Thanks!
Frank
--
In March 2002, Senator Santorum and two Ohio Congressmen, Representatives John A. Boehner (Chair, House Education and Workforce Committee) and Steve Chabot (Chairman, House Constitution Subcommittee), inserted themselves into the Ohio controversy. Senator Santorum published an op-ed piece in the Washington Times in which he called upon the Ohio Board of Education to include the modifications to its science standards,[i] <#_edn1> for “students should be taught a variety of viewpoints in the classroom. Dissenting theories should not be repressed, but discussed openly. To do otherwise is to violate intellectual freedom. Such efforts at censorship abrogate critical thinking and will ultimately thwart scientific progress.”[ii] <#_edn2> He cites in support of this argument his amendment to the No Child Left Behind Act of 2001. However, opponents of both the modifications as well as HB 481 maintain that the Santorum Amendment does not have the force of law because it was removed from the final version of the Act and appears only in the Joint Explanatory Statement of the Committee of Conference.[iii] <#_edn3> In reply, representatives Boehner and Chabot, in a letter to Board of Education members Jennifer L. Sheets and Cyrus B. Richardson, argue that the Santorum Amendment is part of the law and that opponents to the modifications and the House legislation are simply mistaken.[iv] <#_edn4> The pro-ID Discovery Institute admits that “while the Santorum statement may not have the `force of law,’ it is a powerful statement of federal education policy, and it provides authoritative guidance on how the statutory provisions of the No Child Left Behind Act (such as state-wide science assessments) are to be carried out.”[v] <#_edn5> Although the Conference Report is not technically part of the Act, conference report language is relevant, and sometimes crucial, to assessing the purpose of legislation, interpreting a law as well as implementing it appropriately,[vi] <#_edn6> for the report is the result of a committee instituted to fulfill the U.S. Constitution’s requirement that “in order for a bill to be presented to the President for signature, it must pass both the House and Senate in the exact same form.”[vii] <#_edn7> Thus, contrary to what ID opponents have claimed,[viii] <#_edn8> the Santorum Amendment is a significant victory for opponents of the Darwinian paradigm.
<#_ednref1> [i]Rick Santorum, “Illiberal Education in Ohio,” The Washington Times (March 14, 2002), available at http://www.arn.org/docs/ohio/washtimes_santorum031402.htm (April 22, 2002)
<#_ednref2> [ii]Santorum, “Illiberal Education in Ohio”
<#_ednref3> [iii]Ohio Citizens for Science web page, at http://ecology.cwru.edu/ohioscience/santorum.asp. The Conference Report is available at ftp://ftp.loc.gov/pub/thomas/cp107/hr334.txt (April 20, 2002)
<#_ednref4> [iv]March 15, 2002 Letter to Jennifer L. Sheets and Cyrus B. Richardson from Representatives John A. Boehner and Steve Chabot. It is available at http://www.sciohio.org/boehner-chabot2.pdf (April 20, 2002)
<#_ednref5> [v]The Discovery Institute, “Biologist Ken Miller Flunks Political Science on Santorum,” at http://www. discovery.org/viewDB/index.php3?command=view&id=1149&program=CRSC (April 22, 2002)
<#_ednref6> [vi]See Stephen C. Meyer, “Teach the Controversy,” Cincinnati Eqnirer (March 30, 2002), available at http://www.discovery.org/viewDB/index.php3?command=view&id=1134&program=CRSC (April 22, 2002); and Discovery, “Biologist Ken Miller Flunks.”
[vii] <#_ednref7> U.S. House of Representatives Committee on Rules, Majority Office, “Committees of Conference and Consideration of Conference Reports” (Parliamentary Outreach Program), at http://www.house.gov/rules/ conf_rept_cons.htm (April 22, 2002)
[viii] <#_ednref8> See, for example, Kenneth R. Miller, “The Truth about the `Santorum Amendment’ Language on Evolution,” at http://www.millerandlevine.com/km/evol/santorum.html; and National Center for Science Education, “Santorum Amendment Stripped from Education Bill,” at http://www.ncseweb.org/resources/news/2001/US/ 866_santorum_amendment_stripped_fr_12_21_2001.asp (April 22, 2002)
On 3/15/04 10:33 PM, "[EMAIL PROTECTED]" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
I have two responses: First, no sense of the Senate resolution has the force of law, according to the U.S. Senate Counsel. U.S. Senate: Legislation & Records Home > Legislative Process > Legislation, Laws, and Acts <http://www.senate.gov/legislative/common/briefing/leg_laws_acts.htm#4> (see "Simple Resolutions") Any suggestion otherwise is false. This is well-established law, and I find efforts to fudge the lines reprehensible. This not a subject for opinion.
Second, Sen. Santorum did not propose this as a sense of the Senate resolution. He proposed it as a full-blown amendment. Sen. Kennedy made it clear that the bill was dead if the language remained, and Sen. Santorum backed down, agreeing to a sense of the Senate resolution instead. As Sen. Kennedy's office has made clear, he does not endorse the idea, and had he agreed that the idea deserved to be law, he would not have demanded it be removed from the bill. If you want a good earful, call Kennedy's office and ask if they think "problems" with evolution should be taught. Santorum's protestations are interesting, but ineffective. The language is not law. The language of the Santorum amendment is ambiguous to someone who does not understand the code words used by creationists, and I doubt more than two or three senators realized how the resolution would be represented. In Ohio, the claim was that the law required "intelligent design" to be taught. That was repeated, though not by the Discovery Institute, in several pieces of testimony to the Texas SBOE this summer.
The Department of Education is forbidden from participating in writing curricula by tradition and law -- as was the the Commissioner of Education before ED was established. Congress refrains as well. So the claims that a sense of the Senate resolution which gets a nice mention in a conference report are law are false, and continuing efforts to fudge the lines go against law, tradition and wisdom, in my view.
There may be a court test of this stuff. I'm willing to wager who will win on the point.
Ed Darrell
Dallas
In a message dated 3/15/2004 10:15:06 PM Central Standard Time, [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes:
Ed Darrell has made some specific new claims of fraud below. (at least if done under federal research aegis). A couple I have been able to review are worth exploring further.
1. Among other false claims made against science by the campaign against Darwin in the past several years are these: That the No Child Left Behind law requires "intelligent design" to be taught (before the Ohio School Board) (the law has no such requirement);
The Conference Report of the NCLB contains language, tracking a “sense of the Senate” resolution that had been adopted in the Senate 91-8 on June 3, 2001 (CR S6153) that urges: "Where topics are taught that may generate controversy (such as biological evolution), the curriculum should help students to understand the full range of scientific views that exist, why such topics may generate controversy, and how scientific discoveries can profoundly affect society." If Professor Darrell has a specific citation to the Ohio School Board depicting whether someone argued that NCLB “requires” the teaching of intelligent design, I would like to see it. My understanding is that the argument was simply that NCLB permitted (even encouraged) the teaching of scientific views that called Darwin’s theory into question.
2. that a sense of the Senate resolution is as good as law (it has no force of law);
I am not aware of any claim by The Discovery Institute that the Senate resolution (or the conference committee report language tracking it) attached to the NCLB has the "force of law" or that it was legally mandatory. Their point, which is available at http://www.discovery.org/articleFiles/PDFs/santorumLanguageShouldGuide.pdf, is that a bipartisan majority of Congress endorsed the importance of teaching "the full range of scientific views" on evolution, and so states seeking to adopt the science standards required by the NCLB should take Congress's view seriously. There is nothing fraudulent or incorrect about this position.
Again, I don’t think either of these constitute “scholarly fraud” by the Discovery Institute. Perhaps Professor Darrell has more to back up his claim.
Sincerely,
John Eastman
Chapman University School of Law
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