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Supreme Court Won't Hear ACLU Wiretap Case
I Don't Believe in Imaginary Property writes "The US Supreme Court refused without comment the ACLU's appeal of a lower court ruling that prevented them from suing over the government's warrantless TSP program. The problem was a Catch-22: they lack legal 'standing' to sue over it because they can't prove that they were suspected terrorists, but neither can they find out who was actually suspected, because this is a matter of national security." Update: 02/20 00:17 GMT by KD : Removed an incorrect statement after a reader pointed out that, with the expiration of the Protect America Act this weekend, foreign surveillance will revert to oversight by the FISA court.
As demonstrated by their refusal to use it? The Supreme Court is probably the most easily abused of the three branches, it's true, but you've got to remember that there are still checks and balances. The president can refuse to execute a ruling (technically it's illegal, but it's been done), Congress can rewrite the law in a way that gets around the ruling, and they can even start the process of amending the constitution.
Looking from a purely constitutional perspective, the supreme court is also the branch that has abused its power the least imho. Congress routinely enacts laws that are only constitutional if justified by the "general welfare" clause of the preamble, not any part of the actual constitution. The president can send troops anywhere to fight that he wants without a declaration of war, and this president has outright ignored several parts of the constitution.
So, while I am a strong believer that the supreme court has had its share of overreaching rulings that weren't strictly constitutional, I think that pales in comparison to the abuses that the other branches have managed to pull off.
Those boxes you use to defend your freedom, we've already failed on soap, ballot, and jury.
Damn, and I'm out of practice on the last one.
You can't talk about Wikipedia's flaws on Wikipedia
Recommended reading: Kafka's Before The Law Between this and secret laws for security checkpoints at airports, Kafka's absurd vignette is looking looking unsettlingly normal.
When it comes down to it, this ruling (and the ruling of the lower court) isn't 100% onerous, because a US citizen who is tried using evidence obtained in this manner would finally have standing to contest the government's actions. In such a case, if (or, should I say, when) the government's wiretapping is found to be illegal, the evidence would be suppressed, and if the government's case was otherwise weak, the charges could be dismissed. If a person isn't practically affected in their ability to conduct legal day-to-day activities, then it's a reasonable conclusion (whether or not it's a correct one) that they were not damaged and therefore have no standing to sue.
Of course, it's still 95% onerous, because there are still people reviewing the wiretap data (recordings, records, etc.) and those people are privy to otherwise private conversations.
That hand doesn't feed them. They serve for life. The president has no political power over sitting justices. They ARE loyal cronies, but that won't change with administrations.
> the supreme court is also the branch that has abused its power the least
Really? You should double check the Constitution with regards to the enumerated powers (you know, what the 10th amendment discusses) of SCOTUS... in fact they are the ones (not the constitution) that declared themselves the supreme arbiter of the constitution (see Marbury v. Madison).
Technically speaking... the scope of power SCOTUS has is in of itself unconstitutional... problem is that as things have evolved... in order to change things back... we'd either need a SCOTUS ruling (of them giving up their power) or a constitutional amendment... which could still in theory be ignored by them (see cases of how they have ignored the 10th amendment).
Help Brendan pay off his student loans
In Free Lunch, David Cay Johnston notes a trend in limiting access to the courts. In this way, If someone somewhere doesn't want a case to be heard, they just have to buy a little influence and can claim a legitimate victory. Note the reason the courts dismissed ACLU's earlier efforts in this line: only persons under surveillance have standing to sue, and the nature of the program is such that you're not allowed to know that you're under surveillance. That is, if you can prove that you have standing, you can be imprisoned. If you can prove that someone else has standing, you can be imprisoned.
In the book, Johnston details one case of a couple who owned an auto repair business in a spot where (I think) Jeep wanted green space for its factory complex. You can guess whose complaint was thrown out. These days it seems like there are only checks and balances when they're backed up by personal relationships or bullying. Note the number of subpoenas the white house has simply ignored.
When the axe came to the forest, the trees said, "Look out - the handle was once one of us."
This particular legal doctrine has nothing to do with the Bush administration. Despite the Catch-22 of "lack of standing", it's used quite often. Courts have been avoiding Second Amendment challenges for decades, using the same rationale.
A writ of certiorari requires only four votes among the nine Supreme Court justices. Four justices: Stevens, Souter, Ginsburg and Breyer, are generally thought of as the Court's liberal wing. If they felt strongly about this case, they could have voted to do so.
Really? You should double check the Constitution with regards to the enumerated powers (you know, what the 10th amendment discusses) of SCOTUS... in fact they are the ones (not the constitution) that declared themselves the supreme arbiter of the constitution (see Marbury v. Madison).
How you figure? The Constitution itself states that the Judicial branch shall have jurisdiction over all cases arising under the Law of the U.S. and the Constitution. Marbury v Madison was just a case where a Law passed by Congress conflicted with the Constitution -- and again, it is clear from the Constitution that in such a case, the Constitution wins. That case may have formalized the notion of "Judicial Review", but the principle itself is quite Constitutional.
Oh and by the way, the statute which the Court ruled in Marbury v Madison to be Unconstitutional was one which increased the Court's power. It's kind of hard to call this a power grab when the executed their Constitutional power to judge a case under the law in order to reject an Unconstitutional increase in power.
see cases of how they have ignored the 10th amendment
True enough, everyone pretty much ignores the 9th and 10th. But it's worth pointing out that they ignore this ammendment by not finding a law passed by Congress to be in conflict with the 10th, and thus Unconstitutional. How exactly would they do this if not via Judicial Review as established via Marbury v Madison?
In other words this is a case of the Judicial Branch abusing their powers by under-utilizing them, resulting in an increase in power of the other two branches.
The enemies of Democracy are
Note, of course, that the "general welfare" clause was not intended to permit unrestrained growth of government services for whatever vaguely-collective reason Congresspeople might concoct in the service's defense. The "general welfare" clause was not intended to permit galloping socialism.
At least, that's true according to James Madison in Federalist 41. Alexander Hamilton, OTOH, took the broader view that Congress may spend as it sees fit, so long as it doesn't favor a particular party.
Of course, even according to Hamilton's relatively-leftist, pro-government position, expenses to pay for, say, private military contractors, farm subsidies (which mostly go to the largest 20% of farms, often owned by e.g. Tyson Foods), welfare checks for the poor, (benefiting a subset of the population is not necessarily a benefit to the whole population. This doesn't make welfare a bad idea (though its implementations thus-far have ranged from moderately-useful at best (e.g. the EITC), and idiotic at worst) - merely, it conflicts with the way the U.S. Constitution both stands and as was intended by its authors), etc. would, I suspect, be invalid reasons for government spending.
Luckily for American Congresspeople, the majority of the American public has neither read the Constitution or Bill of Rights, nor has been asked to think hard about those documents -- we can thank the public education that the Dept. of Education tries to manage -- and the 20% or so who might have given them more than a passing thought tend neither to abide by those documents nor care about their intent. Combined with incentives to ignore the meaning of the highest law of the land, Congresspeople thus trample the documents they are supposed to uphold...
Is Capitalism Good for the Poor?
Nope, the pot stamp laws are still on the books and enforced in many states. It's easier to prosecute someone for tax evasion then pot dealing so they're kept around. The drug scheduling was developed to harminoze and simplify the laws on the books at the time of passage, not due to any overturned laws by the Supreme court.
There's a pretty simple way out of the catch, although it would be hard to do and potentially open pandora's box: have Congress pass a law which allows legal challenges to the Constitutionality of laws and actions without having to show actual damages. The only reason it's a problem now is because of the technicalities of the laws, which could easily be remedied.
On the other hand, good luck in getting Congress to do something as blatantly beneficial for the country as that...
So why again does Bush and Cheney want the price of oil to rise? Last time I checked they no longer own any oil assets and would not personally profit for a rise or fall in oil...
Last I checked they still have plenty of friends in the oil industry, and may want extremely cushy and well paying jobs in a ridiculously profitable industry after they're done running the country. Of course Cheney's Halliburton stock option sales all go to charity, so there's no direct personal conflict of interest. Thus there's no motivation whatsoever and all those no-bid contracts were perfectly fair? Yeah right, making huge bank for all their oil and defense contractor friends is a huge motivation, and one they themselves will ultimately reap the benefit from.
How much you want to bet Cheney ends up back on the Board of Directors for any number of companies who directly profited from the war in Iraq?
Also, the Oil futures market is much larger than anything going on in Iraq. Oil is rising not because of anything Bush or Cheney or the US is doing, but rather because you have over 2 billion people slowing rising in the middle class in Asia.
Uh yeah I'm pretty sure "Middle East insecurity" has a major impact on the futures market, what with the whole thing being speculation on the future (both near and long term) supply, and Middle East sources still being a huge portion of that supply. Prices jumped hugely after 9/11, again after the invasion of Iraq. Yes there has been an otherwise oscillating but upward trend due to general increasing consumption and lessening of reserves, and yes the market is much larger than just Iraq. To conclude that therefore nothing Bush or Cheney has done has affected the price of oil is completely illogical.
The enemies of Democracy are
No it decreased the power of the other two branches, because they can only act with the approval of the Judicial Branch - not striking down a law is a tacit approval. To play devil's advocate - why can't the President serve as an arbitor of Constitutionality by rejecting the execution of a law?
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