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A Short Summary Following the Pirate Bay Trial
Dan B. writes "The Guardian has a nice piece wrapping up the trial in Sweden for the co-defendants in the P2P trial-of-the-decade, that of The Pirate Bay. 'Today, the defense lawyers summed up. It was a short trial and not a particularly merry one, but it could have far-reaching effects.' Surprisingly, when the defendants hit the stand they didn't bash copyright or take a libertarian approach; it all came back to the tried and tested formula for criminal defense, 'I am not responsible.'"
What makes you think that it started or ended with Bush? Conservatives have been bitching about activist judges ever since SCOTUS found a non-existent right to privacy and said that it gives you the right to kill your unborn fetus/child/what-have-you.
Mind you, I don't think a right to privacy is a bad concept, I just think we should actually amend it into the Constitution and not decree that it exists.....
I want peace on earth and goodwill toward man.
We are the United States Government! We don't do that sort of thing.
So how do you explain asking "do you not have the right to a jury trial[...]?" without applying American law and preconceptions?
"Jury trial" is no "right" to "not have" if the judicial system is different.
The Constitution of the United States sets out and limits the powers of government.
And there again is where the liberal reading of the Constitution has failed us. The liberal reading of the Constitution is generally the reading that finds things within it that don't exist -- like the Interstate Commerce Clause giving the Feds the power to regulate someone growing pot for their personal consumption -- a strict constructionalist reading would suggest that the Feds don't have the power to do this.
The fact that a right to privacy isn't explicit in the Constitution or the Bill of Rights, cannot be evidence prima facie that a right to privacy does not exist.
Neither is the 14th amendment evidence that a right to privacy does exist. And seeing as how I was referring to the Roe v. Wade ruling I would point to the 10th amendment, which suggests (to this non-lawyer anyway) that the states should have the right to regulate the practice of abortion as the population therein sees fit.
I want peace on earth and goodwill toward man.
We are the United States Government! We don't do that sort of thing.