Seeing and being in the presence of good behavior provides an important ethical tool. Watching someone who does something well is an excellent way to learn. This is true for activities as varied as performing surgery and living responsibly. Every society needs role models and other exemplars of skill and virtue.
Value for Tuesday of Week 46 in the season of Assessing
Equal Rights and Protection of Law
Because laws are necessary, so too are moral principles for the laws.
- . . . in the eye of the law, there is in this country no superior, dominant, ruling class of citizens. There is no caste here. Our Constitution is color-blind, and neither knows nor tolerates classes among citizens. In respect of civil rights, all citizens are equal before the law. The humblest is the peer of the most powerful. [John Harlan, dissenting in Plessey v. Ferguson.]
- . . . in a just society the liberties of equal citizenship are taken as settled; the rights secured by justice are not subject to political bargaining or to the calculus of social interests. [John Rawls, A Theory of Justice (1971), Chapter 1, “Justice as Fairness,” (1) “The Role of Justice”.]
- Freedom for the wolves has often meant death to the sheep. [Isaiah Berlin.]
- An unjust law is a code that a majority inflicts on a minority that is not binding on itself. This is difference made legal. On the other hand, a just law is a code that a majority compels a minority to follow, and that it is willing to follow itself. This is sameness made legal. [Martin Luther King, Jr., “Letter from Birmingham Jail” (1963).]
In 1868, the United States added the Fourteenth Amendment to its Constitution, guaranteeing every person within its jurisdiction equal protection of the laws. Despite a checkered history of enforcement, this principle remains an essential and cherished ideal.
Real
True Narratives
- Robert P. Green, Jr., Equal Protection and the African American Constitutional Experience: A Documentary History (Greenwood, 2000).
- Angelo N. Ancheta, Scientific Evidence and Equal Protection of the Law (Rutgers University Press, 2006).
- Eric Marcus, Making Gay History: The Half-Century Fight for Lesbian and Gay Equal Rights (Harper Paperbacks, 2002).
- Steven M. Buechler, Women's Movements in the United States: Woman Suffrage, Equal Rights, and Beyond (Rutgers University Press, 1990).
- Raymond Arsenault, The Sound of Freedom: Marian Anderson, The Lincoln Memorial, and the Concert That Awakened America (Bloomsbury Press, 2010).
- Russell Freedman, The Voice That Challenged a Nation: Marian Anderson and the Struggle for Equal Rights (Clarion Books, 2004).
Technical and Analytical Readings
- Robert C Farrell & Alison Conroy, Equal Protection, Cases and Materials (Vandeplas Pub., 2021).
- William D. Araiza, Enforcing the Equal Protection Clause: Congressional Power, Judicial Doctrine, and Constitutional Law (NYU Press, 2016).
- Tina Fernandes Botts, For Equals Only: Race, Equality, and the Equal Protection Clause (Lexington Books, 2018).
Photographs
Documentary and Educational Films
- Up the Yangtze: how the Three Gorges Dam in China served many interests but only by forcing millions of families“out of their ancestral homes”
Imaginary
Fictional Narratives
Poetry
Music: Composers, artists, and major works
With their gentle and life-affirming tone, Franz Joseph Haydn’s piano trios capture this rudimentary aspect of equality. Here are links to the complete Haydn piano trios (list of recorded performances) performed by the Beaux Arts Trio, then again in another recording. Here are “complete” sets performed by the Haydn Trio Eisenstadt (2008) (583’) and the Van Swieten Trio (on period instruments). Also available on period instruments are Aquinas Piano Trio, Vol. 5, Vol. 6, and Vol. 8.
Albums, from the dark side:
- Samora Pinderhughes, “Grief”: “The vocalist, pianist and composer interviewed roughly 100 people of color who had experienced ‘structural violence’ and created the Healing Project, a three-part interdisciplinary work.”
