Not quite. The Supreme Court did not rule on the merits of the case but rather dodged the issue and found that there was a problem with the filing and naming of the defendant. It didn’t actually deal with any of the issues the court did in this case.
the things I found troubling with the decision are 1) The issue that troubled SCOTUS, and me, is not that the president can detain enemy combatants, but that he can do so indefinitely without even the pretext of due process. This court dealt with that issue in a goddamn footnote in which they basically said that since the country is still involved in military action against Al Qaeda, there is no limit to the time of detention. This is the scariest part of the opinion, because there is apparently no limit to the detention. 2) Congress deserves some of the blame for granting such a blanket grant of power to a power-grabbing President. Although the court read the grant of authority too broadly, Congress can and should restrict his power. They won’t though. 3) There was no real adjudication of whether or not Padilla meets the definition of enemy combatant, it was simply a matter of the president saying he is, so he is. Granted it was a ruling on a motion for summary judgment, but the court, unlike SCOTUS in Hamdi, did not seem to require that the lower court make an actual adjudication as to Padilla’s status. That’s not what happened in Quirin, nor should it be what happened in this case. 4) Even if you accept the ruling as legally sound (which I don’t), I would like my Commander in Chief to show some regard for the rights of U.S. citizens. Indict and try the fucker, even if it is in a military tribunal, and uphold the ideals our country was founded on. I know that’s a lot to ask of the President, but then again, I’m an idealist.
Well, it’s nice and all that ‘bay’ has a gazillion meanings, and we must discern which is intended from context. There are lots of words like that. I remember learning all about that in 1st Grade, but it’s kind of you to remind me of the lesson. Now tell me which words in the 14th Amendment have anything to do with race in any of their meanings. Can’t? That’s because there aren’t any (except for the bit in Section 4 where it says the government won’t compensate people for emancipated slaves). The text is broad. The reason you have just given for reading it narrowly does not give us reason to read it any more narrowly than is necessary in order to avoid rendering it nonsensical, but it is certainly not necessary to restrict it to being about race only to avoid nonsensicality. The only context which might recommend reading it narrowly has to do with original intent, not the meaning of the text.
So, I repeat. Why, if you are a textualist, do you adopt an originalist understanding of the 14th?
Because – as Bricker plainly stated – to read the text of the 14th amendment equal protection clause literally renders the clause nonsensical. In that situation, historical context is an appropriate tool for interpretation, even for a dyed-in-the-wool textualist.
Look, a lot of the clauses in the Bill of Rights are either nonsensical or so vague as to be useless if read overly literally. That would make textualism a bankrupt interpretive strategy right out of the gate. Since it isn’t, it presumably doesn’t require us to read things overly literally, and the nonsensical literal reading of equal protection is never under consideration. I find this line of argument profoundly unconvincing. The equal protection clause no more “requires” a textualist to look to original intent than does the 1st or 8th amendments.
The point of this little digression is that Strict Constructionism requires just as many judgement calls when interpreting the Constitution as any other interpretive approach. Bricker would have us believe that allowing judges to take any other interpretive approach means that there are no strictures on what judges can take the Constitution to be saying, while strict constructionist approaches places tight strictures on judges. This is every bit as implausible as religious fundamentalists who claim that they don’t interpret scripture, but just take plain meaning of the text. If you want to argue that strict constructionism is preferable to alternative interpretive approaches, that’s one thing. Bricker’s little argument about defenders of privacy, etc. not being able to object to any decision whatsoever, however, requires that other interpretive approaches aren’t actually interpreting, but are just making shit up. That is what I find tiresome and offensive.
Question: If section 1 is to be interpreted broadly, it surely must mean that women have equal rights with men, no? But if so, then why does section 2 refer only to male citizens when discussing how “the basis of representation” may be reduced? Might we infer that section 1 is not meant to cover women in the same way that it covers men, otherwise section 2 would be in conflict with section 1?
Note: I’m not addressing the issue of race here, but just gender.
Or you could argue that because section 2 singles out which gender it applies to, while equal protection covers “any person”, we should infer that equal protection covers gender.
:shrug: One can argue all kinds of things. That’s sort of my point.
More questions: What exactly does that second sentence in section 2 of the 14th amendment mean, and does is it still valid today? If it is, does it now include women and what amendment made that so?
This is really just a GQ type of question. I’m not trying to make some rhetorical point by asking the questions-- my inquiring mind wants to know!
