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I turned a traffic ticket into a constitutional trial

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Re: I turned a traffic ticket into a constitutional trial

#11

I don't see why you aren't responsible if you lend your car to someone else. > If we are going to stop those nefarious evildoers who jeopardize the health of the republic by sliding through yellow lights when no one else is around and driving through empty streets at thirty miles per hour in twenty-five zones, then we need a way around such pesky impediments as a lack of eyewitnesses. And fuck this line. Over a milli…

A million a year? Where? Only 30k a year in US, and driving deaths per mile traveled are a fraction of what they once were. Driving is a very safe way to travel, safer than horse-back and previous alternatives.

Also are you aware its legal to drive thru a yellow light?

Re: I turned a traffic ticket into a constitutional trial

#13
post #8
post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The courts have long ignored the constitution. In all criminal prosecutions, the accused shall enjoy the right to a speedy and public trial, by an impartial jury of the State "Within these parameters it was determined that the five year wait for this case to go trial was not in violation of the Constitution."

That quote from Wikipedia cites Barker v. Wingo. That case involved a situation where the trial of one defendant was repeatedly continued so that a different defendant would be available to testify. The first defendant's case dragged on as the prospective witness was tried and exercised his right to appeal. The Wikipedia page for that case further explains: > More importantly, the Court determined that Barker did not…

The case was postponed a year after he explicitly requested a speedy trial. Basically when no numbers are provided the courts feel free to ignore anything else. Copywrite is explicitly there to promote the arts for a finite time. Yet it can be retroactively increased which barring time machines can't promote the creation of said work.

Re: I turned a traffic ticket into a constitutional trial

#14
post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

First, I want to start out by saying I am not a lawyer, but I have been trying very hard to bone up on law in general and natural rights and constituional law specifically (as former military, I have been dissatisfied with my lack of understanding of the document I swore an oath to protect and defend). So that is where my interest comes from. First of all, I wish you would elaborate on what specifically you disagree…

I used the '>' symbol to indicate the paragraph was a block quote, and put the cite to Callan under the whole thing to indicate where the block quote was coming from. Sorry if that wasn't clear. I'm not quoting Callan for its holding, but its discussion of what courts understood the jury trial right (which predates the Constitution) to mean. Hence the relevance of the state court cases--state courts were the ones int…

Thanks for clarifying. Knowing lawyers I tend to think they have a magical ability to obsfucate even simple arguments behind rhetoric.

Please consider trying to not fall into this trap by learning how to state your arguments more clearly. Among other lawyers and judges things like this pass, but by creating a seperate language the common people don't understand, I think the people are done a disservice. (I also think this was one the highlights of the Code of Hammurabi... the first time the law was written in the common tongue.)

Re: I turned a traffic ticket into a constitutional trial

#15
post #4

I don't agree with the Constitutional analysis. The distinction between civil and criminal law is not baked into the Constitution (although the Constitution assumes the existence of such a distinction at certain points). I.e. states have great leeway to design their legal procedure as they see fit with relatively few Constitutional limits. The main limits are due process, and the specific protections applicable to cr…

> The distinction between civil and criminal law is not baked into the Constitution

It's baked in the way that lots of preexisiting understanding is; the Constitution was not intended to be creating a novel understanding of law from first principles; it was written in a particular legal and historical context and assumed quite a bit from that context. The distinction between criminal law and other aspects of law (and that between suits in law and those in equity) are part of that pre-existing context.

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