But in Virginia, the general district court hears traffic violations and misdemeanors, as well as preliminary and bail hearings for felony matters. Their decisions aren’t binding on any other court. The circuit court hears felony matters, as well as appeals from the general district court, which lie as a matter of right. And when you appeal your general district court verdict to the circuit court, it’s a trial de novo, not simply an argument of error.
And the circuit court’s precedents are not binding on the general district courts in its area. So if, for example, a man was accused of misdemeanor mopery, and his defense was that he was blind, and as a matter of law a blind person cannot commit mopery, then the general district court might find that he’s not blind, as a matter of fact, and conclude that the evidence shows he’s guilty.
His appeal to the circuit court results in a new trial, with no deference at all given to the results of the previous trial. The circuit court might find that as a matter of fact, he is blind, but conclude as a matter of law that a blind person can commit mopery, and enter a judgment of conviction.
But a future defendant accused of mopery and offering a defense of blindness would not be foreclosed from arguing his defense in the very same district court that started our first defendant off.
I think that this is the best example, because not only did the Court reverse itself in less than 20 years, you had a Justice (O’Connor) that changed her own vote in each case.
Strange how with no intervening constitutional amendment, the Court and O’Connor felt that there was now a constitutional right to sodomy.
With all due respect, that last line belongs in Great Debates. The only place I’ve seen anyone claiming that Lawrence established a “constitutional right to sodomy” is in right-wing Christian groups decrying it. Most of the rest of the world is able to glean from the text of the opinion that whatever the bounds of the nebulous “right to poverty” may be, one element of it is the right to autonomy in private personal relationships – that is, it is not the law’s business what you do in private. Justice Kennedy nuanced that to be sure, but that’s a broad-brush summary of it.
That was an 1896 decision, reversed in 1954 – 58 years, nearly 3 generations.
That was much quicker, an 1986 decision reversed (explicitly) in 2003 – 17 years, or just under 1 generation.
Generally, reversals happen only decades later. And almost always after changes in the Justices on the Court – I don’t recall any reversals with the same 9 Justices still sitting on the Court.
Um, yeah. blush I could be a wiseacre and say the “right to poverty” was established 100 years earlier, in Lochner. But it was indeed just a Freudian typo of some sort.
Have you read the decision? Try it before commenting on it.
O’Connor wrote a concurrence in which she specifically said she did not want to overturn Bowers and that she did not think there was a constitutional right to sodomy. She wanted the Texas law struck on equal protection grounds, because it was aimed at a group, homosexuals, not an activity, sodomy. She specifically said a law criminalizing all sodomy, not just that by homosexuals, could be constitutional.
It really is beneficial to know what the hell you are talking about when you make comments like this.
So your idea of opining is to make things up about a Supreme Court opinion. I’ll hold that in mind when I read anything you write in the future, and treat it with appropriate credibility.
But it was indeed just a Freudian typo of some sort.