The Volokh Conspiracy http://volokh.com/ The Volokh Conspiracy, an academic blog. en-us 2008-08-08T18:08+00:00 Mama Mia Movie-- Highly Recommended: http://volokh.com/posts/1218218392.shtml I have seen the musical Mama Mia three times, twice in Boston and once on Broadway. So obviously I like the play. Why? Well for one thing I like the... Randy Barnett 2008-08-08T17:08+00:00 Mama Mia three times, twice in Boston and once on Broadway. So obviously I like the play. Why? Well for one thing I like the ABBA songs, and always have, despite the more refined taste of my 1970s peers who preferred the melodious sounds of Neil Young, Van Morrison, and Bob Dylan. (Commentators: take it away!)

Another thing I really liked about Mama Mia was the cleverness with which playwright Catherine Johnson wove the songs and their (largely) unaltered lyrics into an entertaining story. Not a deep one, mind you, but a cute Broadway musical-type story that was a teeny bit clever to boot. In contrast, I recently saw Jersey Boys and loved it, not truly realizing before how many big hits the Four Seasons had. I also knew nothing about the history of the group, which now seems odd since we knew so much about the personal history of other groups from the 60s and, judging from the play, the Four Seasons seem to have a truly colorful history. (Hint: jail, the Mob, and Joe Peschi were involved.) Yet the songs in Jersey Boys only relate very tangentially to the plot, which is about development of the group itself. Mama Mia was a traditional musical in which the songs advance the story.

When the Mama Mia movie came out and was highly reviewed, I knew the songs themselves would provide a minimum level of enjoyment. Yet, I was not eager to see it. As everyone knows, movie versions of plays are typically overblown given the need to expand beyond the confines of a stage and fill the screen with images and action. And the on-screen performances often seem phony given that screen actors, rather than Broadway performers, are typically cast to satisfy box office demands. Translating a play into a film usually undermines what made the play work well enough to be made into a film in the first place. And I am not a big Meryl Streep fan. I recognize her enormous talent, of course, but rarely look forward to seeing her performances.

Yesterday I finally saw Mama Mia the film and was shocked at how good it was. I don't want to give anything away so let me offer a few brief reasons why. First and foremost, Meryl Streep's performance as Donna Sheridan was really impressive. Her singing was surprisingly good, but her dancing and verve were amazing, especially given her age. As a bonus, her powerful acting ability injected a real meaning and emotion into the songs that never came through in the play. (Especially "The Winner Takes it All".) So too was Amanda Seyfried's performance as Sophie, Donna's daughter. Because the plot revolves around these two characters, the strength of their performances elevated the entire production.

Second, and related to the first, because of the acting abilities of Streep and Seyfried, combined with the closeups allowed by film, there was an emotional element that was lacking in the play, and aspects of the plot made more sense because of it. Third, the plot itself was tweaked in small ways (I won't mention) that enhanced the believability of the love story, and especially the largely contrived ending, which in the film seems less contrived. Finally, the cinematography and choreography were both outstanding. Perhaps it works so well because the gorgeous Greek island where it was shot provides a naturally confined "stage" on which the action transpires.

As with the play, the male characters are mere appendages to the females around whom the plot revolves. While Pierce Brosnan's acting ability helps sell the love story, unfortunately he cannot sing a note, while called upon to sing an extra ABBA song not in the play. The audience kept tittering whenever he tried. Ironically, Brosnan's gross inability to sing made the singing of the other film actors all the more impressive as, obviously, there remain limits on how a voice can be digitally enhanced in the studio.

[My one beef with the film as compared with the play is a small but needlessly offensive plot change involving the Harry Bright character's background. (Warning: tiny extraneous plot spoiler follows.) A middle-aged man, in the play he is revealed to gay with a stable long-term relationship back home. Played by Colin Firth (one of my favorite actors), in the movie he has just 2 dogs at home and an obvious attraction to a much younger island native, with whom it is intimated he hooked up at a drunken bachelor party. Had the play and film plots been reversed, I might have been annoyed at the political correctness of the film-makers, but to introduce a derogatory gay stereotype into a story where it previously did not exist is stupefying.]

So if you like musicals, and especially if you liked the play, you should see Mama Mia the film.

[comments now activated]]]> "Local Idiot to Post Comment on Internet": http://volokh.com/posts/1218164461.shtml ... Orin Kerr 2008-08-08T03:08+00:00 the Onion. Thanks to blm28 for the link.]]> Military Jury Gives Hamdan Time Served Plus Five Months: http://volokh.com/posts/1218142290.shtml Wow. Hamdan's response:... Orin Kerr 2008-08-07T20:08+00:00 Wow. Hamdan's response:
Hamdan thanked the jurors for the sentence and repeated his apology for having served bin Laden.

"I would like to apologize one more time to all the members and I would like to thank you for what you have done for me," Hamdan told the panel of six U.S. military officers, hand-picked by the Pentagon for the first U.S. war crimes trial in a half century.

]]> Nuremberg or Nothing for Bush Administration Officials?: http://volokh.com/posts/1218142016.shtml TPM TV has an interview with Dahlia Lithwick on whether the Bush Administration officials responsible for legal strategies in the GWOT should be tried for war crimes Nuremberg-style, or whether... Orin Kerr 2008-08-07T20:08+00:00 TPM TV has an interview with Dahlia Lithwick on whether the Bush Administration officials responsible for legal strategies in the GWOT should be tried for war crimes Nuremberg-style, or whether a Truth Commission South-Africa-style or just some investigations or even nothing is more appropriate:
  I personally think it's delusional to think that the public would allow former U.S. government officials to face war crimes prosecutions or anything remotely like it for their legal advice in the war on terror. Those who want war crimes investigations brought against Bush Administration officials remind me a lot of the Republicans who wanted Bill Clinton impeached and removed for his conduct in Monicagate in the late 1990s. They're mistaking the anger and sense of moral righteousness among the base with the attitudes of the public at large.

  But I doubt we'll get to that point anyway. Based on what we know about George W. Bush, isn't it highly likely that he'll pardon everyone prospectively on his way out in January 2009? After all, the officials were doing the President's bidding. In an Administration as focused on loyalty to the President as this one, I would be surprised if he would let his people face the prospect of prosecution down the road. ]]> Bizarre Case of Two Gazan Students: http://volokh.com/posts/1218063289.shtml Seven Palestinian students were awarded Fulbright scholarships to study in the U.S. Israel, whose border with Gaza is closed due to its state of war with the Hamas Gazan government, refused... David Bernstein 2008-08-06T22:08+00:00 Seven Palestinian students were awarded Fulbright scholarships to study in the U.S. Israel, whose border with Gaza is closed due to its state of war with the Hamas Gazan government, refused to allow the students to enter Israel on the way to the U.S. U.S. officials put heavy pressure on Israel to allow the students to travel through Israel, including by leaking the story to the U.S. media in a manner very unflattering to Israel. Israel eventually agreed to accede to U.S. demands, including with regard to three students whom it deemed to be particular security risks. Two of the students were given passage from Gaza to the Jordanian border, and after several delays apparently caused by mistakes by U.S. consular officials, here's what happened next:

At 8 P.M., when the border crossing closes, the Israeli border terminal workers approached the U.S. diplomats and suggested they return to Gaza and try crossing the following day, after having dealt with the passport matter. "I'm not interested, I'm not moving from here until they open the bridge," said one American diplomat and sat down in the road in protest.

After consulting with the Foreign Ministry, the Defense Ministry and the office of the Shin Bet chief, it was decided to leave the bridge open, until the Jordanians finally agreed to the Americans' request at 9 P.M. and allowed the Palestinians to pass. But this was not the end of the two Palestinians' travails.

The high school student remained in Amman for a few days. His friend departed for Washington on Saturday night. However, after a 12-hour flight, when he got to the border control station in Washington, an unpleasant surprise awaited him. The U.S. immigration officials informed him that his visa has been canceled and put him on a plane back to the Jordanian capital. The high school student, who was still waiting in Amman, was notified that his visa had been canceled, too. He already returned to Gaza yesterday, disappointed, while his friend remains frustrated in Jordan.

Israel has asked the State Department in Washington for some clarifications, and local officials are especially upset at the behavior of the American diplomat at the Allenby Bridge. "It's a disgrace," said a senior Foreign Ministry official. "If I had behaved that way at an American border crossing, I'd either be in jail or no longer in the U.S."

A spokesman for the U.S. State Department told The New York Times, which first reported yesterday on the revocation of the visas that the visas were canceled because of new information received by the U.S. authorities. The paper reported that Rice was unhappy about the way these cases were handled and that a thorough review had been ordered to prevent a recurrence.

"This is one of the oddest things we have encountered in recent years," an Israeli official said of a long sequence of events that began with intense American pressure to allow two young Palestinian students to leave Gaza to study in the United States and ended with the U.S. barring their entry and canceling the visas it had granted them.

Sure sounds that way. I'm especially troubled that post 9/11, the State Department was putting intense pressure on Israel to allow into the U.S. the students whom the Israelis (who, let's face it, have a much better record on these things than U.S. authorities) specifically thought had ties to terrorism and were security risks, a belief U.S. authorities apparently eventually came around to, at the last minute.

]]> Religious Accommodations: http://volokh.com/posts/1218062715.shtml My post on religious accommodations, and in particular the statement, "But requests from minority religious groups (including recent immigrant groups) for accommodation are a longstanding and respectable part of the... Eugene Volokh 2008-08-06T22:08+00:00 My post on religious accommodations, and in particular the statement, "But requests from minority religious groups (including recent immigrant groups) for accommodation are a longstanding and respectable part of the American tradition of religious freedom," drew this response from a commenter:

Correction: It's not part of American tradition but part of a U.S. Supreme Court adventurism under the faulty disguise it has the power to dictate social religious preferences within states.

Actually:

1. None of the examples I gave are U.S.-Supreme-Court-mandated religious accommodations; all were done by the democratic process.

2. While from 1963 to 1990, the U.S. Supreme Court read the Constitution as mandating some sorts of religious accommodations, the 1990 Employment Division v. Smith decision almost entirely rejected that doctrine. The rule right now is that the Free Exercise Clause almost never mandates religious exemptions from generally applicable laws. (I have written in support of the Smith constitutional rule.)

3. Following the Smith decision, it was Congress that enacted the Religious Freedom Restoration Act, which provided that governments have to exempt religious objectors from generally applicable laws that burdened their religious practices (unless applying the law to the objector was necessary to serve a compelling government interest). Congress voted in favor of RFRA by a 97-3 vote in the Senate and by voice vote with no objection in the House.

4. It was then the Supreme Court, in 1997, that struck down RFRA as it applied to states. State legislatures in about a dozen states, and state voters in Alabama, have since enacted state-level RFRAs that do apply to state laws. (State supreme courts in about a dozen more states have also read their state constitutions as mandating some sorts of exemptions from generally applicable laws.)

So you can fault the Court for lots of things, but don't turn hostility to the Court -- or even to constitutional constraints on legislative action more broadly -- into a macro (ctrl-shift-A for "activism") that becomes a blanket response to everything. The American tradition of religious accommodation has generally been a tradition of accommodation precisely by the political branches of government.

]]> "Tyson Plant Drops Labor Day for Muslim Holiday": http://volokh.com/posts/1218058942.shtml So reports Fox News:... Eugene Volokh 2008-08-06T21:08+00:00 So reports Fox News:

A 5-year contract approved by members of the Retail, Wholesale and Department Store Union at the Shelbyville, Tenn., [Tyson Foods] plant last November includes the change [of paid holidays to exclude Labor Day and instead include the Muslim Eid al-Fitr holiday] to accommodate Muslim workers....

The seven additional paid holidays are the employee's birthday, New Year's Day, Martin Luther King Jr. Day, Memorial Day, Independence Day, Thanksgiving and Christmas, Mickelson said....

Tyson officials said that approximately 250 of the plant's 1,200 employees are Somalis who entered the United States as political refugees. Most, if not all, are believed to be Muslim ....

Tyson officials said the contract was agreed to by 80 percent of the union's 1,000 members at the plant.

This year Eid al-Fitr falls on Oct. 1.

English First, in a seemingly non-English-related objection (or is it that they just don't like the Arabic name?), complains:

English First today denounced as multiculturalism run amok a decision by a Tennessee Tyson Foods poultry plant to eliminate Labor Day as a paid holiday for employees and replace it with a paid observance of a Muslim holy day....

A new immigrant to America, legal or illegal, enjoys more rights than taxpaying American citizens, Boulet said. The notion that immigrants should adapt to America is being destroyed one bilingual education class, one press one for English, and one ACLU-approved Muslim foot-washing bath at a time.

Bill Poser's post at Language Log brought this to my attention, and I agree with him that this is entirely fine. "You might think that this is the kind of thing that labor unions are supposed to do: negotiate holidays that are convenient for their members." The business wins, the Muslim members win, and it seems like the non-Muslim members are generally quite happy, too, judging by the vote.

But more importantly, America was expressly not founded on the notion that immigrants should adapt to America's religious beliefs. Indeed, some of the most important early colonies were settled by people who didn't want to adapt to English religious beliefs, and while some of them did promptly try to expel or exclude people who wouldn't accept the colonies' new religious orthodoxy, thankfully that largely disappeared by the Founding of the nation, and religious tolerance -- including accommodation of minority religious groups -- continued to increase since then. Jews were allowed to come to America without rejecting their own religious beliefs (for an early and surprising legal accommodation of Jewish religious beliefs, see here). Quakers' and other groups' opposition to swearing oaths is expressly accommodated by several provisions in the Constitution, which allow affirmations instead of oaths. More recently, businesses and schools with large Jewish workforces or student bodies have set up some Jewish holy days as days off. The same should apply to Muslims.

Not all religious beliefs, of course, have been accommodated, and not all should be accommodated. But requests from minority religious groups (including recent immigrant groups) for accommodation are a longstanding and respectable part of the American tradition of religious freedom. Where religious pluralism goes, multiculturalism is indeed a traditional American value. And the union vote at the Tyson plan is not "multiculturalism run amok" -- it's the American tradition of religious tolerance and religious accommodation working as it should be.

Finally, just to respond to the anticipated complaints about Islam being special because of the violence of some Muslim extremists, or even the endorsement of religious violence by substantial numbers of Muslims around the globe: None of this has anything to do with whether Somali immigrant Muslims working at a meatpacking plant should get a day off. When someone suggests religious accommodations aimed at letting people (of whatever religion) contribute to terrorist organizations, or engage in suicide bombings, I'll happily agree that they should be rejected -- just as religiously motived attacks on abortion clinics and other sorts of religious violence should remain fully punishable. But that some of the Somali-born meatpackers' coreligionists are doing bad things based on bad ideas doesn't make it the desire to have Eid al-Fitr off any less legitimate.

]]> Lysander Spooner Quote of the Day: http://volokh.com/posts/1218041760.shtml In editing Lysander Spooner's 1886 A Letter to Grover Cleveland for a conference I am organizing, I happened upon the following colorful observation I thought others might enjoy:... Randy Barnett 2008-08-06T16:08+00:00 A Letter to Grover Cleveland for a conference I am organizing, I happened upon the following colorful observation I thought others might enjoy:
To say, as the advocates of our government do, that a man must give up some of his natural rights, to a government, in order to have the rest of them protected the government being all the while the sole and irresponsible judge as to what rights he does give up, and what he retains, and what are to be protected — is to say that he gives up all the rights that the government chooses, at any time, to assume that he has given up; and that he retains none, and is to be protected in none, except such as the government shall, at all times, see fit to protect, and to permit him to retain. This is to suppose that he has retained no rights at all, that he can, at any time, claim as his own, as against the government. It is to say that he has really given up every right, and reserved none. . . .

It is especially noticeable that those persons, who are so impatient to protect other men in their rights that they cannot wait until they are requested to do so, have a somewhat inveterate habit of killing all who do not voluntarily accept their protection; or do not consent to give up to them all their rights in exchange for it.

If A were to go to B, a merchant, and say to him, "Sir, I am a night-watchman, and I insist upon your employing me as such in protecting your property against burglars; and to enable me to do so more effectually, I insist upon your letting me tie your own hands and feet, so that you cannot interfere with me; and also upon your delivering up to me all your keys to your store, your safe, and to all your valuables; and that you authorize me to act solely and fully according to my own will, pleasure, and discretion in the matter; and I demand still further, that you shall give me an absolute guaranty that you will not hold me to any accountability whatever for anything I may do, or for anything that may happen to your goods while they are under my protection; and unless you comply with this proposal, I will now kill you on the spot," — if A were to say all this to B, B would naturally conclude that A himself was the most impudent and dangerous burglar that he (B) had to fear; and that if he (B) wished to secure his property against burglars, his best way would be to kill A in the first place, and then take his chances against all such other burglars as might come afterwards.

Our government constantly acts the part that is here supposed to be acted by A. And it is just as impudent a scoundrel as A is here supposed to be. It insists that every man shall give up all his rights unreservedly into its custody, and then hold it wholly irresponsible for any disposal it may make of them. And it gives him no alternative but death.

If by putting a bayonet to a man's breast, and giving him his choice, to die, or be "protected in his rights," it secures his consent to the latter alternative, it then proclaims itself a free government, — a government resting on consent!
]]> Verdict in Hamdan Case: http://volokh.com/posts/1218036356.shtml ... Orin Kerr 2008-08-06T15:08+00:00 here.]]> Medellin Opinions on the Stay Application: http://volokh.com/posts/1218034521.shtml ... Orin Kerr 2008-08-06T14:08+00:00 yesterday's opinions denying the application for a stay of execution in the Medellin case are fascinating. A brief per curiam opinion (presumably authored by Justice Scalia as the Circuit Justice) denies the stay, and four Justices authored individual dissents. Of particular interest, Justice Souter addresses the question of how long a Justice should adhere to his own dissent: In his view, sticking to his guns through at least through the end of the Term is reasonable. In addition, Justice Breyer takes the unusual step of criticizing the majority for turning down his efforts to get a courtesy fifth vote for a stay. (I don't think his criticism has much force, as the courtesy fifth vote is generally given when four Justices are voting to grant cert and need a 5th for a stay -- not when four Justice want a stay but aren't ready to grant cert -- but so it goes.) Anyway, this is probably too geeky for all but the most serious Supreme Court geeks, but I thought I would flag the opinions anyway. ]]>