{{Infobox Law School | image = | name = Yale Law School | established = 1824 | type = Private | endowment = $1.2 billion | parent endowment = $16 billion | head = Robert C. Post | city = New Haven | state = Connecticut | country = USA | students = 587 | faculty = 149 | bar pass rate = 97%

Among other luminaries, former U.S. President William Howard Taft was a professor of constitutional law at the school from 1913 until he resigned to become Chief Justice of the United States in 1921. Presidents Gerald Ford and Bill Clinton received their law degrees at Yale Law School later in the century, and the law school's library has been memorialized as the meeting place of Bill and fellow student and current Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton. Current U.S. Supreme Court Justices Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito and Sonia Sotomayor are alumni of the school, and a number of former Justices have attended the school, including Abe Fortas, Potter Stewart, and Byron R. White. Former Democratic Vice Presidential nominees Sargent Shriver and Joe Lieberman are also graduates. The school has also produced several heads of state around the world, including Karl Carstens, fifth president of Germany, and Jose P. Laurel, president of the Philippines during World War II. Alumni also include the current deans of eight of the ten top-ranked law schools in the US: Yale, Harvard, Columbia, NYU, Chicago, Michigan, Penn, and Virginia.

The school's law library, Lillian Goldman Law Library, contains over 1,000,000 volumes. The law school's flagship law review is the Yale Law Journal.

Culture

The institution is known for its scholarly orientation; a relatively large number of its graduates (14%) choose careers in academia within five years of graduation, while a relatively low number (49%) choose to work in law firms. Another feature of Yale Law School's culture since the 1930s, among both faculty and student graduates, has been an emphasis on the importance of spending at least a few years in government service. A similar emphasis has long been placed on service as a judicial law clerk upon graduation. Its 7.5-student-to-faculty ratio is the lowest among U.S. law schools.

Yale Law School does not have a traditional grading system, a consequence of student unrest in the late 1960s. Instead, it grades first-semester first-year students on a simple Credit/No Credit system. For their remaining two and a half years, students are graded on an Honors/Pass/Low Pass/Fail system. Similarly, the school does not officially rank its students. It is also notable for having only a single semester of required classes, instead of the full year most U.S. schools require. Unusually, Yale Law allows first-year students to represent clients through one of its numerous clinics; other law schools typically offer this opportunity only to second- and third-year students.

Students publish nine law journals that, unlike those at most other schools, mostly accept student editors without a competition. The only exception is YLS's flagship journal, the Yale Law Journal, which holds a two-part admissions competition each spring, consisting of a four or five-hour "bluebooking exam," followed by a traditional writing competition. Although the Journal identifies a target maximum number of members to accept each year, it is not a firm number. Other leading student-edited publications include the Yale Law & Policy Review, the Yale Journal on Regulation, and the Yale Journal of International Law.

History

Early 19th century

The Yale Law School traces its origins to the earliest days of the 19th century, when law was learned by clerking as an apprentice in a lawyer’s office. The first law schools, including the one that became Yale, developed out of this apprenticeship system and grew up inside law offices. The future Yale Law School formed in the office of New Haven lawyer Seth Staples, who owned an exceptional library (an attraction for students at a time when law books were scarce) and began training apprentices in the early 19th century.

By the 1810s, his law office had a full-fledged law school. Samuel Hitchcock, one of Staples’ former students, became a partner at the office and later, the proprietor of the New Haven Law School.

The New Haven Law School affiliated gradually with Yale from the mid-1820s to the mid-1840s. Law students began receiving Yale degrees in 1843. David Daggett, a former U.S. senator from Connecticut, joined Hitchcock as co-proprietor of the school in 1824. In 1826, Yale named Daggett to be professor of law in Yale College, where he lectured to undergraduates on public law and government.

The Yale Law School remained fragile for decades. At the death of Samuel Hitchcock in 1845 and again upon the death of his successor, Henry Dutton, in 1869, the University came near to closing the School.

Late 19th century revival

The revival of Yale Law School after 1869 was led by its first full-time dean, Francis Wayland, who helped the School establish its philanthropic base. It was during this time that the modern law library was organized. It was also during this period that The Yale Law Journal was started and Yale’s pioneering efforts in graduate programs in law began; the degree of Master of Laws was offered for the first time in 1876.

In the last decades of the 19th century, Yale began to articulate for its Law School two traits that would come to be hallmarks. First, it would be small and humane, bucking the trend toward large law-school enrollments and impersonal faculty-student relations. Second, it would take an interdisciplinary approach to teaching the law, first bringing professors from other University departments to teach in the Law School, and later in the 20th century, pioneering the appointment to the law faculty of professors ranging from economics to psychiatry. This led Yale Law School away from the preoccupation with private law that then typified American legal education, and toward serious engagement with public and international law.

Legal Realism movement

After 1900, Yale Law School began to shape legal scholarship. In the 1930s, Yale Law School led the movement known as legal realism, which has reshaped the way American lawyers understand the function of legal rules and the work of courts and judges. The realists directed attention to factors not captured in the rules, ranging from the attitudes of judges and jurors to the nuances of the facts of particular cases. Under the influence of realism, American legal doctrine has become less conceptual and more empirical. Under Dean Charles Clark (1929–1939), the School built a faculty that included such legendary figures as Thurman Arnold, Edwin Borchard, future U.S. Supreme Court Justice William O. Douglas, future U.S. Supreme Court Justice Abe Fortas, Jerome Frank, Underhill Moore, Walton Hamilton, and Wesley Sturges. Clark was the moving figure during these years in crafting the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure, the foundation of modern American procedure.

Beginning in this period, a special relationship or connection developed between YLS and the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit. Professors Clark and Frank, among others, became judges on that court. Some of the faculty members who became Second Circuit judges continued to teach courses at YLS and chose their clerks from student graduates. These judges influenced thinking in general at YLS and particularly reinforced student interest in public service, a characteristic tradition at YLS since the New Deal.

Law and policy movement

In the 1950s and 1960s, the School became renowned as a center of policy-oriented legal studies, inter-disciplinary legal studies, and constitutional law, taxation, commercial law, international law, antitrust law and economics. In recent decades, the pace of curricular innovation has, if anything, quickened, as the School has developed new strengths in such fields as comparative constitutional law, corporate finance, environmental law, gender studies, international human rights, and legal history, as well as an array of clinical programs.

Late 20th--early 21st century

The law school's 15th Dean, Harold Koh, made human rights a focus of the law school's work, building on a tradition that had developed over the previous two decades. Robert Bernstein, the founder of Human Rights Watch, is affiliated with the law school in several ways, and the organization's current executive director Kenneth Roth is an alum. Yale has taken a lead in defending detainees at Guantanamo Bay through its 9/11 clinic.

On March 23, 2009, the White House announced the appointment of Dean Koh to the State Department as a legal adviser. Robert C. Post was selected to replace him as Dean of the Law School. An urgent concern in the selection of the new Dean was finding an administrator who could guide the school through the ongoing financial crisis and budget cuts. The search committee publicly stated that Post came out of the search process as the strongest individual to navigate YLS through its financial challenges.

Admissions

Yale Law School enrolls about 200 new students a year, one of the smallest numbers among U.S. law schools. Among the top three law school, only Stanford Law School is smaller. Its small class size and prestige combine to make its admissions process one of the most competitive in the United States. Half of the class that entered in 2006 had a GPA above 3.91 (out of 4.33) and/or an LSAT score above 173 (out of 180 possible points) or 99th percentile.

After an initial round of screening by the admissions department, approximately 25% of applications are independently evaluated by three different faculty members. Each application is scored from 2–4 at the discretion of the reader. All applicants with a perfect 12 (i.e., a 4 from all three faculty members) are admitted, upon which they are immediately notified by the school. There are also 50–80 outstanding students admitted each year without going through this review process.

The LL.M. Program and the Visiting Researchers Programm at Yale are amongst the smallest and most selective graduate law programs in the United States. Yale admits around 25 LL.M. students and around 10 visiting researchers every year . These programs are usually limited to those students who intend to pursue a career in legal academia.

Deans of Yale Law School

#1873–1903 Francis Wayland III #1903–1916 Henry Wade Rogers #1916–1927 Thomas Walter Swan #1927–1929 Robert Maynard Hutchins #1929–1939 Charles Edward Clark #1940–1946 Ashbel Green Gulliver #1946–1954 Wesley Alba Sturges #1954–1955 Harry Shulman #1955–1965 Eugene Victor Rostow #1965–1970 Louis Heilprin Pollak #1970–1975 Abraham Samuel Goldstein #1975–1985 Harry Hillel Wellington #1985–1994 Guido Calabresi #1994–2004 Anthony Townsend Kronman #2004–2009 Harold Hongju Koh #2009–present Robert C. Post

Current prominent faculty

Bruce Ackerman, constitutional and political science scholar and op-ed writer.

Akhil Amar, constitutional scholar, writer and consultant to the television show The West Wing.

Ian Ayres, author of Why Not? and frequent commentator on NPR's Marketplace program.

Jack Balkin, First Amendment scholar, legal blogger, founder and director of the Yale Information Society Project.

Aharon Barak, former president of the Israeli Supreme Court from 1995 to 2006.

Guido Calabresi, judge on the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit and former Dean, Yale Law School.

Stephen L. Carter, author of a number of books, including the novel The Emperor of Ocean Park.

Amy Chua, author World on Fire: How Exporting Free Market Democracy Breeds Ethnic Hatred and Global Instability.

Jules Coleman, legal philosopher.

Drew S. Days, III, former United States Solicitor General.

Owen M. Fiss, liberalism and free speech scholar.

Dan M. Kahan, criminal law and evidence scholar, director of the Yale Supreme Court Advocacy Clinic.

Harold Hongju Koh, Dean of the law school (2004–2009) and former Assistant Secretary of State for Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor in the Clinton administration (1998–2001).

John Langbein, legal historian and trust and estates scholar.

Jonathan R. Macey, corporate/banking law scholar.

Jed Rubenfeld, constitutional theorist and criminal law scholar.

Kate Stith, constitutional law and criminal procedure expert.

Ralph K. Winter, Jr., senior circuit judge and former chief judge, United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit.

Michael Wishnie, clinical professor, expert on immigration.

Notable alumni

Notes

External links

Yale Law School

Yale Information Society Project

The Yale Law Journal

The Yale Journal of Health Policy, Law, & Ethics

The Yale Journal of International Law

The Yale Journal of Law and Feminism

Yale Law and Policy Review

Yale Law School Sculptural Ornamentation

Law School Category:Law schools in Connecticut Category:Educational institutions established in 1843 Category:Education in New Haven, Connecticut Category:Buildings and structures in New Haven, Connecticut Category:Universities and colleges in New Haven County, Connecticut

Name	Jack Balkin
Birth date	August 13, 1956
Birth place	Kansas City, Missouri
Nationality
Fields	Constitutional law
Workplaces	Yale Law School
Alma mater	A.B. and J.D. degrees from Harvard University; Ph.D. in philosophy from Cambridge University
Known for	author of several books; blogs at Balkinization; frequent guest on BloggingHeads.tv
Signature

Jack M. Balkin (born August 13, 1956, in Kansas City, Missouri) is the Knight Professor of Constitutional Law and the First Amendment at Yale Law School. Balkin is the founder and director of the Yale Information Society Project (ISP), a research center whose mission is "to study the implications of the Internet, telecommunications, and the new information technologies for law and society." Balkin is a member of the Advisory Committee of University of the People, and he also writes political and legal commentary at a weblog, Balkinization.

Education and early career

Balkin received his A.B. and J.D. degrees from Harvard University and his Ph.D. in philosophy from the University of Cambridge. From 1982 to 1984 he was a litigation associate at the New York law firm of Cravath, Swaine & Moore.

Memetics, Ideology, and Transcendence

Balkin's 1998 book, Cultural Software: A Theory of Ideology, argued that ideology could be explained in terms of memes and processes of cultural evolution. He argued that ideology is an effect of the "cultural software" or tools of understanding that become part of human beings and that are produced through the evolution and transmission of memes. At the same time, Balkin argued that all ideological and moral analysis presupposes a transcendent ideal of truth and "a transcendent value of justice." Like T. K. Seung, he suggests that a transcendent idea of justice—although incapable of perfect realization and inevitably "indeterminate"—underlies political discourse and political persuasion.

Ideological drift and legal semiotics

Balkin coined the term ideological drift (inspired on genetic drift) to describe a phenomenon by which ideas and concepts change their political valence as they are introduced into new social and political contexts over time. Along with Duncan Kennedy, Balkin developed the field of legal semiotics. Legal semiotics shows how legal arguments feature recurrent tropes or topoi that respond to each other and whose opposition is reproduced at higher and lower levels of doctrinal detail as legal doctrines evolve. Hence Balkin claimed that legal argument has a self-similar "crystalline" or fractal structure. Balkin employed deconstruction and related literary theories to argue that legal thought was structured in terms of "nested oppositions"—opposed ideas or concepts that turn into each other over time or otherwise depend on each other in novel and unexpected ways. Although he draws on literary theory in his work on legal rhetoric, Balkin and his frequent co-author Sanford Levinson contend law is best analogized not to literature but to the performing arts such as music and drama.

Partisan entrenchment

Balkin and Levinson argue that constitutional revolutions in judicial doctrine occur through a process called partisan entrenchment. The party that controls the White House can stock the federal courts with new judges and Justices who have views on key constitutional issues roughly similar to those of the President. This shifts the median Justice on the Supreme Court and changes the complexion of the lower federal courts, which, in turn, eventually affects constitutional doctrine. If enough new judges are appointed in a relatively short period of time, changes will occur more quickly, producing a constitutional revolution. For example, a constitutional revolution occurred following the New Deal because Franklin Roosevelt was able to appoint eight new Supreme Court Justices between 1937 and 1941. Balkin and Levinson's theory contrasts with Bruce Ackerman's theory of constitutional moments, which argues that constitutional revolutions occur because of self-conscious acts of democratic mobilization that establish new standards of political legitimacy. Balkin and Levinson view partisan entrenchment as roughly but imperfectly democratic; it guarantees neither legitimate nor correct constitutional interpretation.

Constitutional interpretation

Balkin's constitutional theory is both originalist and living constitutionalist. He argues that there is no contradiction between these theories, properly understood. Interpreters must follow the original meaning of the constitutional text but not its original expected application; hence much constitutional interpretation actually involves constitutional construction and state building by all three branches of government. Balkin's "framework originalism" views the Constitution as an initial framework for governance that sets politics in motion and makes politics possible; it must be filled out over time through constitutional construction and state building. This process of building out the Constitution is living constitutionalism.

Democratic culture

Balkin's work on the first amendment argues that the purpose of the free speech principle is to promote what he calls a democratic culture. The idea of democratic culture is broader than a concern with democratic deliberation or democratic self-government, and emphasizes individual freedom, cultural participation and mutual influence. A democratic culture is one in which ordinary individuals can participate in the forms of culture that in turn help shape and constitute them as persons. Balkin argues that free speech on the Internet is characterized by two features: "routing around" media gatekeepers and "glomming on," i.e., non-exclusive appropriation of cultural content that is melded with other sources to create new forms of culture. These distinctive features of Internet speech, he argues, are actually features of speech in general and thus lead to a focus on democratic participation in culture.

Footnotes

Selected works

As author

Cultural Software: A Theory of Ideology (1998)

The Laws of Change: I Ching and the Philosophy of Life (2002)

As editor

The Constitution in 2020 (Oxford Univ. Press 2009 ISBN 978-0195387964) (with Reva B. Siegel)

Cybercrime: Digital Cops in a Networked Environment (NYU Press 2007 ISBN 978-0814799833) (with James Grimmelmann et al.)

The State of Play: Law, Games, and Virtual Worlds (NYU Press 2006 ISBN 0-8147-9972-8) (with Beth Simone Noveck)

What Roe v. Wade Should Have Said (NYU Press 2005 ISBN 0-8147-9918-3)

What Brown v. Board of Education Should Have Said (NYU Press 2001 ISBN 0-8147-9890-X)

Legal Canons (NYU Press 2000) (with Sanford Levinson)

Processes of Constitutional Decisionmaking (Aspen Publications, 5th edition 2006) (with Paul Brest, Sanford Levinson, Akhil Amar, and Reva Siegel).

External links

Jack Balkin's Home Page

Jack Balkin's Bibliography

Jack Balkin's Blog, Balkinization

Yale Information Society Project

Yale Faculty Profile

Videos of debates and discussions involving Balkin on BloggingHeads.tv

Balkin's biography, University Of The People website

See also

list of deconstructionists

Category:1956 births Category:Living people Category:American legal writers Category:Harvard Law School alumni Category:Alumni of the University of Cambridge Category:Yale Law School faculty Category:Semioticians Category:Scholars of constitutional law

Eugene R. Fidell (born March 31, 1945) is an American lawyer and notable expert in military law. He is currently a visiting Professor of Military Law at Yale Law School.

Commenting on District Court Justice Joyce Hens Green's analysis of the classified dossiers prepared for captive's Combatant Status Review Tribunals Fidell said:

Clark Hoyt, or the New York Times described Fidell holding back in participating in preparing a brief submitted to the Supreme Court on behalf of National Institute of Military Justice and the Bar Association of the District of Columbia because of the concern it would be considered a conflict of interest, since his wife journalist Linda Greenhouse was covering the case.

Slate magazine published an article written by Emily Bazelon and Dahlia Lithwick, criticizing the New York Times for failing to show more support for their employee. According to Bazelon and Lithwick the main critic of Greenhouse covering stories where her husband Fidell has a role is M. Edward Whelan III of the ''National Review. They wrote:

The Washington Times published an op-ed by Fidell on 7 December 2008. He concluded: :

Publications

References

Category:American lawyers Category:1945 births Category:Harvard Law School alumni Category:Living people

Name	Bradley Manning
Alt	photograph
Birth date	December 17, 1987
Birth place	Crescent, Oklahoma
Nationality	American
Occupation	Soldier, United States Army
Known for	Allegedly passed classified data to Wikileaks
Criminal charge	Transferring classified data onto his personal computer, and transmitting national defense information to an unauthorized source. His father left home when Manning was 13, and he moved with his mother to Haverfordwest, Wales. Tom Dyer, a school friend, told Britain's Channel 4 News that Manning wanted to "right a big wrong." "If something went wrong," Dyer said, "he would speak up about it if he didn't agree with something. He would even have altercations with teachers if he thought something was not right." Dyer told Channel 4 that Manning was bullied at school because he was an American. He was also targeted for being effeminate; Denver Nicks writes that he had told his schoolfriends in Crescent that he was gay, but he was not open about it at school in Wales.
Name	Manning, Bradley E.
Date of birth	December 17, 1987
Place of birth	Crescent, Oklahoma

Category:1987 births Category:American LGBT military personnel Category:American military personnel of the Iraq War Category:American people of Welsh descent Category:American prisoners and detainees Category:American whistleblowers Category:Iraq War legal issues Category:Living people Category:People from Logan County, Oklahoma Category:Prisoners and detainees of the United States military Category:United States Army soldiers Category:WikiLeaks

Name	Barney Frank
Date of birth	March 31, 1940
Place of birth	Bayonne, New Jersey
State	Massachusetts
District	4th
Term start	January 3, 1981
Preceded	Robert Drinan
Succeeded	Incumbent
Party	Democratic
Order2	Chairman of the House Financial Services Committee
Term start2	January 4, 2007
Term end2	January 3, 2011
Preceded2	Mike Oxley
Succeeded2	Spencer Bachus
Order3	Member of the Massachusetts House of Representatives
Term start3	1973
Term end3	1981
Religion	Judaism
Alma mater	Harvard College Harvard Law School
Occupation	Attorney, United States Representative
Residence	Newton, Massachusetts
Partner	Jim Ready
Committees	House Financial Services Committee
Website	www.House.gov/Frank
Relations	sister: Ann Lewis

Barney Frank (born March 31, 1940) is the U.S. House Representative for , serving since 1981. He is a member of the Democratic Party. He won his first full term in 1980 and has been re-elected ever since by wide margins. In 1987, he became the second openly gay member of the House of Representatives. He has become one of the most prominent LGBT politicians in the United States.

Early life

Frank was born Barnett Frank to a Jewish family in Bayonne, New Jersey, one of four children of Sam and Elsie. Frank's father ran a Jersey City truck stop—a place Frank describes as "totally corrupt"—and served a year in prison, when Frank was 6 or 7, for refusing to testify to a grand jury against Frank's uncle. The bill, which had the support of Boston's Police Commissioner, never came up for a vote. Later, when Frank was running for Congress, opponents erroneously portrayed him having attempted to permit red light districts in all Bay State communities.

While in state and local government, Frank taught part time at the University of Massachusetts Boston, the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard and at Boston University. He published numerous articles on politics and public affairs, and in 1992 he published Speaking Frankly, an essay on the role the Democratic Party should play in the 1990s.

In 1979, Frank was admitted to the bar in Massachusetts. A year later, he ran for the U.S. House of Representatives in the 4th congressional district, hoping to succeed Father Robert Drinan, who had left Congress following a call by Pope John Paul II for priests to withdraw from political positions. In the Democratic primary held on September 16, 1980, Frank won 51.3 percent of the vote in a four-candidate field. His nearest opponent, Arthur J. Clark, won 45.9 percent and finished almost 4,500 votes behind. As the Democratic nominee, Frank faced Republican Richard A. Jones in the general election and won narrowly, 51.9 percent to 48.1 percent.

For his first term, Frank represented a district in the western and southern suburbs of Boston, anchored by Brookline and Newton, Massachusetts. However, in 1982, redistricting forced him to run against Republican Margaret Heckler, who represented a district centered on the South Coast, including Fall River and New Bedford. Although the newly configured district retained Frank's district number — the 4th — it was geographically more Heckler's district. Frank focused on Heckler's initial support for President Ronald Reagan's tax cuts, and won by twenty percentage points. He has not faced significant opposition since, and has been reelected fifteen times.

In 1985 Frank was still closeted and the "first time he felt good in a relationship" was after he hired Steve Gobie, a male prostitute, and they became friends more than sexual partners. Later that year Gobie's friends convinced him he had a gay male version of Mayflower Madam, a TV movie they had been watching. The Committee found no evidence that Frank had known of or been involved in the alleged illegal activity and dismissed all of Gobie's more scandalous claims; they recommended a reprimand for Frank using his congressional office to fix 33 of Gobie's parking tickets and for misstatements of fact in a memorandum relating to Gobie's criminal probation record. The House voted 408–18 to reprimand Frank. The attempts to censure and expel Frank were led by Republican Larry Craig, whom Frank criticized for hypocrisy after Craig's own later arrest for soliciting gay sex in an airport bathroom. Frank won re-election that year with 66 percent of the vote, and has won by larger margins until the 2010 Mid-term elections when Frank only won by eleven points.

Public perception

Frank is known for his quick wit. In one famous quip he said he was unable to complete his review of the Starr Report detailing President Bill Clinton's relationship with Monica Lewinsky, complaining that it was "too much reading about heterosexual sex". In 2004 and again in 2006, a survey of Capitol Hill staffers published in Washingtonian gave Frank the title of the "brainiest", "funniest", and "most eloquent" member of the House. In 2008 the same survey named him "brainiest", and runner up for "workhorse", and "most eloquent", in 2010 he was named "brainiest", "workhorse", and "funniest". He is also widely considered to be one of the most powerful members of Congress. In his book Ripples of Hope: Great American Civil Rights Speeches, Democratic speech writer Josh Gottheimer describes Frank as "one of the brightest and most energetic defenders of civil rights issues."

Political initiatives and positions

Domestic issues

LGBT issues

Frank has been outspoken on many civil rights issues, including lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) rights. In 1987, he publicly came out as gay. In 1990, Frank was instrumental in crafting the 1990 Immigration Act, which restated the reasons for which a person could be denied entry into the country. The act did not include "sexual preference exclusion[s]", reforming earlier immigration law which allowed persons to be excluded for a sexual deviance "afflict[ion]". He said in a 1996 interview: "I'm used to being in the minority. I'm a left-handed gay Jew. I've never felt, automatically, a member of any majority." In 1995, then-Republican House Majority Leader Dick Armey famously referred to Frank as "Barney Fag" in a press interview. Armey apologized and said it was "a slip of the tongue". Frank did not accept Armey's explanation, saying "I turned to my own expert, my mother, who reports that in 59 years of marriage, no one ever introduced her as Elsie Fag." In 1998, Frank founded the National Stonewall Democrats, the national LGBT Democratic organization.

In 2006, Frank and incoming House Speaker Nancy Pelosi were accused by Rep. John Hostettler (R-IN) of having a "radical homosexual agenda"; Frank responded "I do have things I would like to see adopted on behalf of LGBT people: they include the right to marry the individual of our choice; the right to serve in the military to defend our country; and the right to a job based solely on our own qualifications. Frank's stance on outing gay Republicans has been called the "Frank Rule" whereby a closeted person who uses their power, position, or notoriety to hurt LGBT people can be outed. The issue became relevant during the Mark Foley scandal of 2006, during which Frank clarified his position on HBO's Real Time with Bill Maher: "I think there's a right to privacy. But the right to privacy should not be a right to hypocrisy. And people who want to demonize other people shouldn't then be able to go home and close the door and do it themselves."

In February 2009, Frank was one of three openly gay members of Congress, along with Tammy Baldwin of Wisconsin and Jared Polis of Colorado. In April 2009 Frank was named in the LGBT magazine Out's "Annual Power 50 List", landing at the top spot.

Civil rights

In 1987, Frank was the Chair of the important House Judiciary Subcommittee on Administrative Law and Governmental Relations in the 100th Congress. In this position, he was one of the staunchest supporters of redress and reparations for Japanese American internment during World War II. In 2001 frank co-sponsored an amendment to the U.S. Constitution to apply an equal rights based on gender differences. In 2002 he co-sponsored the "Federal Agency Protection of Privacy Act" (H.R.4561) to require a "Privacy Impact Statement" on new federal rules. In 2006 the Human Rights Campaign scored him at 100% indicating a pro-gay-rights stance. He has consistently voted for the bipartisan Hinchey-Rohrabacher amendment, annually proposed by Dana Rohrabacher (R-CA) and Maurice Hinchey (D-NY), that would prohibit the United States Department of Justice from prosecuting medical marijuana patients. In March 2008, he proposed the Personal Use of Marijuana by Responsible Adults Act of 2008 (HR 5843), which would have decriminalized small amounts of the drug but died in committee during the 110th Congress. On June 18, 2009 he re-introduced the bill as the Personal Use of Marijuana by Responsible Adults Act of 2009 (HR 2943). Commenting on legislation to remove federal criminal penalties for possession of small amounts of marijuana for personal use, Frank stated "In a free society a large degree of human activity is none of the government's business. We should make criminal what's going to hurt other people and other than that we should leave it to people to make their own choices." In 2003 he was rated "A" by Vote Hemp, indicating a pro-hemp voting record. In 2006 he was rated "+30" by NORML, indicating a pro-drug-reform stance. He co-sponsored "Innocence Protection Act of 2001" (H.R. 912, S.486) to "reduce the risk that innocent persons may be executed [by examining DNA evidence more thoroughly]" and the "National Death Penalty Moratorium Act of 2001" (H.R.1038, S.233) to limit capital punishment until the National Commission on the Death Penalty reviewed the "fairness of the imposition of the death penalty". In 2003 he was rated 95% by the League of Conservation Voters indicating pro-environment votes. The same year he co-sponsored overturning FCC approval of media consolidation (S.J.RES.28&H.J.RES.79; 2008-SJR28). To restore online gambling rights, in 2007 Frank sponsored H.R. 2046, the Internet Gambling Regulation and Enforcement Act. This bill would have established licensing and regulation of online gaming sites. It provided for age verification and protections for compulsive gamblers. In 2008, he and Paul introduced H.R. 5767, the Payment Systems Protection Act, a bill that sought to place a moratorium on enforcement of the Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act while the United States Treasury Department and the Federal Reserve defined "unlawful Internet gambling". As a result of these efforts, Frank (who does not gamble) has been praised by poker players and online gamblers, including many Republicans.

Abortion

In 2003 Frank had a 100% rating from NARAL Pro-Choice America indicating a pro-choice voting record. He voted against the Partial-Birth Abortion Ban Act, against the Unborn Victims of Violence Act and against restrictions on the transportation of minors across state lines by non-family members to circumvent local abortion laws. In 1993 Frank co-sponsored the "Freedom of Choice Act" (H.R.25) (1993-H25) to "protect the reproductive rights of women". In 2006 he co-sponsored the "Compassionate Assistance for Rape Emergencies Act" (S.3945) 06-S3945), a bill for "emergency contraception for rape victims". In 2007 his co-sponsored the "Compassionate Care for Servicewomen Act" (S.1800 & HR.2064) (07-HR2064) to "providing emergency contraception at military facilities"; the "Prevention First Act" (S.21&H.R.463; 2009-S21) to "expand access to preventive health care services that help reduce unintended pregnancy, reduce abortions, and improve access to women's health care". As of December 2003 Frank has a 89% rating by Peace Action, indicating a pro-peace voting record. In 2005 he co-sponsored "Rail Security Act" (S.1379/H.R.153) (05-S1379) giving higher priority to rail transportation security. Frank supports having fewer F-35 Joint Strike Fighter planes, but also supports a $3 billion backup engine project that the Pentagon does not want. Frank told MSNBC's Keith Olbermann that he actually wanted to cut the entire F-35 program, but as long as military spending continued he would fight for his district's share of it.

House Financial Services Committee

Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac

In 2003, while the ranking Democrat on the Financial Services Committee, Frank opposed a Bush administration proposal, in response to accounting scandals, for transferring oversight of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac from Congress and the Department of Housing and Urban Development to a new agency that would be created within the Treasury Department. The proposal, supported by the head of Fannie Mae, reflected the administration's belief that Congress "neither has the tools, nor the stature" for adequate oversight. Frank stated, "These two entities...are not facing any kind of financial crisis.... The more people exaggerate these problems, the more pressure there is on these companies, the less we will see in terms of affordable housing." In 2003, Frank also stated what has been called his "famous dice roll": "I do not want the same kind of focus on safety and soundness [in the regulation of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac] that we have in the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency and the Office of Thrift Supervision. I want to roll the dice a little bit more in this situation towards subsidised housing."

Frank was criticized by conservative organizations for campaign contributions totaling $42,350 between 1989 and 2008. Bill Sammon, the Washington managing editor for Fox News, claimed the donations from Fannie and Freddie influenced his support of their lending programs, and said that Frank did not play a strong enough role in reforming the institutions in the years leading up to the Economic crisis of 2008. In 2006 a Fannie Mae representative stated in SEC filings that they "did not participate in large amounts of these non-traditional mortgages in 2004 and 2005." In response to criticism, Frank said, “In 2004, it was Bush who started to push Fannie and Freddie into subprime mortgages, because they were boasting about how they were expanding homeownership for low-income people. And I said at the time, ‘Hey—(a) this is going to jeopardize their profitability, but (b) it’s going to put people in homes they can’t afford, and they’re gonna lose them.’” The 2005 bill included Frank objectives, which were to impose tighter regulation of Fannie and Freddie and new funds for rental housing. Frank and Mike Oxley achieved broad bipartisan support for the bill in the Financial Services Committee, and it passed the House. But the Senate never voted on the measure, in part because President Bush was likely to veto it. “If it had passed, that would have been one of the ways we could have reined in the bowling ball going downhill called housing,” Oxley told Frank. In an op-ed piece in the Wall Street Journal, Lawrence B. Lindsey, a former economic adviser to President George W. Bush, wrote that Frank “is the only politician I know who has argued that we needed tighter rules that intentionally produce fewer homeowners and more renters.”

Chair of the House Financial Services Committee

[[Image:Congressmen Ellison & Frank at Financial Services Field Hearing on Home Foreclosures in Minneapolis.jpg|thumb|Congressmen

Ellison & Frank at Financial Services Field Hearing on Home Foreclosures in Minneapolis.]] As chairman of the House Financial Services Committee, beginning in 2007, Frank "sits at the center of power". Frank has been a critic of aspects of the Federal Reserve system, partnering with some Republicans in opposition to some policies. Frank says that he and Republican Congressman Ron Paul "first bonded because we were both conspicuous nonworshipers at the Temple of the Fed and of the High Priest Alan Greenspan.” In 2008 Frank supported passage of the American Housing Rescue & Foreclosure Prevention Act, intended to protect thousands of homeowners from foreclosure. In an August 2007 op-ed piece in Financial Times, Frank wrote, "In the debate between those who believe in essentially unregulated markets and others who hold that reasonable regulation diminishes market excesses without inhibiting their basic function, the subprime situation unfortunately provides ammunition for the latter view." Frank was also instrumental in the passage of , the Credit Cardholders' Bill of Rights Act of 2008, a measure that drew praise from editorial boards and consumer advocates. In 2007 Frank co-sponsored legislation to reform the Section 202 refinancing program, which is for affordable housing for the elderly, and Section 811 disabled programs. Frank has been a chief advocate of the National Housing Trust Fund,

During the subprime mortgage crisis, Frank was characterized as "a key deal-maker, an unlikely bridge between his party’s left-wing base and [...] free market conservatives" in the Bush administration. Hank Paulson, the U.S. Treasury Secretary for the Bush administration, said he enjoyed Frank’s penchant for brokering deals, "he is looking to get things done and make a difference, he focuses on areas of agreement and tries to build on those."

Personal life

According to Stuart Weisberg's 2009 biography Barney Frank: The Story of America's Only Left-Handed, Gay, Jewish Congressman, Frank dated women in an effort to deny his homosexuality. His last romance with a woman was a nearly two-year long affair with Irish-American Catholic Kathleen Sullivan, the daughter of New England Patriots owner Billy Sullivan, that began in 1974. When the two split up, at Frank's instigation, he admitted to her that he was gay. He was still closeted publicly.

According to Frank, he "realized it was crazy" to try to have a romance with someone he cared for but was not compatible with due to his homosexuality. "That was the last effort to avoid being gay," Weisber quotes Frank as saying. Frank never again dated a woman.

Frank started coming out as gay to friends before he ran for Congress and came out publicly in 1987, "prompted in part by increased media interest in his private life…" and the death of Stewart McKinney, "a closeted bisexual Republican representative from Connecticut"; Frank told The Washington Post after McKinney's death there was “An unfortunate debate about 'Was he or wasn't he? Didn't he or did he?' I said to myself, I don't want that to happen to me.” Frank's announcement had little impact on his electoral prospects. Shortly after coming out, Frank met and began dating Herb Moses, an economist and LGBT activist; their relationship lasted for eleven years until an amicable break-up in July 1998. Moses, who was an executive at Fannie Mae from 1991 to 1998, was the first partner of an openly gay member of Congress to receive spousal benefits and the two were considered "Washington's most powerful and influential gay couple." , Frank's net worth is estimated to be $972,150. His sister, Ann Lewis, served as a senior adviser in Hillary Clinton's 2008 presidential campaign.

Books

Weisberg, Stuart Barney Frank: The Story of America's Only Left-handed, Gay, Jewish Congressman, University of Massachusetts Press (2009), ISBN 978-1558497214

Bibliography

Financing Foreign Aid: A Case Study in the Budgetary Process. (1962)

Budget for a Strong America (1989)

Speaking Frankly: What's Wrong with the Democrats and how to Fix it (1992)

Notes

References

Johansson, Warren & Percy, William A. Outing: Shattering the Conspiracy of Silence. Harrington Park Press, 1994. pp. 106, 139, 143, 154, 157, 188–9, 228, 231, 235, 291

External links

Congressman Barney Frank official U.S. House site

Barney Frank for Congress official campaign site

Profile at SourceWatch

Articles

A Liberal Wit Builds Bridges To the G.O.P., The New York Times, May 13, 2008.

Congressman Frank defends trans-exclusive Employment Non-Discrimination Act, The Bilerico Project, September 28, 2007.

The Republicans' Democracy Disorder, In These Times, 2006-02-04

Congressman Barney Frank: A Buzzflash Interview, Buzzflash, July 22, 2003

Monumentally Frank: Interview with Massachusetts Congressman Barney Frank Metro Weekly, March 20, 2003.

Frank Discusses U.S. Policy, Attitude Regarding Gay Rights, The Hoya, October 19, 2001.

Category:1940 births Category:Living people Category:People from Bayonne, New Jersey Category:Jewish members of the United States House of Representatives Category:Massachusetts Democrats

Category:Censured or reprimanded United States Representatives Category:Gay politicians from the United States Category:Harvard Law School alumni Category:Harvard University alumni Category:LGBT Jews Category:LGBT members of the United States Congress Category:LGBT state legislators of the United States Category:LGBT rights in Massachusetts Category:Members of the Massachusetts House of Representatives Category:Members of the United States House of Representatives from Massachusetts