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Antonin Scalia, a sitting U.S. Supreme Court Justice, has died:
US Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia - one of most conservative members of the high court - has died. Justice Scalia's death could shift the balance of power on the US high court, allowing President Barack Obama to add a fifth liberal justice to the court. The court's conservative majority has recently stalled major efforts by the Obama administration on climate change and immigration.
Justice Scalia, 79, was appointed by President Ronald Reagan in 1986. He died in his sleep early on Saturday while in West Texas for [a] hunting trip, the US Marshall service said. Justice Scalia was one of the most prominent proponents of "originalism" - a conservative legal philosophy that believes the US Constitution has a fixed meaning and does not change with the times.
Justice Scalia's death is, unsurprisingly, now being widely reported.
From the San Antonio Express News:
According to a report, Scalia arrived at the ranch on Friday and attended a private party with about 40 people. When he did not appear for breakfast, a person associated with the ranch went to his room and found a body.
[...] The U.S. Marshal Service, the Presidio County sheriff and the FBI were involved in the investigation. Officials with the law enforcement agencies declined to comment.
A federal official who asked not to be named said there was no evidence of foul play and it appeared that Scalia died of natural causes.
A gray Cadillac hearse pulled into the ranch last Saturday afternoon. The hearse came from Alpine Memorial Funeral Home.
Most major news outlets are covering this story, including CNN [video autoplays], The Washington Post, The New York Times, and NBC.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday February 14 2016, @09:45AM
> But that doesn't mean the framework was intended to be rewritten by every fad blowing in the wind.
Do you understand what you are doing by framing it as an extreme?
You say "framework" but then, without a single example, you talk as if any modernization is a "fad blowing in the wind" and "whims of the moment" - you base your argument on the extreme case of some non-existent hypothetical. You make it a choice between black and white when the entire world lives in the greys. Your position is based on something that doesn't exist. In that way you invalidate your argument from the very start.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Sunday February 14 2016, @02:00PM
You say "framework" but then, without a single example, you talk as if any modernization is a "fad blowing in the wind" and "whims of the moment" - you base your argument on the extreme case of some non-existent hypothetical.
Well, let's look at an example [soylentnews.org] then.
The problem with Citizen's united is that they changed the definition of person to include things which are definitely not people and that could be fixed in the near future if the court gets competent jurists rather than right wing ideologues appointed to it.
150 years of law on corporate personhood are ignored here.
You have people that still insist that the 2nd amendment grants individual gun ownership rights when that's almost certainly not what they had in mind and doesn't even make sense from a historical point of view.
Except of course, there was widespread individual firearm ownership, historically to the origins of the pre-US colonies. That's a huge support for individual gun ownership and use rights. It's also worth noting that there are a number of other times when "the people" are granted rights by the Bill of Rights. Each of these times, the right was an individual one not a collective one. This incidentally is an argument [soylentnews.org] that Scalia made!
Next, Scalia turns to the language of the Second Amendment, once again arguing along the same lines as the libertarian individualists. He begins his analysis by dividing the amendment into two clauses: the prefatory clause (“A well regulated militia, being necessary to the security of a free State”), and the operative clause (“the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed”). Scalia believes the prefatory clause simply announces the purpose of the Amendment and does not limit the operative clause (District of Columbia v. Heller 2008, 3). He writes that while “this structure…is unique in our Constitution, other legal documents of the founding era, particularly individual-rights provisions of state constitutions, commonly included a prefatory statement of purpose” (District of Columbia v. Heller 2008, 3). For Scalia, the prefatory clause may offer clarification regarding the operative clause, but it in no way restricts its meaning. After defining several key phrases found in both clauses, Scalia offers a conclusion regarding the meaning of the structure of the amendment.
Scalia begins his analysis of the operative clause with an examination of the phrase “the right of the people.” The Bill of Rights uses the phrase three times: in the First Amendment’s Assembly-and-Petition Clause, in the Fourth Amendment’s Search-and-Seizure Clause, and in an analogous phrase in the Ninth Amendment (District of Columbia v. Heller 2008, 5). According to Scalia, each of these examples refers to the protection of an individual right, not a collective right. The use of the words “the people” by themselves is found three additional times in the Constitution, each regarding the reservation of power, not rights (District of Columbia v. Heller 2008, 6). The phrase “right of the people,” when used in its entirety, always refers to an individual right. “The people” used in these six examples has been read to describe the entire political community. Therefore, according to Scalia, the amendment does not just protect a subset of people, in this case the militia consisting of adult white males. Instead, it protects the rights of all Americans.
Not only does Francis in this post, reinterpret the Constitution to fit his whims twice, he reinterprets history as well in order to reach the desired conclusion. Unfortunately, we don't agree on what should be the law, not everyone is virtuous, and our interests are not identical. So extending this sort of subjective, fleeting reinterpretation of law and history to current law is sure to be disaster.
(Score: 2) by frojack on Sunday February 14 2016, @07:38PM
It's also worth noting that there are a number of other times when "the people" are granted rights by the Bill of Rights.
That too is a fundamental mistake of understanding the US Constitution.
The bill or rights, or rather the entire constitution does not GRANT rights to the people.
The people are assumed to have these rights, and the constitution restricts the government from taking them away.
It was precisely because this was misunderstood that Amendment 10 was added:
The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.
Many states (5 or 38%) ratified with conditions (demands, really) that amendments be added to make perfectly clear that specific things left unsaid in the original constitution be added to the Constitution, (not changing any of the original text, simply adding the bill of rights). Even at that early date, people understood the likelihood of a federal power grab and over reach.
To that end, almost the first order of business was the construction by congress from those demands, the first 12 amendments to the constitution and the submission of those to the states.
No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Sunday February 14 2016, @10:04PM
The bill or rights, or rather the entire constitution does not GRANT rights to the people.
The people are assumed to have these rights, and the constitution restricts the government from taking them away.
It was precisely because this was misunderstood that Amendment 10 was added:
That's pretense. We've seen that Amendment 10 is toothless and that the presence of the Bill of Rights has turned out to be necessary to preserve those rights which we supposedly have automatically.
(Score: 2) by frojack on Monday February 15 2016, @01:51AM
Well you are exactly correct.
There was argument at the time (Federalist Papers) that the bill of rights was unnecessary, because the body of the constitution would itself prevent government from usurping all rights and powers.
Turns out what little freedoms we have today are almost wholly dependent on and hang by a thread from those first ten amendments, each of which is watered down daily. What should have been a mere redundancy turned out to be an absolute necessity.
One wonders if we would not be better off has the Original First amendment had also passed. The Original Second Amendment did pass. In 1992, as the 27th.
The First amendment [teachinghistory.org] would have limited the size of a US Representative's constituency to about 40,000 people. Had it passed the house would be composed of 8074 representatives.
Of course that's too big to get anything done. Oh, wait......
It might also be too big to bribe.
No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.