Obama's Bill of Attainder

"He who pays the piper, calls the tune" - popular idiom

The Department of Education has instructed Harvard Law to suspend due process for complaints of sexual harassment and assault. This was in spite of the efforts of President Obama's mentor, Charles Ogletree. He was among twenty-eight Harvard Law professors, including seven women, who wrote a letter to the Boston Globe claiming that the school's sexual harassment policy lacks “the most basic elements of fairness and due process.”

The Department of Education has its own Office for Civil Rights, whose main responsibility seems to be installing Title IX coordinators in institutions across the country who will then adjudicate cases of alleged sexual violence. And OCR can do this because Harvard accepts hundreds of millions of dollars from the federal government every year.

The professors' main concerns include the inability for the accused to present evidence and cross-examine witnesses; putting the investigation, prosecution and appellate review in the hands of one office that is aligned with Title IX compliance instead of an impartial entity; and denying the accused counsel.

Now Harvard Law must adopt a "preponderance of evidence" standard for deciding cases of rape, sexual assault and sexual harassment. This means that a faculty member, who would represent the jury, only needs to determine that it was more likely than not that the offense occurred. This stands in stark contrast to the criminal justice system, whose standard is more stringent, and requires evidence beyond a reasonable doubt.

Harvard Law must also review any complaints of sexual harassment filed during the 2012-13 and 2013-14 school years to carefully scrutinize whether the Law School investigated the complaints consistent with Title IX and provide any additional remedies necessary for the complainants.

What are they going to do, strip a graduate of his law degree? This trial by executive fiat and reaching into the past amount to unconstitutional bills of attainder. Funny that many people voted for Obama because they thought they were electing a Constitutional Law professor.

Helpfully, the OCR has directed Harvard Law to "notify complainants of their right...to pursue the criminal process in cases of sexual assault or other sexual violence." Nice of them to notice that sexual violence is a criminal matter. It's not the analogue of cheating on an exam.