this is why it should be easy to remove a sitting judge
 

Since the civil war, we have ALWAYS known that there has been an inalienable right to travel. Well not according to THIS idiot judge.

wapo - katrina evacuees lose ruling.

The most relevant part of this 'decision',
:shakehead:

I'm sure they will appeal it and it will be overturned.

I agree with you that their should be easy means to remove judges, but there should also be easy means to remove senators, congressmen, supreme court justices, the Vice President and the President.

I would love it if congress would introduce an amendment which detailed recall election guidelines for the states.

Off the top of my head something like a petition containing some % of the registered voters signatures in the relevant voting area (district, state, nation, ect) must be filled out. Upon submission of the signatures 30 days must pass in which people can file grievances with the signatures (look for fraud ect). Upon the completion of that interval an election must be set within say 60 days. Once the election occurs 60% of the voters must vote for their removal for them to be removed.

I think a system like this would keep elected and appointed officials in check with the public.

since the states set their own election rules, for the most part, it shouldn't be that difficult to provide for those specific criteria to recall. You'd have to set it up so that simple political targeting couldn't be used.

Yes thats why I said 60%. It is very hard to get 60% of the vote.

not really, but I understand what you are trying to get at. Personally, i'd make it more like 75%. That way, you'd KNOW that your district is not satisfied with you.

It going to be funny to watch this idiot lose everyone's respect so fast.

That's crazy. Let's extrapolate that to a real world scenario involving your favorite subject.

A judge rules that gun ownership is illegal. You immediately whip up a crowd to remove the judge. The next judge comes in, and not wanting to lose his job, rules that gun ownership is legal no matter what. Anti gun people whip up a crowd to remove the judge.

In short, it'd be completely impossible for a judge to do what a judge must do - render an impartial decision. There's a very good reason it's next to impossible to remove them - - because if it were possible, then they'd have to rule based on what the prevailing political winds of the day dictated, rather than on the law.

The writers of the Constitution demonstrated their wisdom with the concept of keeping politics and popular sentiment out of the judiciary, to the extent possible.

The Constitution does not specifically say judges have lifetime appointments...rather they "shall hold their offices during good behaviour".

A judge's interpretation of the law that does not meet a particular political or even popular test does not constitute "bad behavior".

Bad cases make bad caselaw. -old proverb.

How the fuck are we supposed to get to the border to exercise our clearly established right to interstate travel, then?

That said, she's really just effectively ruling that she can't make a ruling. Which, given the presumable lack of higher or authoritative case law on the subject, is what she should to be doing. If she had ruled there is a Right to intrastate travel she'd be one of those dreaded "Activist Judges Legislating from the Bench".

As shakran demonstrated, Democracy only works without idiots. We, the smarties, have to do what we can. At the end of the day, that's politics in a nutshell.

Sorry I know a number of judges, and while I don't agree with them all the time I do agree that they have their position.

Checks and balances come from ANY other judge that will allow you to use their courtroom to hear any complaint or issue.

To have the ability to remove judges at whim is folly. Don't like the fact that they voted anti abortion, remove them from the bench. Don't like the fact they are sympathetic to minorities, remove them from the bench. Don't like the way they do something remove them from the bench.

No it doesn't seem like a good way to do business at all. Seems to me like "tyranny of the majority" is much more possible.

I'd like to clarify my statement of removal. I believe there should be means to remove them if they are ruling clearly against the rule of law. Case in point, here in Utah there are Polygamist cities. In these cities the entire government is controlled by the polygamists. If you get caught up in the legal system there and you are not one of them expect the court to be a kangaroo court. Shouldn't their be means by which people can remove those judges in this case? If a judge is abusing their power then their should be a way to remove them started by the people.

so by that first statement, congress enacts a new law, and a judge cannot overturn it without risking his job. Again, shortsighted against the checks and balances.

The SCOTUS, just a few months ago, refused the opportunity to "rule" on this very issue. Up until this latest case, as the deliberations posted below indicate, the "right" to personal, unimpeded transport via walking was not at issue. Now, even that mode of interstate transport is not protected by the court.....

John Gilmore's efforts in court concerning the "right" to travel inside the U.S.:
http://www.postgazette.com/pg/05058/462446.stm

<b>It should be considered that one of the judges who participated in the 9th Circuit Gilmore hearing and decision is not above reproach:</b>
....and I thorougly documented this controversy in this thread:
In this post,
http://www.tfproject.org/tfp/showpos...29&postcount=4
on the thread that I just mentioned, I documented that the DOJ "OPR", Office of Professional Responsibility was reported on 11/01/03, to have opened an "investigation" into possible wrongdoing by "two dozen government lawyers", in their prosecution of Edwin Wilson. Judge Stephen Trott was one of those lawyers, nothing has ever been reported from OPR since, and Trott is still free to serve on the 9th Circuit and issue "rulings" that amount to telling us that it is okay to restrict our travel via "secret regulation", and to restrict every mode of personal transport, other than presumably, by the means of walking.....


Details the struggle to overcome travel restrictions inside the U.S.:
http://papersplease.org/id.html

If the judge can show legally why he overturned it there shouldn't be a problem. But what if the judge decided to enact his own laws that were not constitutional? For instance what if a judge decided a US citizen shouldn't be given Habeous Corpus.

If I recall correctly there have been times in US history where Habeous Corpus has been suspended during the Civil War and Reconstruction. Again, the laws have to be dynamic enough to allow for all kinds of unforseens and un-thought ofs...

And I believe after the fact it was ruled as illegal and the government offered apologies.
What if a judge comes out and has some known bias? Shouldn't there be a way to remove him? For example say it comes out that some judge hates black people, or hates tourists. Now say this bias is clearly affecting his decisions. What should be the public recourse?

I should also point out that judges in at least Utah are elected and as such every couple years the people have a chance to remove the judges. There hasn't been any major problems caused by this but there have definetly been some bad judges removed.

there are judges that are voted in my district as well with no adverse affects or notable ones at least. But those are for local issues, via local representation.

The public recourse is for the justices to deal with it themselves.

nobody seems to be getting it yet. except maybe host.

Kent v. Dulles, 357 U.S. 116 (1958).
Chicago Coach Co. v. City of Chicago, 337 Ill. 200, 169 N.E. 22.
Stephenson v. Binford 287 U.S. 251, 264, et al.
Whyte v. City of Sacramento, 165 Cal. App.534, 547.
Schactman v. Dulles 96 App DC 287, 225 F2d 938, at 941.
Davis v. Wechsler, 263 US 22, at 24.
Thompson v. Smith, 154 SE 579.
Adams v. City of Pocatello, 416 P.2d 46, 48; 91 Idaho 99 (1966).

the above cases all have confirmed the undeniable right to freedom to travel, yet here we have a judge who either doesn't know the law, doesn't want to piss off louisiana law enforcement, too afraid to make such a 'huge' earth shattering decision, or is setting an unconstitutional agenda. In any case, it shouldn't be a difficult decision to see that she needs to be removed.

No I get it, I just don't have a knee jerk reaction to the idea.

Our tiered federal judicial system, as envisioned in the Constitution, has worked as well or better than any in the world for the last 200+ years, which is why there is absolutely no reason to make it easier to remove federal judges.

The ultimate ejudicator is a body of 9, ensuring that a misguided ruling (if in fact it is misguided) by this judge or any lower court judge, for whatever reason, is short lived and the rule of law prevails.

what this ruling clearly means is that if you are african-american and poor, you cannot count on your right to travel across local boundaries, particularly not in the context of a huge natural disaster one result of which is the flooding of what--70%?--of the city where you live.

worse, it seems pretty clear to me that the reasoning is strained in order to justify the police blockade. so it would seem that the ruling responds to at least an asepct of local political conditions----you know: the political conditions that obtained in gretna of the sort that made the blockade seem like a rational idea.

like it didn't mean what it obviously did: that the people who were trying to get out of new orleans across that bridge should have been forced to turn back. so it seems to me that the most direct and disturbing implication of this is that if you are poor and african-american in lousiana, you can be compelled to "stay in your place" even if that place is under water.
and that if you are so compelled, you have no legal recourse.

bourgeois property uber alles yes?
good thing that the situation in new orleans after katrina was so well managed. good thing that conditions in new orleans were so nice so quickly. yay fema. yay state of lousiana. yay city of new orleans.


if you forget what this is about, have a look at spike lee's "when the levee breaks" and then tell me that the most disturbing aspect of this involves the constitutional implications of shabby reasoning on the part of a rightwing judge.


i assume that means that i do not "get it"....

dc my faith in the integrity of the supreme court is not absolute. The members of the supreme court are appointed by a politicized figure and as such their appointments many times hinge on their feelings on a certain case. The problem I see is that with only 9 judges it would be fairly easy for the court to be stacked against something. This is evident in the recent appointments in which people were appointed based on their political stance and not on their merits. People see the supreme court as a way to further their political agenda and that is dangerous.

I would feel much more comfortable with the supreme court if it had 19 judges or if their was an ability for the public to check them if it was needed. With a larger number of justices it would be much harder for the bench to be stacked.

Rekna...FDR tried stacking the Supreme Court by pushing legislation to add 6 more justices because he was pissed at how the Court ruled on some of his New Deal programs.

One should never had absolute faith in 9 other fallible human beings...but if the system aint broke...dont fix it.

hmmm, no. I think you've just about got it all.

Although it is off-topic, history indicates that Democracy only works until the people discover they can vote themselves other people's money.

Recent elections have not appeared to be decided by uninformed voters (the notable exception being the Florida dyslexics who seemed to inadvertently vote for Pat Buchanan). Instead, they are decided by voters weighing who has promised them the most tax money. Or to take the least amount of their money.

THAT is politics in a nutshell.

Agreed, in addition to idiots add selfish pricks. Democracy only works without greed or ignorance, so a perfect democracy will have to be qualified by perfect people. That's why no governmental system will work unless it's run by robots, and even then, Windows Vista is kinda shaky.

dc in increasing the number of justicies it would have to be done in such a way that stacking would not be likely. For instance add 1 justice every 4 years or something. Of course then we would need to have some way to handle ties. Another option would be 2 justices every 4 years but then it would be more likely to be stackable.

No, you seem not to be "getting it"
Citizens typically sue government entities under section 1983, which are claims of violations of civil rights.

Given that there is no constitutional right to interstate travel, the judge can't rule in their favor on that basis. None of the cases you cited establish an "undeniable right" to interstate travel, merely one that is established by precendent...precendent the judge clearly stated she was aware of in her ruling!

The irony, of course, is that strict constructionists *have* to admit that since the right to travel is not clearly written in the constituation, then it is not a constituational right. If she were to rule the other way, then in order to be consistent, the places decrying her decision now should be clamoring that she is an activist judge--creating laws and rights from the bench. Yet, we know that such people are anything *but* consistent...


I'm going down the line on your cases...it would help if you'd provide your analysis for why the cases are relevant. As I've found is often the case with you from past threads like these, your articles/cites are likely irrelevant or contrary to the issue at hand.

The first case: regarding whether denying a passport to a citizen is appropriate...the end of the court's analysis is that one's freedom to travel should fall under the right to liberty...the rest of the argument extrapolates from this...however, this is as I stated earlier, a prime example of judges "interpreting" rights from the words written in the constitution which is evidently only acceptable when the constructionists complaining agree with the ruling...

of course, should we mention that the *end* of the legal argument engages with it's past rulings allowing the government to shut down travel in time of war and during times of imminent danger? nah...

I get tired of having to spank you when you're wrong.

In Kent v. Dulles, 357 U.S. 116 (1958), the United States Secretary of State had refused to issue a passport, based on the suspicion that the plaintiff was going abroad to promote communism. Justice William O. Douglas wrote for the Court:

"The right to travel is a part of the 'liberty' of which the citizen cannot be deprived without due process of law under the Fifth Amendment. . . . Freedom of movement across frontiers in either direction, and inside frontiers as well, was a part of our heritage. Travel abroad, like travel within the country, . . . may be as close to the heart of the individual as the choice of what he eats, or wears, or reads. Freedom of movement is basic in our scheme of values."
Now, to most people like yourself, you like to assume that you only have rights when the supreme court says you do. This would be wrong on your part and it is part of the big problem in this country today. Did the right to freedom of movement suddenly spring in to being in 1958? Not bloody likely, in fact, in Shapiro v Thompson, 394 U.S. 618 (1969), Justice Stewart noted in a concurring opinion that "it is a right broadly assertable against private interference as well as governmental action. Like the right of association, ... it is a virtually unconditional personal right, guaranteed by the Constitution to us all."

Maybe that justice can explain where in:
...anything is said about interstate travel. I see grand jury, war trials, double jeopardy, self incrimination, due process, and eminent domain. As smooth stated, there is no explicitly stated constitutional right to travel within the country. If anything, the 10th Amendment might come into play (as nothing is specifically restricted in the Constitution), but that's a rather weak argument when one insists that free travel is constitutionally protected.

Will, he is not saying that the right is IN the 5th, he is saying that one cannot be denied without due process of law, according to the 5th.

so what you're saying is that UNLESS a right is specifically enumerated in the constitution or the bill of rights, that it does not exist? How Alberto Gonzalez like of you.

I dont think you have a constitutional right to spank Smooth. :shakehead:

AND I still believe there is absolutely no reason to change the process for removing sitting judges based on one ruling.

An otherwise solid post turned sour by a single snarky remark...

I fully support the right of due process whole heartedly. The way you edited it threw me off.
Not at all. I was simply working off the assumption that you were making the argument that interstate travel was based in the Constitution.

we need to get a couple things straight...

first of all, your ability to understand how I feel about personal rights vis-a-vis the supreme court is about as miniscule as your grasp of the law, so don't insult me regarding either or I'll bite right back

second of all, I guess you get tired of something...but given that every time you spout ignorance I shut you down, I find it ironic that you would then reply that you're weary of spanking me...


you, once again, fail to understand some BASIC points...

1) there is no explicit constitutional right to travel
there's a constitutional right to liberty, and traveling has been interpreted to fall under liberty, but along with the caveat that government actions curtailing any such "right" to travel falls under strict scrutiny
Do you know what strict scrutiny means?

2) You didn't bother reading the entire legal argument in the case you cited...that's obvious to anyone who has. Because if you had done so, you would have noticed I was paraphrasing the rest of the legal argument when I mentioned that in times of war and emergencies the court has ruled that the right to travel can be curtailed cf. STRICT SCRUTINY.

3) You probably don't know this...but supreme court decisions are narrowly confined to the case at hand. That means that this passport case regarding travel OUT OF THE COUNTRY is of LITTLE to NO RELEVANCE to citizens moving between cities.

Simply because FIVE justices believe that the right to travel is included in the right to liberty as it pertains to passports and travel between countries does NOT translate to binding precedence that they would necessarily rule the same as it pertains to citizens moving between cities. Such a ruling would require a seperate case on that specific issue...and given that the justices clearly established the "right" to travel as CONDITIONAL, it's unlikely that the same justices would have done so if they were alive today and ruling on this katrina case of two people trying to circumvent the police telling them to go somewhere that was better prepared to handle their needs during a national emergency...

4) More to say, but I'm going to leave it at this IRONY:
The last thread you and I had one of these unlearning sessions centered around our understandings of the 14th amendment. and unless I'm forgetting something, you pretty much told the board you thought that the court only recognized certain rights under the 14th amendment due to political bullshit.

now, that is hilarious in it's own right...but it's even moreso this time around because you absolulely need the 14th amendment to make the argument you are doing in this thread...the ONLY way a citizen can make a claim about a city police force to a federal court is by arguing: hey, I've got FEDERAL civil rights that supercede local rights and policies...hear my plea...

so here, you [perhaps unknowingly] hinge your legal argument on the reality of securing federal rights for citizens over and above local rights, but there you didn't want to hear anything of it...mighty inconsistent unless you'd like to clear that up....


the "big" problem today is IGNORANCE...and proud demonstration of it by the ignorant over and over...like threads and comments such as yours. see, it's interesting that the best insult you can come up with is that I derive my thoughts of rights from judges and courts, yet you're the one citing case after case as the basis of the right to travel.

you didn't come at me with a philisophical claim, which I might actually have been interested to hear...no, you posted the legal claims and when I discuss them with you it appears that you have to resort to arguing that I only see rights through a legal prism. I wonder if anyone else considers that oddly hypocritcal...

just giving back what I got. it's a character flaw. my apologies and thanks for the good part of the comment.

I agree... think about how many judges there are in the nation, and how many things pass through their courtroom. because of one person it calls for the dismantling of the whole system?

Ok, one guy spanks the other, and then the other "shuts him down". Let's just take a deep breath and continue this conversation without getting so personal. Neither of you guys has anything to do with deciding this case - so we're all just talking.

Now that that's over with... Smooth, can you help me out? I'm not sure that I understand why a right has to be enumerated in the Constitution. I was under the impression that the 10th amendment specified that rights not specifically restricted or assigned to the Feds BY the Constitution were reserved to the states or the people. Clearly I'm either misreading your post or I'm on the wrong page.

ubertuber, I didn't claim that a right must be specifically enumerated in the constituation for it to be valid.
EDIT: oh, and I should probably add right here that depending on how "strong" the court considers a right, that's the level of scrutiny they will apply to abridgement of said right. so that means clear consitutional rights are held to the highest standard before determining if curtailing them was appropriate or not (not that it can't ever happen, but whether the interest of the government meets or exceeds the standard for doing so ;)) /EDIT

I wrote that constructionists believe that.
And, up until today, dksuddeth has been a constructionist.
his every post on gun control hinges on the explicit words of the 2nd amendment, and all of his arguments I can remember defend the proposition that judges should a) not be activist from the bench (finding rights where none are explicitly written) and b) that justices can (and should) infer the constituational framers' original intent.


now, setting that aside to answer you on who holds what rights...that's pretty much been my point in past threads...and it's implied in my responses here: in so far as the federal consitution doesn't say an explicit peep about traveling, the states have a right to control/restrict their own as well as incoming citizens' rights to travel. the courts have held this to be true...and since they've decided that there is a right to travel, they mandate that the state must have a reason that is compelling to their interest before curtailing it. only after all that does a citizen have a personal right to move around as he or she sees fit. and in this particular case, it's an uphill battle to argue that the state doesn't have a compelling interest to control movement during evacuations persuant to a national emergency...

and I'm curious whether anyone went so far as to actually read up on this particular case...because if so, that person will notice that the judge ONLY said nay on the right to travel issue. The two still have a slew of other claims that the judge didn't toss...

Not sure where I said that I was a constructionist, although i'm pretty sure that my definition of a constructionist is not going to be the same as yours. If Scalia is your definition of a constructionist, then I most certainly am not. Scalia is only a constructionist when it comes to things that he idealizes. Take, for example, the right to an abortion. His 'constructionism' tells him that since it's not specifically enumerated it must not exist, however, in the Raich case he goes on to say that the commerce clause gives congress to regulate the totally intrastate and personal growth and use of marijuana because marijuana CAN be interstate commerce, even if it's illegal commerce. That is not constructionism nor original intent. MY definition of constructionist, or original intent, is that ALL individuals have ALL rights and power but the constitution enumerates CERTAIN powers to the central government and that judges should not be granting extra powers to the government that weren't originally enumerated to them.

well, now it's my turn to admit I'm stumped by your response
it looks like you said that you're not a constructionist as I would think of one, but you are a constructionist as you think of one?

I actually gave a point a & b to support my claim of your constructionist stance. Since you didn't even address them, I'm going to assume my memory is correct in regards to those two points until you say otherwise....

as for Scalia, since neither he nor I call or consider him to be one, I fail to see the relevance of tossing him out there...unless it was a strawman.

lastly, I'm confused on your read of the constitutional rights being directed toward what the government can do because I distinctly remember you railing against me in the past that the amendments are specifically what the government CAN'T do. My memory may be faulty, I may be thinking of someone else, but reading over the Bill of Rights I'd have to say that the rights written therein are directly speaking against your analysis that they are rights of what the government CAN do rather than what the feds CAN NOT do. (and here we'll probably break down again because it was this precise point, that it wasn't until much much later that anyone conceived of the idea that those rights would limit what the state or a local city can not do, it's this precise point that our discussions in the past have broken down)...yet in this case, you want us to agree with you that these two indvidual citizens have inaliable rights over the local police force.

Not to belabor points, but back in law school the standard formulation of the "interpretivist" school was that you have federal constitutional rights if they are either expressly stated or fairly inferred from the constitution's language or structure. The right to travel is a "structure" right - e.g. the right to petition the government for redress of grievances (first amendment) fairly implies that you can get to the seat of government to present your petition; it's also implied by, for example, the empowerment of congress to regulate interstate commerce - without travel there would be nothing to regulate. (The "noninterpretivist" view would basically leave it to judges to figure out what's right. This is a VAST oversimplification, of course.)

The other thing people miss about the "idiot" judges is that there are rights to appeal. They exist precisely because judges can get things wrong. Statistically it doesn't happen all that often (I think something like 80% of appeals end in an affirmance), but it does happen. A trial level judge gets appealed, and appeals judges sit in panels of three, so if one of them is an idiot s/he'll get outvoted.

Also, I find some of the arguing about opinions to be a bit strange, because people are misreading technical terms (like "final") to mean something that they don't mean as used in an appellate opinion. A "final" decision, as the term is used in an appeals court's opinion, means it's not "interlocutory" (which is the opposite of "final") - technically, it means that the what was done by the administrative agency or the lower court is ready to be appealed because there aren't any more substantive decisions to be made that warrant holding up taking an appeal. A decision can be appealed in the federal system only if it's "final."

Would you agree that Scalia would consider himself an adherent of the interpetivist school?

(I'm assuming you draw a distinction between constructionist and interpretivist, correct? I mean, both fall under the judicial restraint paradigm, but seperate schools of thought)

Judicial Restraint paradigm:
1) strict constructionist -- only concerned with the literal lettering of the law [what I think dksuddeth demonstrates in his various analyses)
2) interpretivist -- concerned with both the lettering of the law along with original intent (cf. Bork)

cf. Greenhouse for support for the importance/necessity of activist judges

I'm not sure I like the term "strict constructionist" because it carries all sorts of baggage. Scalia calls himself a "textualist", though he'll be the first to tell you that textualists can and do disagree -- which doesn't surprise me as a lawyer, because I can tell you that parties to a contract disagree about what was intended by the words all the time. That doesn't mean a court can invent new terms instead of trying to find the most reasonable meaning. And that's all textualism is: we have words, we have to figure out what those words mean, or what range of meanings they have. The reason to write things down and to choose the words you use is precisely so that there will be a guide to future conduct. Otherwise why bother writing it down?

The rationale for having judicial review (back in Marbury v Madison) is that the constitution is law, just like a contract or a will, so figuring out what it means is a judicial task. That necessarily implies that the words have an ascertainable meaning. Plus, if it's necessary to change what the Constitution says, there is a mechnaism built right into it, in Article V. It's not for judges to change it.

That isn't to say that there are no new issues or new applications of old concepts - that's why the const has open-ended phrases, precisely so that it's flexible. But flexible is not the same thing as mutable. Original meaning is a perfectly workable guide to decision.

;)

OK, so now I'm getting a sense of when you went to law school.

hmm, but where would you place Bork then (if different)?
Or how would you rework the partial typology I posted of restraintive positions?
AKAIK, interprativist and textualist are not distinct...the former is an earlier designation?

Whether you or I like the phrase "strict constructionism" is neither here nor there. I've defined it and am not carrying any political baggage with it. I do not see anything in dksuddeth's position that allow anything other than a literal reading of the words written. He even explicitly differentiated himself from Scalia...

Smooth, I graduated law school in '84.

Bork was ....... well, a curmudgeonly version of Scalia, without the libertarian streak. Modern original meaning theorists tend to go up a single level of abstraction, so to speak: so (for example) speech/press/assembly/petition are all expressive rights, and expression is protected. Whereas Bork once floated the idea that the first amendment protects ONLY political speech.

To my mind, taking the const seriously means that rights come from two places: (1) direct restrictions on govt'l ability to act (whether express or implied) - this is what we typically think of as rights; and (2) structural constraints on the ability of govt to act (which in turn come in two types, separation fo powers and federalism). Each type is essential to protecting our liberties. Never underestimate how important the second type is: it's what Jefferson thought was the primary protection for the citizenry against tyranny.

I would say textualist is a subset of interpretivist. An interpretivist will try to ascertain the meaning of the words by looking to logical sources. A textualist, in theory, looks at the words and tries to figure out what they mean. The textualist will use fewer sources of guidance, I would guess. Think back to how Roberts explained his approach in his Judiciary Committee hearings - that's interpretivism. Ditto for Alito. It's still bound to the text, but it's not limited to the text. Thomas, on the other hand, is a more pure textualist than Scalia: he looks to original meaning, period.

I haven't followed this stuff all that closely since law school, though I do still read casually about it, enough to keep a hand in and follow the arguments. Back in law school Brennan was still on the court doing his thing - very different kind of court.

loquitor, you weren't supposed to *tell* me! :D
Thank you for the information.
I had to cf. Jefferson with federalism because I wasn't sure if you meant for me not to underestimate structural constraints or federalism

I think it'd be an interesting research question comparing the implications federal agencies (operating outside the tripartate seperation of powers model) have on our everyday lives to the folding of state agencies under the federal homeland security umbrella.

It would seem, from what I've read, that Jefferson would be most concerned about the latter. I wonder how I'd operationlize that...something like rates of civil complaints would give us some insight into how people felt their rights were being violated; but that wouldn't account for the fact that people have differential access to the courts.

Do you have an idea of how I'd operationalize that question?
(or is the question uninteresting? ;))

I don't know what "operationalize" means.

Anyone have a link that actually details what happened in this case?

Ie, was the bridge owned and administered by the county?

Did the county pass laws that state it would be closed, or did the police just decide? (Due process)

What arguements and cases where brought up by the citizen in their case?

...

And, in US justice, does the judge have an obligation to look up cases that the attournies on each side do not bring up?

The answers to some of your questions are here: http://209.85.165.104/search?q=cache...lnk&cd=5&gl=us the link is to a threas OP from Sept. 2005 containing quotes from Gretna police about the rationale for closing the bridge to pedestrians......]

No, that post doesn't answer any of my questions.

This is expressly the reason that the right to travel exists.

hosts link didn't give you that info?

can't say for sure, but i'm guessing that it would either be county or state owned, state most likely.

From the article - "police from Gretna City, Jefferson Parrish and the Louisiana State Crescent City Connection Police Department closed to foot traffic the three access points to the bridge closest to the West Bank of the river."

i'll find the published decision.
...

not that i'm aware of, unless the judge decides that there is another case that holds precedent that was not brought up.

No, as far as I read, as one amoung many articles, it gave a cursory description of what happened at the bridge. There was no information that I read about the actual case.

And was there any process involved in that decision? Did the county pass a law blocking passage over the bridge? Or was it done by the fiat of the police and/or county executive?

There is a difference between the government doing something via fiat and whim, and doing it by legal process.

So, all of these articles linking to previous decisions, do we have any evidence that the plaintiff brought them up during the trial?

Yet we have people calling for the judge's job. Strange, how people jump to conclusions.

operationalize is how you measure a concept.
since you can't directly measure an idea, you have to come up with a tangible thing that adequately represents the idea you want to know about.
In this case, the idea is that civil rights claims would adequately represent people's perceptions of injustice...because people will file generally claims when they feel their rights are violated. but I brought up the problem that not everyone can or wants to file cases. the additional problem of then I'd only be measuring perceptions of injustice, at best, not actual instances of it makes it not very suitable as a measure.

so I don't know, I need a better measure of injustice.
so the question of how would I operationlize it was a question to someone who practices law (you) of how you think injustice can be measured.

having worked in the courthouse and in the legal profession, I can tell you that a lot of lawsuits get filed because there are "hooks" for them, not becuase the person is genuinely aggrieved. It's the modern day equivalent of a saloon brawl in Dodge City. You get "dissed," you sue.

Another one that should be gone.
 

Judge acquits police captain of DUI, with an alc lvl of .19