Judge allows fence
(Written by kencraw)
As many of us hoped and expected, Judge Miller rejected the protestor’s ill-founded request to have the fence removed. What was mildly surprising was that she ruled more quickly than she had originally indicated, doing it on Thursday evening, only a handful of hours after hearing arguments. Clearly after looking over the evidence she didn’t need to spend the night thinking it over.
While after reflection I’m not so sure the fence was a good idea (brings to much attention to protestors), particularly at this late date, I do know that the ruling is very good news. It’s an indicator that we have a judge who rules based on the law, not based on some ridiculous emotional pleas and twisted-logic appeals to over-applied aspects of the Constitution. It also will probably have the effect of lighting a fire under the City of Berkeley to make a settlement with the University. The more and more evidence there is that the judge is going to rule in the University’s favor, the more and more likely it is that the COB has to settle if they want to get any concessions.
Speaking of which, the word on the street is that the COB and the University have been having closed door negotiations this week and that a settlement is likely. No word on an expected timeline.
August 31st, 2007 at 8:55 am
Settlement would be great. But I’m not sure we can glean too much from the denial of the injunction. This wasn’t a close call. Plus, if the injunction had been granted, any alteractions tomorrow between fans and protestors — which are likely to happen anyway but may be less likely because of the fence — would have been blamed on the judge. Even if she thinks we are ultimately going to lose, she wouldn’t want to be blamed for violence.
August 31st, 2007 at 9:12 am
You’re right DC Bear. I over-stated the impact of this ruling in my post. One of those ‘sometimes what I’m thinking doesn’t come out right on paper’ deals. Most of my analysis was an attempt to read the tea-leaves and hope as opposed to thinking this will make any substantive difference. In the big picture, if a settlement wasn’t going to happen this won’t change that. At most, if the mayor had one last pinky toe on the fence, it might break him loose to make the settlement, but not much more.