The Volokh Conspiracy
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Today in Supreme Court History: July 20, 1990
7/20/1990: Justice William Brennan resigns.
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Califano v. McRae, 434 U.S. 1301 (decided July 20, 1977): Marshall turns down request to stay the Court’s previous order allowing the Medicaid abortion ban to go into effect; movants are essentially asking a rehearing of two recent Court decisions allowing states to have their own bans on public funding for abortions, and Marshall dissented in those cases; Marshall points out that a request for rehearing must be directed at a judge who voted in the majority (so that means you can’t ever move for a rehearing if the judge for your Circuit happened to be a dissenter?)
Hedrick v. Kelly, 548 U.S. 928 (decided July 20, 2006): denying stay of execution (Stevens and Ginsburg would grant the stay); Fourth Circuit had rejected ineffective assistance of counsel claim, and on procedural grounds rejected Brady claim (failure of prosecutor to turn over exculpatory material) and Atkins claim (executing “mentally retarded” is “cruel and unusual”), and substantive claim that he was “mentally retarded”. Hedrick, after an evening of smoking crack and drinking, had kidnapped 23-year-old Lisa Crider, whom he knew to be a crack dealer’s girlfriend and was probably carrying crack, robbed her and raped her, and then shot her in the face to avoid retaliation from the boyfriend. Hedrick was executed the same day the stay was denied.
It’s hot as blazes here so today’s movie review is the best version of Dickens’s “Christmas Carol”, namely Scrooge, 1951
This is a movie that’s better than the book, because of the material added to fill out the running time. Apparently it was not a big hit when it first came out. It was criticized as too dark — but this is a ghost story, and it all takes place during the darkest month (of various years). There are some things that one notices, viewing this as an adult.
First, Scrooge may be greedy, but he’s not dishonest. (“Scrooge was good for anything he chose to put his name to . . . “) Also one finds some sympathy with him when he says: “A man has enough to do with his own business without getting into other peoples’. Mine occupies me constantly.”
Fred may have not married for money, but he’s not poor; he and his wife can afford a reasonably nice dwelling with a piano in it and hire a (cute as a button) maid.
Why doesn’t Fezziwig agree to Jorkins’s “very large” buyout offer? He knows his business is doomed. It seems not like honor but stupidity.
Fanny’s death scene is a real tear-jerker. But why does she want Scrooge to take care of her boy? Is she unmarried??? (In Dickens, unwed mothers are victims of their own disgrace.) The (younger) Scrooge passes by a man one imagines to be her husband. Why does she place the responsibility on Scrooge and not him?
Speaking of death scenes, mothers dying while giving birth was unfortunately common in those days. In the movie we learn that Scrooge’s father is cruel to him because his mother died giving birth to him. This seems like too easy an explanation for why Scrooge is the way he is.
One of my favorite scenes is where Jorkins is found out as an embezzler. The outrage by Mr. Snedrick & co. at the theft, and further outrage as they realize they have to agree to Scrooge and Marley taking over the company. (I’m amazed that a stenographer armed with just a quill pen can take down all that fast talking — and strike Jorkins’s speech from the record!)
Corny as Dickens often is, there are many fine touches. The scene where bells announce the approach of Marley’s ghost is scary even though all you see are still shots and sound effects. The coordinated slowness as the Cratchit children drink a toast to Scrooge’s health. The scene of the dead businessmen trying to throw their money at the homeless mother and child doesn’t quite work visually but one could imagine it done better with today’s technology. Bob Cratchit is a stock Dickens character, good-hearted, not very smart, put-upon, and his relationship with his wife (where she wants him to fight for his interests but he either can’t or doesn’t know how) is something I’m familiar with. Also notice how the image of the Ghost of Christmas Past gets fainter and fainter as we approach the present day.
Also there are historical details from 1843 that British audiences in 1951 would probably have understood but we don’t. There are references to “the machines” and “the vested interests”. Dickens viewed the Industrial Revolution and capitalism as evil monsters, enabling greed and creating misery. Also at the end, when it looks to Mrs. Dilber that Scrooge has gone nuts, he says she doesn’t have to “call for the beadle”. A beadle was a minor church official whose job it was to maintain public order (this was before there were any police, in the sense that we understand the term). (In “Oliver Twist”, Mr. Bumble was a beadle.)
So many peripheral characters are fleshed out with only a line or two (for example, Fred’s friend Topper and the girl who fans herself while denying interest in him, the undertaker and the pawnbroker, the coughing girls in the background, the kid in the street who is asked to buy the turkey).
And when Alistair Sim gets “the Christmas spirit”, he really gets it. The audience shares in his giddiness.