“The core power of a legislator acting within the legislature’s subject-matter jurisdiction is to make a discretionary decision on what the law should be; that is why a legislator may not be legally ordered to exercise discretion in a particular way without damaging the legislative power as such.” — U.S. Supreme Court Justice David Souter (Printz v. United States, 521 U.S. 898 (1997))
The various constituencies were so busy fulfilling their pundit-decreed roles in the sandbox fight over the Oregon Commentator that they all missed what actually matters. The central issue is not what the Commentator has printed, whose buttons it has pushed in muckraking fashion or its inherent right to print what it wants; rather, it is whether student legislators possess a constitutional right to speak freely, like any other legislators in the United States, and to legislate the student incidental fee, even to defund a group.
In a real legislative process, nobody is entitled to anything more than a chance to present his or her request. However, more critical is whether those who oversee the University sandbox can refrain from interfering with the democratic process among University students, despite the bureaucracy’s overarching want to maintain another revenue stream for student services that the fee represents, which effectively relieves fiscal pressure from the bureaucracy’s own budgets.
As you may know, the ASUO Constitutional Court has chosen to disenfranchise three University student legislators indefinitely for doing nothing more than expressing their opinions on a legislative question in a Programs Finance Committee legislative hearing. I have wondered over the past few weeks what on earth could prompt fellow University students to accept the judicial gagging of a fellow student — even one with legislative rights. Sadly, many seem content that a court can do this sort of thing to ensure that “viewpoint neutrality” is a reality of political life at Oregon. Never mind this was how nations such as East Germany used to stifle political criticism and freedom. And, of course, never mind that no court can ever exercise this jurisdiction over the legislative process in America, regardless of governmental level.
What concerns me is not that a piece of paper says or does not say something or that some kangaroo court thinks it gets to interpret it so as to assign itself immutable power to disenfranchise legislators. This is all, naturally, an exercise in American students learning how the American system works. But therein lies the worrisome problem that has prompted me to comment. Somebody has
erroneously taught students that courts may order legislators on how a legislative vote shall be cast and which words surrounding it are constitutionally acceptable. This does
violence to our society’s understanding of liberty’s dependence on the principle of separation of powers.
In America, legislative power carries with it legislative immunity from suit, derived from nothing less than the U.S. Constitution, Article I, Section 6 and applied through common law to the states and their subordinates, such as public universities. Would you find it outrageous to find one morning that Chief Justice William Rehnquist had ordered Sen. Edward Kennedy’s votes no longer counted, because he was not “viewpoint neutral” when denouncing Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld’s mission in a legislative hearing before voting against his request?
To rectify this severe departure from American practice of government, I have introduced two ASUO resolutions to restore full voting rights to these student legislators. To do anything less cheats University students of their education in American government and their inalienable rights. Please contact your ASUO senator to urge support for these resolutions.

Michael Watson is ASUO
Academic Senator