating Hammurabi with Biblical citations. It often includes the full Biblical text for comparison and is valuably augmented by his commentary.
The strong similarities between the two legal systems probably does not indicate a direct borrowing of one from the other, but instead is evidence of the continuity between the Old Babylonian society and Judea of the first millennium BC. The Code is a remarkable compendium of contract law, family law, and criminal law. There are even regulations for sentencing and clues to judicial procedure. Careful study can reveal the relative legal standing of different elements of the society and broad principles of justice, most generally: lex talionis.
Punishments ranged from fines -- usually a multiple of the value of what was illegally lost, stolen, or destroyed -- to whipping, mutilation, and death. Executions generally were accomplished by drowning or burning the felon, possibly burning him or her alive.
The parallels with Mosaic Law and even with contemporary legal principles are sometimes striking, leading one to wonder how deeply seated is our sense of justice.
Perhaps most interesting, though, is the inventory of social positions and occupations that can be generated from the Code, giving the careful reader a vivid picture of life in Old Babylon where grains, fruit, cattle, oxen, sheep, asses, and goats provided sustenance. The Code regulates farmers, herders, orchard growers, tenants, landlords, sailors, traveling salesmen, teamsters, business agents, money lenders, doctors, artisans, brick makers, tailors, stone cutters, carpenters, builders, tavern keepers, kings, priests, sacred prostitutes, slaves, masters, indentured servants, husbands, wives, concubines, fathers, step-fathers, mothers, sons, daughters, brothers, neighbors, and aliens. The mores and behavior of these people are revealed by the laws that Hammurabi found necessary to promulgate. Infractions were few enough to be regulated, but frequent enough to need regulation.
The strong similarities between the two legal systems probably does not indicate a direct borrowing of one from the other, but instead is evidence of the continuity between the Old Babylonian society and Judea of the first millennium BC. The Code is a remarkable compendium of contract law, family law, and criminal law. There are even regulations for sentencing and clues to judicial procedure. Careful study can reveal the relative legal standing of different elements of the society and broad principles of justice, most generally: lex talionis.
Punishments ranged from fines -- usually a multiple of the value of what was illegally lost, stolen, or destroyed -- to whipping, mutilation, and death. Executions generally were accomplished by drowning or burning the felon, possibly burning him or her alive.
The parallels with Mosaic Law and even with contemporary legal principles are sometimes striking, leading one to wonder how deeply seated is our sense of justice.
Perhaps most interesting, though, is the inventory of social positions and occupations that can be generated from the Code, giving the careful reader a vivid picture of life in Old Babylon where grains, fruit, cattle, oxen, sheep, asses, and goats provided sustenance. The Code regulates farmers, herders, orchard growers, tenants, landlords, sailors, traveling salesmen, teamsters, business agents, money lenders, doctors, artisans, brick makers, tailors, stone cutters, carpenters, builders, tavern keepers, kings, priests, sacred prostitutes, slaves, masters, indentured servants, husbands, wives, concubines, fathers, step-fathers, mothers, sons, daughters, brothers, neighbors, and aliens. The mores and behavior of these people are revealed by the laws that Hammurabi found necessary to promulgate. Infractions were few enough to be regulated, but frequent enough to need regulation.
Sunday, March 28, 2010
Lincoln on Trial: Southern Civilians and the Law of War / Burrus M. Carnahan -- Lexington, KY: University Press of Kentucky, 2010
The recent "War on Terrorism" has generated some perplexing legal problems with regard to how a nation state, in particular the U.S., may treat "unlawful combatants," i.e., persons who are members of a non-state terrorist group. As such, they are said not to enjoy the protections of the Third Geneva Convention. Furthermore, the U.S. government asserts the right to detain them until the end of hostilities; however, when such persons are U.S. citizens, their right to petition for habeas corpus stands against the government's claim to detain them for the duration of hostilities. Clear and uncomplicated rulings on these issues seem remote, and it is doubtful that the law governing such cases will be settled anytime soon.
The difficulty is not without precedent, though, as is demonstrated in Burrus M. Carnahan's recent book Lincoln on Trial. Carnahan amply illustrates the legal, political, and moral difficulties that Lincoln and the military forces of the Union had in dealing with Confederate rebels. As with the current conflict, the legal treatment of Confederate rebels was complex and at times contradictory.
At the start of the war, Lincoln took pains to do nothing that would bestow sovereign status on the seceded states. This was far from simple. The first challenge was to maintain a blockade of Southern ports. To be effective, the blockade would require Union ships to search and seize ships and their cargoes outside of the territorial waters of the U.S. Under international law, this would be permitted only if the South were recognized as a sovereign state.
Similarly, the right of the Union armies to appropriate supplies from non-combatant Southerners would exist only if the population was deemed an alien population, not protected by the Constitution. Furthermore, captured Union soldiers could not be exchanged for Confederate soldiers unless all were officially classified as prisoners of war. Lincoln's response to these dilemmas was to gradually act as though the Confederacy was a sovereign state.
Carnahan's book is primarily a litany of ostensible violations of the rights of Southern non-combatants. Through out, Carnahan argues that Lincoln largely allowed his generals to interpret and abide by rules of engagement for Union troops developed and outlined by Francis Lieber in the Lieber Code; however, when specific controversial acts that did not seem justified by military necessity were brought to his attention, Lincoln commonly intervened without ever establishing broader executive orders to prevent future abuses.
The final verdict appears to be that Lincoln expected his generals to interpret and abide by a code of conduct that might justify significant attrocities under strained interpretations, but would not, himself, reach those interpretations. In all, Lincoln appears to have approached the problem pragmatically, seeking to minimize damage to the South, without compromising the aims of the war.
The difficulty is not without precedent, though, as is demonstrated in Burrus M. Carnahan's recent book Lincoln on Trial. Carnahan amply illustrates the legal, political, and moral difficulties that Lincoln and the military forces of the Union had in dealing with Confederate rebels. As with the current conflict, the legal treatment of Confederate rebels was complex and at times contradictory.
At the start of the war, Lincoln took pains to do nothing that would bestow sovereign status on the seceded states. This was far from simple. The first challenge was to maintain a blockade of Southern ports. To be effective, the blockade would require Union ships to search and seize ships and their cargoes outside of the territorial waters of the U.S. Under international law, this would be permitted only if the South were recognized as a sovereign state.
Similarly, the right of the Union armies to appropriate supplies from non-combatant Southerners would exist only if the population was deemed an alien population, not protected by the Constitution. Furthermore, captured Union soldiers could not be exchanged for Confederate soldiers unless all were officially classified as prisoners of war. Lincoln's response to these dilemmas was to gradually act as though the Confederacy was a sovereign state.
Carnahan's book is primarily a litany of ostensible violations of the rights of Southern non-combatants. Through out, Carnahan argues that Lincoln largely allowed his generals to interpret and abide by rules of engagement for Union troops developed and outlined by Francis Lieber in the Lieber Code; however, when specific controversial acts that did not seem justified by military necessity were brought to his attention, Lincoln commonly intervened without ever establishing broader executive orders to prevent future abuses.
The final verdict appears to be that Lincoln expected his generals to interpret and abide by a code of conduct that might justify significant attrocities under strained interpretations, but would not, himself, reach those interpretations. In all, Lincoln appears to have approached the problem pragmatically, seeking to minimize damage to the South, without compromising the aims of the war.
Tuesday, October 20, 2009
The Constitutional and Political History of the United States, Vol. 7 / Hermann von Holst -- Chicago: Callaghan and Co., 1892
From 1889 to 1892, Professor Hermann von Holst of the University of Freiburg saw the publication of an English translation of his eight volume constitutional and political history of the United States. The first seven volumes trace events from 1750 to the inauguration of Abraham Lincoln in March of 1861. The final volume is an index to the work. Volume seven covers just the last two years of that period and consequently provides a hoard of fascinating details describing the collapse of any hope for avoiding the secession of the several Southern states and civil war.
Horst begins his work with an account of John Brown and his raid on the arsenal at Harper's Ferry. He indicates that the overly excited reaction to Brown revealed a deep seated fear that the South was reaching the end of its ability to maintain control of federal institutions. His account of subsequent actions by Southern politicians makes a strong case. For example, the rabid reaction against Hinton Rowan Helper's book The Impending Crisis of the South indicated how tenuous the planter class felt their political power was over non-slave owning Southern whites.
Yet most of the Horst's work describes the efforts of Northern (or conservative) Democrats to placate the Southern radicals and the machinations of politicians of every party to advance their political goals. Central to these events were Constitutional interpretations related to the right to property in slaves and the right of a state to secede. His account of James Buchanan's view on secession is especially interesting. Buchanan held that while a state had no right to secede, the federal government had no right to use force to prevent its secession. Horst properly criticizes this view as incoherent, but does not make clear what Buchanan's motivations might have been for holding the view. At times, he seems to suggest that Buchanan was quietly encouraging the South to secede, but sought to avoid war while he was in office. At other times, it seems that Buchanan honestly believed that by taking a passive position on secession, prodigal states would soon enough return to the Union without war.
Other politicians (including some Republicans) seemed equally eager to accommodate the wishes of the Southern radicals in an effort to avoid war; however, the political division within the Democratic Party was too great for them to reach agreement on how to deal with slavery. Southern radicals sought to explicitly enshrine slavery in the Constitution, while conservative Democrats supported Stephen A. Douglas's doctrine of "popular sovereignty" in which states would be free to permit or prohibit slavery as they saw fit. These disagreements played out in a series of political conventions that ultimate split the Democratic Party and led to Lincoln's election by a Republican plurality.
What is most amazing was the unending efforts by politicians to reach a compromise and the willingness of many Republicans to abandon the slavery planks of their platform to head off war. The leading Republican of the time, William Seward, engaged in private negotiations prior to joining the Lincoln administration. According to Horst, Seward offered to accept slavery to avert the war; however, the inertia leading to secession was far too advanced to be stopped.
Horst's account is detailed and convincing and makes the reader wish Horst had continued the story at least to the conclusion of the war; however, one is consoled by the knowledge that this was only volume seven and that six previous volumes are likely to be equally engaging.
Horst begins his work with an account of John Brown and his raid on the arsenal at Harper's Ferry. He indicates that the overly excited reaction to Brown revealed a deep seated fear that the South was reaching the end of its ability to maintain control of federal institutions. His account of subsequent actions by Southern politicians makes a strong case. For example, the rabid reaction against Hinton Rowan Helper's book The Impending Crisis of the South indicated how tenuous the planter class felt their political power was over non-slave owning Southern whites.
Yet most of the Horst's work describes the efforts of Northern (or conservative) Democrats to placate the Southern radicals and the machinations of politicians of every party to advance their political goals. Central to these events were Constitutional interpretations related to the right to property in slaves and the right of a state to secede. His account of James Buchanan's view on secession is especially interesting. Buchanan held that while a state had no right to secede, the federal government had no right to use force to prevent its secession. Horst properly criticizes this view as incoherent, but does not make clear what Buchanan's motivations might have been for holding the view. At times, he seems to suggest that Buchanan was quietly encouraging the South to secede, but sought to avoid war while he was in office. At other times, it seems that Buchanan honestly believed that by taking a passive position on secession, prodigal states would soon enough return to the Union without war.
Other politicians (including some Republicans) seemed equally eager to accommodate the wishes of the Southern radicals in an effort to avoid war; however, the political division within the Democratic Party was too great for them to reach agreement on how to deal with slavery. Southern radicals sought to explicitly enshrine slavery in the Constitution, while conservative Democrats supported Stephen A. Douglas's doctrine of "popular sovereignty" in which states would be free to permit or prohibit slavery as they saw fit. These disagreements played out in a series of political conventions that ultimate split the Democratic Party and led to Lincoln's election by a Republican plurality.
What is most amazing was the unending efforts by politicians to reach a compromise and the willingness of many Republicans to abandon the slavery planks of their platform to head off war. The leading Republican of the time, William Seward, engaged in private negotiations prior to joining the Lincoln administration. According to Horst, Seward offered to accept slavery to avert the war; however, the inertia leading to secession was far too advanced to be stopped.
Horst's account is detailed and convincing and makes the reader wish Horst had continued the story at least to the conclusion of the war; however, one is consoled by the knowledge that this was only volume seven and that six previous volumes are likely to be equally engaging.
Wednesday, July 2, 2008
Information on the Renunciation of War, 1927-1928 / John Wheeler Wheeler-Bennett
Wheeler-Bennett's The Renunciation of War, 1927-1928 contains a long essay explaining the diplomacy that resulted in the signing of the Kellogg-Briand Pact which renounced war as an instrument of national policy. In all, 14 countries including the six leading powers of the time signed the pact. The Pact marked a high point in the international effort to outlaw war. Wheeler-Bennett also inlcudes the text of diplomatic letters and crucial speeches related to the negotiations. Among the most interesting documents is the Soviet Union's critique of the Pact, which nonetheless did not prevent it from adhering to it.
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