I have not once alluded to historic tradition. What I have said is simply that common law is subordinate to constitutional, regulatory, and statutory law inasmuch as common law can be wiped out by sufficiently-specific constitutional, regulatory, or statutory laws. I will admit to having played fast and loose with the term "civil law" in using it as a shorthand form for "constitutional, regulatory, and statutory law" in an effort to conform to your use of the term "civil law".
Contempt of court, for instance, is a common-law criminal offense.
In this you are incorrect. Contempt of Court is indeed codified in statutory law. Specifically in Title 18 of the US Code. State codes have similar provisions (e.g. Revised Code of Washington, Title 7, Chapter 21, or Texas Government Code section 21.002). Contempt of court does have its origins in common law, but as practiced today it is absolutely codified in statutory law.
I fully understand that the US legal system is founded upon common law principles. Likewise, I fully understand that, in the absence of sufficiently-specific codified law, a court's decision on unregulated issues is a de-facto "law". That does not change the fact that the courts have no power to act against existing codified law (provided, of course, that existing codified law is not subordinate to other, contradictory, codified law). As I illustrated in my earlier example, no court has the power to determine that the BAC limit "ought" to be 0.05% when codified law states that the BAC limit is 0.08%.
The bottom line is this: I have continuously been in agreement with you that common law is a vital and integral part of the legal tradition in the United States. My point is merely that common law is subordinate to codified law.
Statutes need to be interpreted with reference to the constitutional scheme under which they exist. This means that one needs to impose particular constructions on the statute to make it accord with the framework in place: i.e., one needs to determine what it "ought" to mean.
Our difficulty here seems to be definitional. You appear to be using a very broad definition of "ought" whereas my use of the term has a much more specific meaning. When I speak of a court determining what a law "ought" to be, I am not speaking about a court deciding whether an existing law applies to a given circumstance, but rather about a court making substantive changes to existing civil laws. For example, drunk driving laws stipulate a 0.08% BAC as the baseline for intoxication. A court cannot decide that this "ought" to be 0.05% and convict someone of a DUI anyway. Surely you can see the difference between my use of "ought" and the much looser definition you have been using.
Common law courts can also invent new legal principles out of whole cloth. Most of our law was originally formulated this way. It continues to happen all the time: in the area of copyright law in the US, for instance, both the Sony and Grokster cases imported new concepts ("staple article of commerce" and "inducing infringement") into the law of copyright which had not existed before, and that were not found in any statute.
Once again, we have an issue that is apparently due to an overly-broad definition on your part. "Legal principles" are not synonymous with laws. No new laws were created in either of the cases you mentioned, rather, existing laws were applied to new technological developments and the resulting decisions formed legal precedents that are unlikely to change due to the doctrine of stare decisis. Both decisions are firmly based in the pre-existing civil laws. Moreover, both decisions remain vulnerable to sufficiently-specific civil laws should such civil laws be implemented in the future. That is to say, should the legislative body pass a law specifically stating that any and all recording devices are illegal the court's decision in the Sony case would be superseded by this new civil law. Yes, the court could claim that such a law was unconstitutional, but that decision likewise has its foundation in civil law (i.e. the US Constitution) and would not be a new "law" in any true sense, but rather an application of an existing law (the Constitution) to a new situation (the passage of a new subordinate law).
Like I said: if you don't understand the operation of the common law, you should read a book about it.
It is very clear which of us is failing to understand the other.
You should read a book that explains the system of common law that governs jurisdictions like the UK, US, Canada, etc. Then you would be less uninformed about how said system works, and how the common law system is perfectly compatible with democracy; indeed, how early conceptions of democracy (on the US constitutional model) embraced the common law system as a check on the excesses of the executive and legislature. You seem to think that living in a civil law jurisdiction would provide you with a more perfect democracy; if that's true, I encourage you to move to France or Quebec and keep us posted on the dramatic enhancement of your democratic experience.
Are you suggesting that common law can supersede constitutional, statutory, and regulatory law?
Common law certainly interacts with the other forms of law to form a coherent legal climate and the principle of stare decisis is a necessity if one desires anything resembling stability, but neither of those facts can be rationally interpreted as indicating that a court has any true say in what a law "ought" to be. While there does (and should) exist an ability for a court to re-interpret a law in light of new information or developments (as, for example, free speech laws have been re-interpreted with the advent of the internet), a court always needs a compelling rational basis for its decisions within existing civil law.
In Loving v. Virginia, for example, Mr. and Mrs. Loving never denied being married -- rather, they argued that interracial marriage shouldn't have been illegal.
In Loving v. Virginia the basis for the case was that state laws prohibiting interracial marriage violated the equal protection clause of the 14th Amendment and were therefore invalid. The claim was not "X shouldn't be illegal", the claim was "X isn't illegal" because the 14th Amendment supersedes the state law.
I know that it seems as though I'm picking nits by stressing the difference between "shouldn't be" and "isn't", but there's a big difference from a legal standpoint. Whether something "should" be legal or not is irrelevant to the courts, they only care about whether it actually is legal based on the current interpretation of applicable laws. Only the legislative body is concerned with whether or not something should be legal.
Now here's a question for you. Why not drive-by-wire with a steering wheel?
I can think of one very important reason: Fail-safe mode. It's the same reason that brakes are not "brake by wire" yet and still rely on a hydraulic system. Even if all the electronics on a car fail, the brakes and steering still need to work. Yes, you lose power assist, but the brakes and steering, having a mechanical link, are still essentially functional and still work.
If an electronic throttle fails, the car can't accelerate. Inconvenient, but not necessarily dangerous. If an electronic steering system failed, the car would lose directional control. That's dangerous no matter how one looks at it. Having the mechanical link provides a failsafe measure.
Usually if you get added via CC or are part of a mass "To:" it's because you've been pulled in to something, and it now concerns you.
Then the subject line had better summarize why I'm suddenly involved, or, at the very least, I should be called out specifically in a line item near the top of the E-mail body with a specific request. If neither of those are present when I scan the E-mail, I'm going to ignore it because there's a 99.9999999999999999999999999999% chance that I have absolutely no reason to be included on that E-mail.
The idea is that they aren't sure who would be best suited to answer.
Competent personnel will research this before they send the E-mail, rather than spamming an entire department. When I have a question and I don't know who can reply, I work with my manager or my other business contacts, offline, to find out which team should know and who our point of contact for that team is, then I send the E-mail directly to that person. I have yet to have an experience where that one person was not able to either answer the question, or forward the E-mail to another single person who could. Carpet-bombing a department with a mass E-mail because you're too lazy to do the legwork to figure out the contact person is unprofessional.
If you suddenly find meeting minutes in your inbox, it means something happened that made them decide you needed to be notified.
In which case, they need to send a clearly-titled E-mail that explains the specific reasons why they decided to notify me. I am not a mind reader. I cannot deduce why I'm needed by reading someone else's five-sentence summary of a two-hour meeting.
This is especially true if you're seeing the minutes even after not being invited.
Same as above, only now the E-mail with an explicit explanation of why I'm being informed (and of what, precisely, I am being informed) is many orders of magnitude greater because there's not even a baseline familiarity with the project.
There are only two types of people that I can see taking your view of E-mail: Recent college graduates who do not have work experience and PHB's.
"please explain what the methodology is by which we should determine which sections of the Bible are literal and which are metaphorical."
Does it matter? Would it make one jot of difference to the overall message of love and charity conveyed by the Bible if the entire thing were metaphor? Of course not. The message loses nothing at all by being considered to be entirely metaphorical.
There is not now and never has been any data anywhere that proves anything conclusively. I cannot even prove conclusively that I exist. Pointing out that Evolution cannot be conclusively proven is a non-starter.
As far as offering evidence goes, again, that is a non-starter. Just because something is offered as evidence does not make that evidence credible. Thousands of people offer many pieces of "evidence" that show that the moon landing was a fake. That doesn't make that evidence valid. Similarly, creationists offer "evidence" that is nearly universally dismissed within the scientific community, yet they still are willing to count it as "evidence" in favor of creationism.
I have no doubt that you could present many things that you believe are evidence for creationism, but I will go ahead and state right now that I do not believe that any of them will be anywhere near as solid as the evidence provided by DNA analysis, the fossil record, and observed micro-evolution. The theory of evolution was, and still is, derived from observed data. The data came first, the theory second. Creationism, however, inverts this natural order. The hypothesis of creationism came first, and those who embrace that hypothesis mis-represent the facts to fit their hypothesis.
To borrow a line from Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, "It is a capital mistake to theorize before one has data. Insensibly one begins to twist facts to suit theories, instead of theories to suit facts." Evolution is a theory that is continuously adapted to suit the facts. Creationism is static and mandates the adaptation of facts to suit it.
This constant harping that, "Evolution is just a theory" shows a dire lack of scientific understanding. The common usage of "theory" as something that is just a guess is wildly inaccurate from a scientific standpoint.
Theory, noun: a well-substantiated explanation of some aspect of the natural world; an organized system of accepted knowledge that applies in a variety of circumstances
Hypothesis, noun: a tentative insight into the natural world; a concept that is not verified
Evolution is a theory in the above sense. Creationism is a hypothesis. There is a gaping chasm between the two. Evolution is well-supported by existing empirical evidence. It is, as all scientific "truths" are, the best explanation we currently have of the facts that we have observed. As with all scientific explanations, Evolution encourages continued research and revision as new data are discovered. Creationism, in addition to lacking the external evidence that Evolution enjoys, restricts the incentive to continue research and to revise the hypothesis over time.
In short, Evolution explains the observed facts as best we can at this time. It remains open to revision as new data are discovered. It does not purport to be "true for all time", and, in fact, no scientific explanation can make such claims.
Re:Will they ever listen?
on
The Cult of Kindle
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· Score: 3, Interesting
The Device Software will provide Amazon with data about your Device and its interaction with the Service (such as available memory, up-time, log files and signal strength) and information related to the content on your Device and your use of it (such as automatic bookmarking of the last page read and content deletions from the Device). Annotations, bookmarks, notes, highlights, or similar markings you make in your Device are backed up through the Service.
That's what really disturbs me about the always-on EV-DO. I really don't like the idea of Amazon knowing everything that I have on my reader. It's one thing for them to keep track of everything that I buy through their service, it's quite another for them to track any content I have on the reader. If I download a copy of the Koran through Project Gutenberg and put that on my Kindle, am I going to be paid a visit by Homeland Security if I view the wrong passages too many times? Or what if I spend too much time reading a copy of "The Communist Manifesto"? Can you imagine if information could have been tracked like that during the McCarthy era?
Slashdot Mirror
Once again, you misunderstand what I have said.
I have not once alluded to historic tradition. What I have said is simply that common law is subordinate to constitutional, regulatory, and statutory law inasmuch as common law can be wiped out by sufficiently-specific constitutional, regulatory, or statutory laws. I will admit to having played fast and loose with the term "civil law" in using it as a shorthand form for "constitutional, regulatory, and statutory law" in an effort to conform to your use of the term "civil law".
Contempt of court, for instance, is a common-law criminal offense.
In this you are incorrect. Contempt of Court is indeed codified in statutory law. Specifically in Title 18 of the US Code. State codes have similar provisions (e.g. Revised Code of Washington, Title 7, Chapter 21, or Texas Government Code section 21.002). Contempt of court does have its origins in common law, but as practiced today it is absolutely codified in statutory law.
I fully understand that the US legal system is founded upon common law principles. Likewise, I fully understand that, in the absence of sufficiently-specific codified law, a court's decision on unregulated issues is a de-facto "law". That does not change the fact that the courts have no power to act against existing codified law (provided, of course, that existing codified law is not subordinate to other, contradictory, codified law). As I illustrated in my earlier example, no court has the power to determine that the BAC limit "ought" to be 0.05% when codified law states that the BAC limit is 0.08%.
The bottom line is this: I have continuously been in agreement with you that common law is a vital and integral part of the legal tradition in the United States. My point is merely that common law is subordinate to codified law.
Statutes need to be interpreted with reference to the constitutional scheme under which they exist. This means that one needs to impose particular constructions on the statute to make it accord with the framework in place: i.e., one needs to determine what it "ought" to mean.
Our difficulty here seems to be definitional. You appear to be using a very broad definition of "ought" whereas my use of the term has a much more specific meaning. When I speak of a court determining what a law "ought" to be, I am not speaking about a court deciding whether an existing law applies to a given circumstance, but rather about a court making substantive changes to existing civil laws. For example, drunk driving laws stipulate a 0.08% BAC as the baseline for intoxication. A court cannot decide that this "ought" to be 0.05% and convict someone of a DUI anyway. Surely you can see the difference between my use of "ought" and the much looser definition you have been using.
Common law courts can also invent new legal principles out of whole cloth. Most of our law was originally formulated this way. It continues to happen all the time: in the area of copyright law in the US, for instance, both the Sony and Grokster cases imported new concepts ("staple article of commerce" and "inducing infringement") into the law of copyright which had not existed before, and that were not found in any statute.
Once again, we have an issue that is apparently due to an overly-broad definition on your part. "Legal principles" are not synonymous with laws. No new laws were created in either of the cases you mentioned, rather, existing laws were applied to new technological developments and the resulting decisions formed legal precedents that are unlikely to change due to the doctrine of stare decisis. Both decisions are firmly based in the pre-existing civil laws. Moreover, both decisions remain vulnerable to sufficiently-specific civil laws should such civil laws be implemented in the future. That is to say, should the legislative body pass a law specifically stating that any and all recording devices are illegal the court's decision in the Sony case would be superseded by this new civil law. Yes, the court could claim that such a law was unconstitutional, but that decision likewise has its foundation in civil law (i.e. the US Constitution) and would not be a new "law" in any true sense, but rather an application of an existing law (the Constitution) to a new situation (the passage of a new subordinate law).
Like I said: if you don't understand the operation of the common law, you should read a book about it.
It is very clear which of us is failing to understand the other.
You should read a book that explains the system of common law that governs jurisdictions like the UK, US, Canada, etc. Then you would be less uninformed about how said system works, and how the common law system is perfectly compatible with democracy; indeed, how early conceptions of democracy (on the US constitutional model) embraced the common law system as a check on the excesses of the executive and legislature. You seem to think that living in a civil law jurisdiction would provide you with a more perfect democracy; if that's true, I encourage you to move to France or Quebec and keep us posted on the dramatic enhancement of your democratic experience.
Are you suggesting that common law can supersede constitutional, statutory, and regulatory law?
Common law certainly interacts with the other forms of law to form a coherent legal climate and the principle of stare decisis is a necessity if one desires anything resembling stability, but neither of those facts can be rationally interpreted as indicating that a court has any true say in what a law "ought" to be. While there does (and should) exist an ability for a court to re-interpret a law in light of new information or developments (as, for example, free speech laws have been re-interpreted with the advent of the internet), a court always needs a compelling rational basis for its decisions within existing civil law.
In Loving v. Virginia, for example, Mr. and Mrs. Loving never denied being married -- rather, they argued that interracial marriage shouldn't have been illegal.
In Loving v. Virginia the basis for the case was that state laws prohibiting interracial marriage violated the equal protection clause of the 14th Amendment and were therefore invalid. The claim was not "X shouldn't be illegal", the claim was "X isn't illegal" because the 14th Amendment supersedes the state law.
I know that it seems as though I'm picking nits by stressing the difference between "shouldn't be" and "isn't", but there's a big difference from a legal standpoint. Whether something "should" be legal or not is irrelevant to the courts, they only care about whether it actually is legal based on the current interpretation of applicable laws. Only the legislative body is concerned with whether or not something should be legal.
Now here's a question for you. Why not drive-by-wire with a steering wheel?
I can think of one very important reason: Fail-safe mode. It's the same reason that brakes are not "brake by wire" yet and still rely on a hydraulic system. Even if all the electronics on a car fail, the brakes and steering still need to work. Yes, you lose power assist, but the brakes and steering, having a mechanical link, are still essentially functional and still work.
If an electronic throttle fails, the car can't accelerate. Inconvenient, but not necessarily dangerous. If an electronic steering system failed, the car would lose directional control. That's dangerous no matter how one looks at it. Having the mechanical link provides a failsafe measure.
Usually if you get added via CC or are part of a mass "To:" it's because you've been pulled in to something, and it now concerns you.
Then the subject line had better summarize why I'm suddenly involved, or, at the very least, I should be called out specifically in a line item near the top of the E-mail body with a specific request. If neither of those are present when I scan the E-mail, I'm going to ignore it because there's a 99.9999999999999999999999999999% chance that I have absolutely no reason to be included on that E-mail.
The idea is that they aren't sure who would be best suited to answer.
Competent personnel will research this before they send the E-mail, rather than spamming an entire department. When I have a question and I don't know who can reply, I work with my manager or my other business contacts, offline, to find out which team should know and who our point of contact for that team is, then I send the E-mail directly to that person. I have yet to have an experience where that one person was not able to either answer the question, or forward the E-mail to another single person who could. Carpet-bombing a department with a mass E-mail because you're too lazy to do the legwork to figure out the contact person is unprofessional.
If you suddenly find meeting minutes in your inbox, it means something happened that made them decide you needed to be notified.
In which case, they need to send a clearly-titled E-mail that explains the specific reasons why they decided to notify me. I am not a mind reader. I cannot deduce why I'm needed by reading someone else's five-sentence summary of a two-hour meeting.
This is especially true if you're seeing the minutes even after not being invited.
Same as above, only now the E-mail with an explicit explanation of why I'm being informed (and of what, precisely, I am being informed) is many orders of magnitude greater because there's not even a baseline familiarity with the project.
There are only two types of people that I can see taking your view of E-mail: Recent college graduates who do not have work experience and PHB's.
"please explain what the methodology is by which we should determine which sections of the Bible are literal and which are metaphorical."
Does it matter? Would it make one jot of difference to the overall message of love and charity conveyed by the Bible if the entire thing were metaphor? Of course not. The message loses nothing at all by being considered to be entirely metaphorical.
There is not now and never has been any data anywhere that proves anything conclusively. I cannot even prove conclusively that I exist. Pointing out that Evolution cannot be conclusively proven is a non-starter.
As far as offering evidence goes, again, that is a non-starter. Just because something is offered as evidence does not make that evidence credible. Thousands of people offer many pieces of "evidence" that show that the moon landing was a fake. That doesn't make that evidence valid. Similarly, creationists offer "evidence" that is nearly universally dismissed within the scientific community, yet they still are willing to count it as "evidence" in favor of creationism.
I have no doubt that you could present many things that you believe are evidence for creationism, but I will go ahead and state right now that I do not believe that any of them will be anywhere near as solid as the evidence provided by DNA analysis, the fossil record, and observed micro-evolution. The theory of evolution was, and still is, derived from observed data. The data came first, the theory second. Creationism, however, inverts this natural order. The hypothesis of creationism came first, and those who embrace that hypothesis mis-represent the facts to fit their hypothesis.
To borrow a line from Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, "It is a capital mistake to theorize before one has data. Insensibly one begins to twist facts to suit theories, instead of theories to suit facts." Evolution is a theory that is continuously adapted to suit the facts. Creationism is static and mandates the adaptation of facts to suit it.
This constant harping that, "Evolution is just a theory" shows a dire lack of scientific understanding. The common usage of "theory" as something that is just a guess is wildly inaccurate from a scientific standpoint.
Theory, noun: a well-substantiated explanation of some aspect of the natural world; an organized system of accepted knowledge that applies in a variety of circumstances
Hypothesis, noun: a tentative insight into the natural world; a concept that is not verified
Evolution is a theory in the above sense. Creationism is a hypothesis. There is a gaping chasm between the two. Evolution is well-supported by existing empirical evidence. It is, as all scientific "truths" are, the best explanation we currently have of the facts that we have observed. As with all scientific explanations, Evolution encourages continued research and revision as new data are discovered. Creationism, in addition to lacking the external evidence that Evolution enjoys, restricts the incentive to continue research and to revise the hypothesis over time.
In short, Evolution explains the observed facts as best we can at this time. It remains open to revision as new data are discovered. It does not purport to be "true for all time", and, in fact, no scientific explanation can make such claims.
The Device Software will provide Amazon with data about your Device and its interaction with the Service (such as available memory, up-time, log files and signal strength) and information related to the content on your Device and your use of it (such as automatic bookmarking of the last page read and content deletions from the Device). Annotations, bookmarks, notes, highlights, or similar markings you make in your Device are backed up through the Service.
That's what really disturbs me about the always-on EV-DO. I really don't like the idea of Amazon knowing everything that I have on my reader. It's one thing for them to keep track of everything that I buy through their service, it's quite another for them to track any content I have on the reader. If I download a copy of the Koran through Project Gutenberg and put that on my Kindle, am I going to be paid a visit by Homeland Security if I view the wrong passages too many times? Or what if I spend too much time reading a copy of "The Communist Manifesto"? Can you imagine if information could have been tracked like that during the McCarthy era?