Supreme Court to Consider Pentagon Recruitment at Law Schools

Every once in a while, a legal case turns up in which everybody involved seems to be in the wrong. Such is Donald H. Rumsfeld, Secretary of Defense, et al., v. Forum for Academic and Institutional Rights, Inc., et al. The Forum is arguing about its free speech rights in banning military recruiters from campuses, and the government is arguing contract law. While there’s some truth in each approach, neither argument has much to do with justice.

The Forum side of the case says that the military’s “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy on homosexual recruits violates the academic institutions’ anti-discrimination policies. Recruiters from organizations that discriminate are not welcome on campus. This is a noble stand, but the situation isn’t quite that simple, despite a panel from the Third Circuit agreeing.

The government argues that, since it provides $35 billion in aid annually to institutions of higher learning, it is entitled to have Pentagon recruiters on campus every bit as much as a big law firm or multinational corporation. This has been the key to the creeping federal powers over the years – federal money always has strings attached. And it is hard to see how an institution can take federal money, much of it spent on defense-related research, and then tell the government, “we won’t let our students meet with your recruiters on campus.” Chief Justice John Roberts has already said the solution is simple – the professors can turn down the cash.

As a half-solution, he is dead right. However, it would be about as easy for American law schools to give up federal money as it would be for the US military to accept that gay men and women have the same rights to fight and die for their country as straight Americans (indeed, if some 18-year-old wants to spend a few years in harm’s way so that the Kensington Review can pontificate thrice weekly, it is hard to see how sexual proclivities matter). Black and Japanese Americans were segregated until President Truman gave the order to integrate. Some officers resigned, but in the end, it turns out to have been much ado about nothing.

Moreover, it is hard to figure out why the military is trying to recruit law students. Military justice, it has been said, is to justice what military music is to music. Why a bright young thing would want to practice such “law” is unfathomable. Yet, if the top legal brain at Harvard or Stanford Law wants to put on a uniform, he or she will sign up regardless of what the law profs do. Could it be that there is some expectation that a lot of top people in the Pentagon will need lawyers before the Iraq War is finally over?


© Copyright 2005 by The Kensington Review, J. Myhre, Editor. No part of this publication may be reproduced without written consent.
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