Boots & Sabers

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Tag: Supreme Court of the United States

Judge Rules Against Trump in Presidential Immunity Assertion

by | 2016, 16 Dec 2424 | , | 0 Comments

This is the correct ruling and shows how narrowly the Supreme Court ruled giving presidents immunity for official acts.

The New York judge in President-elect Donald Trump’s criminal hush money case ruled Monday that the Supreme Court’s presidential immunity decision does not apply to that case.

Trump had sought to dismiss his criminal indictment and vacate the jury verdict on the grounds that prosecutors, during the trial last May, introduced evidence relating to Trump’s official acts as president, after the Supreme Court later ruled in July that Trump is entitled to presumptive immunity from criminal prosecution for official acts undertaken while in office.

However, Judge Juan Merchan said on Monday that the evidence in Trump’s hush money case related “entirely to unofficial conduct” and “poses no danger of intrusion on the authority and function of the Executive Branch.”

Biden Proposes to Usurp the Supreme Court

by | 0717, 29 Jul 2424 | , | 23 Comments

First, no, Joe Biden did not write this screed. They won’t tell us who did.

WASHINGTON — President Joe Biden called for major changes to the Supreme Court on Monday, including a constitutional amendment that would limit immunity for presidents, impose term limits for justices and stipulate an enforceable code of ethics.

 

In an op-ed in the Washington Post, Biden said “no one is above the law.”

 

“Not the president of the United States,” he wrote. “Not a justice on the Supreme Court of the United States. No one.”

 

[…]

 

Biden, who served as a U.S. Senator for 36 years, wrote that he had overseen more Supreme Court nominations as senator, vice president and president than anyone living today.

Remember that Biden would not be proposing any of these things if the court were reliably issuing ruling that the liberals want. For 50 years, the court leaned Left and nobody proposed these kinds of things. Now that the court has tilted slightly right for less than a decade, liberals have decided that the court needs to be blown up.

Thankfully, none of this stands a chance of passing with a divided Congress and a lame duck President. It is curious that he would push it at all. Harris is the Leftist standard-bearer now. By tipping their hand that the Leftists want to radically usurp the power of the Supreme Court, does this help Harris? She will have to now offer her position on his reforms, right? Or is this a setup where Harris will come out against these “reforms” to make her look more moderate? Or is Biden just a bitter old man who wants to demonstrate that he still matters?

Curious…

Biden Proposes Stacking the Supreme Court

by | 2031, 16 Jul 2424 | , | 11 Comments

Who is a threat to the Republic? It’s quite rich that Biden – a man who has been in government so long that he is going senile in office – would propose term limits.

WASHINGTON (AP) — President Joe Biden is seriously considering proposals to establish term limits for U.S. Supreme Court justices, and an ethics code that would be enforceable under law amid growing concerns that the justices are not held accountable, according to three people briefed on the plans.

 

It would mark a major shift for Biden, the former head of the Senate Judiciary Committee, who has long resisted calls to reform the high court, though since taking office he has been increasingly vocal about his belief that the court is abandoning mainstream constitutional interpretation. The details were first reported by The Washington Post.

 

Any changes would require congressional approval, which would be unlikely in a divided Congress. But with Republican nominee Donald Trump bragging about putting the three justices on the high court who are now part of the conservative majority, Biden’s call for major changes could help animate his voters.

The Supreme Court leaned to the Left for my entire life until it swung to the Right under Trump. Republicans worked the entire time to win elections and try to make good selections (only about 50/50 successful) to change the philosophical makeup of the court. The Democrats just can’t stand it and don’t want to put in the work to swing it back. Instead, they just want to change the rules to make it easier for them.

This will never make it into law. If it did, this court would likely strike it down anyway. But the fact that Biden is willing to go there to appease his rabid Marxist base speaks to how much our Republic is on the knife’s edge.

“Absolute Immunity”

by | 1819, 1 Jul 2424 | , , | 2 Comments

SCOTUS made this ruling today. It gave me pause.

Held: Under our constitutional structure of separated powers, the nature of Presidential power entitles a former President to absolute immunity from criminal prosecution for actions within his conclusive and preclusive constitutional authority. And he is entitled to at least presumptive immunity from prosecution for all his official acts. There is no immunity for unofficial acts.

Affirming that any person in our United States has “absolute immunity from criminal prosecution” is a very, very serious thing. In this case, however, I think the court got it right.

Go read the whole opinion and the dissents. It’s an informative read and fairly easy to follow.

Such an immunity is required to safeguard the independence and effective functioning of the Executive Branch, and to enable the President to carry out his constitutional duties without undue caution. At a minimum, the President must be immune from prosecution for an official act unless the Government can show that applying a criminal prohibition to that act would pose no “dangers of intrusion on the authority and functions of the Executive Branch.” Fitzgerald, 457 U. S., at 754. Pp. 12–15.

(3) As for a President’s unofficial acts, there is no immunity.

In any system of government, the Executive is granted immense power and authority precisely to do things that regular citizens can’t do. We give the Executive the power to wage war, use violent power to strip people of their rights, enforce the collection of taxes, and so much more. Any of these powers, if exercised by an ordinary citizen, would be a crime. An ordinary citizen is not permitted by law to kill someone except in self defense. An ordinary citizen may not lock up their neighbor in prison. An ordinary citizen may not legally take their neighbor’s money to spend on other people.

Since the Executive is empowered and charged by the People to exercise these extraordinary powers on the People’s behalf, the Executive must be free of the threat of criminal prosecution for executing their charge within their official capacity. The People have ceded their right to exercise violent authority on their fellow citizens in exchange for an orderly society enforced by the government to which they ceded their power. It’s a trade.

In our system of government, the proper remedy for correcting an Executive who is using their extraordinary power inappropriately is found at the ballot box. In exceptional cases, an Executive can be removed from office via the Constitutional impeachment and removal process. Our Founders thought this out.

No, it’s not perfect, but no representative government is. It is merely the least objectional form of government necessitated by the pervasive evil imbued in our fallen race.

Once again, this court got it right. It is worth noting that no previous court has ever had to consider and opine on this issue because no previous DOJ had ever sought to prosecute a former president for acts done in office. But here we are…

SCOTUS Rejects Judicial Overreach on Homelessness

by | 0642, 1 Jul 2424 | , | 0 Comments

Another great, if obvious, ruling.

The Supreme Court on Friday upheld ordinances in a southwest Oregon city that prohibit people who are homeless from using blankets, pillows, or cardboard boxes for protection from the elements while sleeping within the city limits. By a vote of 6-3, the justices agreed with the city, Grants Pass, that the ordinances simply bar camping on public property by everyone and do not violate the Constitution’s ban on cruel and unusual punishment.

 

Writing for the majority, Justice Neil Gorsuch contended that the Eighth Amendment, which bans cruel and unusual punishment, “serves many important functions, but it does not authorize federal judges” to “dictate this Nation’s homelessness policy.” Instead, he suggested, such a task should fall to the American people.

 

Justice Sonia Sotomayor dissented, in an opinion joined by Justices Elena Kagan and Ketanji Brown Jackson. She argued that the majority’s ruling “focuses almost exclusively on the needs of local government and leaves the most vulnerable in our society with an impossible choice: Either stay awake or be arrested.”

If the activists were successful in using the 8th Amendment to negate simple loitering ordinances, then the reach of the 8th would have been almost limitless. It is good to see this court affirm the appropriate role of the court and have a strong deference to leaving public policy in the hands of elected officials – as it should be.

SCOTUS Pushes Back on Overreaching DOJ

by | 0626, 1 Jul 2424 | , | 0 Comments

And another excellent ruling. The DOJ stretched the meaning and intent of this statute in an act of political retribution. This is not as much about Jan 6 as it is about a rogue law enforcement agency that is targeting political opponents wherever it can. I hope that every person prosecuted by the DOJ under this law sues and gets relief.

The Supreme Court on Friday threw out the charges against a former Pennsylvania police officer who entered the U.S. Capitol during the Jan. 6, 2021, attacks. By a vote of 6-3, the justices ruled that the law that Joseph Fischer was charged with violating, which bars obstruction of an official proceeding, applies only to evidence tampering, such as destruction of records or documents, in official proceedings.

 

Friday’s ruling could affect charges against more than 300 other Jan. 6 defendants. The same law is also at the center of two of the four charges brought by Special Counsel Jack Smith against former President Donald Trump in Washington, D.C.

 

[…]

 

The law at the center of Fischer’s case is 18 U.S.C. § 1512(c)(2), which makes it a crime to “otherwise obstruct[], influence[], or impede[] any official proceeding.” U.S. District Judge Carl Nichols concluded that because the previous subsection, Section 1512(c)(1), bars tampering with evidence “with the intent to impair the object’s integrity or availability for use in an official proceeding,” Section 1512(c)(2) only applies to cases involving evidence tampering that obstructs an official proceeding, and he dismissed the obstruction charge against Fischer.

 

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit reversed Nichols’ ruling, concluding that the “meaning of the statute is unambiguous,” so that it “applies to all forms of corrupt obstruction of an official proceeding, other than the conduct that is already covered by” the prior subsection.

 

On Friday, the Supreme Court vacated the D.C. Circuit’s decision, interpreting the law more narrowly to apply only to evidence tampering.

Perhaps the most stunning about this ruling was the breakdown of the Justices. Barrett sided with the leftists and Jackson sided with the conservatives. Jackson even said in her concurring opinion:

Jackson suggested that it “beggars belief that Congress would have inserted a breathtakingly broad, first-of-its kind criminal obstruction statute (accompanied by a substantial 20-year maximum penalty) in the midst of a significantly more granular series of obstruction prohibitions without clarifying its intent to do so.”

And, frankly, Barrett’s opinion is downright scary:

Although “events like January 6th” may not have been the target of subsection (c)(2), she acknowledged (noting in a parenthetical, “Who could blame Congress for that failure of imagination?”)… For Barrett, the text of subsection (c)(2) clearly supports the government’s broader interpretation. Subsection (c)(2), she asserted, “covers all sorts of actions that affect or interfere with official proceedings,” and the word “otherwise” does not limit its scope.

For Barrett, the DOJ should stretch statutes well beyond their intent or writing if something happens that Congress could not have anticipated. She is supporting a government in which the Executive Branch should act in response to events how they see fit even when they do not have Congressional authority to do so.

Nuts to that.

SCOTUS Ends Chevron

by | 0619, 1 Jul 2424 | , | 0 Comments

I was blissfully in a wilderness area for a few days and came back to this fantastic news. Huzzah, huzzah.

In a major ruling, the Supreme Court on Friday cut back sharply on the power of federal agencies to interpret the laws they administer and ruled that courts should rely on their own interpretation of ambiguous laws. The decision will likely have far-reaching effects across the country, from environmental regulation to healthcare costs.

 

By a vote of 6-3, the justices overruled their landmark 1984 decision in Chevron v. Natural Resources Defense Council, which gave rise to the doctrine known as the Chevron doctrine. Under that doctrine, if Congress has not directly addressed the question at the center of a dispute, a court was required to uphold the agency’s interpretation of the statute as long as it was reasonable. But in a 35-page ruling by Chief Justice John Roberts, the justices rejected that doctrine, calling it “fundamentally misguided.”

 

Justice Elena Kagan dissented, in an opinion joined by Justices Sonia Sotomayor and Ketanji Brown Jackson. Kagan predicted that Friday’s ruling “will cause a massive shock to the legal system.”

 

When the Supreme Court first issued its decision in the Chevron case more than 40 years ago, the decision was not necessarily regarded as a particularly consequential one. But in the years since then, it became one of the most important rulings on federal administrative law, cited by federal courts more than 18,000 times.

Yes, ELECTED officials should be debating and making decisions about our live. Unelected bureaucrats should never have been given this power. Does this mean that elected officials will have to work harder and write more detailed legislation without hiding their intent behind the bureaucracy? You bet. That’s good.

Now the hard work begins. Every regulation that is unauthorized by legislation must be challenged in court and thrown out. This will take years, but it must be done. In every case, the question must not be whether or not the regulation is good or not. The question must be whether or not the regulation was passed by our elected officials in Congress.

SCOTUS Denies Standing for Social Media Litigants

by | 1615, 26 Jun 2424 | | 0 Comments

It seems that they took a pass on weighing in on perhaps one of the most important 1st Amendment debates of the modern era. On the one hand, I would have liked to see the court take a firm stance against the government dictating speech. On the other hand, a humble, constructionist court might be right to take a strict position on standing. Either way, this ruling is not good for our Republic and our state of freedom. And the liberals cheering today will come to rue the ruling.

Of immediate significance, the decision means that the Department of Homeland Security may continue to flag posts to social media companies such as Facebook and X that it believes may be the work of foreign agents seeking to disrupt this year’s presidential race.

 

Rather than delving into the weighty First Amendment questions raised by the case, the court ruled that the state and social media users who challenged the Biden administration did not have standing to sue.

 

Justice Amy Coney Barrett wrote the opinion for a 6-3 majority.

 

“To establish standing, the plaintiffs must demonstrate a substantial risk that, in the near future, they will suffer an injury that is traceable to a government defendant and redressable by the injunction they seek,” Barrett wrote. “Because no plaintiff has carried that burden, none has standing to seek a preliminary injunction.”

SCOTUS’ Ruling On Bump Stocks is About Agency Overreach

by | 0608, 17 Jun 2424 | , , | 2 Comments

Democrats are really trying to scare people with SCOTUS’ bump stock ruling by making it about guns because they want you to ignore that the ruling was really about reining in rogue agencies who are abusing their authority. For example:

“But now that they have got a Supreme Court that seems ready to unwind the entirety of the Second Amendment and take away from Congress or the executive branch the ability to keep our communities safe, they’re once again lining up behind the gun industry.”

 

Murphy’s comments echo the response of gun control advocacy groups, which argued Friday that the court’s ruling will have a dangerous impact in a country constantly reeling from gun violence.

But if you read the actual ruling, the court did not even mention the 2nd Amendment. The ruling rested on the fact that the ATF exceeded its statutory authority to define a bump stock as a “machinegun.”

Held: ATF exceeded its statutory authority by issuing a Rule that classifies a bump stock as a “machinegun” under §5845(b). Pp. 6–19.

(a) A semiautomatic rifle equipped with a bump stock is not a “machinegun” as defined by §5845(b) because: (1) it cannot fire more than one shot “by a single function of the trigger” and (2) even if it could, it would not do so “automatically.” ATF therefore exceeded its statutory authority by issuing a Rule that classifies bump stocks as machineguns. P. 6.

(b) A semiautomatic rifle equipped with a bump stock does not fire more than one shot “by a single function of the trigger.” The phrase “function of the trigger” refers to the mode of action by which the trigger activates the firing mechanism. No one disputes that a semiautomatic rifle without a bump stock is not a machinegun because a shooter must release and reset the trigger between every shot. And, any subsequent shot fired after the trigger has been released and reset is the result of a separate and distinct “function of the trigger.” Nothing changes when a semiautomatic rifle is equipped with a bump stock. Between every shot, the shooter must release pressure from the trigger and allow it to reset before reengaging the trigger for another shot. A bump stock merely reduces the amount of time that elapses between separate “functions” of the trigger.

What Democrats really want to preserve is the ability of federal agencies to operate on their own without the authority of Congress. They WANT to empower the Executive Branch at the expense of the Legislative Branch because they know that their agenda is too unpopular to implement with the consent of the governed. That is why they are up in arms, so to speak, to usurp the court as a means to usurp the Congress.

SCOTUS ruled how all Americans should want them to rule. They simply said that a federal agency may not make up laws. Congress has the sole authority to make laws. If you wanted a different ruling, then you don’t really support democracy.

SCOTUS hears Case On Banning Homeless Encampments

by | 1953, 22 Apr 2424 | , | 0 Comments

This should be pretty simple. The Constitution is silent on homeless people, thus laws about them are up to the states.

A majority of Supreme Court justices on Monday appeared sympathetic to an Oregon city making it a crime for anyone without a permanent residence to sleep outside in an effort to crack down on homeless encampments across public properties.

 

The case, City of Grants Pass v. Johnson, carries enormous stakes nationwide as communities confront a growing tide of unhoused residents and increasingly turn to punitive measures to try to incentivize people to take advantage of social services and other shelter options.

 

“These generally applicable laws prohibit specific conduct and are essential to public health and safety,” argued the city’s attorney Theane Evangelis during oral arguments, which stretched more than two and a half hours.

The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals said in a decision last year that a homeless camping ban amounts to “cruel and unusual punishment” under the 8th Amendment. But several members of the high court’s conservative majority took a critical view of that conclusion.

 

“Have we ever applied the Eighth Amendment to civil penalties?” asked a skeptical Justice Clarence Thomas.

SCOTUS Allows Texas to Arrest Illegal Aliens

by | 2117, 19 Mar 2424 | , | 3 Comments

Excellent.

A divided Supreme Court on Tuesday allowed Texas to begin enforcing a law that gives police broad powers to arrest migrants suspected of crossing the border illegally while a legal battle over the measure plays out.

 

The conservative majority’s order rejects an emergency application from the Biden administration, which says the law is a clear violation of federal authority that would cause chaos in immigration law.

 

Texas Gov Greg Abbott praised the order — and the law — which allows any police officer in Texas to arrest migrants for illegal entry and authorizes judges to order them to leave the U.S.

The high court didn’t address whether the law is constitutional. The measure now goes back to an appellate court and could eventually return to the Supreme Court. In the meantime, it wasn’t clear how soon Texas might begin arresting migrants under the law.

 

It was also unclear where any migrants ordered to leave might go. The law calls for them to be sent to ports of entry along the U.S.-Mexico border, even if they are not Mexican citizens.

 

But Mexico’s government said Tuesday it would not “under any circumstances” accept the return of any migrants to its territory from the state of Texas. Mexico is not required to accept deportations of anyone except Mexican citizens.

I suggest that Mexico make some effort to prevent non-Mexicans from crossing their country to jump our border.

SCOTUS Unanimously Sides With Constitution

by | 0933, 4 Mar 2424 | , | 3 Comments

Excellent. Surprising that it was unanimous, but a good sign that the justices can sometimes put aside their personal political biases in favor of the Constitution.

The Supreme Court’s Monday ruling that Donald Trump should appear on the ballot in Colorado is a massive victory for the former president, vanquishing one of the many legal threats that have both plagued and animated his campaign against President Joe Biden.

 

Using the 14th Amendment to derail Trump’s candidacy has always been seen as a legal longshot, but gained significant momentum with a win in Colorado’s top court in December, on its way to the US Supreme Court. Since that decision, Trump was also removed from the ballot in Maine and Illinois.

SCOTUS Takes Aim at Chevron Doctrine

by | 1238, 21 Jan 2424 | | 4 Comments

Yes. Kill it. Weaker government is better government.

What’s next

 

Legal experts say the court’s conservative justices appear very likely to significantly reduce the scope of the Chevron doctrine, if not eliminate it altogether. A final ruling is expected in early summer.

Perspectives

 

If Chevron is eliminated, the government’s power to do just about anything will be weakened

 

“​​Here’s the bottom line: Without Chevron deference, it’ll be open season on each and every regulation, with underinformed courts playing pretend scientist, economist, and policymaker all at once.” — Mark Joseph Stern, Slate

SCOTUS Fails to Find Leaker

by | 1926, 19 Jan 2323 | , | 2 Comments

It appears that the flow of information was pretty loose – probably because they all trusted each other to not violate the secrecy of the court. Now that that trust is shattered, I hope they have implemented more stringent safeguards.

WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court on Thursday announced that after a lengthy investigation it has been unable to conclusively identify the person who leaked an unpublished draft of an opinion indicating the court was poised to roll back abortion rights.

 

In an unsigned statement, the court said that all leads had been followed up and forensic analysis performed, but “the team has to date been unable to identify a person responsible by a preponderance of the evidence.”

 

The attached report suggested the court was not watertight, with some employees admitting they had talked to spouses about the draft opinion and how the justices had voted. The investigation conducted by Supreme Court Marshal Gail Curley was largely limited to the court building itself and the people who work there, meaning that any actions taken by people at home or elsewhere using personal devices were mostly not within its scope.

 

The report also indicated that the justices were not scrutinized as part of the probe, with the focus on permanent employees and the law clerks who work for each justice for a year.

SCOTUS to Rule on Unconstitutional Student Loan Handouts

by | 2124, 1 Dec 2222 | , | 1 Comment

Good, but…

The U.S. Supreme Court on Thursday said it will review the legality of President Joe Biden’s federal student loan debt relief plan, putting borrowers on track to get clarity on the fate of the program by next summer.

 

The program, which would grant up to either $10,000 or $20,000 in federal debt relief to student borrowers who make under a certain income, depending on the kind of loan they used, has been blocked by lower courts since November. The administration initially planned to start rolling out cancellations by the end of this month.

 

The Supreme Court agreed to hear oral arguments in February, allowing the case an expedited schedule, and is expected to make a decision by the end of June, when the term ends. February’s arguments are also likely to give insight into how the justices view the program.

It is nuts, in this day and age, that citizens should have to wait seven months – SEVEN MONTHS – for SCOTUS to act. There should be an expedited process for the court to adjudicate issues of this importance. Really… all interested parties should be able to be reasonably ready to argue their cases by January and the court should have plenty of time to render a ruling within a couple of weeks. It’s ridiculous that the court moves at glacial speed in a modern country. Too often, irreparable damage has been done while everyone sits around and waits on the court.

Second SCOTUS Leak?

by | 2124, 20 Nov 2222 | , | 1 Comment

Nobody seems to be looking very hard for the first leak.

Following the monumental leak of the draft opinion to overturn Roe v. Wade in May, a former anti-abortion leader claims he was told the outcome of a 2014 case weeks before it was announced publicly, according to a report published on Saturday in The New York Times.

 

Rev. Rob Schenck, who led an evangelical nonprofit in Washington, said he was informed ahead of time about the ruling of Burwell v. Hobby Lobby, a landmark case involving contraception and religious rights, according to a letter he wrote to Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr.

Roberts did not respond to the letter.

 

Schenck used his knowledge of the verdict to prepare public relations materials, the report said, and to inform the president of the Christain evangelical-owned craft store Hobby Lobby, the winning party of the case. Schenck said the ruling was also shared with a handful of advocates, according to the report.

I do think that there is a distinction between the two leaks. Leaking the full draft opinion was an egregious breach. Giving a heads up at a dinner party was not appropriate, but a far cry from the first leak. I expect that the latter has been happening for eons while the former was unheard of in modern times. Also, the latter was allegedly done with the intent to be a private heads up while the former was a public attempt to intimidate justices.

But both leaks are wrong, and they need to stop. Also, the court needs to operate more swiftly so that there isn’t the gigantic lag between when decisions are made and when they are released.

SCOTUS Considers Consequential Docket

by | 0706, 3 Oct 2222 | | 0 Comments

Fingers crossed.

It could be another really good session for expanding civil rights and ending institutional racism.

 

In cases from Harvard University and the University of North Carolina, the court could end any consideration of race in college admissions. If this seems familiar, it’s because the high court has been asked repeatedly over the past 20 years to end affirmative action in higher education. In previous cases from Michigan and Texas, the court reaffirmed the validity of considering college applicants’ race among many factors. But this court is more conservative than those were.

 

[…]

 

A new clash involving religion, free speech and the rights of LGBTQ people will also be before the justices. The case involves Colorado graphic and website designer Lorie Smith who wants to expand her business and offer wedding website services. She says her Christian beliefs would lead her to decline any request from a same-sex couple to design a wedding website, however, and that puts her in conflict with a Colorado anti-discrimination law.

 

The case is a new chance for the justices to confront issues the court skirted five years ago in a case about a baker objected to making cakes for same-sex weddings. The court has grown more conservative since that time.

 

[…]

 

In November, the court will review a federal law that gives Native Americans preference in adoptions of Native children. The case presents the most significant legal challenges to the Indian Child Welfare Act since its 1978 passage.

 

SCOTUS Allows State to Force University to Violate Religious Beliefs

by | 2047, 14 Sep 2222 | , | 0 Comments

That’s a shame. Another blow against religious liberty.

WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court has cleared the way for an LGBTQ group to gain official recognition from a Jewish university in New York, though that may not last.

 

By a 5-4 vote Wednesday, the justices lifted a temporary hold on a court order that requires Yeshiva University to recognize the group, the YU Pride Alliance, even as a legal fight continues in New York courts.

 

Two conservatives, Chief Justice John Roberts and Justice Brett Kavanaugh, sided with the court’s three liberal justices to form a majority.

 

The disagreement among the justices appears to be mostly about procedure, with the majority writing in a brief unsigned order that Yeshiva should return to state court to seek quick review and temporary relief while the case continues.

 

If it gets neither from state courts, the school can return to the Supreme Court, the majority wrote.

Power to the People

by | 1934, 2 Jul 2222 | | 7 Comments

Here is my full column that ran last week in the Washington County Daily News. I’m glad to see that the rest of the rulings continued this theme.

It was a blockbuster week of rulings from the Supreme Court of the Unites States. With a few more important rulings to be released this week, we see a positive trend emerging from the rulings. SCOTUS is stripping back the power of government and returning it to the people.

 

Arguably the two most important rulings of this session have to do with gun rights and abortion. In New York State Rifle & Pistol Association, Inc. v. Bruen, the court was asked to evaluate if New York’s restrictive gun laws violated the 2nd Amendment. The law in New York prohibits people from carrying a firearm unless they obtain a permit to do so from the government. To obtain the permit, the applicant must cite a specific reason and it is up to the arbitrary judgment of the government official as to whether the given reason is good enough to get a permit. SCOTUS struck down New York’s gun restrictions. What is interesting, however, is that the court did not strike it down based on the 2nd Amendment protection of the right to keep and bear arms. Instead, the court struck it down based on the 14th Amendment’s protection for citizens being denied “life, liberty, or property, without due process of law.” Taking the rights guaranteed in the 2nd Amendment as already clarified by earlier case law, Justice Clarence Thomas brilliantly sums up the ruling by saying, “We know of no other constitutional right that an individual may exercise only after demonstrating to government officers some special need. That is not how the First Amendment works when it comes to unpopular speech or the free exercise of religion. It is not how the Sixth Amendment works when it comes to a defendant’s right to confront the witnesses against him. And it is not how the Second Amendment works when it comes to public carry for self-defense.”

 

In Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, the court issued a narrower ruling that, “the Constitution does not confer a right to an abortion.” Thus, “the authority to regulate abortion is returned to the people and their elected representatives.”

 

Abortion is not mentioned in the Constitution, but in Roe v. Wade the earlier court engaged in judicial activism to thrust the power of the federal government into the regulation of abortion. In Dobbs, the court corrected that wrong and transferred the power to regulate abortion from the unelected federal court system to the elected representatives of the people. This is how it was up until Roe.

 

While the court did confirm that aborting a baby is not a right guaranteed by the Constitution, it did not say that the Constitution protects someone from being aborted. The Constitution does protect citizens from being deprived of life without due process, but to make such a ruling, the court would have had to define when life begins. That was not the question before the court and to rule on that issue would have been an act of judicial overreach. Perhaps a future court will have the opportunity to consider that question.

 

In both cases, we see the court reducing the power of government. In the case of Bruen, the court checked any government from restricting the 2nd Amendment without the same kind of extraordinary justifications we require of government to restrict other rights enumerated in the Constitution. This will have a cooling effect on zealous gun grabbers.

 

In the case of Dobbs, the court returned the power to regulate abortion to the people to exercise through their elected representatives. While the federal legislature could take up the issue, reaching a consensus across the broad ideological spectrum represented in the national legislature would be difficult. The state legislatures will more practically take up the arduous task of regulating such a politically contentious issue. Since the government closest to you generally governs the best (a reliable, if not unfailing, truism), the court’s ruling has empowered the people.

 

As the courts final rulings are released, we may hope to see more of this trend of limiting the power of government and returning powers heretofore usurped by government to the people.

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