Yesterday, I went to the U.S. Second Circuit to observe the oral arguments in the Doninger case. However, before we got to those arguments, there were several other cases being addressed. It is useful to look at these cases a little to get some background for the Doninger case. In my reflections about the courtroom, I observed that there were two busts at the entrance to the courtroom. One was of Learned Hand, and the other was of Henry Friendly. Judge Hand is noted for his cases involving freedom of speech. However, that is not all that the court hears. Judge Friendly is noted for his expertise in Securities Law and that was part of the mix.

The first case seemed a bit arcane and, at least to me, uninteresting. I’m sure that it was interesting to people with a vested interest. As best as I could make out, it is continued legal wrangling about Computer Associations and a Special Litigation Committee that they set up to investigate Charles Wang, founder of Computer Associates, of fraudulent accounting. Key issues seemed to be whether or not cases were filed in a timely fashion by the right people or legal entities.

This was followed by questioning about several motions. A representative of the National Labor Review Board appeared by the judges to discuss the wording of some document. There was a long complicated discussion about some company in Brazil and trademark issues. A lot of people were very interested in this case and left after the arguments. There was another trademark case. Both of these seemed to be about who would be permitted, or not to permitted to take which legal actions, when and where. Like the Computer Associates case, this is probably really important to some people, but I didn’t see anything important coming out of the cases.

Then, there were two cases where sentence reductions were argued. One case centered around ‘robotic incantations’. The key issue seemed to be whether or not the judge in assigning the sentence properly considered all the factors, or simply rubberstamped the sentence. In another case, a repeat offender was given 96 months for possessing 50 grams of crack cocaine, even though he had worked with the government and worn a wire. In this case, one judge expressed concern about the prosecutors being draconian and pursing ‘vindictive prosecution’. I wondered if this would be a foreshadowing of the Doninger case, where people have asserted that the school administration was draconian and vindictive.

The other interesting case was of an asylum seeker. The person had fled from China after being a supporter of the Falong Gong. The representative of the immigration service argued that since we did not know why the police ripped the shirt off of the asylum seeker or why they came to his house, we cannot assume it is because of persecution. As I listened to him, I thought of our responses to genocide. Would he have said the same thing about not knowing why Hitler’s S.S. agents coming to the door of a person who has spoken sympathetically of Jewish people. I was disgusted by the performance of the representative of the immigration service.

This case was perhaps the closest to having meaning for me. One of the things that Avery has been focusing during the time when she has been deprived of being Class Secretary is genocide issues. She has testified before the Education Committee in Hartford about teaching genocide awareness. We do need to think more about how we deal with genocide, with political persecution, as well as the simplest forms that it takes in our schools, bullying.

All of this sets the background for the oral arguments in the Doninger case.