Cough aaron Burr and Samuel Wilkinson vs US. this predated Fruit of poisonous tree but Marshall literally said well you need two witnesses to the overt act.
AHC: Lewis Powell, Potter Stewart, Byron White, etc — the center holds in the Supreme Court from the 1970s to 90s ? ! ?
- Thread starter Dancing Fool
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at age 15, I did high school debate. Our year-long topic was energy policy!
For me, the all-time argument against the “exclusionary rule” is the 1971 movie Dirty Harry. People younger than me may have a more recent movie, or a touchstone case they’ve followed closely.
And I don’t think it’s my job to solve the problem. Heck, I’m not even a lawyer!
But I think I can point out— Has to be better way.
The biggest cause of crime increases —
You just take a peak year of the Baby Boom generation, add 20 years, and there you go.
You just take a peak year of the Baby Boom generation, add 20 years, and there you go.
Ive been partial as a kid to more theocracy. IE we take the Sanhedrinal route of the jury being lawyer-detective as well. I realize that wouldnt really work given the average American on said Jury. Mainly to move away from power delegates and manipulating the evidence code to investigatory justice. Before the Sanhedrin made the rule of execution impossible there was a rule that death sentences were commuted if unanimous because that meant they hadn't done their job in looking for exculpatory evidence seriously enough if none of them had sufficient doubt to dissent. Another thing Id do is hope Mcculloch vs Maryland prevents the Lochner era, bring Alexandria vs Wray and Wickard vs Filburn or a similar case earlier say in the 19th century and get the same ruling. However that would require ASB. I think a lot of people like Mcculloch until they realize it is the precedent for Citizens united and Heller.
For me, the all-time argument against the “exclusionary rule” is the 1971 movie Dirty Harry. People younger than me may have a more recent movie, or a touchstone case they’ve followed closely.
And I don’t think it’s my job to solve the problem. Heck, I’m not even a lawyer!
But I think I can point out— Has to be better way.
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Sanhedrin - Wikipedia
I see the Sanhedrin was in ancient Israel and had either 23 or 71 elders.
I have a favor to ask. Maybe you could try to mention only one or perhaps two Supreme Court cases at a time? On the one hand, it is kind of cool knowing there’s a great big world out there. On the other hand, wow, just a lot of cases to try to keep track of.
I’m actually open to judges appointing a 3rd neutral lawyer to gather facts. And I think they sometimes do appoint an investigator, or someone to speak for the welfare of a child.
Just to put a couple of issues out there—
I’m going to guess that about 20% of people in TDC, meaning Texas Department of Corrections, are flat-out innocent.
People should not be raped in prison.
Prosecutors fixate on the first suspect, hugely over-charge so that it’s then rational to plead out, at times coach a witness to be more sure. What about defense lawyers who cheat? I’m not crazy about that either. But I somehow expect better conduct from prosecutors.
With both, we’re talking about brainy (entitled?) people who are used to A’s across the board and are used to excelling. And then, you put them in a more 50-50 environment. Not a good recipe. Plus, young lawyers are expected to work massive hours if they want to have realistic hope for a promotion.
And then, the war on drugs and mass incarceration. As a society, we’re perhaps midway through the process of legalizing marijuana. But I think there are still people in jail on marijuana as well as people whose records need to be “sponged clean”— alright, the legal term is “expunged”! ! !
And then there are cases like the young lady who signed a lease for her boyfriend, who was a drug dealer [more than 2 decades ago]. Maybe the jury honestly believed she was in on it, too. But in many cases, I think juries just feel obligated to mechanically follow rules. That jury should have rebelled.
Cases like this come up periodically, and nothing seems to change. Or, not enough seems to change.
I’m going to guess that about 20% of people in TDC, meaning Texas Department of Corrections, are flat-out innocent.
People should not be raped in prison.
Prosecutors fixate on the first suspect, hugely over-charge so that it’s then rational to plead out, at times coach a witness to be more sure. What about defense lawyers who cheat? I’m not crazy about that either. But I somehow expect better conduct from prosecutors.
With both, we’re talking about brainy (entitled?) people who are used to A’s across the board and are used to excelling. And then, you put them in a more 50-50 environment. Not a good recipe. Plus, young lawyers are expected to work massive hours if they want to have realistic hope for a promotion.
And then, the war on drugs and mass incarceration. As a society, we’re perhaps midway through the process of legalizing marijuana. But I think there are still people in jail on marijuana as well as people whose records need to be “sponged clean”— alright, the legal term is “expunged”! ! !
And then there are cases like the young lady who signed a lease for her boyfriend, who was a drug dealer [more than 2 decades ago]. Maybe the jury honestly believed she was in on it, too. But in many cases, I think juries just feel obligated to mechanically follow rules. That jury should have rebelled.
Cases like this come up periodically, and nothing seems to change. Or, not enough seems to change.
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I'm not sure how this is a response to what I wrote. It looks like a very high-density discussion of, very specifically, the jurisprudence around evidence rules in American law, and it's based on the assumption that whoever reads it is enough of a lawyer to automatically be able to identify Supreme Court cases by the name of one of the participants. Are you sure this was aimed at me?
Yes. The problem being, this non-neutrality interfaces with policy in a lot of places.
Personally, I think the response is to just... decide which side one is on. You can either be trying to wreck the federal government, or to use it to solve problems; you cannot split the difference. You can either forbid 'those people' from having a chance to prosper, or you can make it possible, but you cannot split the difference.
Less charitably, there are a lot of "normal, fine, upstanding" people whose general nature and existence has the approval stamp of mainstream society, who fall into a sort of nasty middle ground. People who want the blessings of living in a secular, tolerant society where they and their immediate social circle are free to live as they wish. But where "those weirdos," the ones they don't identify with and have been taught not to respect, do not get those blessings, and cannot live freely or peacefully or safely, as the price for their being, well, the wrong kind of person.
Because there's a wide band of ideologies in this world that boil down to "there should be one kind of person the law binds and does not protect, and another kind of person the law protects and does not bind."
The only way to make things decent and functional is to apply the laws to everyone, but this can mean telling people that their special privileges have been revoked or that their business model will no longer be allowed to work. And they get angry about that. So it goes.
The problem, fundamentally, is that identifying these as issues that can be solved "from the center" strongly implies that they can be solved by doing things the left and right agree on doing. The great crisis of the current post-Cold War era is that it's become unavoidably obvious that there is no such middle ground. Arguably, there never was, and it was just a matter of one team quietly getting uncontested wins for those who were to be "protected and not bound."
Not really but I'd say the legal profession does have a consensus on prodecural law. The Texas abortion law and the student loan cases were weird for going against 3 centuries of precedent on Standing or questioning 3 centuries worth of precedent on what allows you to file a suit.
And is there any reason a judge couldn’t issue a serious warrant by phone — recorded of course — or by text?
I vaguely remember San Diego had this at one time. I guess it didn’t always hold up in court. All the same, this does seem like it’d be an update for the 21st century.
I vaguely remember San Diego had this at one time. I guess it didn’t always hold up in court. All the same, this does seem like it’d be an update for the 21st century.
I’d very much divide Cold War into 1945 - 1970 when the middle class was growing, and ‘70 to ‘91 when it wasn’t. Makes a HUGE difference in how people feel about their own future, how people feel about those who are “different,” etc, etc.
And post-Cold War, from ‘91 to present, or from ‘89 to present, take your pick, it’s been all slow, gradual decline. [it might be similar to drought vs. hurricane, in which people respond worse to a slow-motion crisis than a fast-moving one]
Actually, the American middle class is not near as bad as people think. But if a guy in a sports bar tells me it’s been “decimated,” doesn’t make for a productive conversation for me to tell him that he’s wrong. So, I try to embrace that tension between number facts, which certainly are facts, and lived experienced.
“Let me ask you, has the workplace been feminized, or just corporatized?” <— that’s one question I might experiment with asking my fellow bar patrons
In similar vein, I want to embrace our tension.
Isn’t Constitutional government an attempt to split the difference by having majority rule with minority rights? With imperfections of course. And, I’m not so into “neutrality.” Instead, I’ll take the standard goal of transparency and to this I’ll add “quick enough” feedback and “clear enough” feedback.
To take another example and without getting into the politics— the Covid pandemic. To me, the clear lesson is that we need to be able to develop vaccines in a matter of weeks, not months. [on the overall societal level, Covid really is about the gentlest tap on the shoulder we could expect, although on the family level obviously not for those who have lost loved ones] At the same time, our fellow citizens have extremely high safety standards, at the level of what people expect for radiation safety or aviation safety. Embrace this tension.
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Consensus among legal professionals, maybe. But not among the general public.
The exclusionary rule is just the most obvious. It’s a type of showing off. It’s similar to the King in ages yonder past letting an obviously guilty person go free, to prove whatever. I guess the magnificence of the King.
And that’s just the beginning. We need reform across the board. For example, maybe the legal profession can keep 3 favorite Latin expressions for the sake of tradition. But no more than 3 please!
The doctrine of standing as wellConsensus among legal professionals, maybe. But not among the general public.
The exclusionary rule is just the most obvious. It’s a type of showing off. It’s similar to the King in ages yonder past letting an obviously guilty person go free, to prove whatever. I guess the magnificence of the King.
And that’s just the beginning. We need reform across the board. For example, maybe the legal profession can keep 3 favorite Latin expressions for the sake of tradition. But no more than 3 please!
Maybe give me a case in which the current approach is wrong, as well as one in which it’s largely correct?
Thank you for your brevity, but I myself think corporate personhood is a bad thing.
I’ve heard people say that it’s necessary for the smooth functioning of the court system. But I’m thinking . . . has to be a better way!
I meant to be a means to serve an organization where each member could claim not to be the person to be served. There was a recent case against Ford over whether it had sufficient connection to Montana for it to be liable enough for the plaintiff to serve Ford papers in Montana. Its kind of like the legal fiction of how the British Crown resurrects every person acceptable as Monarch and then tracks through this every heir who would be eligible as Monarch if alive to determine the new monarch. Or for another Jewish example how Hillel made the fiction that the sabbatical only cancelled personal loans and a means to transfer personal loans to the court to induce leaning in the last few years of the Sabbatical cycle which due to the debt forgiveness of the Sabbatical had led to an era in the Roman period of people not loaning others during the lead up to the Sabbatical year
I guess whether it had enough employees and/or customers in Montana. As far as “serving papers” on Ford, send a certified letter. Or, the court could hire an investigator to contact the company, although to me that sounds like going overboard. I don’t think we need a whole bloated theory of “corporate personhood” for this purpose, which in practical terms the corp gets more rights than a regular person.
But—
As I’m sure you and I both know, institutions change at a glacial pace, usually. We’d need a real groundswell, and then things might change quickly. Or, the pro-status quo people might be able to ride out the storm.
Probably the best right now change would be to expand what paralegals can do and therefore make law more accessible [I think this might be in the process of happening . . . slowly ]