Cato Daily Dispatch for September 26, 2001
Attacks A Crime Against Humanity?Supreme Court Will Take On Voucher Issue
Lawmakers Approve Some Faith-Based Funding For After-School Programs
Attacks A Crime Against Humanity?
The terrorist attacks on the United States were a "crime against humanity" under international law, the United Nations human rights chief said yesterday, according to the Associated Press.
Mary Robinson said she felt there was no doubt the attacks constituted "a widespread, deliberate targeting of a civilian population" -- one of the definitions of a crime against humanity set down in U.N. treaties.
The attackers had "crossed a line" beyond terrorism, said Robinson, the U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights, and noted that there is currently no international court where the perpetrators could be tried.
The International Criminal Court was established by a 1998 treaty but lacks the required ratifications needed to come into force. The United States is one of more than 100 countries that have signed but not ratified the treaty.
In "Crime or Act of War?" Cato Foreign Policy Analyst Gary Dempsey, an International Criminal Court expert, writes that the "international community has yet to agree on a legal definition of international terrorism or that a global court could open a Pandora's box of legal mischief -- treating terrorism as a criminal justice matter is wrongheaded."
Supreme Court Will Take On Voucher Issue
The Supreme Court announced yesterday that it would decide whether the Constitution permits the use of public funds for tuition at private and religious schools, a bitterly debated question whose resolution by the justices could reshape American education, The Washington Post reports.
The case before the court involves a program created by the Ohio legislature in 1995 to cope with the near-breakdown of Cleveland's public schools. It provides a maximum of $2,250 each to about 3,700 mostly low-income students whose parents prefer to send them to private nonsectarian schools, religious schools or suburban public schools.
The school voucher issue is debated in "Vouchers and Educational Freedom: A Debate," by Joseph L. Bast, David Harmer and Douglas Dewey. In "What Would a School Voucher Buy?" Executive Vice President David Boaz and R. Morris Barrett explain that $3,000 a year would go a long way toward buying a quality education.
In the case studies "Lessons from Vermont: 132-Year-Old Voucher Program Rebuts Critics," and "Lessons from Maine: Education Vouchers for Students since 1873," released earlier this month, Libby Sternberg and Frank Heller look at the education programs in those two states and conclude that vouchers are not new and untested as their critics would argue.
Lawmakers Approve Some Faith-Based Funding For After-School Programs
Lawmakers handed a victory to President Bush's effort to give religious organizations access to federal funding by endorsing their involvement in after-school activities at public schools, according to the Associated Press.
A bipartisan House-Senate conference committee approved the after-school language unanimously and without debate yesterday. Under its provisions, the federal before- and after-school program would be modified so that education departments in the 50 states would decide which programs are financed. School districts now apply directly to the U.S. Education Department.
The change would favor programs in which school districts collaborate with community organizations, including religious groups. It also would favor projects that focus on academics.
In the Cato Handbook for Congress section "Department of Education," Douglas D. Dewey recommends that the Department of Education be abolished and that control of education be returned to families and localities. In "The Department of Education: An Anti-Celebration," Darcy Olsen argues that "Congress should simply end federal involvement in education and return the department's budget to the American people in the form of a tax cut."
In "Faith-Based Charities on the Federal Dole?" Michael Tanner warns, "mixing government and charity ... risks undermining the things that have made private charity effective."
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