51–60 of 178 posts
Much like food or medical care: fundamental rights can never depend on the work of other people. Otherwise you can demand that work, which imposes on their rights.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
That'd require them explaining why "the 14th Amendment predates germ theory" is a reasonable argument but not "the Second Amendment predates machine guns".
Machine guns are banned at the federal level, though, and it's been consistently upheld by the courts. I'm not sure I follow the argument anyway; the US constitution consists of negative rights (e.g. freedom to do something) rather than positive rights (e.g. entitlements)
Semiautomatics, if you prefer. (And plenty of Second Amendment purists feel that limit is unconstitutional, and SCOTUS may well soon agree. As they just did with silencers - https://www.npr.org/2026/08/17/nx-s1-5935562/firearms-law-la...)
> I'm not sure I follow the argument anyway; the US constitution consists of negative rights (e.g. freedom to do something) rather than positive rights (e.g. entitlements)
That's what the Ninth Amendment is for.
> He [judge] also said there was no constitutional right to “truthful information from officials during a public health crisis.” We should have "spirit of the law" courts. This is absurd.
This seems to fall under the whole “promote the general welfare” part of the Preamble of the Constitution, though perhaps the court is unaware of it.
That sentence just says why we're making a national government (i.e. giving up some of our rights). It does not create some unlimited requirement for governments (especially state) to do whatever they can to promote general welfare, whatever that means. It doesn't even grant unlimited authority to do so. Or really say anything at all except state a very general purpose for why a national government is a sensible thin…
That it doesn’t confer unlimited power is orthodox constitutional law. But the Preamble explicitly states the constitutional purposes that should guide the interpretation and exercise of the powers enumerated. And it doesn’t follow that the purposes it states are legally meaningless. The’re part of the constitutional text and inform how the powers actually conferred by the Constitution are construed. As Story commented:
“One of the best established rules of interpretation, one, which common sense and reason forbid us to overlook, is, that when the object of a power is clearly defined by its terms, or avowed in the context, it ought to be construed, so as to obtain the object, and not to defeat it. The circumstance, that so construed the power may be abused, is no answer. All powers may be abused; but are they then to be abridged by those, who are to administer them, or denied to have any operation? If the people frame a constitution, the rulers are to obey it. Neither rulers, nor any other functionaries, much less any private persons, have a right to cripple it, because it is according to their own views inconvenient, or dangerous, unwise or impolitic, of narrow limits, or of wide influence.”
Earlier quoted context omitted.
It seems nonsensical that the government could have the power to lie to and defraud the people while poisoning them. That just renders other rights meaningless.
sure, but that's not the 14th amendment. Maybe the guarantee clause. It MIGHT touch the 14th amendment via incorporation. That's not what the attorneys argued.
Surely intentional lead poisoning counts?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
That'd require them explaining why "the 14th Amendment predates germ theory" is a reasonable argument but not "the Second Amendment predates machine guns".
Germ theory really started around 1860 and the 14th amendment was 1868. Seems they both coexisted.
Oh wait, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Contemporary_reaction_to_Ignaz...
> In the majority decision, Judge Kurt Engelhardt wrote that while the deprivation of clean water was “grievous,” it did “not infringe upon any deeply rooted constitutional right.” “We are skeptical that the right to not be harmed by lead-contaminated water fits within the right to bodily integrity, and Plaintiffs point us to no historical tradition or Supreme Court precedent convincing us,” he wrote. The Ninth Amend…
This seems to fall under the whole “promote the general welfare” part of the Preamble of the Constitution, though perhaps the court is unaware of it.
If that was taken as valid justification for government intervention, why not just elect a king that promises to be do "good" things?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I completely disagree. Not everything can be included in the Constitution. We have ordinary laws to address things like this.
Never once tried to argue that it should be included in the Constitution. I suppose one of those "other laws" will cover when the government deliberately gives people lead poisoning? I wonder why they didn't go with that one...
> alleged that the city knowingly allowed residents to drink unsafe water. Surely knowingly letting people drink lead contaminated water breaks other laws rather than their constitutional rights?
Dependence on "interpretation of the day" of the US Constitution seems to have overtaken regular maintenance of the law in a lot of high profile issues for the last many decades.
- the US law making process is fundamental and deeply broken to a point of it feels comparable to the Weimar Republic (the Germany between WW1 and Hitler taking over, around it's end it was pretty much dysfunctional when it comes to passing laws)
- instead things which should be law changes, and should be pursued bipartisan, are squeezed into other things. Like the budged bill, wider interpretations(1) of the existing law etc.
- or bundled into absurdly large bills covering docents of things which should not be one bill (which is very un-democratic and likely harmful for the US citizens. It allows corrupt politicians to forces less corrupt ones to vote for bad laws, because they are bundled with very essential needed changes, it also has shown to pose a very realistic risk of "sneaking" in something bad etc.)
- other cases often get stuck or even for topics which should be bipartisan held hostage to push some other goals
- with the current president this seems to have gotten even worse as he and the people close to him have attacked changes otherwise pursued by a wider bipartisan support. So even iff you can onboard both sides it might not mean enough in this legislation. But while I'm pretty sure I have seen such cases I can't remember details, so take with a grain of salt.
- to add in on top of all of that: Consumer and environmental protection in the US has always been a bit weak, a bit too slow, and often lacking precautionary approaches (most thing being reactive to enough people suffering harm, even if it was clear for a long time that idk. a product isn't safe or similar). And in some aspects this has been further crippled by the current administration, but idk. if such aspects apply here. That means even iff the current state is caused by a crime, it likely will take years to make stop the criminal from committing it. If it's seen as a breach of constitution things likely would move faster, and corrupt local governments have a much harder time undermining it.
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(^1): Which isn't always bad, some degree of "vagueness" to handle the complexity of constant changing IRL is often desirable (as a dump example you also would make a law to forbid killing, instead of a law which explicitly lists and forbids every imaginable way you might kill someone). But what I mean goes far beyond that. In general some recognition of "basic human right" on a constitutional level should be something any citizen should ask their country to have. And I mean that independent of the international human rights court and the specific interpretation of human rights common with it. Not recognizing it is one thing, but insistently not recognizing any form of human rights is another, IMHO pretty evil, thing.