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Science, Culture, & Humanities / Re: Education
« on: December 30, 2010, 07:13:23 AM »
GM, I am not sure why you are asking me that question based on the article I posted.
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The question of elected and unelected judges is very interesting, and more complicated than that sounds. For example, the Iowa vote was a form of impeachment by the voters. The new justices will still be appointed and confirmed by the state executive and legislative branches respectively (as I understand it). Urban legend here in Minnesota is that the best judges were picked by the wholly unqualified independent governor, Jesse the wrestler, because he did not have a pool of partisan, party, political paybacks to attend to and was able to select based only on merit. That being the exception rather the rule indicates that the ordinary process of appointment-confirmation is less than perfect and objective also.
The Des Moines register contemplates the question of how the ousters will affect the pool of potential new justices. http://www.desmoinesregister.com/article/20101120/NEWS/11200334/How-will-ousters-affect-pool-of-justice-applicants- My feeling is that of course it has an effect but the experience of being ousted puts you in private practice with increased pay and the credential of being a former supreme court justice. That is not all bad, so it seems to me that a good justice will still do what is right in their mind and not necessarily cling to power like a typical Washington politician.
The full faith and credit clause pointed out by bigdog is what makes these policy questions settled by such small numbers of people so huge in implication.
Regarding Stevens, thank you bigdog for conceding point 3) to me. (smiles!) For some reason I never see that point acknowledged in death penalty discussions. Important context of point 3) is that Stevens prefaced his 5 points with this: "To be reasonable, legislative imposition of death eligibility must be rooted in benefits for at least one of the five classes of persons affected by capital offenses." I will settle for one out of five and rest my case.
Clarifying my point on elitism, I only intended it as a negative when judging the benefits of the general public as per Stevens point 4). I certainly value choosing the finest minds and highest character for the people who will review the technical arguments of constitutional and case law for interpretation, though I often disagree with them.
Unequal application is a concern. I hadn't seen the argument before regarding elected/unelected judges. I see it made over black vs. white convicts and don't know what to make of it. What I see in the neighborhoods is how unfair it is that black people are disproportionately crime victims in black neighborhoods, not that the guilty are pursued or punished too harshly.
GM,
Taking a line from one of my favorite movies, "What we have here is a failure to communicate." In the state of nature, at least as I conceive it, it is every man for himself. This means that there are no formalized groups, no cultural mores, and no us vs. them. It more more me vs. "all y'all". In every instance that you described, Dutch vs. slaves, tribe vs. tribe, etc. there is one formalized group that has taken liberties with "the other." All this is a smaller version of war. England vs. France, US vs. Germany and the like.
Our bipedal, prehuman ancestors were slower and weaker than most anything else, especially the predators. Only working in groups could they survive. The same is true today. No man or woman is an island. We emerge from parents, are socialized (or not) and fuction (or not) within whatever culture/tribe/nation we find ourselves. We reflect both nature and nurture. Isolated humans don't tend to do well, either physically or mentally. Prison inmates that are segrigated from othes, tend to develop serious mental illnesses, even with no history of mental illness.
Survival experts can teach you how to survive until you make to a place where other humans are. Very few can teach you how to exist long term away from any human culture. A hunter-gatherer in the Amazon rainforest or the Highlands of New Guinea are experts at surviving in those environments, they still need their fellow humans for long term survival.
The social contract has been discussed by philosophers, they didn't invent it, just as physicists didn't invent gravity.
Nature and that includes humans are "red in tooth and claw". A quick look at how humans exist across the planet and through recorded history shows that places that lack the rule of law and/or the protection of individual freedoms are not the places most would want to live, though that tends to be the nasty, brutish reality for most humans.
My desire is to preserve the rule of law and public safety while balancing the rights and freedoms of the individual. Neither is absolute.
My view of the social contract is informed by my interactions with those involved in the various aspects of the criminal justice system, including those who have committed violent crimes seeking their own vision of justice, mostly what NPR calls "Members of the gang community". Funny enough, they don't often refer to various philosophers when relating their views on "Putting work in for my homie".
Glad to have BD with us.
"when elected judges are more likely to execute than non-elected judges, then there is no equal protection of the laws, and that IS unconstitutional."
The inference being that electing judges is to blame? Can we not equally say that unelected judges abusing the power which is in their hands to insert their own opinions are the unconstitutional ones?
The 5th Amendment
No person shall be held to answer for a capital, or otherwise infamous crime, unless on a presentment or indictment of a Grand Jury, except in cases arising in the land or naval forces, or in the Militia, when in actual service in time of War or public danger; nor shall any person be subject for the same offence to be twice put in jeopardy of life or limb; nor shall be compelled in any criminal case to be a witness against himself, nor be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor shall private property be taken for public use, without just compensation.
** "nor be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law". So, as long as due process of law occurs, then the deprivation of life is constitutional.**
New rights and more rights, that sounds good. A state court finding a new right of free health care would be an example?
How about changing marriage from a man and a woman becoming husband and wife into an any-gender experience - no matter what the people of the state say - and no matter what the U.S. Supreme Court would have said:
"We hold the Iowa marriage statute violates the equal protection clause of the Iowa Constitution."
- http://www.slideshare.net/LegalDocs/findlaw-iowa-gay-marriage-decision
Iowa voters oust justices who made same-sex marriage legal
http://www.cnn.com/2010/POLITICS/11/03/iowa.judges/index.html
BD:
Thank you for that thoughtful analysis.
Backtracking in the thread a bit, I want to comment on some points gone by:
Bigdog wrote: "there may be a self selection problem. Professors don't make much money, despite the arguments to the contrary. If may be that conservatives largely take their talents to the private sector, where the pay is better."
I agree with this point. Not for money alone, but there is an attraction for conservatives to the private sector and for liberals to academia.
"just because a professor is "liberal" (or "conservative") does not mean that they bring politics into the classroom"
In other disciplines such as climate science and economics they certainly seem to. I wonder how Nobel Laureates such as Obama or Krugman could describe the virtues of supply side economics in a classroom while they falsely characterize it publicly. I challenge anyone to find so much as a paragraph written by either of them that describes those arguments accurately or honestly. Very few of the best political moderators can question without exposing their own view. One firsthand classroom example I experienced was studying economics under the former chief economic adviser to Presidents Kennedy and Johnson. At the time he was positioning himself to be chief adviser to Ted Kennedy as well, advocating gas rationing and national healthcare in 1980. He taught and tested only on his view. He passed out reprints of his WSJ contributions, never opposing views which was the rest of the editorial page. That may not happen as egregiously in Law but I question how many teachers with very strongly held views can be fair to the other side of an argument.
I wonder how well lecturer Obama presented opposing views on contested constitutional issues. I question how well someone like Ruth Bader Ginsburg as a lecturer could present the arguments of Thomas on Kelo for example - or vice versa. Suppose the other side were in attendance, I wonder how they would rate the opponent's explanation of their argument.
As a sample, I wonder how BigDog (or anyone) might frame the pro-DOMA argument (federal defense of marriage act), assuming his personal view is opposite, to give us an idea of how he would frame the argument that the federal government has full constitutional authority to define the meaning of marriage, superseding any states' rights argument...
Woof Bigdog,
Yes they do, by restating those ideas and making arguments against them; pro or con the ideas are planted my man.
My experience does not correspond with yours. As a student in non-elite schools, I've been subject to profs who felt their role was that of propagandist for post-modern neo-marxist dogma. As a criminal justice student, I took a class on sexual assault, and instead of actually getting useful information on the subject to enhance my skills as a law enforcement officer I got to read on how America was a "rape culture" and every sexual act between a man and a woman was an act of rape because no woman in our society could truly give consent, and any woman who thought she did was a victim of "false consciousness".
I took a class on "multicultural communication" which was nothing but a extended rant by the prof on the evils of America, western civilization and anything remotely christian, heterosexual and/or white.
In addition, I had a personal connection to an academic who was the product of a elite schools and seeking a tenure track position in academia in those school. She was utterly terrified of me dooming her career because of my line of work and political opinions. She was a wide-eyed believer in all the leftist drivel she had been immersed in since since her undergrad days.
BD, see any patterns here?
http://pajamasmedia.com/blog/concealed-carry-on-campus/?singlepage=true
http://www.discoverthenetworks.org/guideDesc.asp?type=aca
BD:
So, given what the Preamble says, what does a reasonable argument against the Second being an individual right look like?
Thank you.
PC's point about the Preamble seems to me quite strong. Indeed, IMHO it demolishes any idea that the Second is not an individual right. What do you think?
QuoteThe point of NRA's radio show was to move around BCRA.
I'm sorry, the NRA generates magazine, television, radio, and web content that all perform a reporting function, and has done so to one degree or another for the 40 years I've been a member. Not sure what the acronym you refer to is, but does the NRA's press credentials armor them against the free speech prohibitions contained in McCain/Feingold and the Disclose Act? If not, how does one cleave that baby? If so, why should we care what unconstitutional prohibitions congress bats around?
Being a literalist, how can your definition of press move beyond the printing press of the revolutionary era? Did the founding fathers mean a llc owned blog? Where did they anticipate such things?
Being a literalist, how can your definition of press move beyond the printing press of the revolutionary era? Did the founding fathers mean a llc owned blog? Where did they anticipate such things?
Hmm, NRA publishes a lot of news so does that mean they shouldn't have been impacted by McCain Feingold and thus don't have to embrace expediency and sell out where the Disclose Act is concerned?
As corporations are not freed slaves, is it safe to assume that the Framers of both the Bill of Rights and the 14th amendments did not originally intend corporations to have the rights guaranteed to indviduals. And, if this is true, can we agree that a Supreme Court case that were to give these rights to corporations was an activist court, that is going outside its constitutional limits?
Is the New York Times a coporation? Yes. Does the New York Times enjoy constitutionally protected speech? Given the role of newspapers, pampleteers in the revolution, do you think the intent of the founders was to provide such protections to both for profit and non-profit entities? I think their intent is quite clear.