Discussion of Court Decision: The Solomon Amendment
A decision recently handed down by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit in Philadelphia found that educational institutions have a First Amendment right to bar military recruiters from their campuses to protest the Defense Department policy of excluding gays from the military (Liptak, 2004). The constitutional law at issue in the decision was the First Amendment, which guarantees freedom of speech; also at issue is the constitutionality of the Solomon Amendment of 1995, which bars the federal government from dispersing money to colleges and universities that obstruct campus recruiting by the military (Liptak, 2004).
The Supreme Court should refer to the First Amendment in rejecting the lower court's decision on the basis that refusing to permit military recruiters to speak on campus amounts to a denial of recruiters' own right to free speech. Law schools can allow military recruiters to recruit on campus while simultaneously disavowing support for their political ideology or position. Rights are not limited to single actors alone. In the second half of the twentieth century, Americans became very conscious of their rights, developing a new "rights consciousness" that has shaped the public agenda along with Congressional and Executive branch activities and rulings from the judiciary (Hall, 1992). American civil liberties are grounded in the U.S. Constitution and affirmed over time by Supreme Court decisions on such matters as equal protection, due process, citizenship rights, freedom of association, and so forth. Alan Brinkley (2003, p. 23) has stated that "the history of civil liberties in America, like the history of civil rights, is a story of struggle." Even in peacetime, Americans have been engaged in an ever-changing and complex negotiation between the conflicting demands of liberty and the demands of order and security. Brinkley believes that not...