Here is a little tease from my London adventures this weekend! I’ll write more when I have a chance but for now enjoy Big Ben!
Monthly Archives: July 2013
British Sports: Lions and Murray and Henley, Oh My!
The Course at the Henley Royal Regatta
The weekend of July 5-7 was a spectacular one for British sports. The Henley Royal Regatta took place. The British and Irish Lions beat Australia in their three test series (the first Lions win since beating South Africa in 1997). And perhaps best known of all, Andy Murray became the first Briton to win the Gentlemen’s Singles in Wimbledon since Fred Perry won in 1936. Having arrived in the United Kingdom on July 5th and stayed with a good friend, I got to experience all of this in a very English sort of way.
As I mentioned in other posts, I arrived in London on July 5 after my layover in Copenhagen. It was a long journey, and sadly, the immigration line took forever. I then took the Tube into the city, which took quite a long time as well, leading me to not arrive in Maida Vale, where my friend lives in the city, until much later than anticipated. To make things worse, my phone, which usually works abroad, is simply not allowing me to roam here, so I had no good way for calling him. When I finally made it to his flat in Maida Vale, he’d left. I wasn’t quite sure what to do, but I thought I’d find a hostel and figure things out the next day. I was disappointed, because we were to go to Henley on Saturday (the next day), and I thought I’d miss it. As I was walking down the street, however, with my backpack on my back and rolling my suitcase along, some people asked me if I needed directions (and I indeed believe that I must have looked quite lost). I quickly told them my predicament, and they offered me a cell phone. I quickly accepted, called my friend, and thankfully he was still down the street at Paddington Station waiting to catch a train out to the countryside where his parents live (I was supposed to come with). I thanked the people on the street (who turned out to be Spaniards—I gave them my card), and cabbed over to Paddington.
The New Cover Photo: Blenheim Eyes
Entrance to Blenheim Palace
Just a quick note on the new cover photo. It’s part of the ceiling above the portico of the main entrance to Blenheim Palace, in Woodstock, Oxfordshire, England. I was there over the weekend, and as I wrote in my other post, it was fabulous. The eyes are supposed to be those of the 9th Duke of Marlborough and his second wife Gladys Deacon (an American), with the blue being the Duchess’ eye. It’s rather different, but it does make for an interesting picture!
To quote Blenheim Palace’s website: “The reason for the unusual eyes being painted remains something of a mystery and has baffled the historians as there is no written documentation about them. Speculation has included possible connections to the mystical ‘number three’ and the symbolic ‘evil eye’, or that the brown eyes could belong to the American heiress Consuelo Vanderbilt, first wife of the 9th Duke. An early photograph showing the eyes being painted has a caption by Gladys ‘Colin Gill painting our eyes’. For this reason they are believed to be the eyes of the Duke and Duchess watching over the Palace.”
As with the cover photo I put up from La Posta Vecchia, a place outside of Rome, Italy, I will post a short comment on any new cover photos. It’s always nice to have some context for these things.
Seven Hours in Copenhagen: My First Scandinavian Visit
A Canal in Copenhagen
Hello all! I realize I have not written much since being in Europe, but I have simply not had time. Since I arrived a week ago Friday morning in the beautiful Danish capital of Copenhagen, I have been doing one thing after another, with no time to pause even for jet lag. I will speak more about my first days in the United Kingdom in a future post entitled British Sports: Lions and Murray and Henley, Oh My! but now I wanted to focus on the short layover I had in Copenhagen.
While I have traveled extensively in Europe in the past (you can see my travel information on the About Sam pages), I had never set foot in Scandinavia. So when I realized that SAS Scandinavian Airlines had the cheapest flight into London, but through Copenhagen, I said yes right away. The layover was either going to be about five hours, or a little over seven, and I figured that while I’d be tired from the trip (I can never sleep on the flights across the pond), it would be better to go out and see the city with seven hours than wait around the airport with five. So when I landed on July 5, I headed straight for the metro to buy my ticket and do the 20 minute or so ride into the heart of the city. I have a friend from school who lived in Copenhagen for a while, and he’d given me good tips on how to get into the city and so on.
Blenheim Palace: Winston and the Dukes of Malborough
Blenheim Palace
On Sunday I joined a number of my classmates on a trip out to Woodstock, a town about 20 minutes by bus from Oxford. The town is nice enough, and we enjoyed a drink there later in the day, but the main draw is the fabulous Blenheim Palace, the home of the Dukes of Marlborough and the birthplace of Winston Churchill (1874-1965), the famed prime minister and orator who led Britain to victory in World War II. The land around Woodstock, and the title of Duke of Marlborough, were granted to John Churchill (1650-1722), the 1st Duke, by Queen Anne (the last of the Stuart monarchs) (1702-14) after his victory at the Battle of Blenheim (1704) during the War of the Spanish Succession (1701-1714). The construction of Blenheim Palace began soon after at the direction of John Vanbrugh. Built in the short lived English Baroque style (often defined as existing between 1666 and 1713), it is quite an impressive specimen and was named a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1987. It also boasts impressive gardens and a so-called “Pleasure Garden”, which as you can imagine ignites a good deal of snickering (in reality they’ve got nothing to do with the source of the snickering, but nonetheless it led to some fun jokes on at the garden’s expense).
Queen Pool, Blenheim Palace
Our View at Lunch
In any case, we took a bus from the main station in Oxford out to Blenheim. It was a hot day, with the highs reaching well into the high 80’s Fahrenheit (30 Celsius or so). The bus was somewhat crowded, but not impossibly so, and we arrived without incident. As you walk down the main road into the grounds, you see the palace in the distance, majestic, with the vast, green fields splayed before you. We’d planned a picnic, and the group went off to do that immediately. A few of us wanted to grab some more food, so we headed up to one of the cafes, bought some extra food, and tried to find the rest of our group again. We didn’t, and so ate on our own–sandwiches, fruit, almonds, lemonade, cider, and cookies. It was quite a good assortment, and it was nice to sit under a tree by the Queen Pool, a lake, and see the view.
From Puebla to London in 72 Hours: Via Mexico City, Houston, D.C., and Copenhagen
It’s been a whirlwind few weeks for sure. On Tuesday morning July 2, 2013, around 10:00 I left Puebla, Mexico, the bustling city of three million where my parents live, to head to Oxford, UK, for my month long course in human rights law. A two hour bus ride to Mexico City later, I was sitting in Terminal One, the old terminal, of the Benito Juarez International Airport. Two hours after getting on that plane, I landed in Houston’s George Bush International Airport, went through immigration, customs, rechecked my bag, and boarded the second plane of the day, to Washington D.C.’s Reagan National. By the time I finally got to bed around 1:00 am, I was pretty out of it. Wednesday I saw friends, did errands, went to my therapist, and repacked. Thursday afternoon I boarded a SuperShuttle out to Dulles International Airport, another one of D.C.’s three, to board my Scandinavian Airways flight to London, via Copenhagen, Denmark. I’d decided to give myself a longer layover there to get a short glimpse of the city. Having never been to Scandinavia, I wanted to have a chance to at least walk the streets and eat some food. I checked my bag all the way through to London, and with my small trusty backpack took the Copenhagen metro into the heart of the city. I’ve written about that already, but I wanted to just give a little recap of those days.
When I finally arrived at Heathrow Airport later that Friday (July 5), the immigration line took close to two hours, and then the Tube ride into the city (I got off at the Warwick Avenue station, close to Paddington) took an eternity. When I arrived, my friend had already left his apartment to stay with his parents in the country (I arrived hours later than expected). Someone in the street lent me their phone (they turned out to be Spaniards living in London), and I called my friend. I was able to meet him at Paddington to go out to the town of Newbury, close to where his family is. When I finally arrived there it was after 21:00. I met his family, we had dinner, and talked a lot until about midnight GMT, and then headed to bed to be able to wake up early to go to the Henley Royal Regatta, which was quite something. In short, it was rather hectic 72 hours, but it’s been incredibly worth it—seeing friends, going to events, being in Oxford studying human rights, and meeting new people has been amazing.
The idea of this post is to kind of make it an introduction to the rest of the entries I will put up while in Europe. One is in the planning called British Sports: Lions and Murray and Henley, Oh My! and others will be organized around different topics (the visit to Blenheim Palace, the course work, other trips, and of course the wonderful city of Oxford itself). I’m also going to write about other issues I deal with here. While it’s been a busy time, and the human rights law program keeps you on your toes, I think I can slip in a few posts here and there, although perhaps with less detail and links than my usual ones. Let’s see how it goes!
Manchin and the NRA: Is the Gun Lobby Out of Touch?
Senator Joe Manchin III of West Virginia (2010-present)
When former governor and current Senator from West Virginia Joe Manchin III ran for former Senator Robert Byrd‘s seat in 2010, he was strongly backed by the National Rifle Association (“NRA”). The now-Senator famously shot a bullet through a copy of the cap-and-trade bill in a campaign commercial—literally. It is widely credited with helping turn around his campaign and winning him a full term in 2012. Later in the election, he walked around with a gun resting on his shoulder and told the camera he didn’t have to shoot the bill again because it was already dead. Repeatedly, the senator has said he does not regret the add. He has a lifetime NRA rating of A. The falling out he has had with the most prominent gun lobby, then, came as something of a surprise.
In the aftermath of the school shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary in Newtown, Connecticut, much fanfare was made of imposing new gun control legislation, both in individual states and nationally. While some jurisdictions–Connecticut and Colorado in particular–enacted tough new laws, the Federal government found itself mired in the slog of obstructionist Republicans and gutless Democrats. Vice President Joe Biden‘s special commission went nowhere. So when a bipartisan duo of senators historically backed by the NRA stepped up to the plate to push for almost universal background checks, a modest proposal, it looked like the best deal that could pass.
Oxford: The Beginning
The Cloisters at New College, Oxford University
Scenes in the Harry Potter movies were filmed here
Hello from Oxford! Sorry for not writing for a while–I’ve had an exciting first few days in Europe, with adventures in Copenhagen, Denmark, and across the south of England. It’s been a remarkably special week for British sports (a Lions rugby victory over Australia for the first time in a dozen years and Andy Murray’s Wimbledon win today that ends a 77 year streak in which no Brit came out on top) and I’ll write about that and other things soon, as well as my time with friends in England.
But for now, I just wanted to say that Oxford is fabulous, and quite like I imagined it in many ways. I’ve met a lot of people on the program in the past four hours, both from GW Law and from across the globe (there are quite a few Australians here). The borrowed notion of taking a small bottle of liquor with you when you travel (thanks grandpa) has also come in handy socially.
In short, we begin our program tomorrow, and I’ll be reporting more soon.
Another Adventure
Happy fourth all y’all! London is calling. And then Oxford. 1776, if you could see how things have changed. I’ll write more soon from the Old World.
Minority Rights and the Supreme Court: The Defense of Marriage Act
Note on this Series: This is the first part in a four-part series analyzing the Supreme Court of the United States‘ (“the Court”) decisions released on the week of June 24, 2013, affecting minority rights – the constitutionality of Section 3 of DOMA, of Sections 4 and 5 of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 (“VRA”), of California Proposition 8, and of affirmative action programs in public institutions of higher learning.
Note on Citations: Throughout the post, I will cite to pages of the Court’s slip opinion, which you can find below. Because the decision has yet to be codified in the United States Reports, the slip opinion is the only official version of the opinion available.
Note on the Text: The text of the the Court’s decision on DOMA can be found in PDF format here. The controlling majority opinion was written by Justice Anthony Kennedy, and joined by Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Stephen Breyer, Sonia Sotomayor, and Elena Kagan. There are a number of dissenting opinions written or joined by Chief Justice John Roberts, and Justices Antonin Scalia, Clarence Thomas, and Samuel Alito.
The landmark decision released June 26 in United States v. Windsor, 570 U.S. __ (2013) is one of the defining civil rights opinions of our generation. The Court ruled that Section 3 of the Defense of Marriage Act (“DOMA”), 1 U.S.C. § 7 (2006), a 1996 law defining marriage as between one man and one woman for the purpose of over 1,000 Federal benefits, is unconstitutional. Already in the past hours and days many have written about the merits, and how Justice Anthony Kennedy‘s strong defense of equality has irked many conservatives, including perennially mean spirited Justice Antonin “Nino” Scalia (I should note that I have a great deal of respect for Mr. Scalia despite his fastidiousness in some topics, like this one; he is principled for the most part, and is right on some topics, such as the Fourth Amendment to the Constitution–but that’s for another day). I will give a short recap of my view of the decision as well. But I will also take a quick look at an issue that many in the legal community thought would doom Windsor–standing. In order to get to even be able to consider the merits of the case–that is, whether DOMA violated the Equal Protection Clause of the Fifth Amendment to the Constitution–both the person bringing the law suit and the person defending it have to have standing.
Edith Windsor, the plaintiff in the seminal Supreme Court decision bearing her name
Before addressing the legal rulings and implications of the case, the underlying factual background is necessary. Edith Windsor, who brought the lawsuit, was in a long term, committed homosexual relationship from 1963 until 2009, when her partner, Thea Spyer passed away. See Windsor at 2. Worried about Ms. Spyer’s health, the couple had gone to Ontario, Canada, to marry in 2007, a marriage which is recognized under New York law. See id. at 1. Upon Ms. Spyer’s death, she left her estate to Ms. Windsor, who applied for spousal benefits in estate taxes, which was denied by the IRS because Ms. Winsdor’s marriage was not recognized by the Federal government due to DOMA. See id. at 2-3. Ms. Windsor then tried to get the money—over USD $363,000—back as a tax refund, and was also denied. See id. at 3 She then sued the United States in the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York (“SDNY”) in an attempt to get her refund, arguing that DOMA violates the Equal Protection Clause of the Fifth Amendment. See id. at 1.
A View 