This will be my last comment on this thread. On Mon, 11 Mar 1996, jim bell wrote:
At 09:59 PM 3/11/96 -0500, Black Unicorn wrote:
On Mon, 11 Mar 1996, jim bell wrote:
At 05:54 PM 3/11/96 -0500, Black Unicorn wrote:
My issue was with your application of the cite and decisions to the pending bill.
You keep saying this kind of thing, repeatedly, but you don't back it up with a contrary argument.
Why not tell me why you didn't cite rules of statuatory construction, or the merit of looking at legislative history? I'm hardly going to spend 4 hours of legal research to rebuke what is a patently flawed "legal" opinion. Long time members of the list will know already that I am quite generous with my legal research when a legitimate legal problem arises. My patience does not extend to upstarts who's knowledge of law is limited to complaining about how legal scholars and Supreme Court Justices have their head up their asses.
My issue was, again, with regard to your choice of cites,
Ah! You simply didn't like me using that particular atrocious SC decision to suggest that we can't trust judges and courts in general!
You dismiss 7 learned people quite quickly. I know it's tempting to be superior to them, but as far as I can tell, you haven't even taken a judicial process class in undergrad.
The "above paragaph," incidently, doesn't even rise to the level of court dicta, but is a abstract of dicta by a court commentator. Using such authority to back a legal conclusion (especially when applied to an entirely seperate legal area) is twisted at best, and dangerous at worst.
Let's suppose we agree that "George Will" is a "court commentator." Suppose further that he, more or less, says "this decision sucks." Because it DOES suck.
This illustrates my problem with you, and your writings to the list. This isn't the opinion of a noted legal scholar. It's not the opinion of a renound attorney, or court observer. It's not even the opinion of a law student. The bottom line is that you just don't know what you're talking about. You are wasting the list's time, my time, and, incidently, your time.
than I relate) should be of interest. And most people of ordinary levels of intelligence can recognize that yes, the decision DOES suck.
Excepting 5 surpreme court justices, the prosecution, and hundreds of years of American Jurisprudence. Sure, you're a more legitimate judge of decisions. Really it's just that you don't like the decision, and have latched on to anything to justify your dislike with the illusion of intelligence and knowledge, including a newspaper article in a local paper. And George
Will, who has certainly NOT become successful as a commentator by boring the reader, understands that this decision is of interest to enough people to have it occupy one of his columns for a day.
What the hell does this have to do with your long stretch in applying it to the Leahy bill?
Remember, one of the basic assumptions that any supporter of the Leahy bill could be making is that it will be interpreted INTELLIGENTLY by courts.
Wrong. The assumption is that the rules of statuatory construction and a long history of weighing legislative history will be used in intrepreting the statute. I could go on for paragraphs about how this basic error on your part demonstrates your misunderstanding of the divisons of labor between the Legislative and Judiciary, and that your really calling for an active Judiciary that disregards law and imposes its own view in the face of obvious legislative intent, and go on longer about the importance of using cannons of construction to insure consistancy, but none of that would change the basic fact that you just don't know what you are talking about, and that arguing with you is like talking to a soap box preacher. You don't really care for logic. If
it is obvious to most of the rest of us that those lunatics can't even make the correct decision about a woman's half-interest in a common automobile,
Your "logic" has become a campaign speech.
The fact that you may not _like_ me bringing up a contemporaneous example where the SC stuck their collective heads firmly and completely up their respective asses is irrelevant. If anything, it shows that you feel the law is and should be above the heads of the average individual, or even the UN-average, intelligent individual who regularly reads editorials in their local newspaper.
No, I just feel it's probably beyond someone who couldn't name 2 cannons of statuatory intrepretation to rant on for paragraphs about the impact of a supreme court decision on a pending statute.
Such elitism is disgusting.
I'm not the one calling the Supreme Court a pile of idiots.
Your appeal (what of it there is) is based entirely on skewing meanings, using critiques of dicta, and generally applying inflamatory language taken out of context in a manner which suits you. I don't think I'm off base calling it "twisted."
"Inflammatory language"? The real "inflammatory language" occurs every time a court makes yet another outrageous decision such as the ones you are weakly attempting (and miserably failing) to defend.
I'm not defending the decision at all. Simply pointing out that it's connection to the Leahy bill is non-existant, and that you are a non-entity when it comes to legal analysis.
I notice you don't provide an alternative competing interpretation, either of my conclusions or those of George Will. So how are we to know what "twisted" is if you can't clearly show something which is "untwisted"?
I'm not interested in the opinion, or Will's explanation of what it meant. I am interested in bringing some sanity to the list by filtering out the fluff and bullshit that results when people who know nothing about legislation or lawmaking proport to be experts. I'm sure you, however, would be quite willing to allow a pre-med student preform your bypass operation.
Again, its application to the bill is what I question. All of which throws your understanding of law, dicta, holdings, jurisprudence, and rhetoric into question. What you should have cited was some statuatory construction and legislative history cases, not forfeiture law. But how could you be expected to know this?
I chose my example to display the foolishness of the Supreme Court,
Considering you have never read the opinion, or the briefs of the respective parties, and are relying on only the (perhaps legal, perhaps not) opinion of a newspaper writer, I think you're on fairly thin ice even without my help. as well
as each and every one of the courts below it that did not properly dispose of that Bennis case. You find this disturbing. But it's applicable to ANY law that may someday rely upon a SC decision to overturn or uphold. Anyone considering supporting the Leahy bill had better understand this. Naturally, you want to cover it up.
You assume I support the Leahy Bill. Quote me. Where do you find my support? Because I think you should be taken with the grain of salt your legal ignorance obviously deserves? I could care less which side you are on, but I'm hardly going to let your ignorance be taken for anything but what it is.
What, then, was the point of sending me the note, as well as wasting bandwidth on CP to share your unhappiness?
Distribution of reputation capital (or in this case, negative reputation capital). I believe I also wanted to make a point (in 1,200 bytes) about the utility (or lack thereof) of your article (10,500 bytes) on this list.
I'd glad to see you distributing YOUR "negative reputation capital." Why not do a better job for yourself and make it look like you are actually more familiar with the legal system than the rest of us are (which shouldn't be hard, if you have the credentials), and challenge us with an alternative explanation of the facts I (and George Will) describe?
1> I have often lent my legal expertise to the list. 2> I don't care what you or George Will think the seizure decision means, only that it has nothing to do with the Leahy bill. 3> Challenging you is like falling off a log.
In other words, stop just saying I'm wrong and start DEMONSTRATING it.
Why not demonstrate you're right first Mr. Bell? Tell us all how the latest decision will impact Leahy bill in terms a bit more specific than "The supreme court is stupid, so you're going to get screwed." Cite provisions. Show us why the dicta you use is important rather than fluff. What was the holding in the seizure case? Do you even know? It's easy for me to say "The latest Supreme Court Decision is going to make currency ILLEGAL! LOOK OUT! HIDE YOUR DOUGH!" However, this does not mean I can expect every legal expert on the list to spend hours going over the opinion, and refuting endlessly the raving antics of my lunacy. The burden is on the presentor to make the connection. You're logic seems to look mostly like this. There was a court decision. Mr. Will is a popular newspaper writer. therefore Mr. Will is qualified to intrepret the decision. Mr. Will says some disparaging things about the decision. threfore The Decision is BAD. The decision has to do with seizure of jointly owned property. Remailer messages are jointly owned property. therefore the decision must apply to remailers. Since the property in the decision was seized, and since the Leahy bill has something to say about encryption, and since the seizure decision means that the supreme court has their head up their ass, therefore remailer messages and remailers WILL BE SEIZED. If there is a more logical chain here, I'd love to hear it.
you can. Convince us that you're not just an elitist snob
I am an elitist snob. Who want's a passive attorney fighting for them? I worked hard for my degrees, my post-graduate work, and the Bar. I think I have earned a bit of ego for my years of hell. If nothing else, I have taken 23 hours more of aba accredited legislation courses from a top 10 U.S. law school than you have.
Jim Bell
jimbell@pacifier.com
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