Donald Trump--I'm veering off of privacy and law. He reminds me of Ulysses Grant in his dynamic popularity, his coming from nowhere to the top, and also in how likely he is to be able to handle the job of president. Grant, in case you're not up on your 1870 political history, was a mess as president and got to keep being that same mess for 8 full years. Trump has just won the Republican primaries in New Hampshire, Nevada and South Carolina. Actually "Trump as the Second Coming of Grant" could be its own post--or its own book. By contrast, in Nevada and South Carolina the strong-left candidate Bernie Sanders was brought down to reality by Clinton's voters. Now Jeb Bush is gone and the clock is ticking on Marco Rubio, who looks like a great possibility for president in about 2024. Where is Paul Ryan when we need him? I guess he's sitting over there with Jeb Bush, except that Bush didn't play it safe. He took his shot but it wasn't his year. Also Ryan did take his shot with Romney in 2012 and lose.
What If? Call it a vision of 2025.
What if Trump wins the nomination in spite of the fact that he can't seem to get more than 35% of even the Republican vote? He does seem able to keep anyone else from getting that many.
What if Clinton wins the nomination?
What if she beats him by a lop-sided margin and we have another four or eight years of Democratic President and Republican Congress?
What if the mainstream old Republicans blame the Tea Party for pissing away a great chance to keep a second Clinton President from the White House?
What if the Tea Party portion in Congress stays virtually as big as it is now?
What if the Tea Party hand in state legislatures and governorships stays as is?
What are the odds that the Tea Party will split from the Repubs in the next few years and we will end up with three parties?
What are the odds that centrist Democrats will join the center-Repubs in a new Center Party and the Sanders Socialists will turn into the third party?
It's a vision I keep finding in my head as Trump keeps winning.
As president, nation-saving war hero Grant ended up being a buffoon.
Trump, hero only of his own business empire and Mitt Romney has doubts even about that, is a buffoon 20 times over already. He doesn't have nearly as good of character as Grant had.
Mitt Romney in 2012 at least was a businessman who looked like he could listen to people who disagreed with him and treat them with respect, who sounded like he could think things through before shooting off his mouth, and who seemed to really care about interpersonal relationships at least as much as his own chance at power. Trump shows no sign of being able to do those things, but a president has to do them All Day Long or govern less effectively as a result.
Sunday, February 28, 2016
Monday, February 15, 2016
A Few Things The Law Has Said Are Private
A hundred years ago in the US, few or no court decisions said you had a right to privacy. The good news is that this has been changing, but at the same time we've been gaining wonderful new tools to snoop into private matters. So what are some matters the Constitution protects as private?
Let's start with who you can marry. When I was too young to marry, age 11 in 1960, many US states prohibited blacks and whites from marrying each other. For this and 117 other related reasons, the civil rights movement kicked into gear. In 1967 this civil rights momentum and the determination of a black woman, Mildred Jeter, and a white man, T. Loving, to love each other and be married brought a case to the US Supreme Court. The couple lived in Virginia, where the state would not marry them because they weren't of the same race. This next is from Wikipedia, Feb 2016, plus my comments: A law with the fine name of The Racial Integrity Act of 1924 aimed to prevent that awful degraded black blood from getting into our pure white babies. The Lovings were already mixing body fluids among the races and making babies. They went to the District and got married. Then they came back to Virginia and got arrested and sentenced to a year in jail for having the audacity to, as the phrase goes, "make an honest woman of " Mildred Jeter. They were charged with "cohabiting as man and wife, against the peace and dignity of the Commonwealth." The House UnAmerican Activities Committee should have investigated this "peace and dignity" notion and the law based on it, but they were busy with other things.
The trial judge in the case, Leon M. Bazile, echoing Johann Friedrich Blumenbach's 18th-century interpretation of race, wrote:
9]
On January 6, 1959, the Lovings pleaded guilty and were sentenced to one year in prison, with the sentence suspended for 25 years on condition that the couple leave the state of Virginia. They did so, moving to the District of Columbia. That didn't go well, so they sued. If they had been able to make their peace with living in the Capital, we might still be stringing up white boys who looked at black girls, and vice-versa. I've noticed a couple of black girls myself. In Jamaica, where the boy-girl rules are quite different than in the US, a couple of them noticed me.
Other times where privacy rights came up are listed by the High Court in Carey v. Population Services International, 431 U.S. 678, 685 (1977). Pierce v. Society of Sisters (1925), and Meyer v. Nebraska (1923), dealt with privacy in childrearing and education. Prince v. Massachusetts (1944) with family relationships; Skinner v. Oklahoma (1942), with procreation; Griswold v. Connecticut, supra, and Eisenstadt v. Baird with contraception; and Roe v. Wade (1973), with abortion. The latter three cases were interpreted as construing the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment to confer a fundamental individual right to decide whether or not to beget or bear a child. More on privacy rights next time.
Let's start with who you can marry. When I was too young to marry, age 11 in 1960, many US states prohibited blacks and whites from marrying each other. For this and 117 other related reasons, the civil rights movement kicked into gear. In 1967 this civil rights momentum and the determination of a black woman, Mildred Jeter, and a white man, T. Loving, to love each other and be married brought a case to the US Supreme Court. The couple lived in Virginia, where the state would not marry them because they weren't of the same race. This next is from Wikipedia, Feb 2016, plus my comments: A law with the fine name of The Racial Integrity Act of 1924 aimed to prevent that awful degraded black blood from getting into our pure white babies. The Lovings were already mixing body fluids among the races and making babies. They went to the District and got married. Then they came back to Virginia and got arrested and sentenced to a year in jail for having the audacity to, as the phrase goes, "make an honest woman of " Mildred Jeter. They were charged with "cohabiting as man and wife, against the peace and dignity of the Commonwealth." The House UnAmerican Activities Committee should have investigated this "peace and dignity" notion and the law based on it, but they were busy with other things.
The trial judge in the case, Leon M. Bazile, echoing Johann Friedrich Blumenbach's 18th-century interpretation of race, wrote:
Almighty God created the races white, black, yellow, malay and red, and he placed them on separate continents. And but for the interference with his arrangement there would be no cause for such marriages. The fact that he separated the races shows that he did not intend for the races to mix.How sweet a use of God and bad geography to justify bigotry. This godly interpretation, which I was never taught though I grew up in about the same religion as Blumenbach, ignores the fact that (problem 1) Whites in Europe and Arabia are on the same continent as the yellow Chinese. I'm ignorant of a separate "Malays" race, but if they're in Malaysia, they're (geography problem two) on the same continent as the yellow race, just like the other suckers. The white Russians (problem 3) are next to China, against God's will. Afghanistan and Iran must be whites on the same continent next to Indians/Malays, who are next to yellows. Also, unfairly, the red race got two continents. What gives? This interpretation ignores that such religious renderings of race and facts treat US citizens unequally, do not give them equal protection under law. In 1959 it was very fashionable to just ignore such things straight out, in the name of protecting the good people from the tainted ones.
9]
On January 6, 1959, the Lovings pleaded guilty and were sentenced to one year in prison, with the sentence suspended for 25 years on condition that the couple leave the state of Virginia. They did so, moving to the District of Columbia. That didn't go well, so they sued. If they had been able to make their peace with living in the Capital, we might still be stringing up white boys who looked at black girls, and vice-versa. I've noticed a couple of black girls myself. In Jamaica, where the boy-girl rules are quite different than in the US, a couple of them noticed me.
Other times where privacy rights came up are listed by the High Court in Carey v. Population Services International, 431 U.S. 678, 685 (1977). Pierce v. Society of Sisters (1925), and Meyer v. Nebraska (1923), dealt with privacy in childrearing and education. Prince v. Massachusetts (1944) with family relationships; Skinner v. Oklahoma (1942), with procreation; Griswold v. Connecticut, supra, and Eisenstadt v. Baird with contraception; and Roe v. Wade (1973), with abortion. The latter three cases were interpreted as construing the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment to confer a fundamental individual right to decide whether or not to beget or bear a child. More on privacy rights next time.
The Scalia Effect
Justice Antonin Scalia has had a very wide range of effects in his brilliant career since he ascended to a seat on the US Supreme Court 30 years ago in 1986. In the law, these effects will almost certainly have a long posterity in everything from the right to bear arms to abortion to the role of religion in national life. He may have had a hand in accomplishing a basic turn in the method used to understand what the Constitution says and means. Now he has died 11 months before we get a new president, and the timing is having another series of what we can fairly call "Scalia effects."
First is the practical effect on current cases before the Court. As Scalia leaves, he bequeaths to the nation, however unwillingly, a Court with 8 members that are likely to vote 4-4 ties on at least some of the most prominent cases. There are four remaining liberal justices and four remaining conservatives. One conservative with a mind for international law, another lawyer named Anthony, in this case Kennedy, is something of a swing vote.
A tie vote on the highest court in the land bears some resemblance to a Congress, like ours, more interested in arguing than in compromising. Not that the Court is more interested in arguing, but when tied it can have a hard time getting things done. A tie decides nothing; it leaves no precedent; it leaves in place the lower court's decision. It leaves, really, the whole question on hold until a later time when there may be an odd number of votes to resolve a matter. That's our first new "Scalia effect."
Scalia has only been dead two days, but if you're reading this, you probably already know that the second Scalia effect is on the presidential campaign. The Republican presidential candidates and Senators are making the point that this appointment needs to be left to the next president. That isn't really how the system is supposed to work. This isn't the month before the election. In practice this Democratic president is likely to do what his precedessors have been doing since at least the 1980s, thinking long and hard before nominating anyone but a centrist. Yet the Republicans have succeeded in placing four hard-right judges on the high bench. Obama will have to fudge on this one, as he did with Sotomayor and Kagan. There are 46 Democrats in the Senate, so Obama will have to send a name over that at least five or ten Republicans, like Orrin Hatch, have a hard time voting against.
There is also the speculation that this vacancy could push both major parties to do what they should be doing all along, choosing candidates with the best chance of winning, with the best chance of compromising and governing. The activists on both sides really hate to do that. They wanted Pat Buchanan, George McGovern, and Ralph Nader to run the country. There are still those of us who think, had the Dems had the sense to run anyone but a Massachusetts liberal like John Kerry, and picked pre-scandal John Edwards as the most electable choice, he would have beaten President Bush in 2004. He would have also most likely have avoided that nasty scandal that ruined him for public life, but may have taught him a few lessons about life. The Republicans have been more sensible the last two presidential elections, almost against their better judgment. They nominated the centrist each time, but neither McCain nor Romney won. They may be the more ready to try Trump or Cruz this time around. Still it is hard for me to imagine any one of those two, or Sanders, taking the oath of office on January 20th next, and nominating the next justice.
First is the practical effect on current cases before the Court. As Scalia leaves, he bequeaths to the nation, however unwillingly, a Court with 8 members that are likely to vote 4-4 ties on at least some of the most prominent cases. There are four remaining liberal justices and four remaining conservatives. One conservative with a mind for international law, another lawyer named Anthony, in this case Kennedy, is something of a swing vote.
A tie vote on the highest court in the land bears some resemblance to a Congress, like ours, more interested in arguing than in compromising. Not that the Court is more interested in arguing, but when tied it can have a hard time getting things done. A tie decides nothing; it leaves no precedent; it leaves in place the lower court's decision. It leaves, really, the whole question on hold until a later time when there may be an odd number of votes to resolve a matter. That's our first new "Scalia effect."
Scalia has only been dead two days, but if you're reading this, you probably already know that the second Scalia effect is on the presidential campaign. The Republican presidential candidates and Senators are making the point that this appointment needs to be left to the next president. That isn't really how the system is supposed to work. This isn't the month before the election. In practice this Democratic president is likely to do what his precedessors have been doing since at least the 1980s, thinking long and hard before nominating anyone but a centrist. Yet the Republicans have succeeded in placing four hard-right judges on the high bench. Obama will have to fudge on this one, as he did with Sotomayor and Kagan. There are 46 Democrats in the Senate, so Obama will have to send a name over that at least five or ten Republicans, like Orrin Hatch, have a hard time voting against.
There is also the speculation that this vacancy could push both major parties to do what they should be doing all along, choosing candidates with the best chance of winning, with the best chance of compromising and governing. The activists on both sides really hate to do that. They wanted Pat Buchanan, George McGovern, and Ralph Nader to run the country. There are still those of us who think, had the Dems had the sense to run anyone but a Massachusetts liberal like John Kerry, and picked pre-scandal John Edwards as the most electable choice, he would have beaten President Bush in 2004. He would have also most likely have avoided that nasty scandal that ruined him for public life, but may have taught him a few lessons about life. The Republicans have been more sensible the last two presidential elections, almost against their better judgment. They nominated the centrist each time, but neither McCain nor Romney won. They may be the more ready to try Trump or Cruz this time around. Still it is hard for me to imagine any one of those two, or Sanders, taking the oath of office on January 20th next, and nominating the next justice.
Saturday, February 13, 2016
Partisan Reaction: Justice Scalia Dies At A Moment When The Timing Helps US Democracy
Justice Antonin Scalia, a towering, argumentative figure on the Supreme Court, died this morning, Saturday, February 13, 2016 in the Big Bend region of West Texas. The Court's first and only Italian-American, he was 79 but looked and acted younger, as least from my distant viewpoint. Even so, how "unexpected" is death at age 79, the age at which my vigorous mother Laura McKeachnie Rasmussen died? Scalia was a very human justice, a very talented writer, and a very one-sided interpreter of the law. Many of the Court's quotable lines from the last three decades come from Scalia. With his careful thought and Christian devotion, Scalia stands as a worthy heir to John Adam's gift of government under law. Adams, says David McCullough, was the first to have the idea of putting the judiciary in its own separate branch, instead of having it under the executive branch.
The enduring interest of my blog is: How Democracy Works Best. I believe it perfectly fair to say that Justice Scalia misunderstood how it works best in multiple ways. To me it is clear that virtually all of the five or six Supreme Court (SC) decisions most harmful to 21st-century democracy in these last 30 years came with Scalia's support and push. I believe in inclusive modernity. We're not now 13 scared little colonies between wilderness and ocean, and John Adams would not want us to act like we are, even though in 1789 that was the only way they could act, because that's what they were. I further believe in nonreligious American democracy, and I don't think Scalia shared that belief. He wanted religion almost everywhere anyone could get it. The people can and in my view must be religious to find a good future, but the government cannot be religious.
Here's an example. We must have the right of privacy. We must be able to control our own bodies and our own reproduction. To me that means abortion as a right subject to certain reasonable state regulation. We can argue about how much regulation is proper, but we can't argue about whether abortion is a right if we want equal protection under the law. Scalia would have nothing to do with this. I am completely thankful he was never granted the chance to commit what would have been his greatest sin against human rights: he made it clear many times he would have ignored the intimate, private, pregnancy-related rights of women by overturning Roe v. Wade. If the female has equal protection under the law, she must today have such rights defended by society at large. Justice Scalia was a sometimes strident Catholic, seemingly ever-ready to push his notions of religion down all our throats. C. S. Lewis, the great Christian thinker and novelist, was once described as wanting to use the answers of the 19th century for the questions of the 20th. Scalia's originalism to me looked like C. S. Lewis in a black robe, trying to answer 21st-century questions with answers from 1789--the 18th century.
I don't think we can expect that to work very well.
Scalia was on the wrong side in Citizens United, which helps money corrupt and control politics.
Scalia was on the wrong side in Bush v. Gore, interfering in what was clearly a matter of state election law, to openly harm the image of the court as it secured the appointment of candidate Bush. Careful review (see book Jews for Buchanan) shows that many thousand more Floridians attempted to vote for Gore than for Bush. Buchanan himself admitted he received at least 3,000 Jewish votes. The butterfly ballot confused these Jews, scared and alienated by Buchanan's positions, into marking a vote for him instead of for Gore.
Scalia was on the wrong side of dozens of religion-related decisions, always trying to get government to sponsor and promote the Christian God and Christian morality, which we do at the peril to our freedom.
In spite of all this it is clear that Scalia was (I would say "is") a really nice guy, personable and warm. For example, he developed warm relations with at least two of his more liberal partners on the Court, Ruth Ginsburg and Steven Breyer. He took trips with Ginsburg, including one to Asia in which they each rode an elephant, and did legal seminars with Breyer. What's your relationship with Justice Scalia, the ever-optimistic Breyer was asked, "We're friends." What a heartwarming short summary. So many times in life, the very best thing that can be said is "We're friends."
Scalia being at heart such a fundamentally good guy, I find it ironically appropriate that he died at a time when his leaving the Court can help the country correct its age-old tendency to treat white males as they were treated when John Adams and the founders gave us this gift of democracy: like the only citizens who matter. This has to happen for us to move more toward love and fairness, toward a better world.
Since 1968 when Warren Burger became chief justice, there has been either a slight or a strong conservative lean to our top Court. Scalia replaced Burger on the Court. Burger was very conservative, but as chief justice often served as a swing vote. (This is spelled out in many-page detail in Woodward and Armstrong's book, The Brethren). Chief Burger wanted to be in the majority so he could assign who wrote the opinion, and often changed his vote to do that. He also wanted it to look like he was providing leadership when in practice he was sometimes following. Perhaps not a sin. For example, Burger voted with the 7-2 majority in Roe v. Wade, although he wrote a concurring opinion that Roe "does not create abortion on demand," which it did.
Scalia was never flexible enough to be a swing vote. Obama will now presumably be able to replace him with a moderate liberal justice similar to the two he has already put in place, Sotomayor and Kagan.
We have eight remaining members on the Supreme Court, four conservatives and four liberals. Yet the liberals are mostly moderate liberals, and the conservatives are mostly hard right conservatives. There do not seem to be any far-left liberals like Justice Douglas used to be. There is no Bernie Sanders on the Court, although, until yesterday, 4/5 of the conservatives were as far right as Sanders is left.
In summary, Scalia, with the Federalist Society behind him, has rewritten what we consider to be orthodox views of constitutional law. Nobody except maybe Robert Bork was claiming, before Scalia came, that the one right way to read the Constitution was figuring out exactly what the framers wanted when they adopted it. Now that's one fairly standard approach. Problem #1: John Adams and Thomas Jefferson disagreed on many things--the framers were not of one mind. In practice originalism seems to mean we should still have slaves and consider a black as 3/5 of a citizen. In 1789 essentially no man believed in women owning property. Well may we note on this blog devoted to the legacy of John Adams that his wife Abigail Adams was one of the first women to take property in her own name, likely in violation of the legal tradition of the day. Scalia would have run her out of court! Scalia did not have in mind the kind of America that can help lead the world into the future; he fought that kind of open, loving, many-colored America tooth and nail. He was a good man, a very good man, but I am soooo relieved his part of the fight is over.
Now if Ruth Bader Ginsburg, three years older than her friend Nino Scalia, would just have the sense to retire the day after his funeral! Maybe she will die the day after Marco Rubio is inaugurated, so that she, like Sandra Day O'Connor, can leave her seat to someone about five shades more conservative than herself. That appears to be her aspiration.
The enduring interest of my blog is: How Democracy Works Best. I believe it perfectly fair to say that Justice Scalia misunderstood how it works best in multiple ways. To me it is clear that virtually all of the five or six Supreme Court (SC) decisions most harmful to 21st-century democracy in these last 30 years came with Scalia's support and push. I believe in inclusive modernity. We're not now 13 scared little colonies between wilderness and ocean, and John Adams would not want us to act like we are, even though in 1789 that was the only way they could act, because that's what they were. I further believe in nonreligious American democracy, and I don't think Scalia shared that belief. He wanted religion almost everywhere anyone could get it. The people can and in my view must be religious to find a good future, but the government cannot be religious.
Here's an example. We must have the right of privacy. We must be able to control our own bodies and our own reproduction. To me that means abortion as a right subject to certain reasonable state regulation. We can argue about how much regulation is proper, but we can't argue about whether abortion is a right if we want equal protection under the law. Scalia would have nothing to do with this. I am completely thankful he was never granted the chance to commit what would have been his greatest sin against human rights: he made it clear many times he would have ignored the intimate, private, pregnancy-related rights of women by overturning Roe v. Wade. If the female has equal protection under the law, she must today have such rights defended by society at large. Justice Scalia was a sometimes strident Catholic, seemingly ever-ready to push his notions of religion down all our throats. C. S. Lewis, the great Christian thinker and novelist, was once described as wanting to use the answers of the 19th century for the questions of the 20th. Scalia's originalism to me looked like C. S. Lewis in a black robe, trying to answer 21st-century questions with answers from 1789--the 18th century.
I don't think we can expect that to work very well.
Scalia was on the wrong side in Citizens United, which helps money corrupt and control politics.
Scalia was on the wrong side in Bush v. Gore, interfering in what was clearly a matter of state election law, to openly harm the image of the court as it secured the appointment of candidate Bush. Careful review (see book Jews for Buchanan) shows that many thousand more Floridians attempted to vote for Gore than for Bush. Buchanan himself admitted he received at least 3,000 Jewish votes. The butterfly ballot confused these Jews, scared and alienated by Buchanan's positions, into marking a vote for him instead of for Gore.
Scalia was on the wrong side of dozens of religion-related decisions, always trying to get government to sponsor and promote the Christian God and Christian morality, which we do at the peril to our freedom.
In spite of all this it is clear that Scalia was (I would say "is") a really nice guy, personable and warm. For example, he developed warm relations with at least two of his more liberal partners on the Court, Ruth Ginsburg and Steven Breyer. He took trips with Ginsburg, including one to Asia in which they each rode an elephant, and did legal seminars with Breyer. What's your relationship with Justice Scalia, the ever-optimistic Breyer was asked, "We're friends." What a heartwarming short summary. So many times in life, the very best thing that can be said is "We're friends."
Scalia being at heart such a fundamentally good guy, I find it ironically appropriate that he died at a time when his leaving the Court can help the country correct its age-old tendency to treat white males as they were treated when John Adams and the founders gave us this gift of democracy: like the only citizens who matter. This has to happen for us to move more toward love and fairness, toward a better world.
Since 1968 when Warren Burger became chief justice, there has been either a slight or a strong conservative lean to our top Court. Scalia replaced Burger on the Court. Burger was very conservative, but as chief justice often served as a swing vote. (This is spelled out in many-page detail in Woodward and Armstrong's book, The Brethren). Chief Burger wanted to be in the majority so he could assign who wrote the opinion, and often changed his vote to do that. He also wanted it to look like he was providing leadership when in practice he was sometimes following. Perhaps not a sin. For example, Burger voted with the 7-2 majority in Roe v. Wade, although he wrote a concurring opinion that Roe "does not create abortion on demand," which it did.
Scalia was never flexible enough to be a swing vote. Obama will now presumably be able to replace him with a moderate liberal justice similar to the two he has already put in place, Sotomayor and Kagan.
We have eight remaining members on the Supreme Court, four conservatives and four liberals. Yet the liberals are mostly moderate liberals, and the conservatives are mostly hard right conservatives. There do not seem to be any far-left liberals like Justice Douglas used to be. There is no Bernie Sanders on the Court, although, until yesterday, 4/5 of the conservatives were as far right as Sanders is left.
In summary, Scalia, with the Federalist Society behind him, has rewritten what we consider to be orthodox views of constitutional law. Nobody except maybe Robert Bork was claiming, before Scalia came, that the one right way to read the Constitution was figuring out exactly what the framers wanted when they adopted it. Now that's one fairly standard approach. Problem #1: John Adams and Thomas Jefferson disagreed on many things--the framers were not of one mind. In practice originalism seems to mean we should still have slaves and consider a black as 3/5 of a citizen. In 1789 essentially no man believed in women owning property. Well may we note on this blog devoted to the legacy of John Adams that his wife Abigail Adams was one of the first women to take property in her own name, likely in violation of the legal tradition of the day. Scalia would have run her out of court! Scalia did not have in mind the kind of America that can help lead the world into the future; he fought that kind of open, loving, many-colored America tooth and nail. He was a good man, a very good man, but I am soooo relieved his part of the fight is over.
Now if Ruth Bader Ginsburg, three years older than her friend Nino Scalia, would just have the sense to retire the day after his funeral! Maybe she will die the day after Marco Rubio is inaugurated, so that she, like Sandra Day O'Connor, can leave her seat to someone about five shades more conservative than herself. That appears to be her aspiration.
Thursday, February 11, 2016
Public Information About Privacy Rights in the US, Part Two
A mere 12 days ago (about half a heartbeat compared to the usual delay between my blog posts) I used a frustrated and somewhat overbearing neighbor in my ultra-scenic section of Tucson's High Desert to open up the subject of privacy rights. On we go, but first let's back up a step.
Let's note that there is nothing automatic about having "human rights." You don't believe me? You know that all people are endowed by their creator with certain inalienable rights, among these life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness? That line was written not by our blog's Esteemed John Adams, but by his friend T Jefferson. Adams and Ben Franklin told "Thomas," as John called him, to try his hand at writing a declaration of independence. Jefferson was an articulate Virginian who had the tendency to indulge himself far more than Mr Adams ever did (spending money he didn't have, charming women he didn't marry, ignoring Supreme Court rulings he didn't like). I don't think Adams did any of those things, but at least the first two were habits Jefferson cultivated. Back to those rights, I agree we are thus endowed by our Creator, but a visit to either Russia or Syria in 2016 will show that our Creator isn't driving around enforcing those inalienable rights. Providence seems to leave that to us, while, I allege, giving quite a bit of invisible help to those of us who work on such worthy causes. Makes a nice-sounding theory, anyway.
We humans have been claiming to have certain basic rights for a very long time, but the idea has mostly picked up steam in the last 300 or so years, and even more so in the last 100 years. A little more than 100 years ago someone in the US first wrote a piece claiming that Americans possessed a constitutional right to privacy, even though the Constitution doesn't use the word "privacy." Then along came Thurgood Marshall.
Let's note that there is nothing automatic about having "human rights." You don't believe me? You know that all people are endowed by their creator with certain inalienable rights, among these life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness? That line was written not by our blog's Esteemed John Adams, but by his friend T Jefferson. Adams and Ben Franklin told "Thomas," as John called him, to try his hand at writing a declaration of independence. Jefferson was an articulate Virginian who had the tendency to indulge himself far more than Mr Adams ever did (spending money he didn't have, charming women he didn't marry, ignoring Supreme Court rulings he didn't like). I don't think Adams did any of those things, but at least the first two were habits Jefferson cultivated. Back to those rights, I agree we are thus endowed by our Creator, but a visit to either Russia or Syria in 2016 will show that our Creator isn't driving around enforcing those inalienable rights. Providence seems to leave that to us, while, I allege, giving quite a bit of invisible help to those of us who work on such worthy causes. Makes a nice-sounding theory, anyway.
We humans have been claiming to have certain basic rights for a very long time, but the idea has mostly picked up steam in the last 300 or so years, and even more so in the last 100 years. A little more than 100 years ago someone in the US first wrote a piece claiming that Americans possessed a constitutional right to privacy, even though the Constitution doesn't use the word "privacy." Then along came Thurgood Marshall.
The grandson of a slave, Marshall was a black kid born in 1908 in Baltimore. He went to Howard Law School, then an all-black school because the University of Maryland law school was for whites only in the 1920s. Marshall became possibly the 20th century's most important US lawyer, fighting for broader civil rights and criminal rights, mostly for the NAACP's Inc. Fund. In 1967 he ascended to the Supreme Court. Two years later he wrote the opinion in Stanley v. Georgia, a privacy case. The "polices" had a search warrant to search Stanley's home for evidence of another crime, bookmaking, but they found no evidence of it. What they did see were three reels of what were probably truly tasteless pornography. The stuff was ruled obscene in violation of Georgia's obscenity law. The state supreme court upheld the conviction, but Mr. Stanley questioned their right to tell him what to read or watch while he sat home alone. The US Supreme Court reversed his conviction by unanimous vote. Thurgood
Marshall wrote that obscenity, at least at home, was largely a
personal privacy question. "If the First Amendment means
anything, it means that a state has no business telling a man,
sitting alone in his own house, what books he may read or what films
he may watch." Hence was
created or found a
constitutional right to possess obscene material at home, as long as it's not kiddie porn.
Be careful how you carry even the adult stuff around in your car, though.
“We
hold that the First and Fourteenth Amendments prohibit making mere
private possession of obscene material a crime."
The
defendant was
“asserting the right to be free from state inquiry into the
contents of his library.
. . The
line between the transmission of ideas and mere entertainment is much
too elusive for this Court
to draw, if indeed such a line can be drawn at all.”
This
is the kind of case that makes me proud to be an American. To prove it, I'm gonna hurry out and get some "spicy" films, maybe with Kim Basinger or Bo Derek displaying their pleasant qualities, to rest from all this heavy legal reasoning and historical study.
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