Voting on whether or not to lift the restraining order (legal jargon for calling off the strike) will take place in person at two meetings, one in NYC and one in LA.

If you cannot attend the meetings, you may vote by proxy. Today, there has been some confusion on what "voting by proxy" means. Faxing in a proxy vote form is NOT the same as voting. You are designating a fellow WGA member to vote

This was sent today to WGA members from Presidents Verrone and Winship:

To Our Fellow Members:

On Tuesday, members of the Writers Guilds East and West voted by a 92.5% margin to lift the restraining order that was invoked on November 5th. The strike is over.

Writing can resume immediately. If you were employed when the strike began, you should plan to report to work on Wednesday. If you're not

This email was just sent to strike captains. It contains info on the NegCom vote, the Board and Council votes, the pending vote to lift the strike, and the pending vote to ratify the contract.

DEAR STRIKE CAPTAINS,

This morning, the WGA Negotiating Committee unanimously and unconditionally recommended the terms of the proposed 2008 MBA to the WGAW Board and WGAE Council. The Board and Council

This was sent out today by the WGA:

LOS ANGELES and NEW YORK – The membership of the Writers Guild of America, West (WGAW) and the Writers Guild of America, East (WGAE) today voted overwhelmingly in favor of lifting the restraining order and ending their 100-day strike that began on Nov. 5. 3,775 writers turned out in Los Angeles and New York to cast ballots or fax in proxies, with 92.5% voting

Emotions are flying fast and furious around this issue: do we hold a ratification vote before we lift the strike? Or do we go back to work as quickly as Monday, and hold the vote afterwards?

To get our position up here as quickly and accurately as possible, we decided to do separate grafs signed by each of us, and combine them into one post.

We're all coming at this from different perspectives

I'm going to crosspost this at http://www.utexas.edu/law/faculty/slevinson/undemocratic/blog/, which is devoted entirely to discussion of the ideas in Our Undemocratic Constitution (and which, since the Moyers interview, is getting some participation). I invite anyone on this list to join the discussion there.

The heart of Mark's post is as follows:

SAG Board member and regular U.H. contributor Justine Bateman sends this open letter to all WGA members. -JA

To the WGA membership,

As you prepare to examine the proposed deal points and assemble for your meeting tonight, if the decision is made to continue striking, I will see you on the lines Monday. If you decide to recommend the deal to the membership at large for a vote and it is ratified,

The IntLawGrrls blog has posted a rough transcript of Justice Scalia’s illuminating comments on "so-called" torture in a recent interview with BBC.

BBC: Tell me about the issue of torture. We know that cruel and unusual punishment is prohibited under the 8th Amendment. Does that mean that the issue is a kind of, if it comes up before the Court, is a no-brainer?

Apparently everyone is up in arms over the fact that John McCain was born in the Panama Canal zone in 1936. Is he a "natural born citizen" eligible to be President under Article II, section 1, clause 4 of the Constitution?

I have to tell you, frankly, that whether McCain is "natural born" is the least of our worries. If you are truly an originalist, as I am, nobody is eligible to be president today.

I recently took Ed Whelan's simple one question test to determine whether you are really an originalist and confirmed that, yes, I am one of that proud and hardy band.

Q. The Constitution provides, as one of the criteria to be eligible to become president, that a person must be a "natural born Citizen" (or, alternatively, in a provision that long ago ceased to apply to any living persons, "a Citizen of the United States, at the time of the Adoption of this Constitution") How would you figure out what the phrase "natural born Citizen" means?

I had the privilege of speaking in December to students at Medfield (Mass.) High School, who had been assigned my book as part of an extended unit on the Constitution. The unit culminated in a "constitutional convention" conducted by each of the three classes taught by Richard Desorgher, who had, I think tellingly, won an award for being Massachusetts' "teacher of the year" in the 1990s. I find the conclusions of the classes to be of great interest. I am enthusiastic about some of the conclusions, less so about others. But the point is that these students were able to ask first-rate questions about the operation of our constitutional system and to come to their own conclusions. They represent reasons to have hope about the future, especially if they can be encouraged to carry their "active citizenship" into the future rather than become turned off from politics.

Professor David Adamany in an essay written many years ago maintained that one consequence of the FDR's Court-packing plan of 1937 was that Roosevelt lost vital political capital that could have been spent on other liberal reforms. Most scholars agree that after the failed Court-packing plan and the failed purge of southern conservatives in 1938, the momentum for the Second New Deal was largely over, not to be revived until the 1960s.

Both Paul Clement and Seth Waxman were superlative -- two of the best at their very best.

We had one of the biggest days on New Year's Eve here at this site, as people from around the world came here looking for trivia connected with either New Year's Eve, New Year's Day or the year 2007. The site had 351 hits on Monday, and it was one of the Top 5 days we've ever had here.

Most people followed a link that sent them into the post I put up on Christmas Day about 2007 Trivia that was happening the next day. I put in a new line into it alerting those folks looking for trivia questions to go to my December 27th post that had the questions. I hope they were able to find them, and I thank all of you for being here yesterday.

Needless to say, many pundits are now commenting on the rules of the Democratic Party re the selection of its presidential candidate. See, e.g., E.J. Dionne's column in today's Washington Post, where he writes that "Democrats have contrived a nominating contest that even Rube Goldberg would have considered too convoluted, too dysfunctional and too improbable to name as his own." Save for the certainly peculiar way by which Texas names its delegates--I had the pleasure of voting twice for Barack Obama, once in early voting (in a secret ballot) and then several days later at my local caucus (which is definitely not secret)--I don't share the hostility to a preference-sensitive proportional representation system that does not negate the votes of everyone who doesn't vote for "the winner" (who may, as with McCain in a number of states, get distinctly less than a majority of the vote). But I've already made such arguments, and I won't rehearse them again. My current grumpiness is about something else, though regular readings of Balkinization shouldn't be surprised by what I'm about to write.

2008 MBA RATIFICATION — MEMBER INFORMATIONAL MEETING

All WGAW members who have questions about the tentative contract are encouraged to attend a special informational meeting where senior staff and elected officials will review the deal terms and address members’ questions and concerns. The meeting will take place on Thursday, February 21, 7 pm - 9 pm at Sportsman’s Lodge, 12825 Ventura Blvd,

I'd like to ask a favor of anyone who sees this post in the next few days.

Would you visit this site: FoodSafety.gov ...

... and tell me if you think it easily answers any questions you, as a consumer, may have about food safety -- things like consumer alerts, current recalls, current food-related outbreaks, consumer guidance for same, etc. No big deal, just a quick scan.

Yes, we are hearing the same rumors you're hearing. Repeat: rumors. And last time we all got too excited by such unsubstantiated expectations, well, you know.

So as you get your third email and/or phone call from the guy who knows somebody who talked to the woman who heard from a person "who knows people who know," take a deep breath and read Ray Richmond's column yesterday on The Huffington

I'm talking about Mike Huckabee, who just might be the Republican nominee for president -- and no, it is not farfetched at all. CNN and the New York Times can't be bothered to tell you who this guy really is, but Alex Koppelman and Vincent Rossmeier will. It's not a secret either. But the corporate media, the politicians, and religious leaders who are somewhere this side of sane are all afraid to say anything about it.

The candidate's religion is supposed to be off limits. We can't talk about Mormon doctrine and how that might influence a Romney presidency. In fact, it isn't polite even to inquire what it is. The same goes for Huckabee.

Today in Washington, D.C., Doug Kendall will announce the formation of a new public interest law firm, the Constitutional Accountability Center. The new center will be dedicated to litigation that promotes a proper understanding of text, history and structure and that demonstrates that our Constitution, correctly interpreted according to its original meaning, is a progressive document. I'm a member of the Board of Advisors and I wish Doug every success in his efforts.

I don't want to distract our readers from the very important story about the Administration's stonewalling of the 9/11 Commission -- read about the New York Times's essential story and the Zelikow Report here -- but this is very much worth your attention, too:

Continuing his invaluable work, Charlie Savage of the Boston Globe today publishes responses of nine presidential candidates to a series of questions he posed about the topics that have dominated this blog since 2004. I'll add some highlights here shortly -- in the meantime, go read the responses.

Mark Kende, Professor of Law at Drake and current chair of the Section on Constitutional Law has an inspired idea for the program at the next AALS meeting. The program notice is below. Scholars perhaps overuse the concept of a "crisis" (although it is eye-catching), but there is little doubt there are some strange doctrinal developments in U.S. conlaw. Mostly because of Justice Kennedy, I find I have a harder time explaining to students what the "standard" approach to equal protection and substantive due process jurisprudence is supposed to be. But perhaps it is fairer to say the entire Court seems less interested in the sort of hyper-articulated "tiers of scrutiny" which I absorbed in law school as among the most important doctrinal developments of the 1970s. That entire era in conlaw now seems played out. Again, "doctrinal chaos" seems a bit strong, there are always important inconsistencies in conlaw jurisprudence. But more attention should have been paid to Laurence Tribe's announcement, in the wake of the Schiavo mess in 2005, that he could not produce a new edition of his famous conlaw treatise.

2009 ANNUAL AALS MEETING: AALS SECTION ON CONSTITUTIONAL LAW CALL FOR PAPERS: IS AMERICAN CONSTITUTIONAL LAW IN CRISIS?

I just finished my introduction to the University of Maryland Law Review Symposium: "An Eighteenth Century Constitution in a Twenty-First Century World." The essays are terrific. I hope many of you read them when published. The first paragraph of my introduction declares:

1. What fiction book (or books) would you nominate to be the best new book published in 2007?
2. What non-fiction book (or books) would you nominate to be the best new book published in 2007?
3. And, do "best of" lists influence your reading?

This post is a day late because when I started to answer this week's questions yesterday I realized that I haven't really read enough 2007 titles to answer the first two questions properly. I've decided to stick with number three.

"Best of" lists don't influence my reading too much. I do like to look at them to see what books made the cut and sometimes I do get ideas from them, but lists ("best of" or not) definitely don't dictate my reading schedule. That seems like such a short answer, but there it is.

Trivia Night returns to Tuesday this week, and the special category will be "January 8th Trivia" or questions about people, places and things connected to January 8. It will also be multiple choice, the first time in a long time we've used that.

We will also have the other four categories, and I promise you, no questions about Roger Clemens! The Sneak Peek question for Tuesday night:

Named after a region in France, the Anjou is a variety of what fruit?

Hope to see many of you on Tuesday night.

This op-ed by the distinguished historian Eric Foner reminds us that January 1st we celebrate the 200th anniversary of a law banning importation of slaves into the United States. President Jefferson signed the law on March 2, 1807, to take effect January 1, 1808. Trade in slaves within the United States continued until slavery was abolished by the Thirteenth Amendment.

This was sent today by WGA Presidents Patric Verrone and Michael Winship to membership:

To Our Fellow Members,

While fully mindful of the continuing media blackout, we write you to address the rumors and reports that undoubtedly you have been hearing.

The facts: we are still in talks and do not yet have a contract. When and if a tentative agreement is reached, the first thing we will do is

Let me put this as succinctly as I can. In the past 100 years or so, we have learned a great deal about the universe which has surprised us. We can now describe its age, history, extent and nature in ways that are utterly inconsistent with the ancient beliefs encoded in scripture. Far from being at the center of the universe, and a major preoccupation of the deity, the earth is utterly insignificant, in both space and time, lost in a universe so immense that our imaginations cannot encompass it.

In order to be convinced of this, you do not need to accept an arbitrary set of premises or rules of evidence. We have telescopes. We can see it. Mr. Berlinski, look through the telescope!

We do not know where this universe came from or why it is what it is -- if that is even a meaningful question. We are doing everything we can to explore further and at least draw closer to answering more questions. In the meantime, scientists and people who live by reason have learned to coexist with mystery. It isn't so hard, once you get used to it, really it isn't.

Making up arbitrary and ridiculous stories, and believing in them fervently, is not an appropriate or sensible response. And defending that practice does not make you a deep thinker. It makes you an idiot.

In response to questions from Senator Specter concerning when, if at all, the President may rely on his Article II authorities to decline to abide by statutes or treaties, the Attorney General testified this morning that "I can't contemplate any situation in which this President would assert Article II authority to do something that the law forbids."