Bryan H. Wildenthal

As James Stockdale said in his 1992 vice-presidential debate appearance, "Who am I, and why am I here?" Well, I can't answer for why (other than citing the fact that my parents met and had children), but this webpage may offer some idea who I am.

I was born in 1964 in Houston, Texas, where I lived until the age of two, when my family moved to Oak Ridge, Tennessee. We lived there from 1966 to 1968, then moved back for one year to Bryan, Texas. (Yes, just like my name. Both the town and me, or more precisely, my grandfather Bryan, were named for the 1896 Democratic-Populist presidential candidate, William Jennings Bryan. He was also the Democratic nominee in 1900, when he was a great opponent of then-nascent American imperialism, and again in 1908. My great-grandfather admired him, as do I to a certain extent. See Michael Kazin's fascinating book about him.) In 1969, my family moved to Michigan, where I grew up in East Lansing (1969-70), Williamston (1970-77), and Okemos (1977-82), all in the vicinity of the state capital, Lansing. I also lived for nine months in München (Munich), Germany (December 1972-August 1973), and spent several other periods as a child in England, the Netherlands, France, Germany, Switzerland, Austria, and northern Italy, due mainly due to my Dad's work as a nuclear physicist.

I graduated in 1982 from Okemos High School in Okemos, Michigan (the same school from which one of my favorite writers, Susan Jacoby, graduated; see her magnificent book "Freethinkers," a history of secularism in America), and then spent seven years in California, attending Stanford University and Stanford Law School. (The picture above is of me rollerblading a few years ago on a return visit to the Stanford campus.) Since then, I have lived and worked in Montgomery, Alabama; Lansing, Michigan; Washington, D.C.; Chicago; and since 1996 in California, teaching at Thomas Jefferson School of Law in San Diego.

My first book was published in 2003 by ABC-CLIO: Native American Sovereignty on Trial (click here for more information, but please note that Amazon.com is mistaken in describing me only as the "editor"; the latter half of the book does consist mostly of cases and other documentary materials that I edited, but the first half is original text of which I am the sole author). This book provides a legal and historical overview and analysis of the relationship between the United States Government, the 50 state governments, and the hundreds of American Indian Nation ("tribal") governments.

My second book, Nationalizing the Bill of Rights: The Rise, Fall, and Rise of the Fourteenth Amendment Incorporation Doctrine, remains a longterm project. I have decided to first publish key parts of it as a series of law review articles. This project, so far, consists of four major articles, the first three published in the Ohio State Law Journal in 2000 (available here and here) and 2007 (available here), and the fourth and latest forthcoming in the Journal of Contemporary Legal Issues (available here). All four analyze aspects of the long historical process, from 1866 to the present day, by which most liberties guaranteed in the Bill of Rights (ratified in 1791 and originally applicable only to the U.S. federal government) have been applied as limitations on state and local governments.

Philosophically, I consider myself a freethinker and a rational skeptic (see Wikipedia's article on the history of the "Freethought" movement, and Susan Jacoby's book mentioned above). It thus follows, by force of logic, that I am an atheist (in the probabilistic sense discussed by Richard Dawkins in his excellent book "The God Delusion"). I'm a fan of the Committee for Skeptical Inquiry (formerly known as CSICOP) and the Skeptics Society, and, of course, have a strong affinity for secular humanism. I suppose I owe my philosophical stance in part to my parents, both natural scientists who have taught me to respect reason, logic, and objectively verifiable facts. My Dad is a nuclear physicist (now Provost of the University of Texas at Dallas) and my Mom, trained as an ornithologist, was (until retiring in 2004) a biolab manager at Michigan State University. (See below for a link with more information about my family.)

Soon after moving to San Diego, I become attached to my local Unitarian Universalist Church, a diverse community of open-minded people with a deep sense of spirituality, who also embrace intellectual restlessness and doubt. There is no contradiction between being a regular church-goer and a philosophical atheist, at least not at this church! Some of my fellow "UUers" are theists, some are atheists like me, some are agnostic, and some embrace other philosophies. The focus of the UU Church is "deeds, not creeds." We emphasize the importance of loving community and public service to make this world ("the only one we can be sure of," as UUs like to say!) a better place. We consider ourselves to be on an open-minded philosophical and spiritual journey with a destination that we do not (and may never) know. We love to meet and welcome new friends, so come by if you are interested.

Politically, I'm a liberal Democrat (with some "classical liberal" and libertarian tendencies). I remain very proud to have been an early supporter of Howard Dean for President in 2004. See my personal essay (with some pictures!) explaining why. I supported John Kerry for President in 2004 when he became the Democratic nominee, and I also, of course, supported the election of President Barack Obama in 2008.

I will always feel a deep sense of disillusionment that so many of my fellow Americans, in 2004, made such a patently and profoundly unwise and wrongheaded choice in reelecting the lawless, dishonest, and disastrously incompetent Bush-Cheney regime. The profound damage to America and to the honor of our country's name inflicted by those criminals may be irreparable during my lifetime. As a law professor, I do not use terms like "lawless" and "criminals" lightly. Brazen, deliberate, and systematic violations of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act of 1978, and the systematic ordering and condoning of torture, merely head the list. Torture is a war crime under international law and a felony under U.S. federal law, and yes, that includes water torture, the practice euphemistically called "waterboarding," a technique of the Spanish Inquisition which the U.S. had prosecuted as a war crime for more than a century, including in the Philippines War of 1899-1906 and in World War II. If anything may undermine my support for the Democratic Party, it would be the cowardly and shameful failure of too many Democrats to make any serious effort to hold Bush and Cheney accountable for their crimes and to decisively repudiate their lawless policies. We will see how effective President Obama and the Democratic majority in Congress may (or may not) be in doing so.

As for the disgraceful, militaristic, theocratic, pro-torture freakshow that so much of the modern Republican Party has become, well, it is a truly tragic and sickening fate for what was once the greatest political party in human history, the Grand Old Party of Lincoln, Sumner, Douglass, and Grant, the party that fought to limit and then abolish slavery, and then advance equal justice for all Americans, from the 1850s to the 1870s. Is this now the party of Sarah Palin, Mitt Romney, Mike Huckabee, and their fellow extremist rightwing religious fundamentalists? The mind reels....

Those of you who voted to reelect the Bush-Cheney regime can't say you weren't warned in time. See, for example, Al Gore's powerful speech on October 18, 2004. I would also complain about why my fellow Americans showed the poor judgment not to elect Gore over Bush in 2000, but wait a second (oh yeah!), Gore did win that election by more than half a million votes! President Obama's 53% victory margin in 2008, I am glad to say, exceeds the popular vote of Bush in 2004, Reagan in 1980, Clinton or Carter in any of their victories, and, indeed, the victory margin of any Democratic nominee since the year of my birth in 1964 (when Lyndon Johnson won 61% in his reelection bid).

Ashish and I found each other in August 2005. He is the love of my life, a fascinating, brilliant, and adorable man. Born and raised in Mumbai (Bombay), India, he came to the U.S. (where he is now a citizen) to pursue a medical career. The California Supreme Court, in a historic decision on May 15, 2008, upheld equal marriage rights for gay couples under the California Constitution. Consequently, Ashish and I were able to get married on July 20, 2008.

We were, of course, deeply disappointed that 52% of our fellow Californians, misled by well-funded lies and fear-mongering, voted to deny equal marriage rights to their millions of gay fellow citizens and taxpayers, in the hateful ballot measure known as Proposition 8, passed by California voters in November 2008. We were also disappointed by the California Supreme Court's decision upholding Proposition 8 in May 2009, though we were relieved that the Court confirmed the validity of marriages (such as ours) that occurred before it passed. We are confident this damnably unjust and spiteful ballot measure will be reversed in the near future.

What gives some people the idea that their irrational beliefs and superstitions justify the denial of basic civil rights to their fellow citizens? The legal recognition of marriages like ours does not detract in any way whatsoever from anyone else's marriages, religious beliefs and freedoms, or any rightful claim of any legal right or interest (except, perhaps, some spurious claimed "right" to somehow gain enjoyment from seeing basic rights denied to their fellow citizens). Those who oppose equal CIVIL marriage rights on so-called "religious grounds" are simply seeking to impose their personal religious beliefs on all other citizens by force of law. That's called "theocracy." Humanity has been there, tried that. Bad scene. Didn't work. And how would they like it if the same were done to them? The Christian fundamentalists who oppose equal marriage rights on religious grounds are no different, to that extent, from fundamentalist Muslims who seek to impose theocratic Islamic law on entire societies. They violate the most basic terms of the social contract underlying our ability as human beings to live together in peace and tolerance, under civilized, democratic, and constitutional systems of government. Such people, whatever "faith" they may profess, apparently do want a theocracy, though of course only one that enforces THEIR particular religious beliefs, not any competing religious beliefs, since so many religious beliefs of different groups are mutually inconsistent.

But I digress....

Ashish and I took our honeymoon (why wait for the marriage?) in March 2006, in British Columbia, Canada. That's us in the picture below, in true colonial fashion, taking high tea at the Empress Hotel in Victoria, B.C. I sometimes tease Ashish about why India took so much longer than America to declare independence from the Empire, to which he retorts that Americans "were not colonized long enough!" Canada has recognized equal marriage rights for years now. Thank you, Canada! And thank you to the other jurisdictions, like the Netherlands, Spain, South Africa, Belgium, Norway, Sweden, Massachusetts, Vermont, New Hampshire, Maine, Connecticut, and Iowa, which also recognize equal marriage rights.

I'm also a proud uncle of no fewer than ten nieces and nephews (so far). Not pictured here are my two nephews via my older sister, a niece and nephew via one of my younger sisters, a nephew via one of my stepbrothers, two nieces via Ashish's sister, and two nephews via Ashish's brother. Pictured here (standing in for all of them!) is my niece via another one of my younger sisters. In the first row, that's me holding her when she was two months old. In the second and third rows, when she was going on two years old, that's my brother-in-law holding her with my Mom on the left, my sister and niece doing the mother-daughter swingset thing on the right, and in the third row, my niece and sister looking at me through the window (how very modernistically reflective and self-referential!).

Here are a few more pictures, some information about my family, and below, some of my favorite links (also check out my Professional Page for some more interesting links, especially law-related):

Bryan's Page