The Five Who Rule 300 Million: The Law According to Judicial Whim
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Systematically Gutting the Constitution While Reshaping America in their Image
About this time every year, 300 million-plus Americans drag themselves out of bed, get ready for their day and learn what rights they have been allowed under the latest U.S. Supreme Court decision.
The unelected Supremes, in their hair-splitting wisdom, have ruled this term:
* That elected representatives of the people may make no law to execute child rapists;
* That enemy combatants–captured on the field of battle as they attempted to kill U.S. service personnel–have many of the same rights as law-abiding U.S. citizens;
* That the Second Amendment is not unconstitutional.
Like some Inter-Galactic Council, straight out of a low-budget sci-fi movie, the Court’s 5-4 decisions hand down their brand of justice and law to us lowly interplanetary peons.
Americans assess the impact and damage to their lives–and then, scramble to obey.
In the Court’s granting of habeus corpus rights to detainees at Guantanamo Bay, the 4 liberal judges (plus Anthony Kennedy, in a ruling that’s sure to increase his facetime in the Washington Post) overturned 200+ years of law.
The ruling itself was an unconstitutional violation of the separation of powers–never a concern when the Liberal justices are busy reshaping the U.S. into something a little more to their personal tastes and preferences.
As Rob at Say Anything Blog notes:
Article III, Section 2: In all the other cases before mentioned, the Supreme Court shall have appellate jurisdiction, both as to law and fact, with such exceptions, and under such regulations as the Congress shall make.
In the Military Commissions Act of 2006, passed by Congress and signed into law by President Bush, is the following passage:
(e)(1) No court, justice, or judge shall have jurisdiction to hear or consider an application for a writ of habeas corpus filed by or on behalf of an alien detained by the United States who has been determined by the United States to have been properly detained as an enemy combatant or is awaiting such determination.
So Congress passed, and President Bush signed, the law specifically limiting the court’s authority to challenge it.
The “Five Who Rule 300 Million” ignored it. They had discovered something known by career criminals: it’s only a crime if the law can do something about it. For the liberal Supremes, who’s going to make them obey the law?
Doesn’t matter if it’s the law of the Constitution, state legislatures or the other two branches of government.
determined by how Anthony Kennedy votes
Three years ago, Justices John Paul Stevens, David H. Souter, Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Stephen G. Breyer–again joined by Anthony Kennedy–discarded another Constitutional protection: the Fifth Amendment’s private property protections, in Kelo v. New Haven.
5-4 Ruling Backs Forced Sales for Private Development
The Supreme Court ruled yesterday that local governments may force property owners to sell out and make way for private economic development when officials decide it would benefit the public, even if the property is not blighted and the new project’s success is not guaranteed.
At that time, Stevens wrote that “The court should not “second-guess” local governments”. However, Stevens had no qualms in second-guessing the state of Louisiana’s elected government in the matter of executing child rapists.
The Supreme Court’s creation of rights for non-citizens–while at the same time stripping, or attempting to abolish, clearly-defined protections for the very same citizens the Constitution was written for–is arbitrary.
About this time every year, Americans find that they live not in a country governed by the rule of law, but by judicial decree. To the Court’s Liberal Four, like medieval rulers operating under the Divine Right of Kings, the law is determined by their whims, quirks and fancy.
The sooner we 300 million accept this, the sooner we’ll all be properly grateful for the rights the Five have allowed us keep–for now.
About this time every year, Americans drag themselves out of bed, get ready to face the day–and try to cope with the Law According to the Five Who Rule 300 Million.
by Mondoreb
Sources:
* Justices Affirm Property Seizures
* Supreme Court Ignores The Constitution In Gitmo Case
* United States Supreme Court Decisions: 2007-2008 Term
* supremecourt
* oyez
* Rigorous Intuition
* corbis
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Please drop the rapist decision as something libertarians should be upset about. Libertarians are not death penalty advocates because of the fear of kangaroo courts in the present and the future. Getting the death penalty entirely banned under the 8th Amendment would be a great way to secure our right to live should the government get more fascist in the future and should we ever have to maybe fight it.
You have been reading the libertarian posts about how the next good decision needs to eliminate the death penalty for “treason”.
The main reason why the conservative judge Kennedy (who thinks for himself more often than the social conservative members) made his decision, was because males in the USA these days are constantly accused falsely of rape.
Now the particular 2 child rapists who were affected by this decision were clearly guilty of incredible violence, with tons of evidence to prove they did what they were convicted of….but there were only 2 rapists affected after all.
And you cannot say that the anti-libertarian governor Bobbi Jindal was NOT grandstanding for political purposes (never a good reason to execute anyone).
Would you have someone executed for sleeping with a 17 year old (legal in most states and countries)? Would you have someone even jailed for that? How about the 2 men in California who are in jail because a girl who looked 18 said she was 18 on MySpace and there was every reason to believe she was 18…but she was shockingly 13? You would say the men should remain even one more day in jail? Why? Because you don’t think men should be dating even 18 year olds (for instance if they are over 30)?
I am sorry but this topic does not work to convince anyone who is not an anti-male social conservative or feminist…to vote libertarian.
The decision was meant to protect men from false accusations in the future. Also, a government of a feminist US state (or a evangelical US state) could easily start executing men who slept with 16 year olds while it would remain not even a crime in the next state.
My attitude is the conservative attitude here. The Men’s Rights Movement (MRM) is not amused at the right adopting the radical feminist desire to castrate men accused of rape. The feminists have gotten evanglists to mistakenly internalize the issue as one of their own over the past 20 years.
Check out http://www.mensnewsdaily.com to keep track of the highly conservative MRM.
James,
Although I may disagree with a few of your particulars, I agree with your comment as a whole.
We are not a strictly Libertarian–although I’m a long-time reader/subscriber to Reason and used to regularly read Liberty–some of the Libertarian views, IMO, would work great in a perfect world, but run into problems in a world populated by both good and evil people.
BUT we’re not strictly conservative, either. Our views on the Drug War, in particular, don’t win us many conservative plaudits. This is puzzling, in that conservatives are supposed to be for smaller government, also.
BUT, we are definitely rabidly free speech. And that’s why comments such as yours are welcome all the time.
Thanks for taking the time to stop by and leaving your comment.
“ALL men” — not just citizens — are endowed with certain unalienable rights. Says so right there. When within the jurisdiction of our government — which was established with the clear understanding that it would HONOR those rights — “all men” RETAIN those rights. If our government does not declare war (and Dr. Paul gave them a clear opportunity, which they notably declined to take), then there can be no PRISONERS of war. Can’t have it both ways. That rules out military processes, leaving us with civil, and habeas corpus must apply, just as it must to the subset of “all men” known as “citizens.” To “all men” within our government’s jurisdiction (and what’s so threatening about having their day in court, anyway? what is it we don’t want to hear? or perhaps more concerning, what does our GOVERNMENT not want us to hear?).
If one prefers the military process, there is a solution, but it’s not to pretend that my first sentence isn’t true. Because there’s always a persecuted whimsical subset of “all men” — perhaps even intentionally artificially created — that any one of us can belong to, and that 5 can rule. Or one, for that matter. Personally, I’d prefer not having to cope with figuring out what all those subsets could be in preparation for this time every year. Best just to adhere to the rule of law. “All men”…
It is incumbent upon progressive thinkers to review the reasoning behind many of the court’s judgements. The “living” Constitution is an ideology that at times both liberal and conservative judges have embraced thus you get the morphing for instance of the right to bear arms from “for militia purposes” to every man for himself. The right to habeus corpus has been a right of English common law for 800 years and as a result the right of Americans (and those held under American law) for 227 years. Various Administrations over the years have tried to curtail Americans’ rights but have been thwarted by the Supreme Court. It is a bulwark of justice and stability in an otherwise chaotic world and should be endeared by all Americans.