What if a black widow spider were to nest in a prisoner's dreadlocks?

That happened once. There might also be a fungus hidden in the hair-covered scalp. Weapons might be stowed in the hair, and guards searching for them by hand are afraid of getting cut by razor blades. Moreover, if a long-haired prisoner were to escape, he'd have a ready means of disguise: cut off that hair. These and other reasons were the "compelling interests" that worked for the government in the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals, which rejected a claim for a religious exemption to the no-long-hair policy in prison.

The suit wasn't based on the Constitution's Free Exercise Clause, which doesn't require religious exemptions as long as the government applies the same rule equally. It was based on the Religious Land Use and Institutionalized Persons Act, a federal statute that provides for exemptions. Here's the main U.S. Supreme Court opinion, Cutter v. Wilkinson, rejecting an Establishment Clause challenge to RLUIPA but nudging lower courts to remember "that prison security is a compelling state interest, and that deference is due to institutional officials’ expertise in this area."

The plaintiffs in the 11th Circuit case, Knight v. Thompson, were followers of a Native American religion. Back in 2009, when I used the prison haircut problem for an exam in my Religion and the Constitution course, I presented 5 prisoners, with different situations, intended to highlight the problem of giving special treatment based on religious (as opposed to secular) needs. (Hot links added.)

Prisoner #1 is a musician serving a 2-year sentence who hopes to return to work playing in bands where long hair is traditional.

Prisoner #2 is a young man who believes that his wife loves his long hair. He is hoping that when he is released from prison after serving 3 long years she’ll still want him.

Prisoner #3 was arrested at an anti-war protest called “hair peace” at which he, along with others, chanted “grow your hair for peace.” When a passerby approached him with scissors, a scuffle ensued, and he was arrested for assault. He is serving a 1-year sentence.

Prisoner #4, serving a 5-year sentence, has been a Sikh all his life. For centuries, Sikhs have believed that to cut one’s hair is to reject the love for God and respect for God’s creation that hair symbolizes.

Prisoner #5, also serving a 5-year sentence, decided on his own — before entering prison — to embark on a “spiritual journey” that would be manifested by growing his hair and never cutting it. He isn’t a member of any group, but he was inspired by learning about the Rastafarian movement, which, as he quotes from his readings, is “not a highly organized religion,” but  “a movement and an ideology.” Rastafarians wear their hair in a distinctive uncut way, showing “patience… a journey of the mind, soul and spirituality.”

I asked:

Can the new forcible haircut policy be applied across the board to all 5 prisoners (and any other prisoner that refuses to consent) or will at least one exemption be required? If any exemptions are required, explain which prisoners are entitled to an exemption. If the state wants to make an exception for one or more of the prisoners, will it have to make an exception for more than one? For all of them?

It was very interesting to me to see how students would respond to the 5 different needs for long hair. If I remember correctly, most students found the Sikh's interest so strong that they began there. But then what happens? Do you include all? Just the Rastafarian-inspired man?  None of the others? And does thinking about that make you want to exclude the Sikh too? If your answer is yes, then you may be an 11th Circuit judge.

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"I didn’t go to Thailand, but the summer that I took the bar I did all my studying by the pool."

Writes Instapundit:

I was set to clerk afterward at the Sixth Circut [sic] with a friend from law school who was black, and my goal was to be darker than her when I started. I succeeded — and that was the last really serious tan I had. Subsequent summers in law practice weren’t congenial to tanning; I couldn’t do all that work beside the pool...

He's commenting on a NYT article about the law school graduates who study for the bar and simultaneously vacation.

After all the money spent going to law school and all the pressure in the job market, who can take a vacation? I understand how grads who are going to clerk have a time slot when they can relocate, but where does the money come from? Instapundit frequently writes about "the law school bubble," but that's eclipsed here for a story about racial healing and premarital friendship. The NYT loves to urge its readers to angst over the struggles of the less-than-affluent, but that alternates with stories about privileged persons engaging in some activity that can be perceived as trendy or at least a trend.

I've had far too many free summers to feel envious of those who managed to combine summer vacationing and studying for the bar, but I do vividly remember my time studying in the summer of 1981. I wouldn't have wanted to read those bar review outline books out in the sun. Even if the sunblock available at the time were as good as it is today — and it was not — I've never liked reading in the glaring sunlight, perhaps precisely because getting a tan was never something I could possibly do, unless you count the broken-up tan called freckles.

And quite beyond that, I'd had a baby, my first, in March of that year, and the bodily imperative was not tanning/freckling, but breastfeeding. I enjoyed the post-law-school calm of memorizing the black-letter law that was confidently outlined in those bar-review books. It was so refreshingly different from the complexities of the law-school classroom, and everything was different with a baby. It was nice to get away from the apartment — we lived here — for a few hours to attend the lectures — which were shown in videotape in some big classroom somewhere on the NYU campus. There was no swimming pool, but I self-drenched with milk. There was always that pressure — do you know how it feels? — to get back home, to my baby and to my husband, who had the baby but not the breasts.

Oh! The strange rigors of the summer of 1981.

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"Ignore the haters. Law school is totally worth the cash."

WaPo says.

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The comments vacation.

We've closed the door to comments... for a while at least, but there is still a backdoor, manned by Meade.

Will the comments section ever reopen, or is this a permanent vacation? I expect to reopen, well refreshed, and with some new ideas about how to make the ongoing experience rewarding for commenters of good faith.

ADDED: A reader emails:

Just a note from the peanut gallery that's been around since at least the Bush/Kerry election and a non participant in the comments section (I think I've commented 3 times in the history of the blog.)

I preferred the no comment policy.

Sometimes it feels more like an attempt to generate a discussion and I'm not looking for a group exercise to reach some conclusion. I read because I'm interested in what Ann actually thinks about something and I like to see her explain her view, and lately it's felt more like she's trying to lead a class discussion and she's gotten fairly frustrated when the class came to the "wrong" conclusion. I also live in Madison and enjoy the local flavor, especially the "how the hell did they think that was going to be a good idea" variety.

I don't know what goes on in the comments, good or bad, I've never really read them. Since most of the comments are by definition going to come from the people who comment... I thought I'd chime in from the side that liked the blog better when there were no comments, and I'm hoping they stay closed.

Thanks. I know there are lots of people who only read the front page, and this vacation is helping me think more about the blog as it feels to them. As for the notion that I'm "trying to lead a class discussion," I love starting and furthering conversation, here and in law school class, but there are many differences about the conversation here, where there is no particular goal, and commenters could do all sorts of amusingly creative things that would be way out of line in class. Wonderful, beloved commenters like rhhardin, Chip Ahoy, and betamax3000 would have no way to do their thing in class, where I must keep the discussion on track for the sake of the entire group, which is sitting there in real time with specific needs that must be met. There is no "right" conclusion that I'm trying to extract from either group — law students or commenters — but in law school there are readings that must be understood and issues that must be explored in ways that relate to the profession the students are there to learn. Commenters have far more leeway, and I love diversity of opinion and all sorts of weird things that aren't opinions at all. I want all manner of interesting material in the comments.

There are a few ways that commenters can go wrong, but it's not that they've reached the "'wrong' conclusion." And I wasn't putting up posts for the purpose of getting people to figure out some right answer that I had in mind and was Socratically trying to get them to say. And I don't feel "frustrated" when they don't come up with what I would say. My commenters pretty systematically disagree with me about same-sex marriage and abortion rights, and that's been going on for the entire life of this blog, and it doesn't bother me. I think it's possible that things got especially ugly after the Supreme Court decided the gay marriage cases, and a few people seemed almost to have a nervous breakdown. Then, when I started talking about the consequences of unmarried heterosexual sex, there was some severe cognitive dissonance for the opponents of gay marriage. Their supposed profound reverence for the union of a man and a woman got subordinated to their enthusiasm for the fornicating man's interest in escaping child support payments. That had to hurt, and I felt fine expressing respect for the marital bonds of love for everyone.

That's when things went to hell around here, and the really destructive commenters showed who they are.

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