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U.S. Supreme Court Puts Limits on Police Power to Seize Private Property

nytimes.com

381–390 of 457 posts

Re: U.S. Supreme Court Puts Limits on Police Power to Seize Private Property

#381
post #295

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes actually. The courts aren’t there to set law, that is for the legislature. Also by limiting their ruling to the narrowest ruling they can, they keep decisions as local as possible. Courts handle exceptional circumstances, and it’s important they not rule too broadly, else there can be huge overarching unintended side effects of their ruling. The parallel in programming would be some god class that handles every e…

>The courts aren’t there to set law, that is for the legislature I hate this meme. This is explicitly not true in the American legal system, as well as similar systems evolved from the British one. Case law is just as much part of the law as statutes are. This is the fundamental difference between common law systems and civil law systems. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Common_law#Common_law_legal_sy...

Isn't the difference here that Federal courts can't create law, only rule on constitutional matters. Common law (state and local courts) can create "laws".

There are some exceptions to this where federal laws have likely overreached the framers intentions, and then federal courts had to rule on a matter pertaining to that law.

Re: U.S. Supreme Court Puts Limits on Police Power to Seize Private Property

#382

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They question the correctness of decisions made by the US judiciary system from inside the system They decide if the inside of the box is working correctly in an undemocratic fashion, based upon their biases Not the correctness of the US judiciary system itself Thomas Jefferson advocated for a system that would allow future generations to reasses it’s Constitution and laws, and adjust as necessary We got James Madiso…

>Thomas Jefferson advocated for a system that would allow future generations to reasses it’s Constitution and laws, and adjust as necessary And that’s exactly what we got. I urge you to look into what the legislative branch does and look into constitutional amendments. The system changes all of the time. Based on your description of the GOP, you sound upset that the country isn’t more socialist. That’s hardly related…

Thank you for assuming I’m ignorant of the process.

“That’s exactly what we got.”

Then why do the laws not reflect the wishes of the public?

Majority opinion is to legalize all kinds of things legislators refuse to legalize that are harmless (same sex marriage [oops SCOTUS did that for em], marijuana, Medicare for all)

How is that any less like the comment that claimed India was full of old men proselytizing about morality?

How has it really changed from the view on Main Street? The headlines are the same now as they were when I was a kid in the late-70s and 80s?

Chomsky: ‘I’m sure you believe everything you’re saying. But what I’m saying is that if you believe something different, you wouldn’t be sitting where you’re sitting.’

Re: U.S. Supreme Court Puts Limits on Police Power to Seize Private Property

#383
post #381
post #295

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>The courts aren’t there to set law, that is for the legislature I hate this meme. This is explicitly not true in the American legal system, as well as similar systems evolved from the British one. Case law is just as much part of the law as statutes are. This is the fundamental difference between common law systems and civil law systems. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Common_law#Common_law_legal_sy...

Isn't the difference here that Federal courts can't create law, only rule on constitutional matters. Common law (state and local courts) can create "laws". There are some exceptions to this where federal laws have likely overreached the framers intentions, and then federal courts had to rule on a matter pertaining to that law.

>Isn't the difference here that Federal courts can't create law, only rule on constitutional matters. Common law (state and local courts) can create "laws".

Uh, no. This is just completely incorrect. Things like reasonable suspicion are standards created by federal courts that have the force of law (see Terry v Ohio). The logic is based on the 4th amendment, but the standard was created by the justices.

District courts can't really create laws since it's not binding on any other court. Appeals courts do all the time, in fact one of the easiest ways to get something to the supreme court is to have a split between the circuits because that creates different law in different parts of the country.

Re: U.S. Supreme Court Puts Limits on Police Power to Seize Private Property

#384

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is not a meme. It is the very definition of American courts. Brits dont even have a constitution and have a very different system from that of USA. Other than appearance there is no similarity between British and American courts. I remember a famous case where a British judge refused to punish a Muslim man who use to beat his wife claiming, that is how the man is cultured and beating wife is part of his religion.…

Underneath the parent comment -- which linked a Wikipedia article with some educational material on case law vs statutory law vs common law etc -- there are a number of comments like this which just show users didn't even bother to read a Wikipedia page, but were happy to tell the world how it works in their own minds. Maybe there is some important lesson about people here. I think today people think of themselves as…

I find it incredibly ironic that the person's user name is KorematsuFred given the context.

Re: U.S. Supreme Court Puts Limits on Police Power to Seize Private Property

#385
post #319

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am surprised that the Indiana Supreme Court ruling basically upheld that the Bill of Rights doesn't apply to states in the absence of specific SCOTUS rulings. Can you imagine if individual states felt they have the right to suppress free speech or the press? I read the official decision from the state court[0] but it's a bit dense for me to get through. It seems like a legal punt, of sorts, in the hopes that SCOTUS…

The US Supreme Court decided many decades ago that the Bill of Rights doesn’t apply wholesale to the states. Instead they held that each right has to be analyzed separately to determine if it should apply to the states. This principle is called “selective incorporation”. At this point most of the rights have been incorporated and only a few have specifically not been incorporated, most notably the right to a grand ju…

Actually the third amendment has already been decided as incorporated. :)

See https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Engblom_v._Carey

Re: U.S. Supreme Court Puts Limits on Police Power to Seize Private Property

#386
The more significant aspect of the ruling was Justice Thomas and Gorsuch's concurring opinions, in which they emphasized that the Court's decision should have been based on the "privileges and immunities” clause and not the due process clause of Fourteenth Amendment.

Re: U.S. Supreme Court Puts Limits on Police Power to Seize Private Property

#387

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's only true if you use the definition of "broad powers" that was used back when the Constitution was written - which is very different from what it is today. And all of those broad powers they wanted the government to have, were explicitly written into the text of the Constitution. Sometimes it was deliberately vague, like the Commerce Clause (although if you showed our modern jurisprudence on that to people who…

The First Congress passed the Sedition Act, which was an extremely broad set of laws that would have essentially nullified the First Amendment. The first several Congresses passed extremely broad laws regulating commerce that were ultimately narrowed by the courts. This all despite having numerous members of the Constitutional Convention among their ranks. It's pretty clear from the laws the First and Second Congress…

Alien and Sedition Acts were widely panned when they were passed, specifically because many people saw them as unconstitutional. What they proved is that people aren't particularly respectful of the same constitution they wrote, but little else.

I'm well aware that the Federalist Papers aren't law. The reason why I mentioned them is that they come from the party that was anti-Articles, pro-Constitution and pro-strong federal government. So reading them gives you an idea of what they meant by "strong federal government", and what they considered to be out of bounds.

Re: U.S. Supreme Court Puts Limits on Police Power to Seize Private Property

#388
post #364

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> showed some bleeding heart As if the court being overly sentimental would be the only reason to overturn confiscations of property of this kind?

It seems likely the person you are replying to has english as a non-first language and may be using this phrase incorrectly.

Maybe. In Australia, 'bleeding heart' used by people on the right to describe people on the left who act with conscience, ethics, compassion or recommend a course of such acts. It's a term of abuse, because they think such actions and desires must be pretense, as the right doesn't feel those things themselves. (The right has and doesn't want others to have, a position that hardens the heart.) I took the phrase in that sense.

Re: U.S. Supreme Court Puts Limits on Police Power to Seize Private Property

#389
post #331

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 To what extent do we actually need to have all states do exactly the same? It's a common argument, but there are many independent sovereign states out there that are smaller than many of US states, and they're doing fine solving their national problems despite their size. Sometimes - quite often -…

> The even bigger difference is that those representatives then go and vote on far more issues than they did when the system was originally devised, which increases the dilution of individual voices, by bringing more important issues to the level where their vote is at it most diluted - as opposed to state level. Of course it's going to be overwhelmed. Part of the reason the issue has gotten out of hand is the relati…

But that is also true of countries. For large transnationals (who are the most abusive) especially, I don't think it makes a big difference.

OTOH, if that is the key problem, then why not make feds an arbiter specifically for such externalities? i.e. they'd be the ones establishing whether something negative is actually happening, measuring the impact, and imposing some remedy (either cease and desist or compensation, depending on which one is appropriate).

If we're talking about AGW, say, and carbon tax, then let's have the feds tax the states proportionally to their total carbon output. The states can then pass those carbon taxes onto their residents in various ways - and how exactly they are allocated is then a matter of state policy - but it has to add up.

Re: U.S. Supreme Court Puts Limits on Police Power to Seize Private Property

#390

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

People here commenting that the last point isn't valid are ironically demonstrating just how much respect the bench requires. Thankfully, blind allegations with no substantiation aren't enough to ruin a whole careers worth of earned respect.

> a whole careers worth of earned respect

Hundreds of US law professors disagree with you about that respect.

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2018/oct/02/brett-kavana...

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