Bruce Petrie is a Senior Counselor at Bricker Graydon law firm, having served clients for over forty years in education, health care, public and private sector and constitutional law. He served on the Executive Committee of the firm ...
This is a story that connects some dots we might well imagine have no connection: a 19th century murder, a 21st century adoption, Native tribal sovereignty, Supreme Court Justices past and present, and a law firm where we work. Constitutional history can sound academically remote until dots connect at a personal level relevant to our lives today ...
Art piracy has captured the news. Scotus has decided Andy Warhol’s artwork was not a fair use of a photograph of Prince and a Manhattan jury found that Ed Sheeran didn’t pirate the Marvin Gaye classic “Let’s Get It On”. Sheeran played his guitar and sang in the courtroom to show the jury that his Grammy-winning song “Thinking Out ...
On campus, springtime brings finals week and the distracting tug of hanging out outside . We’re grading final papers from a bunch of Gen Zers, eight page essays on how their lives connect with the U.S. Constitution. I wish I could share them, as the stories are inspiring, whether it be about the immigrant origins of their families, or a decision to ...
“….in order to form a more perfect union…”
Preamble
“To improve is to change; to be perfect is to change often.”
Winston Churchill
Is the U.S. Constitution too hard to change, to make “more perfect,” to amend?
One of America’s most thoughtful commentators on the topic of amendability is Sixth Circuit Chief Judge Jeffrey Sutton. ...
Illustration by Bruce Petrie
You’ve heard that sometimes it’s easier to ask for forgiveness than permission. This month the Biden Administration will be asking Scotus for both, to forgive $400 billion in student loan debt, with stakeholders including not only students and families, but also state and federal governments and taxpayers.
If ...
“The Transportation Security Administration discovered more than 6,500 firearms in carry-on bags in 2022, a record... TSA found a gun stuffed into a whole un-cooked chicken at the Fort Lauderdale-Hollywood International Airport in Florida.”
Wall Street Journal - January 18, 2023
Does the Second Amendment’s right to bear arms extend ...
Scotus just heard oral arguments in the celebrated “Prince Case” involving a photographer’s claim that the Warhol Foundation and its namesake infringed her copyright in her now famous Prince photo, not reprinted here, right, but you can look up the photo and Warhol’s Orange Prince on your phone in a few seconds. There were several ...
Oil Sketch by Bruce Petrie
Can a website designer post a notice that she doesn’t do wedding websites for gay couples? Colorado said no. But website design firm 303 Creative will have its day in the Supreme Court this December, arguing that Colorado’s use of its public accommodation/anti-discrimination law violates the First Amendment by ...
Summer has its rituals, its some-things-never-change continuities like a ballgame with a grandchild. Summer also has an annual ritual of the Scotus Nine announcing decisions before their vacations. But this year was different, really different. The 2022 term was about discontinuity, change and many unfinished issues.
While the leak of Dobbs ...
During his famous debates with Stephen Douglas in 1858, a young lawyer with presidential aspirations (still without the signature beard he would grow in 1860) listened as Douglas called him “two-faced”. “If I had another face, do you think I’d wear this one?” Lincoln replied.
For Independence Day 2022 I painted Lincoln as that younger ...
Independence Day is around the corner, gas prices are crazy, people need a summer break and the Scotus Nine, heading out for theirs, drop four big decisions about abortion, guns and religion. Quite a mix. We were at a party with a thoughtful group of friends last night and you could sense everybody not wanting to let current events turn a grill out into ...
This time of year is when our Supreme Court announces a bunch of decisions before the Nine head out for the summer. It’s a tall order because the cases have big consequences for the lives of Americans in religion, speech, abortion, the environmental, public health and safety, guns, privacy, commerce, tech and so on.
The Court’s job isn’t just ...
In honor of Flag Day…
Our American flag is a powerful visual image that still inspires in many different forms and contexts, whether at the ballpark, a veteran’s funeral, or a second grader’s crayon drawing.
Our flag’s design is set in law: federal statutory law. It’s also constitutional speech. The Supreme Court has ruled that the flag is ...
“Let’s pull up on our phones a YouTube video from January 3, 2022 , a missile strike on Freedom Square in Kharkiv.” As twenty undergraduates watch their ever-present phone and laptop screens, I watch their facial expressions change as an architectural symbol of civilization and freedom explodes into a fireball. “What you’ve just seen ...
The new part of news captures our attention. Today, for example, there’s new data supporting a new, experimental Covid-19 antiviral pill. And, tragically, there’s a new reminder of the swift and destructive power of tornados.
We know that “the new” is never altogether new, but always has within it vestiges of the past: the long story of ...
Excuse the pun, but let’s right here right now officially coin the term “ConText”. In Constitutional Law, Scotus decisions often turn on Context + Text = ConText.
ConText once again played out in the Supreme Court’s ruling this week saying no to two requests to stop New York’s vaccine mandate for health care workers. Health care ...
For many us in Southwestern Ohio, the drive from Cincinnati to Oxford is familiar; more so driving each Wednesday afternoon to teach a class of 18-21 year-olds at Miami. The drive, give or take a traffic-dependent hour, goes from urban to rural, from Bearcats (top 4!!) to RedHawks, from city-scape on the Ohio’s banks to bucolic campus, along ...
Whether you’re Joe Burrow or a Sunday morning pickle ball aficionado, you gotta have it, right? Footwork.
Footwork is fundamental. Especially which foot you lead with. That first foot plant sets it all in motion: the foundation, the balance, the shot, the throw, swing, coordination and power. Big O, Cincinnati’s basketball icon Oscar ...
After Scotus-by-screen last term, the 9 are back live! for the new term this month... or make that 8 live with covid-positive Justice Kavanaugh via screen. New Justice Barrett starts her first in-person term on the Court. Justice Breyer is here too despite pundit speculation about retirement during the Biden presidency. (Justice Breyer will take ...
“Meet you back here in 15,” my wife says pointing at the Findlay Market entrance. A big crowd and bright sun is out this lively July Fourth weekend. She’s headed for the produce and farmer’s market. I’m going for the grill. The ribs, fresh sausage and burgers are flying off the counters today. Aren’t we the town of flying pigs? I plunge into ...
What is today the second largest consumer products company in the world floated a buoyant slogan in 1891 for its invention, Ivory soap: “It Floats!” Procter & Gamble discovered that if air is whipped into the soap batch, soap won’t sink, get lost and turn into mush in the bottom of the tub. Another successful slogan for Ivory was “99 44/100 ...
You might recall “Ask Dr. Science,” a radio sketch in which a faux caller would ask Dr. Science a question and he’d come up with an off-the-wall answer. “He knows more than you do,” was the show’s motto, along with the disclaimer “He’s not a real doctor, but he has a Masters Degree...in science!”
Around our house, Mom’s the real ...
Reading a Supreme Court case in the days after Thanksgiving is sort of like browsing through a post-turkey-day refrigerator: lots and lots of containers and you’re not sure what’s inside each one. This Thanksgiving the “new” Court (we say new because of new Justice Barrett) served up a buffet, a veritable pot luck smorgasbord, the nine ...
My wife and I have spent some time in Montana in the winter and agree that, when it comes to cold weather, Montana is supreme, at least in our life experiences outdoors. A Snowshoe hike with friends in January was so cold that the smallest lapses in gear—a damp glove, boots without gators, a knit cap leaving an ear lobe exposed—were immediately ...
Zoom calls show an interesting array of wardrobe choices. On a recent call the zoomers remarked in good humor about the sartorial spectrum, quite an assortment of mostly casual wear. But one person, a leader, was dressed in coat and tie. For all we knew he may have been wearing cargo shorts too. But from what could be zoom-seen, he was sharply dressed ...
Today the Supreme Court in a 5-4 decision (June Medical Services v. Russo) struck down a Louisiana law requiring a doctor who performs abortions to hold active admitting privileges at a hospital within 30 miles. Our blog today focuses not on the larger abortion debate or on whether the Court’s decision is agreeable or not on the merits. Instead ...
In learning to draw or paint, here’s a little secret. Hold your drawing up to a mirror. The mirror reveals how the drawing needs adjusting to look like the real subject. The inaccuracies jump out, especially in portraiture. For example, if you paint one eye of your subject slightly lower than the other, holding the painting up to the mirror will show ...
In times of national hardship like the present, stories from the American past are useful, but not predictably so. History doesn’t repeat itself exactly. Instead, it can give perspective on human experiences, showing how lives of those who’ve gone before connect to present lives in surprising ways. The past is never entirely past. So it is ...
What do we need and what don’t we need? What have we taken for granted? One word we hear a lot during these pandemic days of reassessment is essential. And many people now include outside on their list of essentials. “After home-schooling on Zoom all morning, my kids just have to get outside,” says a young mom balancing work, school and ...
Five adults and three kids, ages ranging from sixty-plus to under six months, gathered around the basement TV in Cincinnati last night, an extended family under Governor DeWine’s Stay-at-Home order. Five of the eight, including the kids, have been out of their home in NYC for seven weeks. My wife and I are the grandparents and glad to have the ...
Baseball players have their good luck quirks, the special bat, the rally cap, the favorite mitt. So too with painters. Mine is I NEVER throw out a brush. You’re right, there’s no good reason for this. But after a lifetime of painting, we have quite an assembly: flats, brights, longs, shorts, bristle, oil, acrylic, water color, liners etc., etc ...
As COVID-19 is on everyone’s minds, along with fear of the unknown, concern for public health and safety, social distancing, plummeting markets and countless unnamed consequences for millions of Americans and the world, it may seem like the Constitution is beside the point. Let’s suggest instead that at times like this the Constitution ...
In a week hopping with news, an 8-member Supreme Court opened its new term with oral arguments in a case that could define what “critical habitat” means under the Endangered Species Act, America’s most important law protecting biodiversity. The case involves one of America’s most endangered species, the Mississippi Dusky Gopher Frog
With Justice Kennedy’s retirement in July dovetailing into the Fall midterm elections, can We the People have a constitutional conversation, or just a political one? Partisan hyper-politics will line up red versus blue, liberal versus conservative, either-or, door number one or door number two. But let’s remind ourselves there’s a ...
On June 27, 2018 the Supreme Court issued its most important labor law decision in the past 40 years. In those four decades, a case named Abood was the leading precedent that allowed public sector unions to charge a so-called “agency fee” to nonmembers of the union for collective bargaining activities of the union. No more.
In its 5-4 decision ...
The Supreme Court’s Masterpiece Cakeshop decision by Justice Kennedy follows the the unwritten Slender Reed Rule which goes like this: If SCOTUS has to decide a case with narrow facts that could lead to a precedent that’s either slender or rotund, go with the slender reed and save the big issues for another day. The slender reed Justice Kennedy ...
What do Leonardo and Emojis have in common?
Let’s open by noting the irony of writing words about visual symbols. But that’s nothing new in art history. Big book narratives of the 30,000 year story of art use words, but there’s an inevitable shortfall in writing about visuals. An example is the latest of many biographies of Leonardo, a book by ...
In his spare time, when not saving Western Civilization from Nazi domination, Winston Churchill never stopped doing that which helped recharge his relentless energy. He put on a long smock over suit and tie, a shade hat on his famous head, a cigar between his teeth, strolled outdoors with his mobile easel in tow, set out a blank canvas, squinted into ...
Okay, fans, the full title of America's greatest baseball poem isn't Casey at the Bat.
Ernest Thayer entitled his poem: Casey at the Bat: A Ballad of the Republic Sung in the Year 1888.
So, what's with the subtitle? Let's suggest Thayer's masterpiece is not just a semi-comic melodrama about history's most famous strikeout. As the title says, it's ...
It's rare for a judge to include pictures in his opinions. It's also rare for a judge to write visually. But as I make my way through the 10th circuit decisions of Supreme Court nominee Hon. Neil Gorsuch, I see a skill in using visualization as a persuasion tool.
In American Atheists v. Davenport, Judge Gorsuch used in his dissent the literary ...
The nomination of Hon. Neil Gorsuch deserves a constitutional process; and so it's the duty of both blue and red politicians to serve constititutional democracy above party. It's also on us, We the People, to be part of an informed, constitutional conversation.
- Beware judicial labels of liberal and conservative when applied to Supreme Court ...
'Tis the season of red.
But is red always just red?
Say you're in the car at a red stoplight on an overcast day in December. Your brain is trained to think red means stop and it's commonsensical isn't it to conclude a red light is always the same red light?
The next day, a bright sunny day, you arrive at the same red light. But the red light you see now isn't ...
At this time of year media fields of all types are blooming with a journalistic genre called "the year in review". These are mega-retrospectives of Big Stuff 2016 news: celebrities, stars, men and women of the year, big news stories, the biggest bests and worsts, big personalities, the most dramatic events. If Rip Van Winkel were to awake to read a ...
Today I made a guest appearance on Jack Out Of The Box as part of a conversation about the constitutionality of the recently introduced Protect the Flag Act. Jack's article and my comments are below.
PROTECT THE FLAG? Sure. PROTECT THE BILL OF RIGHTS? Better.
Ohio Congressman Michael Turner introduced a bill in Congress on December 2 called the ...
If you had to choose a top-ten list of the most important and influential modern books by a professional historian about American history, the list would surely be incomplete without Gordon S. Wood and his Pulitzer Prize winner: "The Radicalism of the American Revolution". Cited by Supreme Court Justices, authoritatively insightful about ...
Online auctions and the larger marketplace for older, original oil paintings are in an interesting new cycle open to all sorts of savvy (and not so savvy) buyers. America is doing its largest intergenerational offloading of stuff, including those proverbial masterpieces in grandma's attic.
Some paintings are, well, better left in the attic ...
The Constitution's, count them, not one but three references to "Emoluments" within its seven original articles aren't dusty legalisms in the constitutional attic...unless we make them so. Let's dust the words off and look through the broader lens of constitutional meaning.
The word "emolument" may sound old timey, but the principle it ties to ...
Hamilton called it a grand experiment. If you were a late-18th century American, you keenly understood what "experiment" meant. Action--not just words but action--without a certain outcome. No outcomes were certain in the Revolutionary experiment. Replacing a monarch with popular sovereignty? Total experiment. Only recently had an ...
Inspire Your Constitutional Conversation
Especially in this election season, shouldn't we the people get to know our Constitution?
Want to upgrade your conversation about the Constitution? Want to see, in a readable and concise book, the many ways it relates to your life and the future of our communities? Want to see the Constitution through ...
Bruce Petrie Jr. is a partner at Graydon Head and author of a new book, "Constitutional Conversation: A New Lens on America's Best Masterpiece."
Looking for some inspiration during a dispiriting political season? Try the Constitution. In its third century of endurance, artfully concise at about 8,000 words, inspired by the revolutionary ...
This print co-designed by Erika Kohnen, daughter of Graydon Partner Monica Donath Kohnen, just won a prestigious design award in the 2016 Young Lions segment of the Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity. The image of a house with a kite flying from a bedroom window goes along with the message: "A future without limits starts with ...
Brush with the Law pop quiz time. Which is (are) the only word(s) in the following list that appears in the Constitution?
1. Democracy
2. Right to Education
3. Judicial Review
4. Right to Privacy
5. Marriage
6. Political Party
7. Reproductive Rights
8. Republican Party
9. Guns, Gun Control
10. Democratic Party
11. One-Person-One-Vote
12. All Men ...
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It's a perfect spring evening for baseball and the home town fans are on their feet for their team, behind 3-2 in the bottom of the ninth with their last-best-hope batter at the plate sitting on a full count. The home plate umpire is Chief Justice John Roberts calling balls and strikes. The ...
In its post-Scalia interregnum, the 8-Justice Supreme Court just isn't acting the way the Blue/Red Gogglers (i.e. those who view the Court only through the political lens of divided politics) predict they act. The 8-Justice Court isn't just deadlocking 4-4, liberals versus conservatives. We are seeing a Court of Eight that ...
A theme in this blog has been that looking at the US Supreme Court only through the usual lens of party politics is a distortive lens: i.e. the Blue-Red Goggles (“BRGs” for short). If we put those BRGs aside, we can see a creative judicial process at work involving, for now, eight justices who are more three-dimensionally, more realistically ...
What does the Constitution actually say about the Supreme Court nomination/appointment process? After all, that is the main question, now that a nomination is made.
What process most upholds the Constitution?
Not: What process best serves a political party, or a President, or a Senator, or a candidate, or a nominee, or a future President. Those ...
Ideas of government matter in American history and recycle in different eras through different guises, styles and messengers. If we look past the obvious style/messenger/ personality differences between Silent Cal Coolidge and Non-Silent Donald Trump, we see some recycling going on. The Coolidge idea of democracy was summed up in his ...
On Saturday, after the sudden news of Justice Scalia's death, I watched two previous C-Span interviews with him, one just him and the other with Ruth Bader Ginsburg. The interviews showed two sides of Justice Scalia. In the just-Scalia interview, his earnest defense of his judicial philosophy of originalism/textualism caused the interviewer to ...
The idea of Originalism/Textualism is that the Constitution means no more or less than what it meant to those who originally wrote and ratified it. This is seen as a counter-approach to the “living Constitution” idea where the text ...
It was a visually memorable moment, the sculpture covered in a purple drapery which, when pulled away revealed another drapery ...
On January 11, the US Supreme Court will hear arguments in the case of Friedrichs v. California Teachers Association, the issue being whether public teachers can be required (as a condition of employment) to join a union or pay it a fee for collective bargaining services. Plaintiffs say that violates the First Amendment because ...
Truth is, converting words into conceivable mental pictures makes them more likely to ...
The Art of the Brick exhibit of Lego art by former lawyer Nathan Sawaya is drawing big crowds at Cincinnati's Museum Center. As much as the artwork, I enjoyed seeing the kids (and my grandson) relate to a toy-medium-in-art. Legos become like other art-creating material, whether pigment, digital ...
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Nast was the most politically influential cartoonist of the 19th century, lambasting New York's ...
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How does the brain decide what visual images it likes or not? What regions of the brain are activated by making or viewing art? How is the brain persuaded that one image is appealing and the other less so? Recent advances by researchers imaging the brain while viewing and making visual imagery are beginning ...Here's a visual stretch about Jaspers Johns' painting Two Maps.
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Two Maps by Jasper Johns at the Whitney Museum ...
After four months of confusion in their effort to prove more than 150 counts of fraud, prosecutors in the Dewey trial ended in a mistrial. They failed because they never told a real story, a clear narrative for the jury to follow. An artful legal case, to persuade, needs a focal point to interest the jury ...
Persuasive advocacy on ...
Which is the interesting part of the debate: how humans see color. Painters for centuries have explored the nature of color and how we see it. And what painters and scientists have discovered is that people really don’t see color ...
Can the visual arts teach you to be a better trial lawyer? That was the question before a group of trial lawyers from across the US who gathered in New Orleans and heard our presentation last week at the American Bar Association’s annual national meeting for its Litigation Section. The topic was fun ...
Cincinnati-based, nationally recognized portrait painter Carl Samson has an interesting and purposeful art-and-health project underway, an eight by five foot mural on the theme of organ donation and transplantation. Carl traces his inspiration for the major figurative work to an experience twenty years ago when he saw a person he knew receive ...
Well-being -- that's the theme of the UC Health Women's Center Art Show that runs through the end of 2015.
The Show and the Center recognize in visual art an effective ally for wellness and health care. Health care organizations around the world are seeing the connection between art and healing. Many US medical schools, including a pioneering program ...
News Headline: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Cleveland Museum of Art, National Gallery and Hirshhorn Museum in DC prohibit selfie sticks. The Louvre in Paris and Tate and National Gallery in London are ok with them.
One imagines world Masterpieces of portraiture, from Rembrandt to Warhol, gazing out in wonderment from their wall-hung perches ...
Sometimes familiarity breeds not contempt but, well, too much familiarity. Such a familiar image as the Statute of Liberty is a good example. But if you want to re-energize your view of Liberty, read Elizabeth Mitchell’s new book, Liberty’s Torch: the Adventure to Build the Statute of Liberty. The books tells the story of a great public ...
Yesterday I had the pleasure of presenting Kilgour Elementary School with a gift, inspired by the belief that education is the foundation of American democracy.
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I painted the "Constitutional Conversation: Brown v. Board of Education 60 Years" with hopes that joining one another in civil ...
Prediction: Chief Justice John Roberts will once again cast the deciding 5-4 vote to uphold a part of the Affordable Care Act when it hears the case of King v. Burwell next year.
Caveats: One: There’s no crystal ball for SCOTUS predictions. Two: Assume here that there’s no change in the Court before King is decided.
My reasons for the ...
Prediction: Chief Justice John Roberts will once again cast the deciding 5-4 vote to uphold a part of the Affordable Care Act when it hears the case of King v. Burwell next year.
Caveats: One: There’s no crystal ball for SCOTUS predictions. Two: Assume here that there’s no change in the Court before King is decided.
My reasons for ...
There’s a renewed civic creative climate in Cincinnati that is (among many other examples) transforming the City’s front entranceway with a remarkable Park, Smale Riverfront Park. The new Park opens up visual ways of experiencing the City, its connection to the Ohio River, and has sparked fine art craftsmanship. Thanks to the Carol Ann & Ralph ...
The Greenacres Artists Guild Art Show will feature Painting the Queen City through November 16th. Don't miss this opportunity to see twenty-six of Cincinnati's finest illustrators, sculptors, and traditional artists coming together to pay homage to the Queen City.
For gallery hours and show availability please click here
Remember the first art you or your kids made? Chances are it involved hand stencils or prints. Here’s one my son did when he was 4 year old:
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New scientific research reported in Nature Magazine has discovered that hand stencils and drawings on caves in Indonesia (Sulawesi near Borneo) are some 40,000 ...
We did a program this month at the Cincinnati Art Museum with the Cincinnati Bar Association on Painting a More Perfect Union: the Constitution Through the Lens of Visual Arts Masterpieces. Grant Wood’s American Gothic is at the CAM on loan from the Art Institute of Chicago. While one of the most parodied works in American art, Grant Wood’s ...
A recent appearance before the Ohio Supreme Court occasioned seeing this and other artwork at The Thomas J. Moyer Ohio Judicial Center. Among the many murals is this work by Herman Henry Wessel (1878-1969) entitled "Twentieth Century Commerce in Ohio". The Wessel studio where he and his painter wife Bessie worked is near Eden Park in Cincinnati. I ...
A full house of judges and lawyers attended our keynote address yesterday at the Columbus Bench and Bar Conference. The purpose of bench and bar conferences is to improve professionalism and the effective administration of judicial process. Judges and lawyers, in an informal and interactive setting speak and listen to ways we can improve our ...
The American Bar Association's section of Labor and Employment Law published an article I authored in the Spring 2014 newsletter. The article, Works of Art on the Art of Work, discusses the Cincinnati murals created by Winold Reiss (1886-1953). The murals, originated during the Great Depression, celebrated the workers and ...
On the sixtieth anniversary (this month) of the most important decision of the Supreme Court in 20th century legal history, there are three things about Brown vs. Board of Education that strike a note: its brevity, its unanimity and its tone. Brown contrasts with today’s Supreme Court decisions which are often lengthy, divided ...
A youngster looks up at a gigantic glass sculpture by Dale Chihuly and says: “Wow, how did he DO THAT!?” The sculpture is an installation of blown glass, glowing with color, suspended in space, enormous in scale but as delicate as a living sea creature. The young question is one of the highest compliments a viewer of any age can pay a work of art ...
The Supreme Court ruled (5-4) this week in Greece v. Galloway that the Upstate New York town of Greece’s practice of opening its town board meetings with a prayer (given by clergy selected from a local directory) does not violate the First Amendment’s Establishment Clause. Certain facts limit the Court’s ruling: the prayer was ...
So ask yourself. What ideas or insights are you more likely to believe: those that someone tells you you should or must believe, or those that you discover yourself? Once we reach the age of reason, most of us prefer to make up our own minds and discover for ourselves. So the trial lawyer knows that the advocate’s role is to lead the jury to discover ...
In the art of legal persuasion, how the issue is framed often determines how it is decided. And sometimes the issue itself is who decides or (as once presidentially put) who’s “the decider”.
The Supreme Court was the decider on April 22 when it held that the voters of the States may decide whether to prohibit affirmative action in state ...
How does a judge decide a case? What law, facts, judicial temperament, political or other factors, tangible and intangible make a difference? There’s often no easy answer, no crystal ball prognostication. Multiply that by 9 in the case of the United States Supreme Court. The labels “conservative” and “liberal” are used as a shortcut ...