201–210 of 457 posts
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I hate the notion that citizens don't have privileges, because otherwise citizenship is worthless. Obviously the natural rights of all persons ought to be respected.
Citizens have the most important privilege: the ability to vote.
BTW, if you have civil forfeiture at all (which I think should't exist), why does the money go to the seizing agency? Shouldn't it all go straight to the general fund to avoid a conflict of interest? Ditto punitive damages in court cases (where the defendent pays, say, $3M in restitution but say $500M in punitive damages because they could easily afford the $3M and need to suffer enough to change their ways). Why doe…
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The constitution really clearly delineates between "persons" and "citizens." I hate the notion that none of the protections apply to noncitizens. Additionally, a lot of the constitution is actually phrased as limits on the government rather than rights as citizens.
I hate the notion that citizens don't have privileges, because otherwise citizenship is worthless. Obviously the natural rights of all persons ought to be respected.
The important thing to understand about this case is the background and what the SCotUS actually ruled on. It's actually rather narrow ruling even if it is extremely important. The court exercised judicial restraint here, and made the minimum ruling necessary. Timbs was convicted of possession/sale/whatever, jailed for a year, and fined $1,200. The state confiscated his Range Rover as well. Timbs sued or appealed the…
I find this very remarkable about American legal system. The supreme court could have technically showed some bleeding heart by not showing judicial restraint. Instead they just did their job. Americans must thank this judicial culture.
The parallel in programming would be some god class that handles every exception, vs handling exceptions as close to the exception as possible. Generally global exception handling is a bad idea, you want to handle exceptions as close to the context as possible since that is where the most pertinent information in the system lives, and also has the least impact on the rest of the system if the exception can be resolved at a local level.
The important thing to understand about this case is the background and what the SCotUS actually ruled on. It's actually rather narrow ruling even if it is extremely important. The court exercised judicial restraint here, and made the minimum ruling necessary. Timbs was convicted of possession/sale/whatever, jailed for a year, and fined $1,200. The state confiscated his Range Rover as well. Timbs sued or appealed the…
I find this very remarkable about American legal system. The supreme court could have technically showed some bleeding heart by not showing judicial restraint. Instead they just did their job. Americans must thank this judicial culture.
Anyone can become President, and anyone can become a lawmaker.
It takes a lifetime of respect to earn a seat on the Supreme Court bench.
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> noncitizens necessarily do not enjoy the privileges and immunities of citizens. Would you have more reading on this? It's something I've wondered about but never really come across a comprehensive answer to. What rights do noncitizens not have that citizens do?
For example: the right to vote, the right to run for elected office, the right to enter US territory and remain there indefinitely.
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> Additionally, a lot of the constitution is actually phrased as limits on the government rather than rights as citizens. This is because the Constitution is supposed to be an enumeration of what the government is allowed to do. The limitations are there to narrow the scope of those enumerated powers. In this context, enumerating most rights of citizens would have been redundant. The enumerated citizen rights were th…
> Unfortunately, Commerce Clause abuse and the effective neutralization of the 10th Amendment has created the opposite situation where the government can do anything it wants as long as it isn't specifically prohibited, and citizens are only guaranteed rights if they are specified. I mean, that's true, but it's also true that it's extremely difficult to get 50 states to jump forward at the same time, particularly whe…
Why couldn't a similar system work well in the US?
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I find this very remarkable about American legal system. The supreme court could have technically showed some bleeding heart by not showing judicial restraint. Instead they just did their job. Americans must thank this judicial culture.
It's a welcome check on the Executive and Legislative branches. Anyone can become President, and anyone can become a lawmaker. It takes a lifetime of respect to earn a seat on the Supreme Court bench.
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Correct, but refusal to enforce a law is one of the checks the executive has on the legislature. When this happens it's up to the judiciary to mediate.
That doesn't /seem/ right - executive can /veto/ a law before it is passed, but I don't believe they are given the ability to not enforce that law once it's been passed. That is effectively creating law, and is reaching into the legislative branch, still.
It was actually a giant question when trump came into office whether he would start arresting people working/running the legal pot shops in Colorado/etc.
So, there are a lot of other cases, where statutes are simply not enforced, but haven't been removed due to lack of political will. Sodomy/etc laws are another area, where they remain on the books despite a number of supreme court rulings declaring various aspects unconstitutional. That means its quite possible depending on where you live frequently performed acts, not explicitly allowed by the supreme court are actually illegal.
Random google hit about "fornication"
https://www.nbcnews.com/news/crime-courts/virginia-bill-decr...
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Of course, nobody will go to jail for it. I'm happy for the ruling, but it doesn't seem to do much to discourage future abuse, since nobody actually gets held accountable.
I'm not sure why you want someone to go to jail for this incident specifically. The police acted in a manner that, at the time, they believed to be lawful. When the state was sued they also thought the police acted within the law, backed the officers, and won their appeal. Then after both sides made the best case they could, the supreme court ruled their actions were ultimately unconstitutional. Do you really expect…
If the only consequence for misuse of civil forfeiture is that a victim can sue to get their stuff back, nothing will change.