On Wednesday, May 14, 2003, at 08:40 AM, Declan McCullagh wrote:
On Tue, May 13, 2003 at 10:00:25PM -0700, Tim May wrote:
(I think the courts should hold personally liable those who pass unconstitutional measures. Imprisoning those who commit acts later declared to be unconstitutional might disincentivize them to blithely pass unconstitutional bills.)
Liability is an interesting idea, but then you'd have judges under a tremendous amount of pressure never to declare anything unconstitutional. ("Want a paycheck anymore, chief justice?" Or just wet squads assigned to take care of the problem of recalcitrant judges.)
We hold corporate employees liable for criminal acts. Why should government employees be exempt from the same standard? And why should a judge who is able to withstand pressures not to sentence corporate employees to prison be unable to withstand similar pressures when it comes to government employees? There are issues of separation of powers, what with the judiciary thus having some power to imprison legislative members, but this is not a new issue. Judges have sentenced members of the legislature and the executive branch to prison for various offenses, including bribery, corruption, perjury, etc. The business of legislators passing new laws when other essentially identical laws were struck down, just to show their constituents that they are "doing something" or "helping to save the children," has got to stop. "You knew that passing a law restricting freedom of speech would be struck down eventually. You did it anyway. You have been found guilty of violations of the civil rights of the 3 million residents of Colorado in this class action case. The 73 defendants in this case are each sentenced to the statutory minimum of 6 months for each violation, sentences to run consecutively." --Tim May --Tim May, Corralitos, California Quote of the Month: "It is said that there are no atheists in foxholes; perhaps there are no true libertarians in times of terrorist attacks." --Cathy Young, "Reason Magazine," both enemies of liberty.