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I spent the following few days in alternating bouts of optimism and despair, joking about giving up my prostate for lent at one minute and weeping the next. But with the support of my wife, information from the Arkansas Prostate Cancer Foundation , and the excellent advice of several doctors, I had successful surgery.

Although recovery from the surgery was no picnic, I returned to work full time within 4 weeks and went on a 2 week bicycle trip with my family to my grandfather’s home town in Italy a little over 2 months post surgery.

But thousands of men in Arkansas and across the country are not so fortunate and die from Prostate Cancer every year. It is the most common form of cancer except for skin cancer. One in every six men will get Prostate Cancer in their lifetime.

The Arkansas Central Cancer Registry estimates that in a typical year around 2000 Arkansas men will be diagnosed with Prostate Cancer and about 360 will die from the disease.

According to the Arkansas Prostate Cancer Foundation:

• Age: The chance of having prostate cancer increases rapidly after age 50. More than 70% of all prostate cancers are diagnosed in men over the age of 65.
• Ethnicity: Prostate cancer occurs almost 70% more often in African-American men than it does in Caucasian men. Compared with men of other races, African-American men are more likely to be diagnosed at an advanced stage. African-American men are twice as likely to die of prostate cancer as Caucasian men are.
• Family history: If a close relative has prostate cancer, a man’s risk of the disease more than doubles. With two relatives, his risk increases five times. With three close relatives, his risk is about 97%.

Although Prostate Cancer responds well to treatment, it still is one of the leading causes of death in men. Over 32,000 men died from Prostate Cancer in 2010.

Information is power.  Men over 40 should talk to their doctor about when to start screening and men over 50 should establish an regular screening.

I was lucky to be in the right place with the right doctor at the right. But, men, don’t push your luck. Get screened. The Arkansas Prostate Cancer Foundation conducts mobile screenings around the state.

Go. Now. It may save your life.

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Being an appellate court judge provides a handy record for Senators to inspect. Justice Alito came to court after a long stint on the 3rd Circuit. His views on most issues were pretty clear. Chief Justice Roberts, on the other hand, spent so little time on the bench that his record was devoid of any meaningful cases.

Finally, is Kagan another Harriet Miers? In a word, No.  Miers’ was a pioneer in many ways and her legal career was nothing to be ashamed of.  Miers’ nomination was brought down by conservative opposition. Activists feared that she was not sufficiently anti-Roe to appoint to a lifetime position.  They submarined her nomination to force the President to appoint a more reliable conservative. Cue Sam Alito with an extensive (conservative) record on the federal court of appeals.

It also matters what kind of experience a person brings to the Supreme Court.  Kagan clerked for a Supreme Court Justice, taught law at the University of Chicago, held significant positions for Joe Biden and Bill Clinton and served as Harvard Law School Dean before becoming Solicitor General of the United States.

The bottom line: you can be a great justice without being a judge.

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Most people had thoughtful observations (e.g., there has not been a Southerner on the Court in a long time) or insightful questions (e.g., why won’t nominees every say anything of substance?). But others showed why I fear for democracy. One questioner began by announcing that the President appoints  “pretty radical” people and wondered if Kagan would be another one. I gave the standard response: she is viewed as a pragmatic, cautious thinker with great personal skill bridging ideological division. But I began that answer by saying that I “wasn’t sure I agree that the President surrounds himself with radicals.’

That apparently lit up the phones. Donna from Cabot, her voice shaking, invoked Van Jones et al (“something anyone can see by reading the headlines”) and announced that “with all due respect,” she could not believe anything I said. Later, Bill, a (former?) student, yelled into his cell phone, that I was a “left wing democrat” (a seeming insult) and that “we don’t need any more radical liberals.”

I love a good debate as much as the next person but these people weren’t interested in debate.  For Donna and Bill, disagreement is not possible.  Donna will only “believe” people who completely agree with her conclusions while Bill finds no room for people who have a different political outlook. But if we cannot calmly examine the facts or tolerate opposing points of view, democratic governance is impossible. Disagreement is important but respect and humility are fundamental. We are not enemies if we disagree and, no matter how certain we are, we may be wrong.But for the Donna’s and the Bill’s there is no uncertainty and no middle ground.

Take any important political issue and you will see this played out over and over. Global warming is a conspiracy. Health Care Reform will steal your freedoms and kill your grandmother. Illegal immigrants have no rights whatsoever and must be rooted out and sent home. Net Neutrality is a Marxist plot to allow President Obama to take over the internet.

We have to be able to talk about the best way to solve our problems but we will never be able to get there if people claim their own reality or want to exclude opposite points of view from the debate. I fear for our democracy.

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“Do something wonderful, people may imitate it.”

Dr. Albert Schweitzer spoke those words. Schweitzer is a man who deserves to be better known today than he is. I. He was an accomplished 20th century theologian, musician, physician, public servant, and political activist. When he turned 30 in 1905, he decided to become a doctor in Africa so he could help repair the damage done by colonialism. He raised money by giving organ concerts, eventually opened a hospital in what is now Gabon, and devoted most of the rest of his life to that effort. A pacifist, he spoke out against colonialism and militarism and won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1952 when he was 77. He was not without his faults which he acknowledged, including an inability to shed the European paternalism toward Africans. Nevertheless, his intense devotion to creating a better world by making a concrete contribution – that is, by doing something wonderful that someone might imitate- is the model for public service as it is being defined at the Clinton school.

He also told people to “search and see if there is not some place where you may invest your humanity.” I see those words come to life in our students. The Clinton school is a unique place because we are all creating a new discipline. We don’t have a recognized department with an established canon. And that is why teaching here is so much fun. Because unlike more established disciplines, the students are co-creators with the faculty and the administration. With every class, we add something more to what Public Service means and with every project you add something to what public service does. It is an amazing experience in which I ALWAYS learn more from the students than they learn from me because they are living examples of Schweitzer’s dictum of people investing their humanity.

Finally, teaching at the Clinton School invigorates me.  Part of it comes from the challenge of thinking about things in new ways; or reaching new insights about well worn topics; or being released from the shackles of law school’s Socratic method. Or trying to explain why my assignments are so long. But the major reason comes from being around energetic, idealistic students who take such joy in what they are doing. Your class was loud, talkative, engaged. Sometimes we wandered far afield; sometimes we didn’t wander very far at all. But throughout it all, a sense of joy pervaded what you did.

In the end, that is why Schweitzer kept coming to mind as I prepared these remarks. I have kept outside my door for over 30 years my favorite Schweitzer quote. It has reminded me why I went into legal services when I graduate from law school but today it reminds me even more of the students from the Clinton School.

And, if you don’t remember anything from my class, I hope you will remember these words.

He said: “I don’t know what your destiny will be, but one thing I do know: the only ones among you who will be truly happy are those who have sought and found how to serve.”

Friends: keeping seeking and serving. Thank you.

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I started tweeting last March during my recovery from Prostate Cancer surgery. I bought an Ipod touch to let me listen to music during the long hours when I was supposed to be resting.  Because it was so uncomfortable to get off the couch very often, I became close friends with the Touch. I got bored listening to music so I started to discover the other things the Touch could do. I said: “Hey, I’ve heard about this Twitter thing. I’ll check it out while I have some time on my hands.”

Once signed on, I soon discovered my friend Skip Rutherford, the Clinton School Dean, tweeting away. (@JLRIII) And the Clinton School students. And Bowen Law School students. And lawyers. And PR people. And…

Twitter allowed  me to break out of the isolation my recuperation imposed. I don’t like to be cooped up and rarely sit still at work but moving was challenging and uncomfortable. Twitter gave me incentive to work on my recovery.  I tweeted the number of steps I had taken that day or my recovering appetite or my new Guitar Hero scores.  And the encouragement from my new twitter buddies kept me accountable to them and gave me even more incentive to take a few more steps the next day.  It kept me happy and helped me to become healthy.

Following Skip showed me the power twitter had as a professional tool. I loved how he interacted with his students, promoted the school’s events,  and touted Little Rock. Since then, I have become an avid tweeter with over 2700 tweets and almost 700 followers. I am one of four known tweeting law school deans (cool fact: 2 of us are from Arkansas, @Nancecy from UAF). It has helped me stay in contact with students, follow the pulse of the law school and, at times, solve problems before they festered. Now, I am seeking ways to incorporate it into the classes I teach.

This is what I mean when I say that Twitter saved my life. It gave me a new and richer life and got me through a difficult time. If that’s not worth tweeting about, I don’t know what is.

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But almost as soon as I had surgery (in fact, the very week), reports began to question the value of routine prostate cancer screening. First, two studies indicated that routine screening save only one life out of every 50 men who were treated. More recently, the American Cancer Society developed new guidelines that may have created even more confusion.  FOX saw the guidelines “casting doubt” on PSA screening, CNN thought the guidelines would “let men decide” while the LA Times understood them as a call for more “education.” Finally, yesterday the man who discovered the PSA antigen called routine PSA testing “a hugely expensive public health disaster” and suggested that profit plays a role in screening and treatment.

I understand the statistics underlying these new reports. I realize that many men have prostate cancer, never know it, and live happily. But, death rates have gone don in the last 20 years because we now catch many tumors early. The problem is that we don’t know which tumors are aggressive but that hardly seems a reason not to screen at all. And, digging through the new Cancer Society guidelines reveals that most men over 50 and many over 40 should still be screened.

Yet, even this analysis ignores the human beings involved. The question that I asked myself and that I would ask myself today is: do you want to be the guy who dies from cancer? Do you want to be one of the nearly 30K men in the United States who die every year from prostate cancer? If not, what chance are you willing to take to avoid being that guy?

The individual’s decision has to be made in the context of his life. I have been married for over 35 years to the love of my life. My four children are all young adults just starting their own lives.  I love my job and I am having the time of my life doing it.  I haven’t run a marathon yet and I have many more places to visit in the years ahead.  I took all of that into consideration last year when I chose surgery.  Today, I would come out in exactly the same place. Last year, I risked treatment’s personal side effects to preserve the things that mattered most to me. It’s no different this year.

I know that some will say this is an overreaction to a fearsome risk or it is like betting on a long shot at the racetrack. But, at some point, that 50-1 longshot surprises everyone. Last year I went with the safe bet. I’d do the same today.

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Inchoate rankings have always been with us. Everyone had an idea about the “best” law schools or “top” law firms. They were relatively few in number, served a national clientele, and had tradition behind them.  As long as there were relatively few schools at the top of everyone’s list, the rest of the law school universe were free to pursue their regional or state missions.  Being a “good state school ” was not an insult and included a large number of schools each of which was seen as relatively equal.

But the formal ranking system threw all law schools into the same pot and, consequently, exaggerated the importance of small numerical differences. Now all 200 or so schools were benchmarked against the Harvards and Yales. They began to obsess about the difference between being 46 or 49. And it is even worse for the schools ranked from 90 to 140, at the bulge of the bell curve. A small difference in input could lead to a big difference in outcome. There is virtually no difference between the 95 school and the 120 school. But the appearance is devastating.

Since US News began its rankings, law schools have become more expensive and less diverse. Schools pursued the same vision in the same way: spend more and more money on merit scholarships and star professors. As long as the job market held up, everyone was happy. The recession has caused some law schools and law firms to rethink their approach. The Carnegie Report on Legal Education and the proposed ABA outcome measures have sent ripples through law schools. It remains to be seen, however, whether or not things will return to “normal” when the economy picks up.

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Deontologists eschew balancing in favoring of principles.  Consequentialists will answer first amendment questions by saying “It depends” while deontologists will answer by saying ” It’s what the First Amendment says.”

The deontological view has surface appeal but is ultimately incoherent. It promises to be absolute: “No Law” means no law. But its absolutism falls apart quickly. We ban speech (obscenity); criminalize speech (bribery); punish speech (libel). We limit what people can say on the job (government employees); in schools (high school students); and on TV (FCC indecency rules). All of these distinctions depend on assumptions about the purpose of the first amendment and then balancing the value of the speech against society’s needs. As Fish notes:

The answer is that in each of these cases the speech involved has been redefined as action or said to be so “brigaded” with action that it loses the status of “mere” speech and can therefore be regulated without     violating any First Amendment principle. (What a move!) Because the speech/action distinction is not perspicuous and is, in effect, always being constructed, activities can be moved to either side of the line so long as there is a will and a majority.

And that is precisely what happened in Citizens United.

According to Justice Kennedy, if a corporation spends unlimited money in a political campaign, that is not corruption because the corporation is speaking by spending money. It doesn’t matter that, in fact, politicians will worry about the gobs of corporate money that will flow one way or the other based on the politician’s stand. But if a corporate official went to an elected official and offered money in exchange for a vote, then that is against the law even though it was all done through speech. And why is the first legal and the second not: because it would be bad for democracy if we protected bribery. In the end, then, the First Amendment absolutists resort to balancing interests but disguise it in a principled fog.

Ultimately, the Citizens United court divided along fact v fiction lines: Stevens wanting to take a factual look at what corporate speech does to the democratic process and the majority maintaining the fictions that money is speech and corporations are persons.

There’s a lot more in the Fish posts and I can’t do justice to them. But if you want to understand Citizens United, read Fish first.

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He worked for decades in an Italian bakery and he voraciously read several newspapers every day. He was intensely loyal to his family and friends. He was a great cook and played a major role preparing the large family meals like Christmas and Thanksgiving. I remember calling him to get advice on how to prepare Braciole, a Southern Italian rolled steak.

He liked nothing better than to gather his family around him.  Living in Arkansas made frequent travel to Pennsylvania difficult and I was able to visit only once a year. One of my most cherished possessions is a picture taken when my children were young. They are posed with my Dad in front of the bread “proofing”  machine in the Italian bakery where he worked.  He looks like he is exactly where he belonged: working with food and surrounded by family.

I miss him and think about him often.  I regret not being able to visit as often as I would have liked or telephoning more regularly. He didn’t travel far from home so he never was able to visit us in Arkansas. But, in spite of the distance, when you were around him he made you feel that you were the most important person in the world.  I am grateful for his love, his devotion, and his example. I can never repay him. I can only hope to remind my children of who he was and to be a pale imitation of him for my friends and family.

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