Terra Extraneus

The folks at the 39th Annual RV SuperShow found one of our cartoons funny enough to post on their website. Our cartoon, “Red Neck Risk” portrays two of our favorite trying to hook up their RV with less than the skills taught by our friends at the RV Show, much to the suprise and pain of their cat.

[Hat Tip to our buddies over at the double wide over at House Marketing and Management.]

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I attended the showing of this great movie twice, so far, with a bitter sweet attitude. The movie brought back many memories of my own debate career. My debate partners were among the finest people and greatest minds I have ever known. One would be famous during one of America’s most tragic times, one would be commercially successful beyond the ability of an Oklahoman to comprehend and only able to achieve that success away from the limitations we have placed on ourselves, one would be a great debate coach, and another would be a well respected minister. I met my wife because of debate. I travelled the United States because of debate and saw the great universities of the day. In the National Debate Tournament of 1976 in Boston, my partner and I, representing “SE Okie,” debated not one but two Harvard teams. While I may be unable to place myself in the shoes of the first nationally recognized black debaters, or comprehend the black experience in America, debate is another matter.

The movie, The Great Debaters, also reminded me of the fact that at one time in things intellectual, Oklahoma universities, like Oklahoma City University, were leaders. That has been lost and replaced by sports.

In part, it was lost because forensics education in Oklahoma was systematically dismantled. Without a forensics education system, no debate coaches were trained or qualified.

In Oklahoma, the large universities have always lagged behind the smaller ones in debate even if they excelled in sports.

While the University of Oklahoma attended the National Debate Tournament eleven times during the history of the tournament, from 1947 to 2007, Northeastern Oklahoma State University attended fifteen times, University of Central Oklahoma (formerly Central [Oklahoma] State University attended fourteen times and Southeastern Oklahoma State University attended ten times. In other words, to become the preeminent debate power in Oklahoma, OU must qualify teams to the NDT at least four more times. Also, the University of Oklahoma would have to do one more thing: win it at least once.

Only Southeastern Oklahoma State University has won the National Debate Tournament among Oklahoma higher educational institutions.

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Most people that engaged a financial advisor employed by a FINRA (formerly NASD) broker-dealer and all registered representatives signed something containing a mandatory arbitration clause. FINRA announced that for 2007, new arbitration case filings dropped to their lowest level since 1992. That is a staggering concession.

While some political forces have been trying literally forever to abolish or curtail arbitration, arbitration itself may be doing what political power could not do.

I have been handling securities industry arbitrations since 1988 and I have represented broker-dealers, registered representatives, and customers, although few of the latter, and I thought 2007 was a busy year. It seems, however, it was less busy than I realized.

The three years of lesser activity at FINRA Dispute Resolution, 1992, 1998 and 2006, averaged 4,644 case filings annually. 2007 was 70% of that average; 30% below the average of the lowest filing years prior to 2007.

It will be interesting to see if the industry credits one or more allegations of: good returns of 2007, good compliance initiatives, or something else. Could it be that the legal community has figured it out and has revised upward the criteria for case selection to offset the fact that it is a high risk forum?

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In his book, Witnessing Their Faith, Religious Influence on Supreme Court Justices and Their Opinions, author Jay Alan Sekulow, Esq., attempted to test the hypothesis that Supreme Court justices wrote their opinions under the influence of their long held religious beliefs. The book’s actual value, instead, seems to be the explanation of how opinions and decisions of the high court of the United States reflected the influence of the times, and the beliefs held during those times, in which the Justices lived.

This is not a book that tries to explain how either the Court works or how the System of Freedom of Expression works. Those topics have been left to others. It is also not a treatise on 1st Amendment law, although its help in understanding the development of the law in that area is invaluable. While it is certainly true that our Supreme Court bases its rulings on prior decisions, the common law, and the foundational documents of our government, such as The Constitution, The Bill of Rights, and the Declaration of Independence, the Supreme Court Justices very much embedded in the events which for us are history but for them were events experienced and yet to be pondered.

Thus, while this book might not take its place next to The System of Freedom of Expression by Thomas I. Emerson (1970) or Freedom of Speech by Zechariah Chafee, Jr. (1920), it will no doubt have a place for lawyers, Christians and students of the Court that are working toward an understanding of 1st Amendment law.

The most striking thing about the book is its historical recitations that inescapably lead to the conclusion that most of the Court decisions reviled by today’s citizen Christians were handed down because of disputes between citizen Christians. This was clearly a case in which the “church” in its universal sense, rather than meeting as was done at the first Jerusalem Conference described in Acts 15, bickered and left to secular authorities the task of sorting out the dispute. Indeed, the book also demonstrates why Christians today are not as unified as would be necessary to achieve the political desires of most evangelicals. The book should be read by lawyers that do not practice in the area but are often presented questions by Christians regarding their rights under the 1st Amendment.

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