The right to life and constitutional law.

[Zkribbler]

Originally posted by Kidicious
Imran, you've been pwned so hard it isn't funny. You have to pay attention to the context that the documents were written in. If you don't you just look stupid.

You are so wrong. Imran is correct -- correct, I say -- when he argues the Declaration of Independence is not a source of law for the U.S.

The "Right to Life" -- as Imran has pointed out -- is the right not to be deprived of life without due process of law. That's found in the 5th Amendment.

To wit:

No person shall be held to answer for a capital, or otherwise infamous crime, unless on a presentment or indictment of a Grand Jury, except in cases arising in the land or naval forces, or in the Militia, when in actual service in time of War or public danger; nor shall any person be subject for the same offence to be twice put in jeopardy of life or limb; nor shall be compelled in any criminal case to be a witness against himself, nor be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law, nor shall private property be taken for public use, without just compensation.

[lord of the mark]

Originally posted by Dr Strangelove


Then prison should be illegal shouldn't it? Heck, just about any law could interfere with somebody's pursuit of happiness, so are all laws constitutional?
.

TJ wasnt a fool, and even in a propaganda document wanted arguments that made sense. Inalienable in this sense didnt mean you couldnt be punished for a crime, but that it was a natural right inherent in man, and not a right created by historical agreement with the monarch, that the people as a collective could NOT alienate by further negotiations withe monarch. If you rob someone and are sent to jail that doesnt alienate the liberty right (since the liberty right doesnt include the right to take someone elses property, obviously) but if you, as state legislator, vote for a bill saying "we dont need liberty anymore, the executive can do as it pleases" you are PURPORTING to alienate the right, something you can not due according to TJ - your action is null and void, regardless of whats written in any basic legal document.

[lord of the mark]

''The language and history of the Ninth Amendment reveal that the Framers of the Constitution believed that there are additional fundamental rights, protected from governmental infringement, which exist alongside those fundamental rights specifically mentioned in the first eight constitutional amendments. . . . To hold that a right so basic and fundamental and so deep-rooted in our society as the right of privacy in marriage may be infringed because that right is not guaranteed in so many words by the first eight amendments to the Constitution is to ignore the Ninth Amendment and to give it no effect whatsoever. Moreover, a judicial construction that this fundamental right is not protected by the Constitution because it is not mentioned in explicit terms by one of the first eight amendments or elsewhere in the Constitution would violate the Ninth Amendment. . . . Nor do I mean to state that the Ninth Amendment constitutes an independent source of right protected from infringement by either the States or the Federal Government. Rather, the Ninth Amendment shows a belief of the Constitution's authors that fundamental rights exist that are not expressly enumerated in the first eight amendments and an intent that the list of rights included there not be deemed exhaustive.'

Mr Justice Goldberg, Griswold v Connecticut

[Kidlicious]

Originally posted by Zkribbler
You are so wrong. Imran is correct -- correct, I say -- when he argues the Declaration of Independence is not a source of law for the U.S.

It's not a source in the same sense that the Constitution is, but it's a source in the sense that the ideas contained within are significant within the legal system.

[MrFun]

Originally posted by lord of the mark


TJ wasnt a fool, and even in a propaganda document wanted arguments that made sense. Inalienable in this sense didnt mean you couldnt be punished for a crime, but that it was a natural right inherent in man, and not a right created by historical agreement with the monarch, that the people as a collective could NOT alienate by further negotiations withe monarch. If you rob someone and are sent to jail that doesnt alienate the liberty right (since the liberty right doesnt include the right to take someone elses property, obviously) but if you, as state legislator, vote for a bill saying "we dont need liberty anymore, the executive can do as it pleases" you are PURPORTING to alienate the right, something you can not due according to TJ - your action is null and void, regardless of whats written in any basic legal document.

exactly

[Imran Siddiqui]

Oy.. one last post to this train wreck. Even if you argue that stealing something is not a part of the inalienable right to liberty and thus your liberty can be alienated because of it, how is killing someone not a part of the right to life. They seem to have no relation. After all, this thread is about the right to life.

Furthermore, if you have an inalienable right to life means that you have a natural right and not a monarch given right, how can that right be taken away by society? Isn't that simply the same thing as a monarch given right then, if it can be so easily alienated? The only way to rectify such a problem is claiming a social contract, which is of dubious nature... and still would violate inalienability. If I have an inalienable natural right to life, how can anyone else take it away from me?

And of course Thomas Jefferson lived in an era where the death penalty was common and slavery survived for over 85 years after he wrote the DoI. Hell, Jefferson owned slaves until the day he died (even though he did consider them human). So much for inalienable rights.

Oh, and of course you are aware that Goldberg's opinion was a concurrence shared only by him. The reasoning for substantive due process is 'penumbras' around the Bill of Rights creating a right of privacy.

And Zkribbler... don't bother. Not worth it.

[Kidlicious]

and LotM gets one more post, but doesn't really need one.

[MrFun]

Originally posted by Imran Siddiqui

And of course Thomas Jefferson lived in an era where the death penalty was common and slavery survived for over 85 years after he wrote the DoI. Hell, Jefferson owned slaves until the day he died (even though he did consider them human). So much for inalienable rights.

Oh, and of course you are aware that Goldberg's opinion was a concurrence shared only by him. The reasoning for substantive due process is 'penumbras' around the Bill of Rights creating a right of privacy.

The beauty of the phrase, "right to life, liberty and pursuit of happiness" is that the implications behind this principle can change over time -- society is dynamic, not static.

Abraham Lincoln used the appeal of the Declaration of Independence when he spoke of his reason why he found slavery to be morally objectionable (even if this was not Lincoln's argument for a legal means to abolish slavery).

In case you haven't noticed, we no longer live in the late eighteenth century in the time of Thomas Jefferson. The principle underlying "right to life, liberty and pursuit of happiness" has taken a more all-encompassing implication over the past 200+ years. You can't apply the same LITERAL meaning with restrictions that Jefferson placed upon it in the late eighteenth century to our society today, but that does not invalidate my argument that we can still embrace its inherent IMPLICATION for our generation and whatever future generations may find in it.

Even as Lincoln knew that his DOI appeal with his argument was no grounds for interfering with slavery through the federal government, as society has changed over the past two centuries, the phrase "right to life, liberty and pursuit of happiness" has indeed changed in our organic laws. The Thirteenth Amendment was one such signal of change -- not to say that the appeal of the DOI was the only grounds for the Thirteenth Amendment -- it's always more complicated than that -- but it was certainly a contributing factor in its justification for legislation. We cannot use the DOI in of itself to legally legislate new laws but it certainly remains one of the pillars of our organic laws.

[lord of the mark]

[QUOTE] Originally posted by Imran Siddiqui

Oy.. one last post to this train wreck. Even if you argue that stealing something is not a part of the inalienable right to liberty and thus your liberty can be alienated because of it, how is killing someone not a part of the right to life. They seem to have no relation. After all, this thread is about the right to life.

Furthermore, if you have an inalienable right to life means that you have a natural right and not a monarch given right, how can that right be taken away by society? Isn't that simply the same thing as a monarch given right then, if it can be so easily alienated? The only way to rectify such a problem is claiming a social contract, which is of dubious nature... and still would violate inalienability. If I have an inalienable natural right to life, how can anyone else take it away from me?

Same with Life as with liberty. The natural right to life is, as TJ said extensively, the basis for all human action. Since life is prior to all else. Ergo men establish govts to protect it, and to accept that govts can arbitrarily take it would contradict the purpose for which govts are founded - ergo any political act that purports to give it up, to alienate it, is null and void. This does NOT mean that govts, in the course of protecting rights, cant take it. I think youve gottten forfeit mixed up with alienate. Whatever your online dictionay says, TJ used it differently (and not just in the DOI, but in private communications)

And of course Thomas Jefferson lived in an era where the death penalty was common

No prob, as ive explained.

and slavery survived for over 85 years after he wrote the DoI. Hell, Jefferson owned slaves until the day he died (even though he did consider them human). So much for inalienable rights.

In most of his statements (his rhetoric wavers in later years) hes clear that slavery is a wrong. What he cant do is figure out, as a practical matter, how to end it. (this was true in his personal life as well as his political life) Like most white southerners, he was convinced there were ineradicable differences between blacks and whites that would make life together impossible. At some times he seems to have favored emancipation combined with return to Africa. If there are statements where he says that slavery in principle is compatible with the DOI, id like to see them.

Oh, and of course you are aware that Goldberg's opinion was a concurrence shared only by him. The reasoning for substantive due process is 'penumbras' around the Bill of Rights creating a right of privacy.

Im not saying that the points im arguing are settled law. What I am saying is that theyre not from left field, as you seem to imply. Someone reading your posts alone might get the impression that a textualist view of the constution was the only one possible, and that any other was the silly rantings of poly posters. That is NOT in fact the case.

[lord of the mark]

"Nothing is more certainly written in the book of fate than that these people [blacks] are to be free. Nor is it less certain that the two races, equally free, cannot live in the same government. Nature, habit, opinion has drawn indelible lines of distinction between them." --Thomas Jefferson: Autobiography, 1821. ME 1:72

"Do not mistake me. I am not advocating slavery. I am not justifying the wrongs we have committed on a foreign people... On the contrary, there is nothing I would not sacrifice to a practicable plan of abolishing every vestige of this moral and political depravity." --Thomas Jefferson to Thomas Cooper, 1814. ME 14:184

"Nobody wishes more ardently to see an abolition, not only of the trade, but of the condition of slavery; and certainly, nobody will be more willing to encounter every sacrifice for that object." --Thomas Jefferson to Brissot de Warville, 1788. ME 6:428

"I can say with conscious truth that there is not a man on earth who would sacrifice more than I would to relieve us from this heavy reproach in any practicable way." --Thomas Jefferson to John Holmes, 1820. ME 15:249

"I congratulate you, fellow citizens, on the approach of the period at which you may interpose your authority constitutionally, to withdraw the citizens of the United States from all further participation in those violations of human rights which have been so long continued on the unoffending inhabitants of Africa, and which the morality, the reputation, and the best interests of our country, have long been eager to proscribe." --Thomas Jefferson: 6th Annual Message, 1806. ME 3:421

[Imran Siddiqui]

How do you 'forfeit' an 'inalienable' right? How can the government say we can't take away your right to life (inalienable right to life), but we can take your life (forfeit life)?

And it appears, from your second post, that Thomas Jefferson wrote a lot of things that he personally did not act on or consider to be wise to be acted on. Do as I say, not as I do, I gather.

[MrFun]

Originally posted by Imran Siddiqui
How do you 'forfeit' an 'inalienable' right? How can the government say we can't take away your right to life (inalienable right to life), but we can take your life (forfeit life)?

And it appears, from your second post, that Thomas Jefferson wrote a lot of things that he personally did not act on or consider to be wise to be acted on. Do as I say, not as I do, I gather.

Geez -- are you such an extreme reductionist in that everything has to be literally, exactly consistent in perfect order?

Often when people take a position on issues, they find conflicting concerns with the two realms of morality and legality. Thomas Jefferson genuinely had serious qualms about slavery even as he himself owned slaves. Abraham Lincoln was consistently opposed to the institution of slavery but saw that he could only propose legal interference with it in regards to western territories.

Humans are not infalliable beings -- only God is. We take positions on various issues but often find ourselves somewhat inconsistent with some of our positions because sometimes our morality does not quite mesh with legal reality. Sometimes, there have been individuals who have come very close to being perfectly consistent in taking a stand on an issue but that does not happen often.

To say that Jefferson really was not against slavery because he thought he could not act upon his morality against slavery is somewhat simplistic -- you need to appreciate the circumstance he was in, along with other slaveowners who had a similar position as Jefferson in regards to slavery.

[Imran Siddiqui]

I never knew you to be such an apologist for hypocrisy before, MrFun. Or is it just because these are your sacred cows? Do you also think George W. Bush is sincere when he talks about reducing oil dependancy, but the circumstance that he is in means that he can't do anything about oil consumption?

[lord of the mark]

[QUOTE] Originally posted by Imran Siddiqui

How do you 'forfeit' an 'inalienable' right? How can the government say we can't take away your right to life (inalienable right to life), but we can take your life (forfeit life)?

Sigh. because forfeiting it as an individual is not alienating it.

And it appears, from your second post, that Thomas Jefferson wrote a lot of things that he personally did not act on or consider to be wise to be acted on. Do as I say, not as I do, I gather.

Actually since he said theres no practical way to free them, and he didnt free them, i see no contradictions between his words and his actions.

Someday you'll be old enough to understand that not changing something doesnt imply accepting that its right.

[lord of the mark]

Originally posted by Imran Siddiqui
I never knew you to be such an apologist for hypocrisy before, MrFun. Or is it just because these are your sacred cows? Do you also think George W. Bush is sincere when he talks about reducing oil dependancy, but the circumstance that he is in means that he can't do anything about oil consumption?

Whether or not W is sincere, has little logical bearing on whether or not TJ was sincere. Theres been an abundant historical literature on TJs views on race, slavery, his own slaves etc. It seems pointless to bring it up, since you dont seem to have much interest in the detailed history of the time period.