Equality and Liberty

by Jacob Remes, Assistant Professor of Public Affairs and History, State University of New York, Empire State College. Prossor Remes is also David Carliner’s grandson.

The problem I see for younger activists is that today it’s harder to get a good job. It’s harder to make the money you need. I mean, we lived so simply. I watch my students and the tuition is so much higher and they’re working two or three jobs trying to support themselves. I think it is harder for people to have the time to be able to do the kinds of work we did, just because we didn’t have as many other demands on us as people who are of college age and a little bit older do. – Sarah Weddington to Time magazine, January, 2013

In June 1969, when Norma McCorvey needed a lawyer to demand her constitutional right to an abortion, she eventually found her way to two very young lawyers, Sarah Weddington and Linda Coffee. Weddington had graduated from law school in 1967; Coffee received her law degree in February 1968. When the Supreme Court handed them their victory in Roe v. Wade on January 22, 1973, Weddington and Coffee were only six and five years out of law school.

As progressive lawyers, reproductive rights activists, and others celebrate the 40th anniversary of Roe, it’s worth listening to Weddington’s concern about whether the work she did in her early 20s would be possible today. Both undergraduate and law school tuition have skyrocketed since the 1960s, and progressive lawyers faced increased pressure to enter higher-paying jobs instead of work for the movement.

Progressive lawyering is difficult and poorly rewarded. ACS’s David Carliner Public Interest Award seeks to make it somewhat better rewarded. Each year, the Carliner Award’s all-star panel of judges gives a $10,000 prize to a rising star in civil rights, civil liberties, international human rights, or immigration law. Winners are between seven and twelve years out of law school (this year, that means having graduated between May 2001 and May 2006) -- long enough that they have racked up some victories and other accomplishments, but young enough that they are beginning to worry about buying a house and affording their children’s tuition all while still paying off their own student loans. The $10,000 prize isn’t enough to solve all their financial problems, but it can provide a much-needed help, and it gives recognition to lawyers who receive all too little of it.

by Jeremy Leaming

So a new Pew poll finds a majority of Americans under 30 do not know what the landmark U.S. Supreme Court case, Roe v. Wade was all about. Well this month marks the 40th anniversary of that landmark decision, so maybe a few more of those under 30 will get a clue about a case that advanced liberty for women. They might also learn that Roe has been undercut by subsequent Supreme Court opinions, which have helped state lawmakers create and enact measures making it far more difficult for women to make decisions about their health.

The opinion issued on Jan. 22, 1973 invalidated a state law banning abortion. A majority of the court led by Justice Harry Blackmun found that the state ban on abortion violated personal privacy. Blackman wrote, in part, that a “right of privacy, whether it be founded in the Fourteenth Amendment’s concept of personal liberty and restrictions upon state actions, as we feel it is, or as, the District Court determined, in the Ninth Amendment’s reservation of rights to the people, is broad enough to encompass a woman’s decision whether or not to terminate her pregnancy.”

On Jan. 18 – 19 as part of the Constitution in 2020 project, several groups, including ACS, will host a conference examining two landmark Supreme Court cases, one being Roe, that helped advance liberty and equality for minorities. The conference at UCLA called “Liberty/Equality: the View from Roe’s 40th and Lawrence’s 10th Anniversaries,” will include some of the nation’s leading experts on gender, sexuality and equality to examine conflicts that led to the landmark decisions and look at how the current Supreme Court has handled ongoing debate over reproductive rights and equality for the LGBT community (The high court in Lawrence v. Texas invalidated a state law banning sex between consenting adults of the same gender.)

Dawn Johnsen, an ACS Board Member, will be among the participants at the Constitution in 2020 gathering. Johnsen (pictured), a distinguished law professor at Indiana University Maurer School of Law, authored an ACS Issue Brief in 2008 on the 35th anniversary of Roe. It’s a prescient piece, noting that challenges to reproductive rights were intensifying, partly because of high court decisions that followed Roe, which opened the door to more onerous restrictions on women’s autonomy.

As noted here recently Reva Siegel and Linda Greenhouse, writing for Balkinization’s Constitution in 2020 conference forum, suggested that a backlash to reproductive freedom was swelling even before Roe was handed down. But in her ACS Issue Brief, Johnsen noted that the setbacks to Roe really got underway with the high court’s 1992 Planned Parenthood v. Casey opinion.