Monthly Archives: June 2008

heading north

I’m not confident that I can blog substantively this week, because we are moving–home, family, office, organization, files, fiscal agent, everything–to Tufts. The first moving van comes today. I can, however, provide a link. My new employer, Tufts, is the home of Geek Girls. Their adviser, Professor Karen Panetta, says, “It’s OK, it’s smart, it’s cool to be a nerd, and the girls are just embracing that.”

ServeNext

ServeNext is an organization started by young AmeriCorps alums who want to build support for national and community service. There is an entertaining article in the Chronicle of Philanthropy about their national road trip. That’s only one of their activities, and ServeNext is just one of several active and well-organized groups that are pressing for more and better federal support for service programs. The advocacy campaign as a whole is well organized and savvy and has the ear of policymakers, including leading Senators from both parties and both national presidential campaigns. I think Congress will pass significant new legislation to authorize many more service opportunities and will promote community service as a way to address important issues, such as the high school dropout crisis and our relationship with the Middle East. Whether Congress will appropriate sufficient funds seems more doubtful, given the awful federal budget situation.

did the Supreme Court repeal the Supremacy Clause?

I was always under the impression that when the United States ratified a treaty, it became the law of our land. I got that idea from the U.S. Constitution, Article VI, section 2: “all treaties made, or which shall be made, under the authority of the United States, shall be the supreme law of the land; and the judges in every state shall be bound thereby, any thing in the Constitution or laws of any state to the contrary notwithstanding.”

Because this seems like strong language, I was actually open to the argument that the US should be careful about signing international human rights treaties. Famously, we and Somalia are the only two countries that have not signed the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child. I thought: That’s not good, but part of the reason is that we take treaties very seriously. To ratify the Convention would add a layer of law in our country and give individual children rights that courts could enforce. Courts might even order changes in state or federal budgets to comply with their reading of the Convention. Maybe there is a democratic argument against ratifying.

But then came the case of Medellin v. Texas, decided last year. Mr. Medellin was sentenced to death, but appealed on the ground that he had been denied the right to help from Mexico’s consulate, as provided by the Vienna Convention on Consular Relations (which we have ratified). The International Court of Justice (IJC) ruled that he had a right to review of his sentence. The Bush Administration actually took the IJC’s position and said that Texas should grant an appeal. But the majority of the US Supreme Court took Texas’ side and permitted an execution. As Justice Roberts wrote for the court, “In sum, while the ICJ’s judgment … creates an international law obligation on the part of the United States, it does not of its own force constitute binding federal law that pre-empts state restrictions on the filing of successive habeas petitions.”

In other words, because we signed the consular treaty, Congress should pass laws guaranteeing aliens the right to assistance by diplomats. But if Congress does not pass such laws, individuals have no enforceable rights under the treaty. And there is no sanction against Congress if it fails to pass laws.

I have friends who think the Medellin decision is an outrage. They say that the conservative justices ignored the plain text of the Constitution and 200 years of precedent. They offer two possible reasons: (1) The Court simply wanted Texas to execute Jose Ernesto Medellin (after all, Justice Roberts described his crimes in gory detail). Or (2) the Court dislikes international law so much that it will ignore a treaty that the Senate has ratified.

Whether these criticisms are fair depends–as such matters often do–on questions of precedent. If Medellin overturns 200 years of well-established law and makes the US an exception among nations, it is outrageous. If American precedents and the rules in other countries are more complex, then it is a more reasonable decision. I don’t know which interpretation is correct.

Leaving questions of legal interpretation aside, I think it is often (but not inevitably) good for the US to sign onto widely ratified treaties that grant individuals rights against governments. I would like such treaties to be enforceable, regardless of what Congress chooses to do. On the other hand, I also believe in the obligation of the US Congress to make all laws. When the US ratifies treaties, only the Senate and the president must agree, and they can agree to a very vague principle. Before the Medellin decision, courts would have to decide how precisely to implement a treaty. Thus I can see a fairly reasonable argument that Congress should always pass specific enabling legislation after a treaty is ratified.

why study service-learning?

I’m at Brandeis for a meeting of “emerging scholars” who study service-learning. They are paired with established mentors who advise them, and they enter a network of other new scholars in the field. This is a project (which we are helping to run) that is part of a larger effort to build the field of service-learning. I also participate in the “emerging leaders” part of the effort, which supports younger managers and organizers. Both aspects are funded by the Kellogg Foundation.

This seems an appropriate moment to ask why anyone should study service-learning (the combination of community service with academic study). I would say:

1. Because studying young people who are asked to work on a community problem or issue is a great opportunity to investigate large issues about human development, the reproduction or reform of institutions and cultures, learning, deliberation, racial conflict, and many other issues. In other words, service-learning is an opportunity for social science.

2. Because service-learning is common–present in about half of American high schools–yet the quality is very uneven. Research can identify what aspects of service-learning generate good results in various contexts. Once we know that makes service-learning succeed, we can inform future teachers in their education courses, explain the criteria in program guidelines, and so on.

3. Because there is an opening for new policies that involve service. Senators McCain and Obama both favor service-learning, and there is an effective nonpartisan advocacy campaign for national and community service programs. It is fairly straightforward to design new policies for Americorps. But it’s not so easy to say what a good service-learning policy should be for k-12 schools. Policies cannot automatically create high-quality educational experiences. They always operate through rather crude incentives or rules–for instance, grant opportunities, mandates, course requirements, standards, or state-sponsored exams. We need research about the likely impact of policies before we can tell friendly politicians which policies they should promote.

Note that even a friendly politician must make choices–must decide how much resources to put into service-learning compared to other activities, including other forms of experiential civic education. Responsible advice to policymakers thus depends upon careful and rigorous comparative research. It’s not enough to say that service-learning is good; we have to know whether each marginal dollar is better spent on it or something else.

4. Because a lot of adults are involved in a field called service-learning, and it’s a good group–diverse in goals and ideologies but idealistic and fairly coherent. To use an over-used term, it’s a “community.” Communities can deserve loyalty even if one doesn’t believe that they are objectively better or more important than other communities. I’m not sure that I believe service-learning is a better, or even a more promising, intervention than some others. I am sure that the community that supports it is a good one. According to the great work of Albert O. Hirschman, when one wants to change a group, the two choices are “exit” and “voice.” Exit is the main mechanism in a market, and it is a good one. We use “voice” when we cannot exit a group (e.g., a family or a nation), or when we are loyal. I think the service-learning world merits some loyalty, and that means using our voice to improve it. For those of us who are scholars, the best form of voice is research.