Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

nytimes.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

391–400 of 457 posts

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

#391

Post by concordDance »

dclowd9901 wrote: post #264
wtf_is_up wrote: post #253

Earlier quoted context omitted.

*alleged

No, you're right: highly respected and professionally stable women often go out of their way to drag themselves and their reputations through the mud to have no effect on the nomination and subsequent appointment of a Supreme Court Justice. That makes perfect sense.

You're looking at it the wrong way. The question is not what the odds are of a given professional and highly respected woman lying/having false memories. The question is what are the odds of such a person existing. Here's a a scenario with made up numbers where you can insert your own: Imagine your starting population is 60 million, assume only 1 in 100 are very passionate. Assume that only 1 in 100 very passionate people are willing to lie and drag their reputationa through the mud to fight a great evil. Assume only 1 in 100 of those people are respectable. That still would leave 60 respectable people willing to lie and fight hard in order to fight a great evil.

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

#392

Post by webmobdev »

KorematsuFred wrote: post #232
sathackr wrote: post #205

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.

I am from India and Indian courts are nothing but bunch of old men sermonizing everyone else. They often have barely read law, believe in extraordinary processes and completely arbitrary legal doctrines such as "constitutional morality" that compels them to actually ignore the law. Digging deep I realize that this is because most of them will retire at 60 after which they either seek lucrative jobs from their politic…

As another indian, I disagree with your stark negative characterisation of the indian judiciary. While I do agree that there are corrupt judges, and judges who acts as puppets for their political masters, this is a phenomenan common with every country (with varying degrees, and we in India perhaps do have it worse than others - a reflection of our very confused society currently going through a cultural and political disruption and change).

On the flip side, the higher courts of our judiciary do have eminent jurists, who are respected internationally. India is considered to have the most powerful judicary in the democratic world. And in my opinion, they have used this power judiciously to make more far-reaching changes to empower our democracy than abused it.

I do have criticisms too (for e.g., I don't like the idea of judges appointing judges as it upsets the delicate balance of power between the executive and the judiciary), but I recognize that despite their shortcomings they do a pretty decent job - in fact much better than most judiciaries of the developed democratic world when it comes to protecting the rights of indian citizens.

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

#393

Post by int_19h »

kortilla wrote: post #326
int_19h wrote: post #271

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem with SCOTUS is its reputation, which is dragged down by basically everything else in our politics. When politicians (on both sides of the aisle) openly talk about "liberal judges" and "conservative judges", and promise to appoint the kind that will rule the way they and their constituents want (as opposed to ruling according to what the law says) - and then those same people actually nominate or confirm a…

Well there are liberal and conservative judges, but not in the sense that lines up with party talking points. Liberal judge == living constitution

Don't downvote the parent - he's just pointing out that meanings of words depend on the context. If you look at it strictly in SCOTUS context, and use the dictionary definition of "conservative" rather than treating it as a partisan political label, a "conservative" judge is the one that tries to introduce as little innovation as possible - i.e. an adherent of originalism and textualism. Conversely, then, a "liberal" judge is the innovator, the one who actively seeks new meanings.

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

#394

Post by DoctorOetker »

milesvp wrote: post #204
KorematsuFred wrote: post #193

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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…

A big difference between programming and law is that the programmers ultimate incentive is independent of the processors incentive. In law and politics there are multiple agents each with their own incentives, so it is extremely important to uniformize the application of the law (in order to be equal before the law). That nearly all systems do provide leeway for the judge (anglosaxon common law emphasizes this and civil law doesnt, so it's more arguing appearances) is not because it is a feature, but because the law is not that exactly specified. One could imagine each precedent by a judge to be accompanied by a democratic consultation, since in a democracy the people are supposed to govern themselves. While this could allow rampant democratic discrimination (both on factors which are recognized discriminative properties: skin tone, religion, ...; but also on factors not yet recognized as discriminative properties), it would also provide a means for proving our voting behaviour to be discriminative in some sense. In this way unintentional discrimination can be highlighted and corrected.

For example a constant back and forth switching on some rule such that the black person goes to prison while the white person walks free would constantly choke the system for democratic consultations until the populace collectively decides to let the black person drink from the same fountain as the white person (or whatever). The system should be set up such that whenever rules are applied unequally it slightly chokes the system with another democratic consultation, until humans end up with equality before the law.

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

#395

Post by billner »

dclowd9901 wrote: post #264
wtf_is_up wrote: post #253

Earlier quoted context omitted.

*alleged

No, you're right: highly respected and professionally stable women often go out of their way to drag themselves and their reputations through the mud to have no effect on the nomination and subsequent appointment of a Supreme Court Justice. That makes perfect sense.

She also instantly became a hero to nearly half the country and made hundreds of thousands in a gofundme. It's not all bad

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

#396

Post by perpetualpatzer »

masonic wrote: post #341
da_chicken wrote: post #125

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…

Had the 8th Amendment not been considered to have been incorporated before this?

The excessive fines clause hadn't, probably in no small part because states would argue "this is a reasonable fine" rather than "we're allowed to give unreasonable fines."

I believe cruel and unusual punishment would have come up in method of execution cases, but not sure of the case.

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

#397

Post by Chris2048 »

dclowd9901 wrote: post #264
wtf_is_up wrote: post #253

Earlier quoted context omitted.

*alleged

No, you're right: highly respected and professionally stable women often go out of their way to drag themselves and their reputations through the mud to have no effect on the nomination and subsequent appointment of a Supreme Court Justice. That makes perfect sense.

Was her reputation damaged? Did she expect no effect?

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

#398

Post by lmm »

User23 wrote: post #165
aqme28 wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> otherwise citizenship is worthless

Would that be such a bad thing?

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

#399

Post by bradleyjg »

burlesona wrote: post #385
bradleyjg wrote: post #329

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Only in the 2nd circuit, I guess, but good call.

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

#400

Post by Nasrudith »

dclowd9901 wrote: post #268
manicdee wrote: post #243

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is why evil will always win, because good is dumb. Or more precisely, evil people will happily violate entire tranches of law while the good people are stuck prosecuting one case at a time, painfully establishing precedent by precedent, and in the meantime the world has moved on.

Blame it on police and military fetishization. At the end of the day, if you resist authority trying to take your shit illegally, it will come to blows. If you choose to defend yourself against them, you are now very much on the wrong side of the law. It has to be less illegal to defend yourself from authority if you feel you're in danger.

On a practical level that doesn't seem very viable in a "mountain lion vs housecat" way. Accountability is certainly needed though.
Post reply on HN