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JUSTICE AND JUSTICES
As a WWII veteran who re-entered college (Harvard) in 1946, I was quite interested to read about the educational background of Chief Justice William Rehnquist as well as his distinguished career (“The Education of William Rehnquist,” July/August). At the same time, I could not help concluding that, regrettably, we Americans live under a system of government that occasionally results in judicial dictatorship. With only nine members on the Supreme Court, it is disturbing that sometimes fundamental decisions, affecting hundreds of millions of Americans, boil down to the vote of one person. That is a very odd way to run a democracy. President Franklin D. Roosevelt recognized this problem and tried, unsuccessfully, to increase the number of justices on the Supreme Court. However, although that would have helped to alleviate the problem, it would not have resolved it. The question is whether on such fundamental, nontechnical legal issues as who should be president and vice-president, whether or not abortion should be legal, what should be the voting or drinking age, etc., there should be an amendment to the Constitution that would require a national referendum to decide the matter.
Thus the issue of who should replace Justice O’Connor, and Chief Justice Rehn-quist after he retires, is only the tip of the iceberg. The real issue is whether the structure of our government is properly democratic. There is also the issue of just how democratic the citizenry (not just the framers of the Constitution) want the nation to be. These issues cannot be overlooked when,
at the same time, at the cost of great human sacrifice in Afghanistan and Iraq, we are attempting to spread democracy there, and to other parts of the world. People in these countries will ask these questions, and we should be prepared to answer them.
Frank R. Tangherlini, PhD ’59
San Diego, California
Inspiring. Demanding. Scholarly. These are a few of the adjectives that describe Professor Charles Fairman as he taught United States constitutional law classes during the winter and spring quarters of 1949—after Chief Justice Rehnquist was inspired by him. Dr. Fairman made U.S. constitutional law “alive.” He created not merely an interest, but a love for the Constitution and the process of interpreting it.
However, most notable to me was a class session during the spring quarter
of 1949 that had nothing to do with U.S. constitutional law. Professor Fairman entered the classroom, piling his law books on the table. Immediately he sensed that something was amiss. When he asked the class what was wrong, a student in the back row referred to an article that had appeared in the Palo Alto Times indicating that there was a surplus of attorneys. The student expressed his concern, saying he had spent several years in the Army during World War II, had a wife and children to support and was concerned about his future earnings.
Dr. Fairman closed the law books, took off his steel-rimmed “GI” glasses and commenced a passionate “sermon” to the class. The essence of his message was that being in the constitutional law class at Stanford University was an indication of our ability. If we wanted to be successful and were willing to work hard to achieve our goals, we could—and would. He stated that if there were 25,000 people in the city of Palo Alto and all of them were attorneys,
if we graduated from Stanford Law School and were willing to work hard, we would be at the top of the heap, achieve success and earn excellent incomes.
This impressed me greatly, and I believe it had a similar effect on the other students in the class. I have tried to promote a comparable reaction from my children, grandchildren, students, staff members and co-workers. This “sermon” was a major reason why I consider Professor Charles Fairman one of the best two teachers I have had—the other being a marvelous lady named Lota Blythe who taught me English at Santa Ana (Calif.) High School.
William Benton Howard, ’50, MA ’51, EdD ’61
Tustin, California
In September 1950, I arrived at Stanford as a freshman and started my new job as
a breakfast hasher at Encina Hall. The hashers gathered for their breakfast at about 6 a.m. There were eight or 10 of us—all undergraduates with the exception of a tall, lanky older fellow who introduced himself as Bill Rehnquist, a Law School student.
For the next year and a half, breakfast
at Encina was a special treat. We quickly realized we were dealing with a superior intellect, and Bill became the leader of
our discussions. Many of these were more challenging than those we encountered
in the classroom. Contrary to the cold, austere person that is often described, we found him to be a warm individual with
a sly sense of humor. In our discussions
he treated us as equals.
In November 1951, we gave him a great cheer when he announced that he was going to Washington, D.C., as a Supreme Court clerk. Our breakfasts were never the same after he left.
John Shields, ’54, MBA ’56
Westlake Village, California
BELIEVE IT OR NOT
Who could disagree with Sam Harris in fearing and condemning religious dogmatism that leads to violence (“The Iconoclast,” Showcase, July/August)? But why does he exclude secular dogma from his purview? Isn’t it potentially as poisonous and lethal as religious dogma? The violence of suicide bombers among the Muslims and Tamil Tigers can’t hold a candle to the violence of secularist Joseph Stalin. Do we really have more to fear from those who believe that bread and wine are transformed into the body and blood of Christ than from those who know that the earth is warming and do nothing about it, or from those who believe in miracles than from the folly of “the best and the brightest” who took us into
Vietnam, and from leaders infected with
hubris and arrogance who took us into Iraq?
President Lincoln spoke of the irony of people who read the same book and prayed to the same God yet engaged in mortal combat. How can one Muslim lash a bomb to his body and blow up scores of humans and another lead a nonviolent army of 100,000 Muslims? Badshah Khan and his disciplined followers worked side by side with Mahatma Gandhi and Hindus to nonviolently force the British to withdraw from India. Badshah Khan drew his inspiration and guidance from the Koran.
John V. Moore, ’41
San Diego, California
Seldom do the obvious truths articulated
by Sam Harris reach beyond readers of such journals as Free Inquiry. As a global society, we need to move beyond the myths of three millennia ago. Should we choose to do
so, we may yet flourish rather than perish.
Nor do we need to abandon totally
the snippets of wisdom contained in the traditions of ancient cultures. We can employ them usefully if we define “religion” sufficiently broadly—e.g. “any object of conscientious regard and pursuit” (No. 4
in Webster’s New World College Dictionary, 4th edition). This could work if we internalize only those snippets that are consistent with reason and with results gleaned from the scientific method.
Edward Fremouw, ’57
Ashland, Oregon
As reported by Lewis Rice, Sam Harris is probably overlooking a basic human trait. Be it religion, ethnicity, business or which end of the egg to crack, humans look at
the world as containing “us” and “them.” Those who crave power routinely seek to increase “us” at the expense of “them.”
So what’s new? Religion is just one of an infinity of excuses.
Robert Avakian, MS ’70
Tulsa, Oklahoma
Mr. Harris is apparently intolerant of all beliefs that cannot be backed by evidence and thus makes an effort to discredit “religious dogma of all types.” While
the scientific method is the proper and necessary mode of inquiry within the sciences, the limits of the questions it can reasonably answer restricts its sphere to ideas that are potentially verifiable by experimentation and proof. To make a “religion” of this method by making a “god” of human reason and by attempting to apply the scientific method to religious, ethical and moral issues, however, is inappropriate and dangerous. A case in point is the increasing secularism and relativism of Europe and Russia following World War I, which led to the horrors of national socialism in Germany, fascism in Italy and communism in the Soviet Union. With
no effective moral compass, the resultant degradation of individuality and loss of respect for human life brought us the Holocaust, the U.S.S.R. gulags and the atrocities of related regimes. In fact, Mr. Harris’s intolerance appears to be teetering on the brink of anti-Semitism (“Anyone
who lives based on Old Testament tenets
is a sociopath”) and anti-Catholicism (“The idea that a cracker turns into the body
of Jesus . . . is no more supportable than a
claim that frozen yogurt makes a person invisible”). He uses the behavior of radically pathological fringe extremists to demean Islam as making “sacraments of illiberalism, ignorance and suicidal violence.” Mr. Harris appears to either forget or to minimize
the important role that Judeo-Christian tradition played in the development of Western civilization and the role played
by Islamic tradition in the development
of Middle Eastern civilization and culture.
It is not religious belief, but rather the marginalization of faith proposed by Mr. Harris, which is “antithetical to our survival.” When I was at Stanford, a Stanford education was built upon a firm grounding
in the history of Western civilization. Reading this article has caused me to wonder if that is still the case, and if not, what we may have lost.
Richard A. Lloyd, MD ’66
Fayetteville, Arkansas
Concerning beliefs that cannot be backed by evidence, the poet Piet Hein says it all:
We glibly talk
of Nature’s laws.
But do things have a natural cause?
Black earth becoming yellow crocus
is undiluted hocus-pocus.
Laurie Hale Feeney, ’56
Washington, D.C.
I read “The Iconoclast” only a day after the terrible underground and bus bombings in London, yet I still could not accept the offensive and ignorant words of Sam Harris. As a Muslim who does not find herself in any way correctly represented by the insane Al Qaeda militants, I was outraged by the statement made by Harris: “[Islam] makes sacraments of illiberalism, ignorance and suicidal violence.”
First, the real reasons behind Al Qaeda’s attacks on countries such as the United States, Great Britain and Spain (and I am
not in any way justifying them), are based on 1) the continuous financial exploitation by these Western countries of Arab and predominantly Muslim countries’ natural resources; 2) the war in Iraq; and 3) the blind support the United States has offered to Israel in the mistreatment of the Pales |
