Police attacking the left across Midwest

[DinoDoc]

All the Constitution guarantees us against our own states is that the governments must be republican.

You mean to say Republican.

[Imran Siddiqui]

Remove the States part of that Amendment and I have no problems with the Bill of Rights. I believe the people should be sovreign, not the States.

But that isn't true, is it? States are soveriegn, not the people within them (all around the world). While the federal government can't do anything unless they can find it in the Constitution (or twist something within it), the states can do ANYTHING, as long as the federal or state Constitutions do not prohibit it.

The US federal branch is an outlier in the world. In no other country is the federal government so restricted.

Then Rehnquist's Gang of Five decided that the 11th Amendment applied to any person suing any state! Incredible! So-called "textualists" actually contradicting the text.

A. They are following precedent. The decision that the 11th basically meant the states had soveriegn immunity comes from the 1800s. The current court is merely applying the precedent.

B. There is only ONE textualist on the court. Scalia. I don't understand how you get Conservatives are the textualists. Rehnquist himself has said he isn't a textualist. And Thomas is the farthest thing from a textualist (believes natural rights superceed the Constitution), even though he agrees with the textualist. O'Conner and Kennedy are both not textualists.

I seriously don't understand how Scalia = all conservatives. The entire textualist school comes from Scalia. Most conservative justices aren't like that at all. But I know how you like to throw names rather than look at the issue.

[SlowwHand]

Remove the fishy taste and I like trout.

[DinoDoc]

Originally posted by The Templar
Then Rehnquist's Gang of Five decided that the 11th Amendment applied to any person suing any state!

I had no idea that Rhenquist & Co. have been on the Court since the 19th century.

[Imran Siddiqui]

Like I've been saying DD, the left wants to blame the Rehnquist court for every ill society has. I can't wait for them to blame poverty on Rehnny and co. .

[DinoDoc]

I'm somewhat shocked that Templar can froth at the mouth so much over a subject he knows so little about.

[Imran Siddiqui]

What do you expect from a lefty with a hammer and sickle in his avatar? I wouldn't expect him to know Hans v. Louisiana (1890).

[Kidlicious]

Originally posted by Imran Siddiqui
Like I've been saying DD, the left wants to blame the Rehnquist court for every ill society has. I can't wait for them to blame poverty on Rehnny and co. .

Well, the supreme court is not only to blame. It's the whole govt.

[Vesayen]

www.democracynow.org is an awsome website....... just read through alot of it and bookmarked it, thank you for the link(gonna pass it around some other politically focused forums I post on).

[Agathon]

Originally posted by Vesayen
www.democracynow.org is an awsome website....... just read through alot of it and bookmarked it, thank you for the link(gonna pass it around some other politically focused forums I post on).

I listen to the webcast occasionally (you can watch it now). It's often quite interesting.

[The Templar]

Originally posted by Imran Siddiqui
What do you expect from a lefty with a hammer and sickle in his avatar? I wouldn't expect him to know Hans v. Louisiana (1890).

A guy with a flag-waving avatar is making cracks about mine?

I'm well aware of Hans, thank you very much. The reasoning at 134 US 1 at 18 is flawed. US Const. Art. III sec. 2 clearly gives the power for a federal court to adjudicate disputes "between states and citizens of another state". (We could argue about enabling statutes here, but Hans was not based on the adequacy of the enabling statute - it was a contitutional case). The 11th Amend. then took that power away from the federal courts. But - it only took away the power of citizens of one state to sue another.

Hans argues that the constitution did not intend to confer jurisdiction to suits between states and citizens of that state in federal court. This on the grounds that fed courts have concurrent jurisdiction with state courts. This is fine as far as it goes - presumably a state is immune from suit unless it gives permission (this itself is dumb - but there you have it.) Now, given that the supremacy clause makes federal law superior to state law federal law may give a right of action to an individual even against a state. What the court in Hans is saying is that even if the federal government gives you a private right of action against a state - the framers of the constitution didn't mean for you to have this right. That's fine and well, except the framers never put this into the text of the constitution. To the contrary, the fact that the 11th Amend. revises the section of Art III that DID allow citizens of another state to sue a state - the founders (by implication) did invision a private right of action against states in federal law. Hans is at best in error or at worst a deliberate attempt to subvert the constitution.

"Fine and well, Templar" you might say, "but how does the blame fall on Rehnquist and Co.?" Well, there is no excuse for maintaining bad precedent. Brown v. Board overturned Plessey, for example. But not only have Rehnquist and Co. not struck down this awful precedent - they have used it to impose their own odd version of federalism on the government. In Maritime Commission they even went so far as to say an agency of the federal government could not bring a suit against a state if a private interest petitions the agency. Of course, Alden v. Maine is the most grotesque example (denying federal labor law protection to state workers) where Kennedy writing for the majority noted that Hans is essentially an 11th Amend. case. In other words, Rehnquist's Gang of Five is exploiting bad precedent instead of correcting it.

I recommend, Siddi, that you demand a refund of tuition from whatever law school you attend or attended.

Oh, and next time you accuse me of not knowing something, please be sure that I actually don't know about it.

[The Templar]

Originally posted by DinoDoc
I'm somewhat shocked that Templar can froth at the mouth so much over a subject he knows so little about.

Read my above post. Now, do you have a response or are you just shooting your mouth off?

[The Templar]

Originally posted by Imran Siddiqui
Like I've been saying DD, the left wants to blame the Rehnquist court for every ill society has. I can't wait for them to blame poverty on Rehnny and co. .

One more thing - Thomas IS a textualist, and Rehnquist and Gang aren't the cause of every social ill - but they sure seem to exaserbate the ones they rule on!

[Imran Siddiqui]

I recommend, Siddi, that you demand a refund of tuition from whatever law school you attend or attended.

Why? You've demonstrated how wrong you actually were.

You insinuated the blame fall squarely on the Rehnquist Court. I saw it, and DD saw it. You cannot deny it. NOW, you change your tune and say they didn't get rid of bad precedent.

Of course, you totally ignore the argument (which is telling) that ONLY ONE person on the SCOTUS considers themself a textualist!!

If you've read Seminole Tribe of Fla v. Florida or Alden v. Maine, you will realize that the majority used legislative history to determine what the 11th Amendment meant. Especially since it came right after (and was meant to rectify) the SCOTUS decision in Chrisholm v. Georgia.

And btw, saying there is no excuse not to overturn 'bad' precedent shows a severe lack of understanding of the federal court system and how insanely difficult it is to overturn precedent. Brown came 60 years after Plessy, and is one of the rare cases that actually overturned prior precedent. One can easily see from Planned Parenthood v. Casey how important precedent is to the federal court system (or else they easily would have overturned Roe v. Wade in 1991, and then it would have overturned again with the next Democrat majority).

All going to show that your view is seriously misguided and in some parts just wrong.

And I think I'll continue to let my top 30 ranked Law School keep my tuition. Though perhaps you ought to write your educational facilities and ask for a partial refund, since you seem to have large gaps in your educational understanding.

[Imran Siddiqui]

Thomas IS a textualist

Bull****! Thomas uses legislative history just as much as anyone else on the bench. That, by definition, does not make him a textualist. I understand that it is a nice pejorative slur you'd like to use towards him, but it doesn't make it true.


Btw, seeing as the Warren Court didn't get rid of the bad precedent of Hans does that make them complicit as well in this 'horrible' reading of the Amendment?