SCOTUS decides vaccine debate . . . in 1905

The Fuller Court, 1888-1910

Did you know the vaccine debate we are now in the middle of was an issue decided by the Supreme Court? In 1905! From the first Justice Harlan's opinion for the Court in Jacobson v. Massachusetts:
The authority of the state to enact this statute is to be   referred to what is commonly called the police power,-a power which the state did not surrender when becoming a member of the Union under the Constitution. [...] According to settled principles, the police power of a state must be held to embrace, at least, such reasonable regulations established directly by legislative enactment as will protect the public health and the public safety. Gibbons v. Ogden, 9 Wheat. 1, 203, 6 L. ed. 23, 71 [...] We come, then, to inquire whether any right given or secured by the Constitution is invaded by the statute as interpreted by the state court. The defendant insists that his liberty is invaded when the state subjects him to fine or imprisonment for neglecting or refusing to submit to vaccination; that a compulsory vaccination law is unreasonable, arbitrary, and oppressive, and, therefore, hostile to the inherent right of every freeman to care for his own body and health in such way as to him seems best; and that the execution of such a law against one who objects to vaccination, no matter for what reason, is nothing short of an assault upon his person. But the liberty secured by the Constitution of the United States to every person within its jurisdiction does not import an absolute right in each person to be, at all times and in all circumstances, wholly freed from restraint. There are manifold restraints to which every person is necessarily subject for the common good. On any other basis organized society could not exist with safety to its members. Society based on the rule that each one is a law unto himself would soon be confronted with disorder and anarchy. Real liberty for all could not exist under the operation of a principle which recognizes the right of each individual person to use his own, whether in respect of his person or his property, regardless of the injury that may be done to others. This court has more than once recognized it as a fundamental principle that 'persons and property are subjected to all kinds of restraints and burdens in order to secure the general comfort, health, and prosperity of the state; of the perfect right of the legislature to do which no question ever was, or upon acknowledged general principles ever can be, made, so far as natural persons are concerned.' Hannibal & St. J. R. Co. v. Husen, 95 U.S. 465, 471 , 24 S. L. ed. 527, 530 [...]
[... T]he answer is that it was the duty of the constituted authorities primarily to keep in view the welfare [...] and safety of the many, and not permit the interests of the many to be subordinated to the wishes or convenience of the few. [...] READ MORE

Supreme Court Takes the Edge Off Arizona Immigration Law

Talk Radio News Service/Flickr

The ruling blocking much of Arizona's harsh SB 1070 calls into question the right's get-tough approach to immigration.

—By Adam Serwer

| Mon Jun. 25, 2012 10:58 AM PDT

 

 

Several parts of Arizona's harsh anti-illegal immigration law, which sought to purge the state of unauthorized immigrants through a policy of "attrition through enforcement," were blocked Monday by a Supreme Court decision that invalidated three of the law's four main provisions but let stand—for now—the part of the law that allows police to stop anyone they suspect or being in the country illegally and request proof of their status. The Arizona law had set off a burst of copycat legislation in other conservative states, some even more severe than the original. But with this decision, the laws spawned elsewhere are now susceptible to challenge—and the right's get-tough approach to immigration is at risk.

 

 

"The court resoundingly rejected the argument that Arizona had the right to impose its own criminal penalties for being undocumented in [Arizona] or trying to seek work in the state," says Elizabeth Wydra, chief counsel at the liberal Constitutional Accountability Center. "I think that is very encouraging to challengers of other state laws."   READ MORE

More MoJo coverage of immigration

• "It Just Not Right": The Failures of Alabama's Self-Deportation Experiment
  
• Maps: We Analyze the 164 Anti-Immigration Laws Passed Since 2010
  
• Did Sheriff Joe Arpaio's Anti-Immigrant Zeal Kill David de la Fuente?
  
• Kris Kobach: The Legal Mastermind of the New Nativists
  
• The Small, Interlocking World of Anti-Immigration Advocates
• Flowchart: How Did Harsh Immigration Laws Spread to Your Statehouse?
• Photos: Feeling the Pain of Self-Deportation in Alabama

The Problem With Citizens United Is Not Corporate Personhood

(Image: Jared Rodriguez / Truthout)

Tuesday, 17 January 2012 03:25 By James Marc Leas and Rob Hager, Truthout | News Analysis 

Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders and Florida Rep. Ted Deutch introduced a constitutional amendment in December to overturn Citizens United, one of five decisions since 2006 by which a closely divided Supreme Court vastly increased the amount of corrupting corporate money in elections.
In an opinion piece critical of the decision in Citizens United, Senator Sanders wrote:

When the Supreme Court says that for purposes of the First Amendment, corporations are people, that writing checks from the company's bank account is constitutionally-protected speech and that attempts by the federal government and states to impose reasonable restrictions on campaign ads are unconstitutional, when that occurs, our democracy is in grave danger.

The joint Sanders-Deutch Resolution proposes an amendment to the constitution "to expressly exclude for-profit corporations from the rights given to natural persons." The first section of the amendment states:
  READ MORE

Court Weighs Revisions in Cocaine-Case Sentences

By ADAM LIPTAK

Published: April 17, 2012 

WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court heard arguments on Tuesday about an aspect of one of the greatest controversies in American criminal law: the differing treatment of crack and powder cocaine.

“I’ve been a judge for nearly 20 years,” said Justice Sonia Sotomayor, the only member of the current court who has served as a trial judge, “and I don’t know that there’s one law that has created more controversy or more discussion about its racial impact than this one.”

Crack and powder cocaine are two forms of the same drug. But, until recently, a drug dealer selling crack cocaine was subject to the same sentence as one selling 100 times as much powder.

In 2010, Congress enacted the Fair Sentencing Act, which reduced the disparity to 18 to 1, at least for people who committed their crimes after the law became effective that Aug. 3. That means many defendants caught with small amounts of crack are no longer subject to mandatory 5- or 10-year prison sentences.

The question on Tuesday was whether the new, lesser punishments also applied to people who committed crimes before the law became effective but were not sentenced until afterward.

The usual rule, set out in an 1871 law, is that new laws do not apply retroactively unless Congress expressly says so. Here Congress said nothing, or at least nothing in so many words. It did instruct the United States Sentencing Commission to act quickly to revise its discretionary sentencing guidelines to reflect the new ratios.  READ MORE

=====Obwon says:===========

Let's see if the Justices can get something right this time!

These laws that are passed do not exist in a vacuum,  there are more tests and rules that apply,  than the simple matter of retroactive or not.  Like,  for example,  "equal protection of law".  Where, as the courts own discussions show it accepts the unfair racial bias argument,  that prompted Congress to act.  They must also feel a pressing need to enforce "equal protection of law" for all who have suffered racial injustice under the "travesty" of the old law.  Such that,  if it is right and mete to correct some racial discrimination suffered under the old law by some.  Then is it not necessary to save others from that same racial discrimination?   

To be clear,  the issue at hand is not: "When was the crime committed",  because racial discriminatory suffering has been found.  The law is not modified merely because of some whimsical,  statistical,  statutory or other limit able needs,  but because it has been found to be "racially discriminatory",  something that other laws [civil rights laws] have demanded be changed.  Thus we arrive at a point whereby the court is all but forced to lift the limits on how this remedial action may be applied.

Or...  Are we to approve of racial inequity,  merely because of when it happened,  and not at all because of what it was about?  We shall see what these Justices think of the law and their own powers to enforce it.

 

GOP Five Like Stripping Americans

The Supreme Court has authorized the police to
conduct strip searches after any arrest.
(photo: Ken Light)

By Robert Parry, Consortium News

03 April 12

ast week, the five Republican partisans who control the U.S. Supreme Court were all about protecting American "liberties" against the threat of compulsory broccoli purchases. This week, they are defending the rights of prison guards to strip search a nun arrested in an anti-war protest or a black guy who got nabbed by mistake for not paying a fine that he had actually paid.

But the Court's strip-search ruling on Monday was more about the future than the past. One could almost see the GOP Five rubbing their hands together at the prospect of mass strip searches of young men and women arrested for challenging corporate greed in Occupy protests. Perhaps the justices would like to take a page from Rush Limbaugh's playbook and suggest the videos be posted online so they could watch.

"Every detainee who will be admitted to the general population may be required to undergo a close visual inspection while undressed," wrote Justice Anthony Kennedy for the Republican majority.

Of course, the justices don't expect that they and their powerful friends would ever be subjected to such humiliation. That's more for the lesser beings - or those with lesser money - especially those who find themselves disproportionately tossed into America's massive prison system: the poor, the minorities and the protesters.  READ MORE

Supreme Court to Weigh Torture Lawsuits Against Corporations

Famed Nigerian author and environmental activist
Ken Saro-Wiwa at a rally, 1993.
(photo: Greenpeace/AP)

By David G. Savage, Los Angeles Times

27 February 12

Can international companies be sued in the U.S. over ties to foreign regimes that commit human rights abuses?

wo years ago, the Supreme Court said corporations were like people and had the same free-speech rights to spend unlimited sums on campaigns ads. Now, in a major test of human rights law, the justices will decide whether corporations are like people when they are sued for aiding foreign regimes that kill or torture their own people.

It would "create a weird paradox" if the corporations are people when funding campaigns but not when they violate human rights, said Peter Weiss, vice president of the Center for Constitutional Rights in New York.

At issue is an obscure 18th century law unearthed by human rights lawyers in the 1980s and increasingly used against U.S. corporations whose work overseas has entangled them with brutal regimes.

On Tuesday, the justices will hear an appeal of a suit accusing Royal Dutch Petroleum and its Shell subsidiary in the United States of aiding a former Nigerian regime whose military police tortured, raped and executed minority residents in the oil-rich delta. The victims included famed Nigerian author and environmental activist Ken Saro-Wiwa.  READ MORE

7 Privacy Threats the Constitution Can't Protect You Against

When it comes to a spate of new technologies, our privacy protections are wildly outdated.

February 4, 2012

The week before last, the Roberts Supreme Court uncharacteristically handed down a decision that doesn't radically infringe on civil liberties. The justices unanimously ruled that police overshot their authority by planting a GPS device on suspected drug dealer Antoine Jones' car without a warrant, tracking his movements for over a month. For now, Americans can rest assured that police can't secretly tag them -- at least without a warrant.

At the same time, privacy advocates pointed out -- and some of the justices admitted -- that the court's majority opinion in US vs. Jones completely skirted more pressing privacy issues. The problem, the majority argued, was that police had trespassed on Jones' private property by planting a GPS device on his car. The majority opinion did not address whether or not it's okay for law enforcement to use a sophisticated surveillance technology to log someone's movements for a whole month without a warrant. 

In separate, concurring opinions Justices Alito and Sotomayor both warned of the multitude of surveillance technologies that do not require intrusion onto private property to trample privacy rights. Here's a (non-comprehensive) breakdown of existing or impending technologies that make our privacy protections wildly outdated. 

1. Everything you use, all the time.

READ MORE

Bernie Sanders | Can't Stop Now

Bernie Sanders, Reader Supported News
Intro: "In the coming weeks I will step up my efforts to generate strong grassroots support for a constitutional amendment I have introduced to overturn the disastrous Citizens United Supreme Court decision of two years ago. It seems to me that there are about five people in this country who believe that a corporation is a person. Unfortunately, they are all on the Supreme Court."
READ MORE