BookTalk

By Anne Emanuel, a law professor at Georgia State University College of Law.

Elbert Parr Tuttle. In his time his name was synonymous with integrity. That unassailable reputation -- hard earned as an Atlanta lawyer in the first half of the twentieth century and as the commander of an artillery battalion in the Pacific Theater in World War II -- served him well when he took over as Chief Judge of the Fifth Circuit in December of 1960. The next month, sitting alone, he lifted a stay only hours after it had issued. Because of his swift, decisive action, Hamilton Holmes and Charlayne Hunter registered at the University of Georgia that very day.

The importance of that historic order can hardly be exaggerated. Six long years had passed since the Supreme Court’s decision in Brown v. Board of Education and nothing had happened. In five southern states – Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana, Mississippi and South Carolina – public elementary and high schools remained totally segregated. In others there had been token integration; in North Carolina, for instance, 60 black students attended school with white students, leaving the remaining 319,000 in segregated schools. Even less had happened on the voting rights front; black voters remained almost completely disenfranchised across the south.

As Chief Judge of the Fifth Circuit -- then covering Alabama, Florida, Georgia, Louisiana, Mississippi and Texas – Tuttle led the way in enforcing the constitutional rights of black Americans, in dismantling the American apartheid known as Jim Crow. The task was dangerous and difficult. Tuttle dealt not only with the massive resistance of  demagogues in high and low office, but also with the obstructionism of federal judges committed to protecting the southern way of life, to prohibiting “race mixing,” in the parlance of those troubled times.

By Joe Roman, a conservation biologist and author.

Last month, Alaska solicited proposals to quantify the costs of protecting polar bears under the Endangered Species Act. The bear had been listed as threatened in 2008, the first species to be federally protected because of global warming.  Some Alaskans objected, afraid that listing would restrict drilling in the Beaufort and Chukchi Seas, where the bears have critical habitat. At first, the state bankrolled a public relations effort to overturn the listing, but when that effort failed, they looked to alternatives. Could they show that listing the polar bear came at too high a price?

In my book, Listed: Dispatches from America’s Endangered Species Act, I discuss the tradeoffs involved in protecting rare and threatened species. Alaska’s solicitation is part of an unfortunate tradition that focuses solely on the costs of protecting species, rather than including the many benefits that can come from conservation. In the polar bear’s case, this may include ecotourism, of value to the state; the dependence of the Inuit on the bear for spiritual and physical sustenance; and the preservation of sea-ice habitat, which can benefit us all.

Beyond these services is the value of conservation itself, whether it’s stewardship, the many people who are employed, or volunteer, to protect the bears, or the value of bequesting the bear to our grand children. And finally there’s the value we put on the very existence of the polar bear -- how much would we pay to keep the bear on earth, whether we or our offspring ever had a chance to see it or not?