For Memorial Day: Cross Purposes in San Diego
28 May 2007 1 Comment
This 29-foot, brilliant-white cross is part of a WWI/WWII/Korean War memorial on Mt. Soledad outside San Diego. The federal government took it over from the city as a historic landmark (a type of cultural property) in May of 2006, after repeated federal court orders to remove it from city land as an improper government preference for one religion over another, beginning in 1991.
The cross can be seen from freeways, public beaches, and other vantage points all over the city. Viewed out of context (as it is by any uninformed observer farther away then the parking lot), it may be a reminder of the role of Spanish missions in California history, or it may seem to announce “This is Christian territory” – reassuring to Christians, maybe not-so-much to others. Even in the context of the memorial function, it may compare any soldier’s death in the service of his or her country to Jesus Christ’s ultimate sacrifice of his life so that others could live, or it may look like “This is a memorial to Christian veterans; other veterans should go get their own.” Some atheists (some of whom were veterans, despite Fr. William Thomas Cummings’ 1942 contention that “there are no atheists in foxholes”) took exception to having their tax dollars support what they saw as a religious advertisement, and filed suit in 1989 to compel the city to either remove it or render the land on which it stood “non-public.” And many years of litigation ensued (sic).
The American Legion and Christian legal groups are launching an initiative to protect crosses on public war memorials from “secular attacks.” (You know a religious-freedom law is working when it can make even the most dominant, powerful religion in the land feel persecuted. : )) On the other hand, many of our country’s historic properties have religious connections – those of the people who made the history in the first place. What happens to the San Diego cross may affect what happens to other publicly-owned historic sites and artifacts.
Must government-supported historic preservation be confined to strictly secular subject matter? Let’s think about this. And for a change, let’s try to describe the existing law accurately.
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Send In the “GIs”: The U.S. Defends its Vinous Territory
23 May 2007 Leave a Comment
in Distressed Genes, Tales of "Terroir"
What goes around, comes around. Wine tasting is one metaphor; you draw the first sip up one side of your tongue, aerating it noisily in a way that would have gotten you banished from your childhood dinner table, and let it slide down the other, savoring all its flavors and, if you’re in that kind of a setting, searching for coherent words to describe them all.
That sip of wine goes around, then it comes around, then you have to either swallow it or spit it out. Similarly, the U.S. has finally come around, at least a little, to the European perspective on identifying wines with place names – because recently our vintners have, figuratively, walked a mile in the Europeans’ vats.
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For National Maritime Day: Whose Turf is Under the Surf?
22 May 2007 Leave a Comment
in Vivat Wrecks
OK, so you want to look for sunken treasure – be it monetary, historical, or both. (Or you find out someone else is doing it, you don’t think they should, and you want to see if you can stop them).
You’re in luck, sort of.
The bad news for underwater artifact-hunters is that unless the body of water is completely surrounded by private land, you’ll probably have to get permits from, comply with the regulations of, and possibly split the loot with, some government or other. Even if it is on private land, some environmental laws may still restrict what you can do. The good news (for both hunters and their opponents) is that now it’s well settled which governments have jurisdiction where. This issue was hotly contested between the coastal states and the federal government in the two-decade U.S. v. Florida series of cases.
I’ve prepared a diagram* that shows the types and extents of underwater government jurisdiction in the United States. Click the thumbnail image below to enlarge it:
*All clip-art used by permission of Jupiter Images (subscription when the images were downloaded, + non-commercial use).
Curse of the Atocha Part 3: Collateral Damage
22 May 2007 1 Comment
in Vivat Wrecks
In Parts 1 and 2, we heard about the legal travails of Treasure Salvors, Inc., who found and salvaged the wreck of the Nuestra Senora de Atocha. But the curse of curios-in-curiae didn’t end there: even buying, owning, selling, or donating Atocha artifacts had legal ramifications.
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Curse of the Atocha Part 2: Mosquitoes Among the Alligators
08 May 2007 Leave a Comment
in Vivat Wrecks
As you’ll have seen in Part 1, the Atocha shipwreck salvage story is a humdinger. It has it all: adventure, wealth, greed, betrayal, violence . . . constitutional interpretation . . . civil procedure . . .
When you’re up to your a** in alligators (or allegations, or litigators), you may not notice the mosquitoes right away, but they’re biting you all the same. While all the federal-court Atocha lawsuits were working their way to the Supreme Court and back, Treasure Salvors, Inc. (TSI) had several investor-contract disputes demanding its attention as well, mostly in state court. Most of theopinions were unpublished or outside the scope of my database subscriptions, and I welcome comments from anyone who knows more about them.
