Supreme Court says state may enforce some restrictions on religious gatherings [pdf] • Hacker News Board

Re: Supreme Court says state may enforce some restrictions on religious gatherings [pdf]

#261

Post by banads » Sun, May 31, 2020, 9:32 PM UTC

koenigdavidmj wrote: post #157

nsajko wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> bias in the USA towards the predominant religious institution away from the minority ones Are you sure that is the case at the federal level? Some states or governors may sometimes do something like you suggest, but I think at least the Supreme Court is more reasonable. Some examples here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_Amendment_to_the_United_... > In God, Yahweh, Allah, Buddah, et al we Trust Some comments,…

> Allah = Christian God = Yahweh There is no consensus on this, either among Muslims or Trinitarians.

Don't the all believe in the God of Abraham?

Re: Supreme Court says state may enforce some restrictions on religious gatherings [pdf]

#262

Post by nsajko » Sun, May 31, 2020, 11:07 PM UTC

AdrianB1 wrote: post #253

kmonsen wrote: post #165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is not ignored, but there is a long practice of interpreting it and defining exactly what it means. You have to spend some effort here in understand it and how it has changed through history instead of expecting to be able to just read the law and fully understand what it means.

Then the law is a failure; if it is written in such a way that regular people cannot understand it (because it does not mean what it says?) and it needs to be "interpreted", then the law failed because it is not what it was written, but what the people want to interpret it based on their own interests: this leads to corruption. In the same logic, Pythagoras' theorem should be interpreted because it is very old, it ha…

I think your point is basically that you want human law to be as clear, definite, unambiguous as scientific theories or mathematical proofs should be. I think this makes you an extremist legal formalist/textualist. Firstly, I think your reasoning is slightly fallacious: it seems you may be implicitly concluding that features that are useful for mathematics and science would be useful for law, too, just because of their effectiveness when applied to math or science.

While I agree that lawmakers are too often too sloppy, with many laws being unnecessarily ambiguous; I disagree with your supposed goal.

The first problem that comes to mind is that not even mathematics is done in formal languages, but I think much deeper issues are at hand here. It is that semantics are hard, even when the grammar is unambiguous.

I found a relevant quote from a 1881 book by a future SCOTUS justice (Holmes), The Common Law. This is the very beginning of the book: The object of this book is to present a general view of the Common Law. To accomplish the task, other tools are needed besides logic. It is something to show that the consistency of a system requires a particular result, but it is not all. The life of the law has not been logic: it has been experience. The felt necessities of the time, the prevalent moral and political theories, intuitions of public policy, avowed or unconscious, even the prejudices which judges share with their fellow-men, have had a good deal more to do than the syllogism in determining the rules by which men should be governed. The law embodies the story of a nation's development through many centuries, and it cannot be dealt with as if it contained only the axioms and corollaries of a book of mathematics. In order to know what it is, we must know what it has been, and what it tends to become. We must alternately consult history and existing theories of legislation.

These Wikipedia pages might be interesting:

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Common_Law_(Holmes)

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philosophy_of_law

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jurisprudence

If you want to get more "practical", try thinking about the real problems that Jefferson & co. would have had trying to express the Constitution, Bill of rights, or even more mundane laws as you would like. It's not just that there was no Lojban or Ithkuil back then and math was less developed, even today the expertise required simply does not exist, and it is not clear if what you wish is even possible.

I want to say that, although I disagree with you, thinking about the questions you raised has been a rewarding experience for me and I wish you luck in finding somebody smarter and/or more knowledgeable in the philosophy of law than me that you could discuss this with. Although, you may need to adjust your attitude to be less sour if you want more discussion, it will be more pleasant for other people if you manage to do that (I know that's difficult). I have a hunch you may also find some answers in science/speculative fiction, but, sadly, I can not remember a relevant work right now. I would like it if you could tell me if you get some interesting conclusions down the road.

Re: Supreme Court says state may enforce some restrictions on religious gatherings [pdf]

#263

Post by kurthr » Mon, Jun 01, 2020, 1:04 AM UTC

int_19h wrote: post #196

kurthr wrote: post #171

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's an interesting constitutional issue there... which is that the right to bear arms is not the right to buy ammunition. That is made all the more challenging for an originalist, because metalic cartridges with percussion caps were not invented for almost a hundred years after the Bill of Rights. If black powder and shot for a muzzle loader are available, has your right been abridged? Is it merely that you as a…

Applying the same logic to 1A, we could say that the freedom of the press is not infringed - you can have as many as you want! - but it doesn't say anything about ink. Or laser and offset printers, for that matter. In practice, the courts take dim view on such arguments, and if some element is required to practically exercise a right, it is usually protected under that right.

See, I actually agree... it's the originalists who have a problem.

If you want to talk about the press, and having rights abridged by not having ink then you better actually be in the business of printing (or maybe a potential member of a well regulated militia?). Waiting periods have been deemed perfectly constitutional so it's a lot harder to argue that those so horrifically unprepared and unwilling to wait for their mail order ammo (yep that's legal!) to be delivered are really having rights infringed more than my free speech is being infringed by being forced to wear a shirt and shoes (or even pants) to be served food.

Re: Supreme Court says state may enforce some restrictions on religious gatherings [pdf]

#264

Post by gamblor956 » Mon, Jun 01, 2020, 7:45 PM UTC

AdrianB1 wrote: post #254

gamblor956 wrote: post #242

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, I disagree. Free Exercise has never meant "do whatever you want" because that would have rendered all other laws moot. The Reynolds case has a good discussion of what was going on in the heads of the BOR convention. In a nutshell, religion was viewed as "beliefs" not "actions." (There is a letter from Jefferson on this point.) So the free exercise of religion was understood to mean the freedom to believe whateve…

So what is the meaning of "free exercise"? What was meant 230 years ago? In plain English, that text was not written by aliens in a rare Klingonian dialect and "interpreted" by Ferengi looking for some profit$$$. Free exercise for almost any religion includes going to the places or worship, without restrictions. At the time the article was written, there was no video conferencing so it was definitely considering goin…

Free exercise for almost any religion includes going to the places or worship, without restrictions. At the time the article was written, there was no video conferencing so it was definitely considering going to the church as part of exercising the religion.

That's not part of the free exercise clause, that's part of the establishment clause. Yes, it's confusing. That's why lawyers get paid the big bucks: to spend days going through the laws, cases, and volumes of written literature on complex topics like this.

Re: Supreme Court says state may enforce some restrictions on religious gatherings [pdf]

#265

Post by aspenmayer » Mon, Jun 01, 2020, 11:01 PM UTC

kmonsen wrote: post #247

aspenmayer wrote: post #236

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To say Jesus wouldn't understand modern Christianity is presupposing the Trinity is false, isn’t it? Otherwise, Jesus is part of the tripartite godhead and is aware of everything the Tetragrammaton and the Holy Spirit are aware of, which is more than the totality of existence of space-time. Not to make this a religious discussion, just striving for a steelman interpretation of the religious logical stance.

I’m not making an argument about Jesus but about his supposed followers. Anyway, the main point is that US law and the Bible are not connected. It’s still legal to eat shrimp and pork, and usury became legal when that was convenient.

I don’t mean to miss your point; however, to many people, US law and the Bible are connected. The Moral Majority[1] used and modern religious right use the Bible as justification for their social and economic policies.[2] It could be argued how Biblical their policies are, but to say they are not connected in many voters’ and believers’ minds is to misunderstand them and what they believe, religiously and politically.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moral_Majority

[2] https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2015/04/corporate-am...

Re: Supreme Court says state may enforce some restrictions on religious gatherings [pdf]

#266

Post by int_19h » Mon, Jun 08, 2020, 5:16 PM UTC

josephcsible wrote: post #208

int_19h wrote: post #205

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's such a missed opportunity, though. I think that a big problem with SCOTUS as it stands today, is that a simple majority of judges is sufficient to decide profound matters of constitutionality. But if the decision is 5:4, or even 6:3 - if there are so many dissenters - shouldn't this be taken as prima facie evidence that the constitution is ambiguous on the issue, and needs to be disambiguated? Imagine for a mome…

While a good idea in theory, I feel like this would be pointless in practice, because none of the amendments would ever end up getting the supermajority of approval they'd need to pass.

With the current state of affairs, yes, but it hasn't always been like that. The point here is more long-term - this significantly reduces the political stakes for SCOTUS appointments, so hopefully the court also becomes less politicized over time. Another goal is to make court decisions less dependent on the point in time at which they're made.

Re: Supreme Court says state may enforce some restrictions on religious gatherings [pdf]

#267

Post by int_19h » Mon, Jun 08, 2020, 5:18 PM UTC

kurthr wrote: post #263

int_19h wrote: post #196

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Applying the same logic to 1A, we could say that the freedom of the press is not infringed - you can have as many as you want! - but it doesn't say anything about ink. Or laser and offset printers, for that matter. In practice, the courts take dim view on such arguments, and if some element is required to practically exercise a right, it is usually protected under that right.

See, I actually agree... it's the originalists who have a problem. If you want to talk about the press, and having rights abridged by not having ink then you better actually be in the business of printing (or maybe a potential member of a well regulated militia?). Waiting periods have been deemed perfectly constitutional so it's a lot harder to argue that those so horrifically unprepared and unwilling to wait for the…

Mail order ammo is only legal until the state says it's illegal - CA did just that. My understanding of your original premise was that there are no venues available.