reading the paper this morning, i came across something that bothered me. i know, that’s nothing new. it is, in fact, why i’d stopped reading the paper for longer than i care to admit.

what bothered me this morning was this: the d.c. attorney general has fired ten attorneys. the primary motivation for the cuts was to close a budget deficit; the particular attorneys were chosen due to their substandard performance. several of the attorneys are members of a union,¹ which plans to challenge the terminations. the president of the union had this to say about the firings:

“it may be the way things are done at big law firms. i don’t think it’s a good way to run civil service.”

i’m boggling at that statement. it seems to me that big law firms are efficient, successful operations. why wouldn’t you want to run the civil service in the same way? granted, civil servants get paid a fraction of what an associate at a large firm can make, and if we can’t afford pay parity, there should be other inducements to attract the best and brightest to public service jobs. good health care, a decent pension plan, generous vacation benefits, perhaps. but i don’t think lax performance standards should be among them.
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¹ i’m philosophically pro-union, as i believe they rectify the inherent power inequality in the company/worker relationship. being an attorney myself, though, i wonder if attorneys need such assistance - we’re generally a well-educated (or perhaps just overeducated) bunch, capable of making rational decisions and by dint of our J.D., commanding comfortable salaries without the enhanced bargaining power of unions.

that said, i do think that contract attorneys should organize. not necessarily to secure better pay ($35/hour plus overtime isn’t anything to sneeze at, even in dc and nyc), but perhaps for better benefits and to minimize the profiteering of the temp agencies that place them. contract work is essentially white-collar piecework, where the attorneys are kept on a very short leash and working conditions can aggravate a host of chronic health problems. (no joke; just try sitting still for ten to twelve hours a day, staring at a computer screen, clicking clicking clicking away. and remember: these aren’t teenage gamers we’re talking about.)

that said, if contract attorneys were to unionize, it might just speed outsourcing doc review to places like india.

given the poor track record christians have through history when it comes to tolerating adherents of other faiths (despite the whole new testament god-got-over-his-vengeance-kick-and-learned-to-love thing), it should come as no surprise to me that a christian pastor would threaten a fellow christian with “forty years in prison” for what essentially boils down to a difference in biblical interpretation. but i still find it disturbing.

the circumstances giving rise to the conflict of interpretation certainly bear examination. in 2001, jake malloy enlisted in the army reserve. in 2005, four months after he found out his unit was to be sent to iraq, malloy filed for classification as a consciencious objector, prompted by the evolution of his religious beliefs. the timing is certainly suspect, but malloy convinced the officer assigned to investigate his case of his sincerity; her recommendation was that he be granted non-combatant status, but kept in the army. however, after malloy’s hearing, the army denied his application. he took a chapter 10 — “other than honorable” — discharge, rather than deploy to iraq or face court martial for disobeying orders.

did the army make the right decision? i don’t know. while it is unusual that the decision was at odds with the recommendation of the investigating officer, i wasn’t there. i didn’t hear the evidence. so i’ll set that issue aside.

what disturbs me is this: for approximately two-thirds of malloy’s hearing, his commanding officer — an evangelical christian pastor, in civilian life — grilled him on questions of theology in an effort to convince the examiners that malloy’s beliefs were not based on “real biblical or christian positions.” translation: malloy’s interpretation of the bible differed from his CO’s — which made malloy’s request for conscientious objector status the action of a coward who deserved court martial. so much for the loving god of the new testament, i suppose; the CO wrote, “…as a christian and as a pastor, i find [malloy’s interpretation of the bible] shameful, reprehensive (sic), and terribly flawed. i expect that viewed in the light of truth, and better biblical understanding, spc malloy’s actions will be seen for the cowardice that they truly represent.”

procedurally, this is disturbing to me because there is no military requirement that a petitioner’s beliefs be grounded in mainstream interpretation of the petitioner’s faith of choice, or even that the beliefs be grounded in any faith. the commanding officer’s faith-based arguments and badgering of malloy should never have been allowed in the hearing, as his (the CO’s) religious beliefs had no bearing on the legitimacy of malloy’s convictions. had the hearing been a formal legal procedure, the CO’s opinions on religion would never have been admissible — they were not relevant to malloy’s beliefs.

personally, this is disturbing to me for a very different reason. the bullying, holier-than-thou, and apparently vengeful commanding officer/pastor is none other than my brother-in-law.

“At the heart of liberty is the right to define one’s own concept of existence, of meaning, of the universe, and of the mystery of human life. Beliefs about these matters could not define the attributes of personhood were they formed under compulsion of the State.

… The mother who carries a child to full term is subject to anxieties, to physical constraints, to pain that only she must bear. That these sacrifices have from the beginning of the human race been endured by woman with a pride that ennobles her in the eyes of others and gives to the infant a bond of love cannot alone be grounds for the State to insist she make the sacrifice. Her suffering is too intimate and personal for the State to insist, without more, upon its own vision of the woman’s role, however dominant that vision has been in the course of our history and our culture. The destiny of the woman must be shaped to a large extent on her own conception of her spiritual imperatives and her place in society.”

Justice O’Connor, Planned Parenthood v. Casey, 505 U.S. 833, 851 (1992). damn it, i wish she hadn’t retired.