danarhea said:
Congress can write all the laws they want, but if the Supreme Court rules those laws unconstitutional, via separation of powers, the Supremes have the right to nullify it.
The Court has the authority to rule any way they please on any law.
Hmm....they don't seem to have any means of enforcement. Fancy that.
Now, that would mean the legal structure of the country has collapsed, and the situation would have to be pretty extreme for this to happen.
danarhea said:
One point you brought up, however is valid. Congress DOES have the power of the purse. This would be a very interesting battle, and would lead to a constitutional crisis. By the power of the purse, would congress be attempting extortion in order to bend the will of the Supreme Court, thus themselves indirectly becoming the interpreter of the law?
The courts have ruled often in education cases that a particular local or state government isn't spending "enough" to meet various laws, and those same courts have occasionally demanded that taxes be levied to finance their whims. In one case, they even jailed a city commissioner for contempt of court because he refused to cast the vote needed to pass the tax increase.
No one does anything about these excesses. Those judges should all be impeached.
And don't ask me to reference this, those were all cases I recall from the '80's.
danarhea said:
This would be quite interesting. This issue also brings up another question. If Nixon had been a popular president, would Congress have gotten away with cutting off the funds for the Vietnam war, thus forcing Nixon to end it?
Oh, I don't know. Nixon won re-election by a landslide '72, the Paris Peace Treaty was signed in '73, and most US combat troops were home by the middle of '73. Saigon didn't fall until April, '75.
Don't know what this has to do with the courts, but resistance to the war wasn't just a Nixon phenom. Johnson refused to run again because of it.
danarhea said:
As for the use of international and foreign law by the Supremes, that is also a tricky issue, since much of our law is derived from foreign sources, much of it from British common law.
No, it's not a tricky issue at all. We have this thing called the "Constitution", which is a written law. Laws passed in countries whose governments didn't exist when the Constitution was ratified should have no bearing on how American laws are interpreted. It's that simple.
Like I said, if it's in the Constitution, there isn't a need to wander abroad looking for a French whore to do the trick instead, is there?
danarhea said:
The framers of our Consitution used some ideas from foreign philosophers and sources when they wrote the document. So where is the line that delineates what laws, and how foreign the laws, the Supreme Court should use? That is a very gray area. Who makes that decision?
No, it's not gray at all. Perhaps this following quote might make things clearer as to when and how the dividing line is defined?
WHEN in the Course of human Events,
it becomes necessary for one People to dissolve the Political Bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the Powers of the Earth, the separate and equal Station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God entitle them, a decent Respect to the Opinions of Mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the Separation.
WE hold these Truths to be self-evident, that all Men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness -- That to secure these Rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just Powers from the Consent of the Governed, that whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these Ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its Foundation on such Principles, and organizing its Powers in such Form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient Causes; and accordingly all Experience hath shewn, that Mankind are more disposed to suffer, while Evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the Forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long Train of Abuses and Usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object, evinces a Design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their Right, it is their Duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future Security. Such has been the patient Sufferance of these Colonies; and such is now the Necessity which constrains them to alter their former Systems of Government. The History of the present King of Great- Britain is a History of repeated Injuries and Usurpations, all having in direct Object the Establishment of an absolute Tyranny over these States. To prove this, let Facts be submitted to a candid World.
...
I'm not sure who wrote this, but it clearly states that a new government is being formed with laws crafted to be independent of those of other nations, as the citizens of the new nation saw fit to do.
Certainly there's a heritage with OLD english common law. Note the emphasis on the word "OLD".
The Constitution took effect in March, 1789, with the various Amendments ratified later. There. Voila! Another dividing line! The US Congress, the legislatures of the various states, and the people themselves made that decision. For the courts to start mixing the good with the European now is simply criminal, and they should be impeached for doing it.
