Info/Law

What does it mean if you invite John McCain to speak at your school’s commencement?

For one thing, it means your dean is smart enough to want news coverage with lots of shots of your school’s logo. But does it mean your institution agrees with any / all of McCain’s positions?

I was pondering this question after reading a piece in the Boston Globe about pressure on Catholic colleges and universities to invite speakers who hold positions amenable to church doctrine. (Sorry, John Kerry and Rudy Giuliani!) This seemed narrow-minded; part of the mission of an educational institution is to encourage, even foster, debate and disagreement. Yet the concern seems to be that inviting speakers with views at odds with Catholic teachings would be perceived either as implicit endorsement of those positions or, perhaps more mildly, a de-emphasis of the importance of following the Church’s rules. (Full disclosure: I went to a Catholic high school, which I loved, and which was absolutely devoted to scholarly inquiry and freedom.)

So, I felt admirably open-minded. But a minor controversy at my current institution, Wayne State, made me think harder about the issue. The law school invited Michigan Supreme Court justice Maura Corrigan to receive an honorary degree. The furor: Justice Corrigan joined the majority opinion in National Pride at Work v. Governor of Michigan (thanks, Prawfsblawg!), which held that Michigan’s constitutional amendment banning same-sex marriage or civil unions also prohibits public employers from offering benefits, such as health care, to the domestic partners of employees. The court relied on the “plain meaning” of the amendment’s text in its ruling. Some at WSU decided not to attend graduation based on the conferral of the honorary degree, for two reasons: first, disagreement with the outcome of the case, and second, strong disagreement with the majority’s legal reasoning. The question became: does offering Justice Corrigan an honorary degree imply endorsement of her legal reasoning, the court’s opinion, or a particular view on same-sex benefits? (Particularly when the opinion came down less than a week before graduation.) A number of my colleagues wrestled with that one.

I’m of two minds about this. Justice Corrigan is a long-time public servant with strong ties to Wayne State – her late husband, Joe Grano, was a professor at the school, and her son graduated recently from it. However, while the National Pride at Work opinion may accurately reflect the intent of the Michigan voters who ratified the amendment, its reasoning is an embarrassment. When a court uses, as its primary source of legal authority, the Random House dictionary, that’s generally a signal of less than high quality legal analysis. (Rick Hills at Prawfsblawg has a more scholarly analysis here – take into account that he was co-counsel for the petitioners. See also Volokh Conspiracy and Workplace Prof Blog.) There are, then, two layers of analysis to the “signaling” issue here: the outcome and the reasoning. Should the honorary degree be read as sending any normative signal regarding either one – for this case, or for Justice Corrigan’s jurisprudence generally?

I love the idea of social signals – of non-verbal, but highly relevant, information. Ethology is loaded with this: threat displays, mating dances, and the like. So, what signal does it send to extend an invitation to someone to speak at graduation, or to receive an honorary degree? How does this type of association function as information? What should we make of Jeremiah Wright and Barack Obama, George W. Bush and Bob Jones University, Howard Knopf and the Public Policy Forum? Does it matter whether the actor / institution intends to send a signal? Practically speaking, how do you pick someone interesting to give an address without offending unduly? (I think Bono is generally available, but he did say the F-word on the air at one point…)

Filed under: Cognitive Decisionmaking, Court Decisions, Law School, Media