Betsy Clarke

Betsy Clarke is a retired law clerk who lives in Columbus, Ohio.

Latest by Betsy Clarke in Chronicles

Results: 15 Articles found.
  • Fatal Amendments
    Reviews
    April/May 2020

    Fatal Amendments

    Enthusiastic defenders of the First and Second Amendments to the Constitution are fundamentalist cultists—and women and minorities are their victims. At least, that is the thesis of University of Miami law professor Mary Anne Franks’ new book, The Cult of the Constitution, an unforgiving disparagement of the Constitution’s white male origins and the allegedly unwoke application of its protections. Her subtitle brings the point home: “Our Deadly Devotion to Guns and Free Speech.”

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  • Reviews
    August 2019

    Supreme Court's Drifting Days Are Done

    This scrupulously objective book may be considered a gift to conservatives who have long despaired about the possibility of principled legal tenets regularly prevailing in Supreme Court opinions. For decades this long-suffering group has watched Republican Supreme Court appointees concur in various left-wing crackpot decisions that have become the law of the land.

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  • No Justice, No Peace
    Reviews
    April 2019

    No Justice, No Peace

    There is no pleasing Duke University law professor Brandon L. Garrett, author of the death-penalty-abolishment screed End of Its Rope: How Killing the Death Penalty Can Revive Criminal Justice, though much about the current state of criminal justice should please him.

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  • Law and Liberty
    Reviews
    August 2018

    Law and Liberty

    Let’s say that a state passed a statute proscribing teachers from teaching reading in a language other than English until the student had passed the eighth grade. Violation of the statute was a misdemeanor.

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  • The Court in Quandary
    Reviews
    May 2018

    The Court in Quandary

    When the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals affirmed the trial court’s preliminary injunction against President Trump’s executive order restricting immigration from certain countries, it cited Trump’s statements about Islam as its rationale.

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  • Drain the Racket
    Reviews
    February 2018

    Drain the Racket

    When Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 was first passed, “help wanted: men” and “help wanted: women” ads were common in newspapers. Private employers could hire and fire for discriminatory reasons.

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  • The Constitution Knows
    Reviews
    June 2017

    The Constitution Knows

    The right to abortion that shielded Gosnell and his customers from the law for decades comes, we are told, from the U.S. Constitution—somewhere, perhaps, between the 9th and 14th Amendments.

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  • Vital Signs
    September 1993

    The Real Target of Public Schools

    Last school year, my son—who was a fourth grader at a public school— came home with a red piece of paper entitled "Family Call to Action."

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  • Vital Signs
    March 1992

    The Politics of Rape

    When an acquitted William Kennedy Smith emerged from the Florida courtroom last December declaring his faith in the system, a viewer could only query, "Why?"

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  • Cultural Revolutions
    April 1989

    Continuing Legal Education

    Continuing legal education is imposed on lawyers by the Missouri Bar Association and the Missouri Supreme Court, and right before the November election I took a day to fulfill the requirements.

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  • Vital Signs
    April 1989

    Crime and Capital Punishment

    "Missouri doesn't have a death penalty," a former prosecutor remarked to me last Christmas. He was wrong, as he well knew. The Revised Statutes of Missouri specifically allow for capital punishment.

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  • Vital Signs
    July 1988

    The War Toys Meltdown

    At Circus World, Mattel's Rattlor, a Masters of the Universe character, glares at his potential purchasers. "Sounds fearsome battle rattle before attacking," the package advertises.

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  • Reviews
    November 1985

    Passage Back from India

    Identifying the patterns of life, tracking the process of modern thought and action, requires an author who knows a big idea from a little one, a tall order in a day of moral relativism and cultural confusion. Ruth Prawer Jhabvala appears to be such a writer.

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  • Imported
    October 1984

    The Surley Skies & Other Civil Slights

    What kinds of behavior does our culture encourage? The question is ever in style, and usually a pat and misleading answer is on the tongue of every commentator.

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  • Opinions & Views
    January 1984

    Where's the Baking Soda?

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Results: 15 Articles found.



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