But Don't Question Their Patriotism Redux

The Solomon Amendment, round two:

Should law schools be allowed to block military recruiters from campus? That's one of the first questions John Roberts will decide as a Supreme Court justice, should the Senate confirm him.

The case, called Rumsfeld v. Forum for Academic Rights, concerns the constitutionality of the Solomon Act, which mandates that law schools will lose their federal funding if they ban military recruiters. In 2003, a coalition of schools sued. Last year, the Third Circuit Court of Appeals ruled in their favor and declared the Solomon Act unconstitutional. The Supreme Court is scheduled to take up the matter in hearings beginning in mid-October.

This week, a group of law professors and students, led by George Mason Law School dean Daniel Polsby, filed an amicus brief supporting the military. The document's signers include Douglas Kmiec of Pepperdine and Robert Turner of the University of Virginia. Polsby's basic opinion about the appeals-court decision can be summarized in two words: It's bogus.

The Solomon Amendment was originally passed in the wake of the 1993 "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" policy when law schools stated that if the military were going to discriminate it would bar recruiters from campuses.

I don't think private institutions should be compelled to allow military recruiters on campus.

I also think that those who refuse to do so ought receive no federal or state funding, including research grants, nor should any government official grace their
campus for so long as they elect to treat our armed forces with more disdain than they do the Islamofascists who come here to learn more effective methods of wiping us off the face of the Earth.