It's very strange when you sit down in the library and notice that the person directly on your right is reading your blog.

Heidi Bond asks:

What I want to know, is do group blogs count as joint publications for the sake of figuring Erdos numbers?

John Quiggin suggests the beginning of an answer (actually, since his post predates Heidi's, he's not answering her question, but I'm posting it here, so I guess I'm the one answering (emphasis is mine):

[I]t’s at least arguable that a joint post would count as co-authorship for Erdos number purposes (this comes back to the question, frequently discussed on this blog, of whether and how blog contributions should be listed on vitas).

Julian Sanchez and Matthew Yglesias are arguing about the draft and other forms of involuntary conscription, and they've set me wondering. Why doesn't the military draft violate the Thirteenth Amendment's command that: "Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction."?

On its face, it seems obvious that those who would not be in the military but for the legal punishments threatened by the draft are there "involuntarily," and that those who "serve" in the military are in a form of "servitude". And yet it also seems clear that the original meaning of the amendment probably didn't outlaw conscription, and that in any case conscription has been around repeatedly in the intervening years, and isn't it going to be eliminated on the basis of a hundred-some year old mandate.

As a text-lover, I find this vaguely bothersome, but I will take it as given. But what, then, would involuntary military service have to look like before it became involuntary military servitude? The 13th Amendment may not outlaw the state's right to conscript young people and force them to go fight in foreign wars, but it surely places some limitation on the government's power to force people into periods of forced labor. What kind of principled rules could one draw to set the draft apart? (And how would those rules apply to the various mandatory service plans suggested hither and yon on the blogosphere?)

[And as a sinister follow-up: And how could these exceptions or limitations on the 13th Amendment be exploted by an unscrupulous government? If military-service is enough to create an exemption from the slavery ban, could a state have saved its slavery program from the Constitution by requiring all slaves in the state to take up arms and serve in the militia? (Assuming it also extended the slavery program to a number of whites to save it from racial-discrimination analysis?)]

UPDATE: A helpful reader sends along the citation to the unhelpful Selective Draft Law cases [245 U.S. 366]:

Finally, as we are unable to conceive upon what theory the exaction by government from the citizen of the performance of his supreme and noble duty of contributing to the defense of the rights and honor of the nation, as the result of a war declared by the great representative body of the people, can be said to be the imposition of involuntary servitude in violation of the prohibitions of the Thirteenth Amendment, we are constrained to the conclusion that the contention to that effect is refuted by its mere statement.

This amendment was adopted with reference to conditions existing since the foundation of our Government, and the term involuntary servitude was intended to cover those forms of compulsory labor akin to African slavery which in practical operation would tend to produce like undesirable results.

In addition to the musings on Little League I mention below, Ted Cohen also expressed his approval of the feminist movement, and in particular his approval of the fact that girls now play in organized sports like that as much as boys:

I like seeing them get hurt. I like seeing them cry when they lose. I like seeing all that stuff. Damn right. Feminism.

A little bit ago, Amber Taylor asked whether her readers would be willing to vote for a candidate who didn't like sports. Now, naturally my answer is "of course I would," but I haven't written on this because I do feel some sympathy for the view that something is interesting and special about sports--

--That the "togetherness" that sports fans at a "good" game feel is somehow different from the togetherness that music fans feel at the opera or a rock concert. Such music fans often do get riled up and transported through flights of passion, but rock fans rarely riot in the same way that sports fans do, and understanding something about that seems relevant to being the leader of the free world.

--Secondly, I do think there's something important or good about game-playing (if not sports-playing), sentiments that were echoed (in a somewhat different tone) by Professor Ted Cohen during today's class. After describing how game-playing, like fiction, was a critical part of learning to understand truths about the world, Cohen added:

But don't create something as asinine, bizarre, and morally dubious as Little League baseball.

In thinking back on Dr. Newdow's very persuasive argument Wednesday on why the words "Under God" cannot be Constitutionally inserted into the Pledge of Allegiance, I found myself trying to remember what the best argument was against him, since so many of his opponents are reduced to saying something along the lines of "just because".

I've rediscovered Judge Easterbrook's opinion in Sherman v. Wheeling, which makes the pro-Pledge case about as well as one can, I think:

Must ceremonial references in civic life to a deity be understood as prayer, or support for all monotheistic religions, to the exclusion of atheists and those who worship multiple gods? You can't understand a phrase such as "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion" by syllogistic reasoning. Words take their meaning from social as well as textual contexts, which is why "a page of history is worth a volume of logic." New York Trust Co. v. Eisner, 256 U.S. 345, 349 (1921) (Holmes, J.). Unless we are to treat the founders of the United States as unable to understand their handiwork (or, worse, hypocrites about it), we must ask whether those present at the creation deemed ceremonial invocations of God as "establishment." They did not. See Allegheny, 492 U.S. at 671-73 (opinion of Kennedy, J.).

James Madison, the author of the first amendment, issued presidential proclamations of religious fasting and thanksgiving. Thomas Jefferson, who refused on separationist grounds to issue thanksgiving proclamations, nonetheless signed treaties sending ministers to the Indians. The tradition of thanksgiving proclamations began with President Washington, who presided over the constitutional convention. From the outset, witnesses in our courts have taken oaths on the Bible, and sessions of court have opened with the cry "God save the United States and this honorable Court." Jefferson's Declaration of Independence contains multiple references to God (for example: "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness."). When Madison and Jefferson wrote their famous declarations supporting separation of church and state, they invoked the name of the Almighty in support.

The Founders' tradition has endured. Presidents still issue proclamations of thanksgiving. Details such as the Pledge of Allegiance and the motto on the coinage testify to its force. The Pledge tracks Lincoln's Gettysburg Address, which ends with a wish "that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth." The second inaugural address of that great statesman and poet concludes: "With malice toward none; with charity for all; with firmness in the right, as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in; to bind up the nation's wounds; to care for him who shall have borne the battle, and for his widow, and his orphan--to do all which may achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace among ourselves, and with all nations." Pupils who study this address with care will find 14 references to God among its 699 words.