In reporting the plan of several law professor organizations to boycott the Association of American Law Schools annual meeting if held in the San Diego hotel owned by a contributor to the California campaign against same-sex marriage, Tom Berg says that we ought to regard the protest/boycott as "legitimate."
If by "legitimate," Tom means legally protected, then by all means, definitely yes. The government should not interfere with the choice by consumers singly or organized (and I would argue many service providers as well) not to patronize (or serve) those whose actions or positions they find offensive. But if by "legitimate," Tom means that this is a laudatory development or one arguably in keeping with the nature of all of the entities that are behind the boycott plan, then I think we should say, definitely no.
Most of the law professor organizations that are involved in this boycott campaign—the Legal Writing Institute, the AALS Section on Legal Writing Research and Reasoning, and the AALS Section on Teaching—are scholarly and academic organizations, not political lobbies. These entities should have no political platform by which to guide their actions. Since when has the Legal Writing Institute or the AALS or any of its subunits been permitted to adopt political resolutions? Does this now mean that a member of the Legal Writing Institute or these AALS sections who is opposed to same-sex marriage is no longer a member in good standing? Does this mean that a member of these entities who dissents from the new official position in favor of same-sex marriage would be well-advised to remain silent or even resign? Should a scholarly organization committed to legal writing or teaching excellence be identified as a political lobbying entity and one that takes a particular stand on a disputed issue? Again, the answer should be definitely no.
When the American Political Science Association (APSA) was recently considering whether to move a future annual meeting from New Orleans, the advocates of relocation were careful to frame their argument in terms of the alleged concrete harms that gay and lesbian political scientists might experience when visiting a state that not only rejected same-sex marriage but also prohibited any legal recognition of same-sex couples comparable to marriage. The debate focused on whether there was a real risk that the legal regime in Louisiana would prevent a gay person's partner from participating in health decisions should that gay person be hospitalized during the annual meeting. Ultimately, the executive board of the APSA concluded that the risk was not substantial enough to justify moving the meeting, to which gay rights groups and others within the APSA have responded with a boycott.
However, during the APSA debate, it was always common ground that political viewpoints alone were not a "legitimate" basis for the APSA as a scholarly organization to make decisions about siting a meeting. No one contended that the APSA should take a stand for or against same-sex marriage. To contend otherwise would have been to corrupt the nature of a scholarly organization, which should be committed to the open exchange of ideas, into that of a political pressure group with a distinct political viewpoint. Not only would such a step have contradicted the very nature of a general scholarly organization and compromised academic freedom, it also would have created inappropriate political conflict among the members.
The boycott of AALS meeting events now proposed by these law professor entities has taken the very step that the APSA wisely understood was never a "legitimate" option for any entity that calls itself a scholarly association and claims to represent an entire field of scholarly study. As I understand it, no one is suggesting that gay and lesbian law professors will be endangered, denied service, or mistreated in any way at this San Diego hotel. The boycott is crudely political, nothing less. It is based solely on the illegitimate and non-scholarly endorsement of one side of an election referendum, which then is advanced by an attempt to preclude any association with those who take the other side of that election contest. Such an openly political gambit, on an election matter no less, is unworthy of a scholarly association. By so corrupting a scholarly association, academic freedom for all law professors is diminished. This is a sad day indeed for the AALS.
(By contrast, the Society of American Law Teachers (SALT) is an openly political organization, not a general scholarly association, and thus its threat of a boycott poses less of a contradiction to its nature. Nonetheless, by taking the unwise step of urging the AALS to become politicized and act in conformity with a particular political stance on a controverted election, SALT improperly seeks to enmesh a scholarly association in a political controversy. As Susan Stabile inquires in her post, SALT's action arguably also undermines freedom of expression for controversial viewpoints, which from time to time SALT has suggested is part of its mission. We apparently may expect SALT in the future to adopt political litmus tests for hotel owners, vendors, etc., which it then will demand be honored by the AALS at the risk of a political boycott.)
Greg Sisk
Susan Stabile kindly responds to my post documenting the massive size of current government programs and the enormous expenditures on social programs already in place. She challenges the significance or meaning of some of the data that I provided and concludes that they fail to demonstrate a "serious commitment to the human flourishing of the poorest."
While the Hodge chart that I included in my prior post does include government pensions in the description of skyrocketing social spending (as compared with defense spending) over the past 60 years, I carefully separated out government pensions when noting that the categories of welfare, health care, and education spending by government constitute 40 percent of overall government spending and some 15 percent of our entire national economy. Now even if we were to assume that only half of health care spending by government and only one quarter of education spending by the government provides benefits to the poor, with all spending on welfare obviously being directed to poverty programs, government spending on programs for the poor in 2007 exceeded $1 trillion. If a trillion dollars of government spending on poverty programs, not even accounting for the many more tens of billions contributed by Americans each year to charities that serve the disadvantaged, does not demonstrate a "serious commitment to the human flourishing of the poorest," then apparently the sky really is the only limit.
I also offer this further defense of the reliability of the data that I provided: As evidence that the figures supposedly are hard to pin down, Susan says that Census Bureau statistics indicate that defense spending in 2007 was 20 percent of government outlays rather than the 13 percent figure that I used. In fact, the figures on government spending are readily available in some detail in Census Bureau statistics. The 20 percent figure that Susan identified is the share of defense spending as a part of the federal government budget viewed in isolation. As I'd noted in my post, and as the heading in the pertinent chart confirms, I was presenting the figures for government spending at all levels: federal, state, and local. The federal government is not the centerpoint for all governmental activity and programs in this country. State and local spending on poverty programs and education is considerable and should not be neglected. Defense spending indeed is only 13.4 percent of overall government spending and less than 5 percent of GDP, a level of defense spending that is lower today than before the Clinton Administration and much lower than it has been at many periods during the past half-century. And while defense spending as a share of GDP has been stable or declining, social spending as a share of GDP has nearly doubled in the past 40 years.
I stand by my earlier observation that those who advocate more government spending, new government poverty programs, and higher taxes to pay for it all have a great burden in proving that government consumption of more than a third of economic production in this country and government exaction of the product of nearly a third of our work lives to pay the taxes is negligible and insufficient.
Greg Sisk
Tom's post suggests that a boycott of a hotel owned by someone who donated funds to oppose same-sex marriage by groups who are part of the AALS is legitimate, but wonders at some point a market power counterargument kicks in. I'm still sorting out what I think about this but what I wonder is whether this isn't more of a speech issue than a market one. That is, it is one thing to organize a boycott against the hotel if there is something about the business itself that is objectionable (e.g., there is evidence of discrimination against homosexuals in the actual operations of the hotel). I assume no one would find such a boycott objectionable. But isn't it another thing for a legal academic group (which presumably thinks freedom of speech and expression is a good thing) to organize a boycott based on the owner's speech (in this case evidenced by a donation), even if we disagree with that speech? I'd be interested in hearing the thoughts of others on this.
From the National Law Journal (thanks to Mark Scarberry at Pepperdine Law for the pointer):
Organizations representing thousands of legal educators say they will boycott the Association of American Law Schools annual meeting in January if it is held at a San Diego hotel owned by a foe of same-sex marriage. . . .
The groups are the Society of American Law Teachers; the Legal Writing Institute; the AALS Section on Legal Writing Research and Reasoning; and the AALS Section on Teaching Methods. The groups represent as many as 2,500 members.
Several of us here, in varying degrees, emphasize the importance of, prima facie, letting people express their conscience in marketplace actions (landlords renting a few apartments, pharmacies refusing to dispense Plan B) without government interference. We also emphasize the value and inevitability of people acting in groups, not just as isolated individuals. So a boycott like this is legitimate, yes? -- but at what point should a "market power" counterargument kick in?
Greg's post does little to ally the concerns some of us have that (as expressed by Eduardo) there has been lacking “a serious governmental commitment to human development among the poorest Americans.” "Social spending," even as Greg narrows it to include only "welfare, health care and education," does not give us an indication of funds spent to help those living in poverty. For example, the Hodges chart figures for social programs includes, e.g., pensions for government employees. Or how much of the funds included for health care reach the poorest among us? It is hard to even tell from the first link Greg gives us what some of the categories of expenditures mean. These concerns are apart from the fact that even the total figures are hard to pin down. The Census bureau stats suggest that National Defense is about 20% of government outlays rather than 13%. So more is necessary to persuade that there is the serious commitment to the human flourishing of the poorest among us.
