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http://www.politico.com/story/2016/09/state-ags-sue-to-stop-internet-transition-228893
Four Republican state attorneys general are suing to stop the Obama administration from transferring oversight of the internet to an international body, arguing the transition would violate the U.S. Constitution. The lawsuit — filed Wednesday in a Texas federal court — threatens to throw up a new roadblock to one of the White House's top tech priorities, just days before the scheduled Oct. 1 transfer of the internet's address system is set to take place.
In their lawsuit, the attorneys general for Arizona, Oklahoma, Nevada and Texas contend that the transition, lacking congressional approval, amounts to an illegal giveaway of U.S. government property. They also express fear that the proposed new steward of the system, a nonprofit known as ICANN, would be so unchecked that it could "effectively enable or prohibit speech on the Internet."
The four states further contend that ICANN could revoke the U.S. government's exclusive use of .gov and .mil, the domains used by states, federal agencies and the U.S. military for their websites. And the four attorneys general argue that ICANN's "current practices often foster a lack of transparency that, in turn, allows illegal activity to occur."
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday October 01 2016, @01:14AM
The way we know that a law is unconstitutional is through a ruling by the Supreme Court. If they don't rule it to be unconstitutional, then it effectively is constitutional whether or not it makes any sense.
"we"? Speak for yourself. That's how our system works in practice, but that's certainly not how reality works. We need authority figures to decide matters at the end of the day, but they can certainly be wrong. It's like you're conflating how the legal system works in practice with how reality itself works, without distinguishing between the two. You even acknowledge the fact that judges can be incorrect when you say "whether or not it makes any sense."
I'm tired of people mindlessly talking about how our legal system works when others simply wanted to talk about what is actually in the Constitution.
(Score: 1) by Francis on Saturday October 01 2016, @02:49PM
Well, no, that's how it works. The constitution is rather short and they don't detail at any point exactly what you'd have to do in order to violate the constitution in many cases.
A good example would be abortion. Is it constitutional to ban abortion because the ban if you ban men from it as well? Or would that be a violation of the 14th amendment because it really only applies to women? Or, how about the 2nd amendment? That one only specifies arms, and that they be held collectively by the well-regulated militias of the country, none of those terms are defined in the constitution and as such, somebody needs to define them.
Just because you choose to not understand how the constitution works or how it was intended to work, doesn't make what I said any less true. Unless you happen to be doing something that is extremely clear cut, you do need a referee to tell you what it means. Because if we have 300 million different people taking views on what the constitution actually means, then we might as well not have one because it's going to be so watered down that only in extreme instances are we going to have consensus on the intent and meaning.