On Thu, 14 Mar 1996, jim bell wrote:
At 07:30 PM 3/13/96 -0500, Black Unicorn wrote:
0 Several people expressed interest in a small treatment of seizure law jurisprudence, and the Bennis case (seizure of an automobile used for soliciting prostitution was upheld even where one of the owners knew nothing about its use for a crime and which Mr. Bell has relied on fairly heavily in pointing out that the Supreme Court has its "head up its ass.")
"Relied on"? Hell no! Not when I get the following text, from an anonymous source.
Uh, I'm not sure what this sentence means.
Begin quotation:
So he wants a cite of Supreme Court decisions from you bearing on legislative history & congressional intent, does he?
When it can be directly applied to your opinion that the Bennis case has anything to do with remailers, sure.
I've attatched the relevant syllabus <summary> which is from the Supreme Court reporter & carries no legal weight, along with the UNANIMOUS decision in Neal written by Kennedy.
[Whining about how a supreme court decision upholding the use of acid measurements including the weight of blotter paper as a guide to sentencing was really unfair deleted.]
congressmen. The more Supreme Cocksucker decisions I read like this, the better BOTH your big ideas sound.
Actually, the decision was in line with a long history of precident. That fact that you personally don't like the result has little to do with the legitimacy of the decision, or its fairness under law and the constitution.
This & all recent other decisions of the 9 in-Justices are available at the below address. http://spoke.law.cornell.edu:8001/supct/opinionlist.1995.html
Syllabus:
SUPREME COURT OF THE UNITED STATES
Syllabus
NEAL v. UNITED STATES certiorari to the united states court of appeals for the seventh circuit No. 94-9088. Argued December 4, 1995-Decided January 22, 1996
[...]
My commentary continues below: JB.
Note the sentence above,
"It is the responsibility of Congress, not this Court, to change statutes that are thought to be unwise or unfair."
Precisely. This is called the seperation of powers. It is the responsibility of the judicary to apply and intrepret the law, not make it.
As far as I am aware, there is no _legal_ mechanism, short of impeachment (but how practical is that?), to remove a sitting SC justice, no matter how damaging his effect on the country by his decisions. Thus, I propose re-writing the above sentence a bit:
Actually, if a decision is so damaging, congress is always free to change it. The major whine you and your anonymous friend have [i.e. that the Supreme court refused to apply the change in sentencing measurement of weight for LSD convictions] is entirely out of place. If you took the time to look at the retroactivity issue, you would know that it was not applied retroactively because congress did not indicate that it should have been, (which congress was quite free to do, and has done before). Retroactivity in relation to a change in law by the legislature is NOT within the ambit of the court. Congress simply refused to apply the sentencing changes retroactively. If the court had done so, it would be making law. This is not the function of the court. Further, what the hell does any of this have to do with your former moronic claim that the Bennis case impacted remailers? The claim that this is a statuatory construction case is rather far fetched. It's a basic seperation of powers case, and it was decided correctly.
"It is the responsibility of the citizenry, not Congress, to 'change' Supreme Court Justices that are thought to be unwise or unfair."
Unfortunately, subjecting the supreme court to the short term whims of political fad would be devestating. Making supreme court justices into elected officials is about the stupidist thing I've ever heard. I won't even go into the kind of decisions you might get if this horridly reckless idea were implemented.
Since that change can be accomplished if that 'Justice' dies or becomes disabled, (or retires, perhaps because he's in fear for his life) I think the answer to boneheaded decisions like the Bennis one is obvious.
I think you need to crawl back under the rock from whence you came. Really you and your anonymous friend have said nothing. You don't like a pair of supreme court decisions, the basic premises and reasonings of which you couldn't recite if someone held a gun to your head and insisted. I suggest you try and break the ego-centric pre-school mentality you have. An eternity with satan himself and all of his devilish instruments of torture would be a walk in the park compared to five minutes in a dictatorship under you and anonymous.
Jim Bell jimbell@pacifier.com ^^^^^^^^
Like I said. Pre-school. --- My prefered and soon to be permanent e-mail address: unicorn@schloss.li "In fact, had Bancroft not existed, potestas scientiae in usu est Franklin might have had to invent him." in nihilum nil posse reverti 00B9289C28DC0E55 E16D5378B81E1C96 - Finger for Current Key Information