Now that is something worth researching further. Thank you. It’s funny that executive, especially through regulatory agencies is ignored by many.
But not in contravention to State’s rights–territories aren’t states and didn’t have state’s rights.
Welll, arguably the regulatory agencies already represent a fourth branch, unaccountable to the public.
What he’s missing is the Federal government didn’t have anything to do with protecting individual rights prior to the 14th Amendment. It had no constitutional role in stopping state government infringement on individual rights. That was the role of state constitutions and state legal systems. The Bill of Rights was written to make it very explicit that the Federal Congress couldn’t pass certain laws restricting individual freedoms, but the prohibition on those actions by the Federal government gave it no authority to protect those rights in the States.
So there was no U.S. Constitutional free speech issues in 1825 if South Carolina prohibited a newspaper publishing news critical of the South Carolina Governor, for example.
So the point I’m making, I guess not clearly enough is that prior to the the 14th Amendment any individual rights that existed in the United States only existed because of State government protection of those rights, the creation of the Bill of Rights was largely a movement on behalf of the state’s to protect citizen’s of those states from the Federal government. So not only is the entire Bill of Rights only there because of the advocacy of state’s rights, all individual rights, good (free speech) or bad (owning slaves) were sprung from the fount of State sovereignty (the core principle behind state’s rights.)
So yes, while history books that only talk about the Civil War and Jim Crow or gay marriage might have you believe State’s rights are only brought up when the Federal government is trying to protect some individual right that the State’s disagree with, at the time of the revolution the “state’s rights” position was one almost wholly focused on individual liberties–so to answer the question as to whether anyone has ever raised the issue of state’s rights for any reason other than to deny individual rights, the answer is “yes.” Look to North Carolina and Rhode Island after the Constitution was drafted, read Mercy Warren’s “Observations on the new Constitution, and on the Federal and State Conventions” or the speeches of Patrick Henry to understand what I’m talking about here.
Actually no. There were no laws against kidnapping free blacks, transporting them to a slave state and enslaving them AFAIK.
Are state’s rights the mechanism by which marijuana is legalized/decriminalized, by which gay marriage was legalized prior to last year’s supreme court decision, and experiments with universal health insurance were performed prior to Obamacare?
I know it happened, but I’m pretty sure there were laws against kidnapping.
All these (and other initiatives, like assisted suicide) are at least in the spirit of states’ rights and the laboratories of democracy.
There is a technical argument about marijuana, that the present situation is conditioned on a federal forbearance which could change; a true states’ rights approach to legalization would mean the revocation of the federal law.
Who cares who has more constituents? Don’t concede the real point to those who think the Congress can just block any appointment indefinitely.
Congress has no authority to appoint judges & justices on its own. Presidents have the responsibility to make those appointments. Presidents even have the authority to make recess appointments to the bench, with no Congressional involvement at all until Congress comes back in session.
In the event of divided government, whose right is it to make appointments? The President, same as it ever was. That’s the Constitution we have.
Mitch McConnell is being a twit. If he wanted a Westminster system, that’d be fine; let’s see him call for a Constitutional Convention. I’d probably even support that. But so far, he’s not trying to replace the President with Prime Minister McConnell; he’s just been generally sabotaging the executive we have. That’s *technically *short of treason, until you make the government unable to govern. McConnell has so far stayed within the lines, and been a partisan but not a traitor; but to sabotage the state out of spite because the President is a different party isn’t exactly serving the public.
Let me add. It is fine if McConnell wants to block, say, Sri Srinivasan in particular for some rational cause. But blocking every appointment? For eleven months? There are a lot of federal judges; some of them are going to leave the bench this year due to illness, death, or mishap. Is he going to block all of their replacements too?
This is absurd. Find a compromise, gentlemen.
Where was this high mindedness during Bork’s hearing. Look once political nastiness becomes part of a process, it typically stays. Ask yourself, at this point, what incentive is there to work with the other side?
Bork was rejected for cause. You may disagree with the cause or the reasoning, but Democrats fulfilled their Constitutional responsibility to provide the advice and consent (in this case rejection) in a timely manner.
Good point. They should at least be required to have a timely vote. I also am not a fan of filibusters.
As I said in another thread, I think it’s crazy that Bork continually gets brought up as an example of partisan haranguing of a nominee. The guy was complicit in the attempt to shut down the Watergate investigation. His firing of the special prosecutor was judged illegal. In his memoirs he mentioned he was promised appointment to the Supreme court for it. There is no way the guy deserved the seat.
They still confirmed Anthony Kennedy to that seat.
The Congress can reject a nominee. But if they reject all nominees by a President, they’re not giving reasons to reject any one nominee, and can expect to be ignored. I suppose if he has to do so, Obama can appoint a justice in the instant between the end of the present Congress and the beginning of the next. And if McConnell keeps this up, the President would be justified to do so.
Might be tricky.
Also, Bork’s rejection by the Senate wasn’t solely by the Democrats.
I just can’t think of the case right now but IIRC a black man was kidnapped in a free state and enslaved and it was one of those things where checking the laws it was like “Goddam there’s no law against kidnapping black men!” Kind of like in Idaho currently the marital abandonment laws are written so that it’s not illegal for women to abandon their husbands.
So you’re saying the law against kidnapping specifically stated the victims had to be white? Because there’s no law (AFAIK) specifically against kidnapping Americans of Bangladeshi origin, either, but it’s still illegal.
Eh, this is no different than the recess appointment argument and the Supreme Court ruled 9-0 that Obama’s scheme to get around that didn’t pass constitutional muster–because there is no constitutional resolution to an obstinate congress, congress retains the right to be obstinate it’s not “invalid”, it’s just shitty… I believe that Teddy’s scheme would still work today (he wrote appointments to happen in the “moment between the adjourning of the prior session and the start of the next”, a “moment” that most happen, even though in Teddy’s case it was only theoretically a picosecond), the problem with that is you can only do it at the end of a congressional term (so January 3rd every two years) if congress is insisting on staying in session perpetually.