Current or modern politics in the United States

[Arturo2nd]

Originally Posted by LadyLuck

One thing is certain. Ruth Bader Ginsburg will not be retiring. If she leaves the Court it will be on a slab.

God Bless Joe Biden.

Which is great reason for voting Dem. The old girl is clearly losing it.

[scoundrel]

Originally Posted by LadyLuck

The SCOTUS is a law deciding body. That was its intention from the outset and that is what it is. SCOTUS decides what the Constitution means and if the case before it violates the Constitution or is in accordance with it. Democrats tend to nominate justices who tend to view things through a liberal lens. GOP presidents do the opposite. It's been that way forever.

One thing is certain. Ruth Bader Ginsburg will not be retiring. If she leaves the Court it will be on a slab.

God Bless Joe Biden.

It is a distinction without a difference. In practise, the law in the USA is anything that the Supreme Court says it is. Since they are the Federal Supreme Court there is nowhere to appeal beyond them, no matter how absurdly they might rule. The Dredd Scott decision of 1857 is a notorious example of a corrupt and dishonest Supreme Court inflicting terrible harm on the nation - it was the catalyst for a dreadful civil war; although in fairness the root causes of the civil war were already there and the Dredd Scott ruling only concentrated abolitionist minds and paved the way for the election of 1860 and subsequent events.

I thought Justice Maclean's dissenting opinion was brilliantly written and a really devastating explanation of his contempt for the ruling and for the 7 judges who made the ruling. Rarely has any judge made such a withering comment on other judges as this opinion does.

Now, the plea which raises the question of jurisdiction, in my judgment, is radically defective. The gravamen of the plea is this: "That the plaintiff is a negro of African descent, his ancestors being of pure African blood, and were brought into this country, and sold as negro slaves."
[snip]
This argument is easily answered. In the first place, the plea does not show him to be a slave; it does not follow that a man is not free whose ancestors were slaves. The reports of the Supreme Court of Missouri show that this assumption has many exceptions; and there is no averment in the plea that the plaintiff is not within them.

By all the rules of pleading, this is a fatal defect in the plea. If there be doubt, what rule of construction has been established in the slave States? In Jacob v. Sharp, (Meigs's Rep., Tennessee, 114,) the court held, when there was doubt as to the construction of a will which emancipated a slave, "it must be construed to be subordinate to the higher and more important right of freedom.
[snip]
It has been argued that, if a colored person be made a citizen of a State, he cannot sue in the Federal court. The Constitution declares that Federal jurisdiction "may be exercised between citizens of different States," and the same is provided in the act of 1789. The above argument is properly met by saying that the Constitution was intended to be a practical instrument; and where its language is too plain to be misunderstood, the argument ends."
[snip]
In the argument, it was said that a colored citizen would not be an agreeable member of society. This is more a matter of taste than of law. Several of the States have admitted persons of color to the right of suffrage, and in this view have recognized them as citizens; and this has been done in the slave as well as the free States. On the question of citizenship, it must be admitted that we have not been very fastidious. Under the late treaty and with Mexico, we have made citizens of all grades, combinations, and colors. The same was done in the admission of Louisiana and Florida. No one ever doubted, and no court ever held, that the people of these Territories did not become citizens under the treaty. They have exercised all the rights of citizens, without being naturalized under the acts of Congress.

Mr Maclean explained the logical fallacies in the arguments which his colleagues endorsed by majority decision and then made clear his own view that his colleagues had based their decision on their own prejudices and bias, ignoring the constitution and ignoring precedent.

The Missouri court disregards the express provisions of an act of Congress and the Constitution of a sovereign State, both of which laws for twenty-eight years it had not only regarded, but carried into effect.

If a State court may do this, on a question involving the liberty of a human being, what protection do the laws afford? ~ Justice John Maclean dissenting opinion Dredd Scott v. Sandford 1857.

That is the trouble with the SCOTUS. It acts like the religious high court in Iran telling Iranians what Islam says. The SCOTUS tells the country what the constitution and the law says even when it is as plain as plain can be that the constitution and the law says no such thing, as Justice Maclean painstakingly explained in his dissenting ruling that the Dredd Scott ruling flew in the face of the constitution, the law and precedent, expressing only the bias and prejudice of the seven majority judges.

We see the same problem today, for example in the atrocious Citizens United ruling, which legalises bribery and corruption.

[LadyLuck]

Originally Posted by scoundrel

In practise, the law in the USA is anything that the Supreme Court says it is.

Correct. That is the reason the the SCOTUS was created and that is their purpose. The United States Constitution is the law of the land. The SCOTUS interprets the Constitution. It really only means whatever the current nine sitting Justices say that it means. They don't make laws. They can't act on their own. They only evaluate those issues that make it up through the lower court systems to their docket.

That is the trouble with the SCOTUS. It acts like the religious high court in Iran telling Iranians what Islam says. The SCOTUS tells the country what the constitution and the law says even when it is as plain as plain can be that the constitution and the law says no such thing, as Justice Maclean painstakingly explained in his dissenting ruling that the Dredd Scott ruling flew in the face of the constitution, the law and precedent, expressing only the bias and prejudice of the seven majority judges.

If they never get anything right then they must have also been wrong about Roe vs. Wade, correct?

[scoundrel]

Originally Posted by LadyLuck

If they never get anything right then they must have also been wrong about Roe vs. Wade, correct?

The SCOTUS probably rules correctly most of the time. Also, of course, if a ruling is truly insupportable, the politicians can change the law and force the SCOTUS to either double-down or shut up - for example the Lilli Ledbetter Fair Pay Act. Unfortunately, the politicians have been up their own arse in Congress for a long time now and there's no evidence that they will change this; which leaves the SCOTUS acting rather like a revisionist chamber, re-interpreting existing laws to try to adapt them to new situations.

There is clearly a need for the SCOTUS. But it has serious flaws, one of which is that there is no mandatory retirement age. Ms Ginsburg should be in an old folks home, not still working at her age; it isn't even as if she is in good health for her age. But the selection process is so politicised that serving judges cling on for fear of being replaced by really biased, incompetent and dangerous individuals - Clarence Thomas is a very good example of the type of person President Trump would be liable to appoint.

[deepsepia]

Originally Posted by LadyLuck

The SCOTUS is a law deciding body. That was its intention from the outset and that is what it is. SCOTUS decides what the Constitution means and if the case before it violates the Constitution or is in accordance with it. Democrats tend to nominate justices who tend to view things through a liberal lens. GOP presidents do the opposite. It's been that way forever.

I]

That’s not exactly the history

SCOTUS’ power to interpret the Constitution, to declare laws un-Constitutional isn’t mentioned in the Constitution itself.

So where does it come from?

From SCOTUS itself, the celebrated case of Marbury v. Madison

When people obsess over the Constitution, as though it were some kind of perfect and complete divine revelation, consider the fact that the folks who wrote it neither considered nor provided a mechanism for dealing with breaches: that SCOTUS and the court system generally is a forum for rectification of laws into conformity with the Constitution is itself an innovation by the Court, not a Constitutionally defined mechanism.

There are nations whose constitutions explicitly establish “Constitutional Courts”, but that isn’t the US; SCOTUS status is improvised — a reasonable improvisation, but you can’t call it the Founders’ plan.

[Dr Pepper]

Originally Posted by deepsepia

That’s not exactly the history

SCOTUS’ power to interpret the Constitution, to declare laws un-Constitutional isn’t mentioned in the Constitution itself.

So where does it come from?

From SCOTUS itself, the celebrated case of Marbury v. Madison

When people obsess over the Constitution, as though it were some kind of perfect and complete divine revelation, consider the fact that the folks who wrote it neither considered nor provided a mechanism for dealing with breaches: that SCOTUS and the court system generally is a forum for rectification of laws into conformity with the Constitution is itself an innovation by the Court, not a Constitutionally defined mechanism.

There are nations whose constitutions explicitly establish “Constitutional Courts”, but that isn’t the US; SCOTUS status is improvised — a reasonable improvisation, but you can’t call it the Founders’ plan.

And as someone else wrote-the name currently evades my memory...."empires often start more by accident and accretion than deliberate design"....it would appear that legal empires are no different....

[Arturo2nd]

Originally Posted by LadyLuck

If they never get anything right then they must have also been wrong about Roe vs. Wade, correct?

The court was right in Roe vs. Wade, but the legal argument in the majority opinion was misguided. One cannot look at the 14th Amendment and justify forcing women to bear unwanted children. We cannot call ourselves an enlightened and humane society if we are going to deny women to state of the art medical procedures because of a minority group's religious opinions. What's up with banning the drugs that make surgical intervention unnecessary? To paraphrase Harry Truman, "Your right to enforce your opinion ends at a woman's skin."

In a related vein, all you folks cheering for a "conservative" court ought to consider that you already have a couple of justices chomping at the bit to dial back Fourth Amendment protections in a major way. I ask you to consider how comfortable you are in tearing down protections against unreasonable search and seizure at a time when police agencies are increasingly grabbing assets. The civil forfeiture laws allow the police, FBI, DEA, etc to seize your house, bank accounts, and other valuable assets without proving any crime. If the cops decide to seize your house, car, bank, and retirement accounts, how do you propose to pay the lawyers need to sue for their return?

Please note that these links are from the Cato Institute and National Review both so conservative that many call them reactionary.

https://www.cato.org/events/policing...set-forfeiture

https://www.nationalreview.com/2017/...arence-thomas/

By the way, are any right-to-lifers on board with my plan to castrate men who abandon their families or fail to provide child support?

[deepsepia]

Originally Posted by Dr Pepper

And as someone else wrote-the name currently evades my memory...."empires often start more by accident and accretion than deliberate design"....it would appear that legal empires are no different....

Oh yes. Thats particularly true of the English legal tradition, a "Constitution" that is the accretion of hundreds of years of precedent and legislation

The US system is a sort a fork of English justice, with a lot of peculiarities due the ambiguities of "dual sovereignty" (eg the State and the Federals)

[BustyWomenLovr]

Originally Posted by Brian249x

In a related vein, all you folks cheering for a "conservative" court ought to consider...

Yet another consideration - This very forum. As laws and rulings become more conservative, and the hyper-religious gain even more sway, when will access to this board be banned? And don't think there won't be some loophole they will come up with to do just that.

[deepsepia]

Originally Posted by BustyEscortLovr

Yet another consideration - This very forum. As laws and rulings become more conservative, and the hyper-religious gain even more sway, when will access to this board be banned? And don't think there won't be some loophole they will come up with to do just that.

The conservatives have certainly talked about going after “obscenity” - and content is banned in lots of places, but never in every place.

I suspect an ever growing market for VPNs and the like, given that this content is almost exclusively digital at this point, it would be a remarkably difficult task to suppress it.

There have been moves against online escort ads —Craigslist, now Backpage- but it’s hard to see how it goes much beyond that.