I don’t think the courts should be limited when it comes to considering the opinions of other courts when making decisions. Again, we are sovreign-- we do not have to “obey” the rulings of other nations’ courts, but just like when a person plans to make a major decision, it’s good to ask the opinions of those around you.
I feel compelled to note that I can put politics aside when looking at issues such as these-- my opinion is not always what’s right. It’s just an opinion-- dust in the proverbial wind. I have not been, nor pray God will ever be, a person who says that something is right simply because my personal ethical code agrees with it-- sometimes what’s morally right is legally wrong and vice versa.
There is a distinct difference between having a general idea that something is wrong and having a true, deep understanding of the consequences of one’s actions.
Look, I’m not saying to smack their hands and send them to bed without any dinner. What I am trying to say is that perhaps there should be a bit of consideration that some of these people may have had the requisite knowledge that an act was wrong, but was physically incapable of truly and fully comprehending the consequences.
Nothing. Say, “Thanks for your advice. We always value your opinions,” and politely disregard it.
Yes, but laws dealing with constitutional issues seem to always get challenged-- and the challenges end up going up the ladder to the Supreme Court anyway.
But when the SC bases it’s opinion, even if just in part, on the actions of foreign courts, we DO have to obey that decision.
I’m the same way, but your original post said that the SC should take foreign courts’ decisions into account in “some” cases. I just wanted to understand when it was OK and when it wasn’t OK. But now you seem to be saying that it’s OK in ALL cases. That’s a different argument.
Ya know what? When the SC of the US issues a decision, following whatever reasoning it finds persuasive, it at that moment becomes a good old *US domestic * decision.
Surely it isn’t hard to accept that non-US’ers are not only human but in many cases represent well-developed, thoughtful, even moral cultures, and that their views just might be worth listening to. Well, maybe that *is * hard for some.
AQA, what laigle said. You call it “hyperbole”, huh? Lame. As lame as saying you were joking. :rolleyes:
Oh, since your faith in the accuracy of the US judicial system in every and all capital cases is so complete that you doubt any innocent man has ever been executed, start your fight against ignorance here.
Putting words in someone’s mouth is a distasteful debating tactic.
What John Mace said, and what I stated as well, was that there is a place to consider world opinion. An appropriate place would be treaty negotiations by the executive branch. Another would be the drafting of legislation and treaty ratification by the legislature.
Such practices explicitly turn international opinion into American law.
Now, foreign laws that have not been treated in this fashion are not binding on Americans. Nor are the treaties or portions of treaties we are not a signatory to or have not yet ratified. Since they aren’t part of a body of law Americans are bound to, I think it improper and dangerous that they be considered when American law is discussed.
The Supreme Court isn’t all powerful, you know. There are, quite properly, limits on its actions. This should be another of these.
If you believe otherwise, I’d love to hear some justification for it other than saying that the opinions must be correct since the Court made them. After all, it was pointed out above that the Court has been in error in the past.
It does. And when Republicans rant against “activist judges” and that resonates with people, and they vote in Bush partly to prevent more “activist judges” from ascending to the SC, that’s a domestic decsion, too. Actions have consequences.
It’s not hard for me. I listen to foreign opions all the time. I’ve even changed my mine due to this. I think the president and legislator should as well. But a judge’s job is to interpret US law and US law alone. Unless, of course, their intention is to usurp the authority of the executive or the legislature, or both.
And that is precisely what they did - there being no more specific definition of “cruel and unusual” in US-only law available to guide an interpretation. Note in passing that they’d have come to the same conclusion without invoking any foreign treaties at all.
This “judicial activism” you complain is in play here has been gone over on this board ad nauseam. The very act of interpreting a law, the Court’s job, is “activism” by any reasonable definition that has been propounded here, and this example is hardly any different. The fact that many may dislike a decision hardly makes it an example of a violation of the principle of non-activism, as you suggest, although it is certainly easier to maintain a high dudgeon by pretending it to be principled. Yet that too is part of the GOP campaign against “activist judges” that you mention - it’s simply code for “getting more judges to support social reactionism”. Mr. Moto, I do not refer to you specifically, but to the argument that nothing that happens or is said outside US borders has any right to be considered.
Yet their decisions are final and binding until legislation or amendments pass to supersede them. You do know that, don’t you? If you disagree with the decision, it’s up to our elected representatives to act. If they don’t, it’s hard to argue that the people’s will isn’t being acted upon.
Now, if you’re going to post Mallard Fillmore-like statements like “I’d love to hear some justification for it other than saying that the opinions must be correct since the Court made them”, please don’t complain about having words put in your *own * mouth, okay?
“[N]o more specific definition … in US-only law available to guide interpretation” … other than the Supreme Court’s own definition from prior 8th Amendment jurisprudence (and quoted in this thread by QuizCustodent)? And other than the Court’s decision on this very issue in 1989? And the persuasive dicta from its prior decisions in over 100 years of 8th Amendment Supreme Court decisions?
No, I don’t guess there was too much else to help the Court. So, yeah, I guess if the Justices were unable to find their prior decisions, then they really had nothing else to go on, right?
Your opinion on this issue would be worth so much more if you undestood what the phrase “judicial activism” means. Interpreting a law is not judicial activism. “Judicial activism” is something much more specific: it refers to interpreting a law in a manner not consistent with the intent of the law’s framers; it refers to interpreting a law in a manner guided by the judge’s own policy preferences rather than the legislature or executive’s; etc.
Just because you don’t understand the words does not mean that they must be code for something else. They have a specific meaning, as addressed above. Unless I just missed the coded message of your words … hmmmm.
I assure you I haven’t conceded any of your points. I just made the assumption that anyone reading your post could make the fairly obvious conclusion left by the relative strength of our arguments. After all, boxers don’t keep hitting an opponent once he’s on the canvas, and your ad hominem attacks belie the strength of your arguments.
Can I assume you don’t have anything to say about the responses I did make?
What point? The unprovable anecdote about jury duty? Certainly my anecdotes are just as unprovable, but if you’re going to try to convince me that my anecdotes are empty you’re not going to have much luck seeing as how I was there for them. Or perhaps you meant the goal post switch about proving false executions after the fact so you could avoid the point I raised about a steady stream of people being released from death row after DNA tests proved them innocent? Those aren’t points, they’re rhetoric and faulty rhetoric at that. Arguing them would be purile.
I also note that you’ve given up any attempt to discuss the issues of relative weights given to Constitutional principle, the validity of examining US law in the light of a variety of legal opinions, and the need for uniformity in the justice system. As such, the debate is won. There’s no point conversing with you further.
As for ad hominem, that’s your gig. I’m certainly condescending (with good reason in light of your side of the discussion), but you’re the only one here replacing insult for argumentation. Don’t bother replying, I won’t be reading any more of your drivel.
And once again you have managed to avoid actually addressing my points. You said something about “cowering” earlier? But I’ll address the things you did say here:
You were there as a juror? Or a potential juror? And thus I take you were privvy to the educational level of all the individuals that actually sat on the jury? How, exactly?
But wait! In order to have sat on the jury, you needed to have less than a high school education! So are we to assume that you don’t have a high school education? Or perhaps that you actually didn’t sit on the jury, and thus have no idea of the educational level or effectiveness of the actual, eventual jury?
Moreover, you’ve failed to indicate exactly how many juries you’ve seen. Are we to assume that you’ve sat on dozens of juries? Or are you just guessing based on the one or two times you were called into a jury pool?
If you didn’t mean executed, then maybe you shouldn’t have said it. Any attempt to back out now would be – as you put it – goalpost moving.
I think the Justices should place Constitutional principal above their own beliefs.
If by “variety of legal opinions” you mean “foreign sources of law that were rejected by the US legislature and executive,” then I think such examinations are inherently invalid. It’s not up to the Supreme Court to decide that we should have ratified treaties that were rejected, or that we should have passed laws that weren’t passed. And when it comes to interpreting the Constitution, the opinion of the French or British or any other foreign body should be irrelevant to the determinatio of what’s “cruel and unusual punishment” to Americans. The Constitution is an American document, that governs only Americans and reflects the will of the Americans that adopted it. Foreign opinion on that document is inherently irrelevant.
As I said before, uniformity is highly overrated. There’s absolutely no basis in law or reason that crimes should be punished the same in every state. Our Constitutional and federal system of government reserves the right to set punishments for criminal actions to the States, and not the federal government.
Beautiful. Even in a sentence in which you deny making ad hominem attacks, you make an ad hominem attack.
Age and others, a small but relevant point: While I can understand use of the term “judicial activism” as descriptive of a jurisprudential philosophy antonymous to judicial self-restraint, and have a problem with using original intent as the sole means of defining constitutional provisions, I’d ask you all to concede that it is also used, not here but in many public forums, to define a nebulous realm of “that judge overturned a law that I approve of,” when the said law clearly flies in the face of a constitutional guarantee of rights and there are sixty years of precedent for the decision.
A statute calling for mandatory or coercive school prayers is a pretty obvious example of a law that might have strong public support and nonetheless be unconstitutional by any reasonable standard for determining constitutionality. And I guarantee that some public figure will declare the judge’s ruling to be “judicial activism.”
To give you an example of where original intent falls short, strict application of its principles would mean that the U.S. Air Force as a national armed service is unconstitutional; it’s clearly not among the delegated powers, and therefore reserved to the states. Yet I think that even the most thoroughgoing of original-intent jurisconsults would agree that the authorizations for Army and Navy should be construed to permit a coordinate Air Force, national defense being largely placed in the hands of the Federal government save for state militias. But the Constitutional Convention didn’t intend to have a national Air Force; development of aviation meant that the intent to have the national government assume primary role for defense would suggest that the strict interpretation of the authorizing Constitutional provisios be extended to cover a coordinate force founded in the new technological development.
I don’t intend to be a smart-ass about this, Mr. Moto, but as explained to me in words of one syllable by Dewey Cheathem Undhow, yes it does. It’s possible to argue against it, to demonstrate why it was a bad decision, etc., but it’s the established law of the country, whether or not you or I like it. (In my case, it was the construction I put on the Ninth Amendment contrary to what the Court had ruled. But the principle is the same no matter whose ox is gored.)
Note original intent can be fuzzy. Given that a number of the Founding Fathers were Deists, one could make a fair argument that their intent wouldn’t have been to allow the 10 Commandments on public property.
But according to you and Dewey those “reasonable standards” would be irrelevant if only SCOTUS says it is. Apparently the only standards that matter are the personal standards of 5 judges.
I allowed that it was legally binding, Polycarp. And the precedent can be used to interpret other law, sure. But let’s not gild a turd here.
If Supreme Court decisions were always correct and infallible, the Court wouldn’t have cause to overturn itself, especially after only a few short years. And all of us would quote Plessy v. Ferguson as an example of correct constitutional interpretation and base other decisions on this precedent.
You state that as if you believe there is not only such a thing as objective correctness about matters not susceptible to the scientific method, or objective persuasiveness, to which your access is superior to that of the Supremes. It ain’t. You have an opinion, they have theirs. Theirs rules. That’s how the system works. Deal with it. The saying goes, “They’re not last because they’re right, they’re right because they’re last”.
Ibid. :rolleyes: AQAHere’s a hint that might help you not only on this board but in life: When you’re wrong, you gain more respect by admitting it than by denying it and deriding those who point it out to you. This board is about *fighting * ignorance. Start with this: As Poly has already pointed out, “judicial activism” has a pretty well established code meaning in modern US politics, one not meaning what you wish it did, but that’s too damn bad - maybe you and Liberal can console each other over the world’s unfair insistence on not observing your own preferred meanings for your pet words. But the discussion will meanwhile pass you by.