Arkansas Blog

Is it possible that what started out as a "good & noble" cause has transmogrified into just more buck$ for Walker? Not living in LR I don't know, but it seems so to me. As an aside, virtually EVERY "student profile" I see in local publications say "Born in Little Rock" but the students are in Benton, Conway, Cabot...white fight for sure - will THAT ever end?

Just wondering in the hills...

...OOPS = white fLight...

Hasn't Walker earned his own golden parachute by now?

Time to move out and then move on.

Mr. Brantley would like all those people mentioning Mr. Walker and his attorney fees to know that the Friday Firm has made much more money and that Mr. Walker's compensation (to which he agreed in a settlement agreement) has not been particularly remunerative when considered against the number of years that Mr. Walker has been handling this particular case.

Smart-assed comments aside, I don't think that this reply brief is particularly good (though, to be fair, I have not seen the first Joshua brief or the LRSD brief that preceded it). The writer of this brief--and I have no idea whether Mr. Walker wrote it or if his co-counsel wrote it--did a rather poor job of, well, replying to the other parties' arguments and establishing why precisely the Joshua Intervenors should be entitled to reversal of the district court's decision to release the district. In addition, the brief does not read particularly well because it is not particularly well-written. Substantively, I'd probably avoid repeatedly using a term like "deeply embedded" that at least one judge on the Court has harshly criticized as "impossibly subjective" (see Judge Gruender's concurrence/dissent in the Eighth Circuit's 2006 opinion).

ARK. BLOG: Excellent summary, Mr. Gaddis.

just been viewing for a while and been quiet for a while
Observation- wasn't the LRSD far better when forced to create equality at all schools in the district?

Just a thought

As always, Gaddis is eloquent and on point. I want to be like him when I grow up.

That said, anyone who thinks this is all about further lining Mr. Walker's pockets just needs to wake up black for the next 75 years in a row.

I think the appeal is about the sense of some black parents (and perhaps some school board members) that undereducated black students will suffer if they do not cling to the leverage of court supervision, including a ready venue for requests for intervention and a documented backdrop of institutional history that is not flattering to those who oppose government mandated attempts to raise the achievement level of black students.

Now, one may say that motivation is illogical, unconstitutional, unwise, unfair, counterproductive, distorted, unwarranted, etc. etc. etc.

But to dismiss the developments as being all about money for Mr. Walker is to disregard, without reason or explanation, the support for the Joshua intervenors among those who will never make a dime off the case, but whose hopes and fears are rooted in a historical perspective that says "Federal courts = good; local boards, courts, governments and politicians = presumptively bad."

ARK. BLOG: Thank you, TAP.