Jesse Choper Explains Legal Argument in Support of Gay Marriage

-NPR Day To Day, May 16, by Madeleine Brand
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=90517603&ft=1&f=1059

“The argument they will make is: This is discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation—which it plainly is—and that that discrimination violates the equal protection clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. And that sexual orientation, much like gender, race, ethnicity, are to be given special consideration by the court.”

-San Francisco Chronicle, May 17, by Bob Egelko
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2008/05/17/MNQR10O1OC.DTL

“I know of no case in which a (law) sought to deprive someone retroactively of a right they had at the time,” said Jesse Choper, a constitutional law professor at UC Berkeley who filed arguments in support of the same-sex couples in the case decided this week.

-KCRW-FM To The Point (Los Angeles), May 19, by Warren Olney
http://www.kcrw.com/news/programs/tp/tp080519can_same-sex_marriag

“The fact that many, many citizens voted contrary to the Supreme Court’s decision is true in virtually every constitutional decision made in either a federal or state Supreme Court finding that government action violates equal rights. If lots of people hadn’t voted to take that action, the case would never had reached the Supreme Court. So that’s true with all of the rights of the accused that the Supreme Court has found, that’s true with the rights of women that many courts have found, that’s true of the racial cases as well.”

Christopher Edley and Maria Echaveste Discuss Campaign Race and Gender Wars

PBS Bill Moyers Journal, May 16
http://www.pbs.org/moyers/journal/05162008/watch.html

Maria Echaveste: Hillary Clinton did not get a fair chance with both media perspectives and the subtleties on gender discrimination. I think … there’s a zone of protection around Senator Obama on race where none existed on gender.… It also raised all kinds of pretty misogynistic views about women and that woman in particular. And a lot of women are angry about it.

Chris Edley: The real challenge of leadership is to find ways to talk about the things that divide us and help us figure out how to bridge those not by ignoring them but by, in some sense, overcoming them, resolving them, accommodating them.… I’m not for ignoring race in the sense that it can’t be ignored. It’s going be there no matter what. If you ignore it in the sense of simply not talking about it then you’ve failed to do anything effectively to deal with the cancer.

Herma Hill Kay Explains Legal Ramification of Gay Marriage Ruling

KQED Special Broadcast, May 15, by Judy Campbell
http://www.kqed.org/epArchive/R805151601

“I think it’s absolutely historic. I think it does go beyond gay marriage, because the court took the opportunity to decide that the sexual orientation is a suspect classification under the California State Constitution, just like gender and race and religion. They’ve never done that until today, and so that means that the gay and lesbian activists now can look to apply this new strict scrutiny standard to other areas where they’re being discriminated against.”

Jesse Fried Says SEC Investigation May Not Force Out Broadcom Executives

San Francisco Daily Journal, May 15, by Gabe Friedman
http://www.dailyjournal.com

Sometimes, he said, a person’s value to the company outweighs the risks of fallout from a potential SEC investigation. He noted that in other instances, officers can continue at a company because they own large shares of stock…. “I see two possible explanations for them staying on,” Fried said about Dull and Samueli. “One is that their technical skills are needed, the other is that they’re powerful.”

Christopher Hoofnagle Study Shows Consumers Unaware Personal Data Is Sold

San Francisco Chronicle, May 15, by Deborah Gage
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2008/05/15/BUJT10MD33.DTL&type=printable

“Businesses are allowed to sell information unless consumers object,” said Chris Hoofnagle, the [Samuelson] clinic’s associate director and a co-author of the report. “There’s a (significant) gap between people’s understanding of the rules and actual marketplace practices.”