{"id":11924,"date":"2009-03-05T11:48:36","date_gmt":"2009-03-05T19:48:36","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.kith.org\/journals\/jed\/2009\/03\/05\/11924.html"},"modified":"2009-03-05T11:48:36","modified_gmt":"2009-03-05T19:48:36","slug":"arguing-articulately-before-th","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/jed\/2009\/03\/05\/arguing-articulately-before-th\/","title":{"rendered":"Arguing articulately before the Court"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>I tuned into the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.calchannel.com\/\">Prop. 8 webcast<\/a> late, most of the way through the Deputy Attorney General's argument. Unfortunately, my impression of him was that he was kinda flailing. He stumbled a lot; he didn't seem to have good answers to the Justices' arguments; he looked kind of harried; his tone sounded to me kind of peevish and annoyed.<\/p>\n<p>Next up was Kenneth Starr, in support of Prop. 8. Starr has a slightly professorial (I might even say fussy) and patronizing tone, but he's very articulate, very quick on his feet, and very reasonable-sounding. Regardless of the merit of his argument, he appears to me to be a far better arguer than the D.A.G.<\/p>\n<p>And much as I want the AG's office to win and Starr to lose, my impression from a variety of articles over the past couple months has been that the AG's argument is widely considered pretty shaky. (Usually the legal scholars quoted in articles politely call it \"novel.\")<\/p>\n<p>But at least the AG's office isn't arguing in favor of Prop. 8.<\/p>\n<p>(For anyone who doesn't know this: There are three basic positions being argued. One group is arguing that Prop. 8 wasn't an amendment but a \"revision,\" and thus required a higher standard than just a popular vote; one group is arguing that Prop. 8 is valid; and the Attorney General's office is arguing that the revision argument is wrong, but that \"the amendment process cannot be used to extinguish fundamental constitutional rights without compelling justification.\")<\/p>\n<p>Best line from the parts I've heard came from Starr: \"Like Lola in <cite>Damn Yankees<\/cite>, what this court wants, it gets.\"<\/p>\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I tuned into the Prop. 8 webcast late, most of the way through the Deputy Attorney General&#8217;s argument. Unfortunately, my&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[120],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-11924","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-samesex-marriage"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/jed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11924","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/jed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/jed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/jed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/jed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11924"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/jed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11924\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/jed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11924"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/jed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11924"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/jed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11924"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}