Delaware County News: Township Assessor to be Gotten Rid of?

Well, that seems the point of The Muncie Star-Press' 'No' vote will save assessor, 'yes' will doom her:

The following question will appear on Center Township ballots on Election Day:

"Should the assessing duties of the elected township assessor in the township be transferred to the county assessor?"

Citizens of Delaware County for Property Tax Repeal, as well as MySmartgov.org, are urging voters to vote "yes" on the referendum. The two organizations also oppose tactics like "Vote No" signs and T-shirts in the township's office.

***

The 2008 Indiana General Assembly abolished township assessors in 965 townships but left it to voters in the 43 most populous townships to decide if they wanted to do the same.

Dieter's organization, which has four full-time employees, expects the Legislature next year to take up even more ways to streamline local government, including eliminating all of the township trustees.

I think streamlining the township duties into county or city entities makes sense in some counties. Those counties being our more urban counties. That said, I think the assessors have a point because they do have specialized training.

Their argument is that abolishing the Center Township assessor's office will result in the loss of services and jobs without saving any money.

"With the budget cuts most of our offices have undergone, there's no way in hell to make us any more efficient," said Becky Williams, president of the Indiana Assessors Association. "A good part of our assessors are experienced. These are not political hacks filling most of these jobs."
Evans has 28 years of experience. Her budget for 2009 is $343,286. Her office assesses about 27,000 residential properties (the commercial and industrial assessments are hired out).

"We do more than assessments," Evans said. "We do deeds, business personal property, disclosures (of the sale price of properties). Businesses with filing cabinets, computers, cash registers, restaurant equipment, tanning beds and other personal property are taxable. I have a deputy that does mobile homes. We go out on building permits, demolitions and remodeling. We do data entry. We do (property) transfers. We assist with the commercial assessments. We do appeals. We measure property, wait on the counters and answer the phones.

"And we are your first step for an answer in local government. One way or another, the money is still going to have to be spent to get our job done."

Which brings up the other point that causes me doubts: how do we know how much money we are saving in what appears to be efficiency?

Indiana Supreme Court Takes on School Funding Case

From The Indiana Lawyer:

The Indiana Supreme Court granted transfer last week to a case of first impression involving the courts' authority to review the state's school financing formula.

In Joseph Bonner, et al. v. Mitch Daniels, et al., No. 49A02-0702-CV-188, nine public school students and their families in eight school districts filed a class-action suit in 2006, arguing the school funding formula violates the Indiana Constitution's Education Clause.

This could be a very big case.

Prudish Indiana - Lixensing Fee for Sexually Explicit Materials

Indiana's General Assembly stuck their collective foot in it - such is my opinion.

From The Indianapolis Star's ACLU, booksellers sue over registration:

The Indianapolis Museum of Art, which sells art books containing images of nudes painted by the Old Masters, joined a civil rights group today in suing over a law that would require business selling pornography to register with the state.

Maxwell L. Anderson, director and chief executive of the IMA, said he is concerned about the law’s effect on the museum and the broader message it sends.

“Our role in this community is to foster tolerance for creativity, and this law is completely in opposition to that mission,” Anderson said.

He added that the law “is not a signal of a progressive place.”

Here is a description of the statute and the suit:

The suit’s target is House Enrolled Act 1042, approved this year by the General Assembly. It requires businesses that sell such material to pay a $250 fee and register with the secretary of state. The suit says the law also appears to require employees of the businesses to register and pay the fee.

Ken Falk, legal director for the ACLU of Indiana, said the law is vague, overly broad and violates the First Amendment.

The Indiana Daily Lawyer's Suit challenges new sexually explicit retailer law has a very interesting detail:

The suit claims the statue contains no guidance as to what types of materials must be registered with the Secretary of State and will lead to self-censorship in order to avoid the state's registration requirements.

Okay, Falk has to file in the federal court to bring the case under 42 U.S.C 1983 which allows for attorney fees if they win. To bring it under the federal statute, there had to be a violation of federal rights. That our state legislators might not know that a statute violates Hoosier's federal rights is bad but I think ignoring our state constitutional rights may be even worse.

"Our state constitutional rights"? Yes, we have 37 of them. Some that do not appear in the United States Constitution and some that do but are different from our federal rights. For instance, Article I, Section 9 reads differently from the federal First Amendment speech rights and is also a bit broader:

No law shall be passed, restraining the free interchange of thought and opinion, or restricting the right to speak, write, or print,

The ICLU may not have included this in their lawsuit but this does not mean we cannot question our legislators' protection of our constitutional rights and how they view their obligations to uphold both the state and federal constitutions.

Instead, we have businesses paying money to fight the statute rather than employing Hoosiers and our taxpayers doubly wasted - first for paying legislators to write and pass the statute and then for defending the lawsuit.

Same-Sex Amendment Dead This Year

What a lot of common sense:

A proposed constitutional amendment to ban same-sex marriages in Indiana likely was dealt a fatal blow Friday when a key lawmaker said he would not give the issue a hearing.

Rep. Scott Pelath, D-Michigan City, who is chairman of the House Rules and Legislative Procedure Committee, said Friday that the most urgent issue facing the state is property taxes, not same-sex marriage, which already is banned by Indiana law.

“I’m not planning on having a hearing,” Pelath said. “The short session (of the legislature) was designed to deal with emergencies. We have a very serious problem with the property tax system, and we don’t have any gay marriages in Indiana.”

And what a lot of hot air:

The Senate committee plans to debate the amendment Thursday, but Eric Miller, who has pushed for passage of the amendment as founder of the conservative group Advance America, called that “disingenuous.”

The legislature, he said, is dealing with plenty of issues besides property tax reform and has the time to debate and vote on this amendment before its March 14 deadline.

“There are hundreds of bills being reviewed by a variety of committees,” he said. “Property taxes are the most important thing, but I’d view the marriage amendment as very important as well.”

Mr. Miller, your marriage is safe from those gays and lesbians that you bash for your fund raisers and so you are the one bieng disingenuous.

For the rest of the story, take a look at Gay-wed ban won't get hearing

Want to Read About Indiana's Constitutions?

Then take a look here: Indiana Constitutions. Worth taking a look at but I think the essay by Chief Justice Shepard is a bit of fluff.

I am surprised that the Debates of 1851 are online.

Same-sex Marriage Back to Haunt Us - Again?

The Indianapolis Star reports that we can look forward to the Republicans pushing the same-sex marriage amendment proposal, again: Same-sex marriage ban faces pivotal year. The Star did report one lone voice of common-sense:

But Walter Botich, the legislative chair for Indiana Equality, a gay rights advocacy organization, said lawmakers have more urgent issues, namely a property-tax crisis, to sort out. His group opposes the amendment.

"We have more pressing issues to deal with this session, and property taxes are on everyone's minds," Botich said. "The issue no longer seems as important to most, I think."

A recent poll conducted for The Indianapolis Star and WTHR (Channel 13) supports that notion.

The November statewide survey showed that 49 percent of Hoosiers support the amendment, down from 56 percent in 2005.

We need to waste legislators time and our tax dollars with this? Takign Down Words has a post on this under WedgeWhack! How Far Will The Pander Bears Push SJR7 This Session?, and Bilerico has it under Indiana amendment: Where are we now?.

Kind of related to this. While doing some research for my Indiana Divorce & Family Law Blog I found a link to the trial court decision in the Iowa same-sex marriage case. You can find it here. I was (somewhat) surprised to see some of the same issues raised there as were raised in Indiana - except that Iowa has a very long explanation of the disabilities same-sex couples face. Worth reading but remember that this is only the trial court's decision.

Sex Offender Registry Violates Constitutional Rights

An apology for delaying this post. The Indiana Law Blog noted it a few days ago. See Ind. Decisions - "Court says registry violated offender's constitutional rights" and also here.

From the ILB:

In Todd L. Jensen v. State of Indiana , a 10-page, 2-1 opinion, the Court rules that "the amendments to Indiana’s Sex Offender Registry as applied to Jensen violate the ex post facto clauses of the federal and state constitutions." Senior Judge Robertson writes:

Defendant-Appellant Todd L. Jensen (“Jensen”) appeals from the trial court’s order classifying him as a sexually violent predator and requiring Jensen to register as such for the remainder of his life. We reverse and remand.

ISSUES. Jensen’s appeal presents the following dispositive issue for our review: whether the amendments to Indiana’s Sex Offender Registry as applied to Jensen violate the ex post facto clauses of the federal and state constitutions.

So far, I have noticed little news about this decision. I put that down to distaste for the subject matter. I feel that distaste, too. However, the constitutional issues trump my distaste. That sexual predators exist, that they are dangerous cannot be denied but the resulting hysteria is something we need to guard against. Otherwise we lose the protections of the law against the force of government.

On the other hand, delay let me find a book review in The London Times that I think applies here, Ronald Dworkin – Mr Justice:

Given that groundwork, Dworkin takes up the question of how we ought to cope with terrorism. Can it be legitimate to set aside the normal constitutional rights to privacy and to freedom from arbitrary arrest and detention – or from being tortured, in the case of suspected terrorists? Can we balance their rights against the risk to other people’s right to life itself, so as to justify some downgrading of rights of terrorist suspects? With painstaking clarity Dworkin shows how such a preparedness selectively to downgrade protection of fundamental rights offends the deepest principles of the US Constitution, when in turn we read these as concretizing more fundamental principles of human dignity.

Given that groundwork, Dworkin takes up the question of how we ought to cope with terrorism. Can it be legitimate to set aside the normal constitutional rights to privacy and to freedom from arbitrary arrest and detention – or from being tortured, in the case of suspected terrorists? Can we balance their rights against the risk to other people’s right to life itself, so as to justify some downgrading of rights of terrorist suspects? With painstaking clarity Dworkin shows how such a preparedness selectively to downgrade protection of fundamental rights offends the deepest principles of the US Constitution, when in turn we read these as concretizing more fundamental principles of human dignity.

More on Reforming Indiana's Government

Still have not found time to read the report. Work, work. But I do have some comments below.

From a sidebar to the Muncie Star-Press'Commission recommends massive restructuring of government

Counties
Create a clearer, more accountable structure with fewer elected officials;
Better coordinate public safety services

1. Establish a single-person elected county chief executive.

2. Establish a single, unified legislative body for county government. Expand legislative membership to ensure sufficient representation for included rural, suburban and urban populations.

3. Transfer the responsibility for administering the duties of the county auditor, treasurer, recorder, assessor, surveyor, sheriff and coroner to the county executive. Transfer the varied duties of the clerk to the courts, to the county election board and to the county executive. Establish objective minimum professional qualifications and standards for certain county administrative functions.

4. Retain a local government role for property tax assessment under a county assessor who is required to meet professional qualifications and appointed by the county executive.

5. Create a countywide body to oversee the provision of all public safety services: Police patrol and crime response, fire suppression, emergency medical services, homicide and other major crimes investigation, hazardous materials response, forensics, fire prevention and related inspection services, anti-terrorism preparedness and response (including, for example, SWAT, bomb squad and hazardous materials response), 911 dispatch, sirens and other public warning systems (e.g., reverse 911), jail facility maintenance, operation, and asset management.

6. Consolidate emergency public safety dispatch by county or multi-county region. Require that new, local emergency communications systems be compatible with the Project Hoosier SAFE-T statewide 800 MHz communications system.

7. Transfer the responsibility for all funding of the state’s trial court system to the state, including public defenders and probation.

8. Move the funding of child welfare from counties to the state.
Townships: Transfer all present responsibilities to the county executive.

9. Transfer the responsibility for administering the duties of township government for assessment, poor relief, fire protection, emergency medical services (EMS), cemeteries and any other remaining responsibilities to the county executive. Establish a countywide poor relief levy.

10. Transfer the responsibilities of the township small claims courts in Marion County to superior courts.

Schools
Establish districts that are large enough to provide high-caliber education
at a lower cost and enhance fiscal accountability

11. Reorganize school districts to achieve a minimum student population of 2,000. Establish state standards and a county-based planning process similar to that established in 1959 legislation.

12. Require that school corporation bonds be approved by the fiscal body of the municipal or county government containing the greatest proportion of assessed value in the school district.

13. Prompt joint purchasing by schools.

14. Conduct all non-partisan school elections during November in even years.
Cities and Towns: Strengthen accountability of elected officials, and eliminate the costs of separate elections.

15. Allow the city council to appoint the city clerk in second-class cities.

16. Move all municipal elections to an even-year cycle.

17. Transfer the responsibilities of municipal health departments to the county health department.

Libraries and Special Districts
Establish library districts that are large enough to provide high-caliber services
to every Hoosier at a lower cost, and improve fiscal accountability

18. Reorganize library systems by county and provide permanent library service for all citizens.

19. Require that the budgets and bonds of library and all other special districts be approved by the fiscal body of the municipal or county government containing the greatest proportion of assessed value in the unit seeking approval.

20. Strengthen the current joint purchasing infrastructure for libraries.

All Local Governments
Encourage additional voluntary action to increase efficiency and effectiveness

21. Expand voluntary coordination and consolidation of units and services. Strengthen the power of voters to compel consolidation.

22. Allow local governments to establish service districts with differentiated levels of service and corresponding tax rates.

23. Facilitate local improvement efforts using best management and business practices. Strengthen state mechanisms that support these activities, particularly for collective purchasing.

24. Prohibit employees of a local government unit from serving as elected officials within the same local government unit.

Support and Monitoring
Facilitate the implementation of these recommendations

25. Assign the Indiana Advisory Commission on Intergovernmental Relations to monitor progress toward these recommendations and conduct additional research as needed. Produce an annual report on progress through 2011.

26. Establish a statewide benchmarking system to provide the public and policy-makers with current information about local government productivity and progress.

27. Designate a state office to provide technical assistance to local government.

Reforms could mean a 'big cheese' for counties:

"One of the recommendations of the Indiana Commission on Local Government Reform is to elect a single county chief executive -- like a mayor of the county -- and to allow him or her to appoint a professionally qualified sheriff, treasurer, auditor, assessor, coroner, surveyor and recorder -- positions that are now elected."

I wince a bit at this quote:

"We note that no other law enforcement leader is elected within any local, state or federal governments," the commission wrote in its report released Tuesday. "We do not elect the chief of police or the director of the FBI."

No, but the sheriff was and is more than just a law enforcement officer.

Under the commission's proposal, "we would end up with a pyramidal structure in county government versus a horizontal line with a whole bunch of itty-bitty kingdoms reporting to nobody," explained Bill Haan, executive director of the Indiana Association of County Commissioners (IACC). "This gives you an authority figure, someone in charge, someone to blame. I think you'd see a lot better delivery of services."

Which raises a question about power and the mechanics of power. Our theory of government has as its more important feature the idea of checks and balances against power. This streamlining of government might be more efficient and cost less dollars in the short term but what are its costs in terms of power?

IACC generally supports the commission's recommendations but favors continued election rather than appointment of sheriffs and coroners. "We excluded sheriffs primarily for political reasons," Haan said. "We didn't think we could fight that battle. And the coroner we felt needs to be more independent, like the prosecutor."

Indiana's coroners have one great power - the ability to arrest the sheriff. They do not hold inquests and most farm out the autopsy work to pathologists. On the hand, getting rid them requires a constitutional amendment.

John Brooke hits on a similar point to one I made above from the same article:

As president of the Board of Delaware County Commissioners, John Brooke feels like a king with no real power "because of all these princes below me who can do their own thing." He added, "The only way you can get anyplace is by diplomacy and schmoozing."

Brooke calls the commission's proposal "an interesting concept worthy of discussion," though he likes the fact that having three county commissioners "forces us to talk, compromise and reach consensus as opposed to someone being the big cheese."

School uniform case going to federal court?

Both the Anderson Herald-Bulletin and the Indiana Law Blog report that the attorney for Anderson Community Schools wants to move the case from Madison County to the federal court in Indianapolis.

The Herald-Bulletin points out that the Bells do not have an attorney:

The Bells are filing pro se — representing themselves —- but they have said that they do have a lawyer, but prefer to keep that person anonymous. Bell also said that they had been contacted by a lawyer from the American Civil Liberties Union.

I see this in some of my work - the other says that they have an attorney but will not say who it is. Usually the story ends with the bluff being called and no attorney. After all, a lawyer has to file an Appearance with the court and so is known to the world as the attorney on the case. I suspect ACS's attorney wants to put this into federal court because they do not have an attorney and the case will have a quick death. All the talk about federal rights and all that sounds much better than wanting to overwhelm the Bells with federal civil procedure.

Rubright has also filed for an “expedited determination” to hasten the case’s process.

“We believe an expedited determination is in everyone’s interest,” said Rubright.

The following from the Herald-Bulletin does not make wonder if the Bells do not have an attorney or are just readers of Indiana's Constitution:

The suit also alleges unconstitutionality against the U.S. and Indiana constitutions because the policy denies “free and appropriate education.”

Rubright said Wednesday that nowhere in either the state or U.S. Constitution does it speak of “free and appropriate education.”

The closest reference to free education in the Indiana Constitution reads, “ ... and to provide, by law, for a general and uniform system of Common Schools, wherein tuition shall be without charge, and equally open to all.”

I read some of the early Indiana cases interpreting the state education clause and I do not think there is much support for attacking the uniform policy in those cases. However, it has been a while since I read these cases.

A hitch in Mitch's privatization plans?

The Indiana Lawyer Daily reports that the Indiana Court of Appeals may have put a kink in Governor Daniels plan on closing a mental hospital in Fort Wayne.

The Indiana Lawyer has a post explaining some of the legal background.

I have had no time to read the entire opinion (links in the posts linked to above) but expect it will go onto the Indiana Supreme Court.

The Death Penalty

I freely admit that my views on the death penalty have changed over the years. Twenty-five years ago, I favored it. Doing one too many criminal jury trials convinced me that the system was just too bound up with human error to be completely comfortable with the death penalty for everyone.

And let us not forget those DNA exonerations, as the Washington Post points out:

The steady drumbeat of DNA exonerations _ pointing out flaws in the justice system _ has weighed against capital punishment. The moral opposition is loud, too, echoed in Europe and the rest of the industrialized world, where all but a few countries banned executions years ago.

Here is Indiana's death penalty statute:

35-50-2-9 b) The aggravating circumstances are as follows:
(1) The defendant committed the murder by intentionally killing the victim while committing or attempting to commit any of the following:
(A) Arson (IC 35-43-1-1).
(B) Burglary (IC 35-43-2-1).
(C) Child molesting (IC 35-42-4-3).
(D) Criminal deviate conduct (IC 35-42-4-2).
(E) Kidnapping (IC 35-42-3-2).
(F) Rape (IC 35-42-4-1).
(G) Robbery (IC 35-42-5-1).
(H) Carjacking (IC 35-42-5-2).
(I) Criminal gang activity (IC 35-45-9-3).
(J) Dealing in cocaine or a narcotic drug (IC 35-48-4-1).
(2) The defendant committed the murder by the unlawful detonation of an explosive with intent to injure person or damage property.
(3) The defendant committed the murder by lying in wait.
(4) The defendant who committed the murder was hired to kill.
(5) The defendant committed the murder by hiring another person to kill.
(6) The victim of the murder was a corrections employee, probation officer, parole officer, community corrections worker, home detention officer, fireman, judge, or law enforcement officer, and either:
(A) the victim was acting in the course of duty; or
(B) the murder was motivated by an act the victim performed while acting in the course of duty.
(7) The defendant has been convicted of another murder.
(8) The defendant has committed another murder, at any time, regardless of whether the defendant has been convicted of that other murder.
(9) The defendant was:
(A) under the custody of the department of correction;
(B) under the custody of a county sheriff;
(C) on probation after receiving a sentence for the commission of a felony; or
(D) on parole;
at the time the murder was committed.
(10) The defendant dismembered the victim.
(11) The defendant burned, mutilated, or tortured the victim while the victim was alive.
(12) The victim of the murder was less than twelve (12) years of age.
(13) The victim was a victim of any of the following offenses for which the defendant was convicted:
(A) Battery as a Class D felony or as a Class C felony under IC 35-42-2-1.
(B) Kidnapping (IC 35-42-3-2).
(C) Criminal confinement (IC 35-42-3-3).
(D) A sex crime under IC 35-42-4.
(14) The victim of the murder was listed by the state or known by the defendant to be a witness against the defendant and the defendant committed the murder with the intent to prevent the person from testifying.
(15) The defendant committed the murder by intentionally discharging a firearm (as defined in IC 35-47-1-5):
(A) into an inhabited dwelling; or
(B) from a vehicle.
(16) The victim of the murder was pregnant and the murder resulted in the intentional killing of a fetus that has attained viability (as defined in IC 16-18-2-365).
(c) The mitigating circumstances that may be considered under this section are as follows:
(1) The defendant has no significant history of prior criminal conduct.
(2) The defendant was under the influence of extreme mental or emotional disturbance when the murder was committed.
(3) The victim was a participant in or consented to the defendant's conduct.
(4) The defendant was an accomplice in a murder committed by another person, and the defendant's participation was relatively minor.
(5) The defendant acted under the substantial domination of another person.
(6) The defendant's capacity to appreciate the criminality of the defendant's conduct or to conform that conduct to the requirements of law was substantially impaired as a result of mental disease or defect or of intoxication.
(7) The defendant was less than eighteen (18) years of age at the time the murder was committed.
(8) Any other circumstances appropriate for consideration.

Muncie's Steven Lambert soon goes to the death chamber. At one time, I partnered with Lambert's death penalty attorney. Yesterday's Indiana Lawyer had an article about how the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals denied Lambert's last appeal.

The 7th Circuit Court of Appeals today rejected one of the last appeals attempts by a man set to die Friday for the execution-style shooting death of a Muncie police officer in 1990.

A five-page unanimous decision by the three-judge panel in the federal appeals court in Chicago rejected Michael Allen Lambert's claims for relief in Lambert v. Edwin G. Buss, Nos. 03-1015 and 05-2610. The ruling upholds the judgment by U.S. District Judge Larry McKinney in Indianapolis.

The facts, as I knew them then, were that Lambert had been threatened and was carrying a small caliber handgun (a .22 or a .25), he got stinking drunk, was picked up by law enforcement, and he awoke not sure where he was and started shooting. Out of six shots fired, the last was the killing shot. Naturally, the Muncie Star-Press took an interest in the approaching execution by interviewing both ministers and police officers - sort of a moral versus a pragmatic viewpoint. The police officers took a pro-capital punishment view, of course. They see it as a deterrent.

Then there was the Washington Post article I referred to above, the actual article reports on the deterrent effect of the death penalty:

A 2003 study he co-authored, and a 2006 study that re-examined the data, found that each execution results in five fewer homicides, and commuting a death sentence means five more homicides. "The results are robust, they don't really go away," he said. "I oppose the death penalty. But my results show that the death penalty (deters) _ what am I going to do, hide them?"

Statistical studies like his are among a dozen papers since 2001 that capital punishment has deterrent effects. They all explore the same basic theory _ if the cost of something (be it the purchase of an apple or the act of killing someone) becomes too high, people will change their behavior (forego apples or shy from murder).

How does one deter someone drunk like Lambert? How does this report make life without parole less useful as a deterrent?

In all of this, I also ran across a movie review for "Pierrepoint” in the New York Times.

"Pierrepoint” is much more than straightforward fictionalized biography. Once Pierrepoint travels to Germany as the designated executioner of guilty Nazis, the movie confronts you with the obvious parallels between this anonymous functionary carrying out lethal sentences handed down by others, and the Nazi defense that in sending millions to their deaths, they were merely following orders.

***

But his detachment begins to crumble once his occupation is no longer a secret and he returns from Germany to find himself a celebrity hailed by one newspaper headline as an “avenging angel.” The blood lust of the British public unnerves him. His notoriety also cuts two ways. He is called a murderer by protesters at a rally against capital punishment. And in the most excruciating test of his character, his work and personal life converge traumatically.

The wrenching movie ends with a 1974 quotation from Pierrepoint, made nearly two decades after he retired from the profession: “The fruit of my experience has this bitter aftertaste. Capital punishment, in my view, achieved nothing except revenge.”

Yes, it would be so nice for us to think that we can dispose of the monsters through capital punishment but how many of those that do go their state-sponsored deaths are the monsters we fear most? My recollection remains that the majority of Indiana death penalty cases are killers of police or were convicted of felony murder (that is they killed someone while committing another felony such as robbery). That these were bad people, I will not dispute because that is not at issue. At issue is whether they were so evil that society's only means of protection is the death penalty rather than life without parole.

One more thing for your consideration, reconcile the death penalty with the following from Indiana's Bill of Rights: "Section 18. The penal code shall be founded on the principles of reformation, and not of vindictive justice."

Well, PM?

INVENTING HUMAN RIGHTS

Have I really spent the day reading the Sunday Book Review in the New York Times? I am starting to realize that may be the case. One last one to take a look at: INVENTING HUMAN RIGHTS. Considering the continuing tale of same-sex marriage in Indiana, I suggest checking out the review and the book.

Hunt, the Eugen Weber professor of modern European history at the University of California, Los Angeles, and a distinguished expert on 18th-century France, says that “human rights require three interlocking qualities: rights must be natural (inherent in human beings), equal (the same for everyone) and universal (applicable everywhere).” This conception of human rights, she explains, had its origins in the Western Enlightenment of the 18th century. Although the English had issued a Bill of Rights in 1689, that document derived from the particularities of English law and English history and did not declare the equality, universality or naturalness of rights. It was left to Thomas Jefferson and the American Congress in 1776 to issue the first notable human rights proclamation. But it was the French Declaration of Rights of Man and Citizen of 1789 that had the greatest impact on Western thinking.

Not being particularly much of a Francophile (and reading Albert Camus's The Rebel gave me a lot of good reasons to think of the French Revolution as pretty much a failure of ideas), I disagree with the last sentence. For Hoosiers, we enshrined the essence of the Declaration of Independence in our state Bill of Rights.

Guest editorial from NY Times - federalism

The NY Times does not keep articles online for very long before charging for them. I found the following very interesting, if a bit flawed. I do not know if it is proper to reprint the whole thing but nothing ventured, nothing gained.

February 10, 2007
Op-Ed Contributor
California Split
By GAR ALPEROVITZ

Washington

SOMETHING interesting is happening in California. Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger seems to have grasped the essential truth that no nation — not even the United States — can be managed successfully from the center once it reaches a certain scale. Moreover, the bold proposals that Mr. Schwarzenegger is now making for everything from universal health care to global warming point to the kind of decentralization of power which, once started, could easily shake up America’s fundamental political structure.

Governor Schwarzenegger is quite clear that California is not simply another state. “We are the modern equivalent of the ancient city-states of Athens and Sparta,” he recently declared. “We have the economic strength, we have the population and the technological force of a nation-state.” In his inaugural address, Mr. Schwarzenegger proclaimed, “We are a good and global commonwealth.”

Political rhetoric? Maybe. But California’s governor has also put his finger on a little discussed flaw in America’s constitutional formula. The United States is almost certainly too big to be a meaningful democracy. What does “participatory democracy” mean in a continent? Sooner or later, a profound, probably regional, decentralization of the federal system may be all but inevitable.

A recent study by the economists Alberto Alesina of Harvard and Enrico Spolaore of Tufts demonstrates that the bigger the nation, the harder it becomes for the government to meet the needs of its dispersed population. Regions that don’t feel well served by the government’s distribution of goods and services then have an incentive to take independent action, the economists note.

Scale also determines who has privileged access to the country’s news media and who can shape its political discourse. In very large nations, television and other forms of political communication are extremely costly. President Bush alone spent $345 million in his 2004 election campaign. This gives added leverage to elites, who have better corporate connections and greater resources than non-elites. The priorities of those elites often differ from state and regional priorities.

James Madison, the architect of the United States Constitution, understood these problems all too well. Madison is usually viewed as favoring constructing the nation on a large scale. What he urged, in fact, was that a nation of reasonable size had advantages over a very small one. But writing to Jefferson at a time when the population of the United States was a mere four million, Madison expressed concern that if the nation grew too big, elites at the center would divide and conquer a widely dispersed population, producing “tyranny.”

Few Americans realize just how huge this nation is. Germany could fit within the borders of Montana. France is smaller than Texas. Leaving aside three nations with large, unpopulated land masses (Russia, Canada and Australia), the United States is geographically larger than all the other advanced industrial countries taken together. Critically, the American population, now roughly 300 million, is projected to reach more than 400 million by the middle of this century. A high Census Bureau estimate suggests it could reach 1.2 billion by 2100.

If the scale of a country renders it unmanageable, there are two possible responses. One is a breakup of the nation; the other is a radical decentralization of power. More than half of the world’s 200 nations formed as breakaways after 1946. These days, many nations — including Brazil, Britain, Canada, China, France, Italy and Spain, just to name a few — are devolving power to regions in various ways.

Decades before President Bush decided to teach Iraq a lesson, George F. Kennan worried that what he called our “monster country” would, through the “hubris of inordinate size,” inevitably become a menace, intervening all too often in other nations’ affairs: “There is a real question as to whether ‘bigness’ in a body politic is not an evil in itself, quite aside from the policies pursued in its name.”

Kennan proposed that devolution, “while retaining certain of the rudiments of a federal government,” might yield a “dozen constituent republics, absorbing not only the powers of the existing states but a considerable part of those of the present federal establishment.”

Regional devolution would most likely be initiated by a very large state with a distinct sense of itself and aspirations greater than Washington can handle. The obvious candidate is California, a state that has the eighth-largest economy in the world.

If such a state decided to get serious about determining its own fate, other states would have little choice but to act, too. One response might be for an area like New England, which already has many regional interstate arrangements, to follow California’s initiative — as it already has on some environmental measures. And if one or two large regions began to take action, other state groupings in the Northwest, Southwest and elsewhere would be likely to follow.

A new wave of regional devolution could also build on the more than 200 compacts that now allow groups of states to cooperate on environmental, economic, transportation and other problems. Most likely, regional empowerment would be popular: when the Appalachian Regional Commission was established in 1965, senators from across the country rushed to demand commissions to help the economies and constituencies of their regions, too.

Governor Schwarzenegger may not have thought through the implications of continuing to assert forcefully his “nation-state” ambitions. But he appears to have an expansive sense of the possibilities: this is the governor, after all, who brought Prime Minister Tony Blair of Britain to the Port of Long Beach last year to sign an accord between California and Britain on global warming. And he may be closer to the mark than he knows with his dream that “California, the nation-state, the harmonious state, the prosperous state, the cutting-edge state, becomes a model, not just for the 21st-century American society, but for the larger world.”

Gar Alperovitz, a professor of political economy at the University of Maryland, College Park, is the author of “America Beyond Capitalism.”

Gore Vidal proposed something similar in one of his essays. Since I no longer have that collection of Vidal's essays, all I can do is paraphrase. The idea was to divide the country into cantons like Switzerland. While, the idea has some appeal. The idea of merging Hoosiers into Buckeyes, I find distasteful. True, our interests might run the same but have you ever seen how Ohio drivers drive?

Seriously, federalism ought to allow enough room for what the writer wants. The sticking point remains state rights. State rights have been tangled up for too long with our national racism. Before the Civil War, it was meant to preserve slavery in the South. From Reconstruction till 1965, the idea protected Jim Crow. State rights appeals to those fear a national government. As such, it has been used to attack the Democrats (who beginning with FDR usurped the Republicans as the national party). What we have seen since 1994 are the Republicans are selective about what they see as belonging to state's rights. That is any rights that do not fit the "conservative" theory are to be nationalized. State Bills of Rights create a wall between church and state? Too bad, we will set up a national standard requiring prayer in schools. So and so forth.

Let us also recognize the sheer humbuggery of our state politicians. Too often they found pushing off matters onto the federal government saved state legislators from making hard choices about taxes and governmental services.

The role the states play in our federal system really has not been addressed since 1876 and certainly not since 1965. The machinery does need examined critically but I doubt we need to follow the prescription laid out in the New York Times. However, all machinery needs a tune up and realignment.