Sonia Sotomayor Tapped For Hight Court

A Judge is suppose to bring nothing to the table but impartiality and law.

The judge's role is to serve the community in the role of administering justice according to law.

 

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but a judge must interpret the law, and some disagree with the judges interpretation of the law and call him/her an "activist judge" and "not respecting the law", etc.

 

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Really? Interpret the Law, no the law is the Law, and once you interpret something it is no longer what it was intended to be.

When interpretation is added to law, impartiality goes out the window as personnel individual bias enters into what they think the Law Means.

That is why you are now seeing laws that leave no room for interpretation, such as the sentencing laws, and three time losers laws, the people through their Legislatures are getting fed up with Judges that interpret the law and use empathy as the measure of justice.

Let take the Civil Rights Laws, and discrimination Discrimination is illegal by law, but empathy now demands that reverse discrimination must take place, so what do we have, justice?

It is Illegal to discriminate, and now because we are using empathy to define law, we continue on with disrimination, and that is not justice.

The Law says Discrimination is illegal, so that is how it should be enforced, stuff the empathy part.

 

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So then what do they use people for? A computer could do that much better and faster. They have to use their personal experience to interpret the Constitution do they not? Like there is no actual amendment that gives the right to privacy, but the justices believed it to be implied. As humans dealing with other humans it is impossible to be completely impartial, like a computer. Because a computer would not allow for implications. It either says it or it doesn't.

 

Really, and you can prove that?

The Jury is the ones to add empathy to a trial, not the judge, the Judge is there to explain the Law to the Jury and see that the proceedings are in a fair and impartial manner.

Now as to privacy, yes it is in the Constitution, it is contained in the IV - IX - and X Amendments.

Ninth Amendment: declares that the listing of individual rights in the Constitution and Bill of Rights is not meant to be comprehensive; and that the other rights not specifically mentioned are retained by the people.

Tenth Amendment: provides that powers that the Constitution does not delegate to the United States and does not prohibit the States from exercising, are "reserved to the States respectively, or to the people."

Backing the IV Amendment;

Fourth Amendment: guards against searches, arrests, and seizures of property without a specific warrant or a "probable cause" to believe a crime has been committed. Some rights to privacy have been inferred from this amendment and others by the Supreme Court.

 

LOL! No one knows how the law applies to a specific situation until someone interprets it! Not only does the supreme court interpret law, but by deciding what it means, they make law!

 

It has to be the most commonly sited example ever, people often refer to the right to privacy even though the word privacy is never used, yada yada. I know you must have heard it before. Just like clothing and flag burning is an implied part of free speech. Judges have to use their human experience to make some decisions, especially when the constitution is not clear.

The 9th amendment is one big implication.

 

Pretty close. Besides, there's no reason to chose based solely on pure experience. A big factor is age (presidents like their appointments to be for a LONG time) and political views.

If you're asking for some sort of numerical ranking, then knock yourself out. The words "most qualified" when appointing SC Justices are a joke. Was O'Connor the most qualified? Hell no, there were mountains of men with more qualifications. Is Sotomayor the most qualified person? Probably not. It is a political appointment, so politics are going to come into play. Again, Obama was only going to appoint a liberal, no matter what their background, and as it turns out her actual experience as a legalist and jurist is slightly more than Roberts and quite a bit more than Alito at the time of their appointment.

~String

 

First off that is not the IV Amendment.

This is the IV Amendment;

“ The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized. ”

And this is the prime part in reference of privacy;

and as the IV Amendment say even the Government cannot do so with out;

Add to that the IX and X Amendments and that right is the peoples.

No the IX Amendment is not one big implication it is very clear as to affermative rights, The Rights of the People do not have to be enumerated for them to exist,

“ The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people. ”

Were is the implication?

Especially when you add the X Amendment;

“ The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people. ”

All rights unless enumerated to the Government or the States by the Constitution belong to the States or to the People first last and always.

 

Duh, you said it yourself, "in reference of privacy". Privacy is implied, it is not written.
Privacy of course can be used much more loosely than the specifics mentioned in the 4th amendment.

The meaning of the Ninth Amendment is elusive, but some persons (including Justice Goldberg in his Griswold concurrence) have interpreted the Ninth Amendment as justification for broadly reading the Bill of Rights to protect privacy in ways not specifically provided in the first eight amendments.

www.law.umkc.edu/

That sounds like they get to do a bit of implying. Like I mentioned earlier flag burning and desecration is protected under the 1st amendment of the constitution even though it was never written.

 

SCOTUS decisions are supposed to be based on the intent of the Founding Fathers, not personal experience.

 

By the way; Sotomayor is a member of the National Council Of La Raza...a controversial group to say the least.

http://www.abanet.org/publiced/hispanic_s.html

 

Yes, "penumbras" and "emanations" only in the liberal mind, there is a definitive absolute right to privacy and protection of such in the Constitution, again I refer back to the Words which are the Actual Intent of the IV-IX-X Amendment.

I pointed out exactly were privacy exist in the Constitution, the IV Amendment;

The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated,
​

And the limits to intrusions into that privacy;

probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized ​

Read the words of the IX Amendment, the only reason that some one would want it to be ambiguous is so they could interpret the Constitution and make it, a living bend it anyway you want to fit your current political need, Constitution.

The Constitution is a absolute restriction to the Powers of the Federal, and State Government, and a affirmation of the rights of the People, enumerated and unremunerated, as stated in the Constitution, affirmed by the Bill of Rights, and Enumerated in the IX and X Amendments of the Constitution, which plainly states that all rights belong to The PEOPLE, unless specifically granted to the Government, and unless that power is specifically granted to the Government, That power rest with The PEOPLE.

And that is the problem, implying, Some Judge added this as a right under the Constitution, by implication, not fact.

 

This is the final nail in the coffin for the Republican party. Once Pat Buchanan and Rush Limbaugh started to pontificate that she's an affirmative action candidate, any hopes of a GOP resurgence were eviscerated. The GOP moderates should of immediately condemned those statements. She's been approved by the Senate twice in the past, she finished second in her class at Princeton. For the life of me I can't understand the GOP's definition of Affirmative Action. Even the most qualified minorities are classified as Affirmative Action recipients looking for a free handout. As long as your party leaders espouse these idiotic and divisive opinions, it will further solidify their status as an regional party.

 

Rusty cage

Re: Privacy

One of the problems conservatives have with explaining the right to privacy is that they've campaigned against it for years: Roe v. Wade. The Supreme Court's construction of the right to privacy is expressed in the Opinion of the Court.

The claims:

Roe alleged that she was unmarried and pregnant; that she wished to terminate her pregnancy by an abortion "performed by a competent, licensed physician, under safe, clinical conditions"; that she was unable to get a "legal" abortion in Texas because her life did not appear to be threatened by the continuation of her pregnancy; and that she could not afford to travel to another jurisdiction in order to secure a legal abortion under safe conditions. She claimed that the Texas statutes were unconstitutionally vague and that they abridged her right of personal privacy, protected by the First, Fourth, Fifth, Ninth, and Fourteenth Amendments. By an amendment to her complaint, Roe purported to sue "on behalf of herself and all other women" similarly situated.

James Hubert Hallford, a licensed physician, sought and was granted leave to intervene in Roe's action. In his complaint, he alleged that he had been arrested previously for violations of the Texas abortion statutes, and [p121] that two such prosecutions were pending against him. He described conditions of patients who came to him seeking abortions, and he claimed that for many cases he, as a physician, was unable to determine whether they fell within or outside the exception recognized by Article 1196. He alleged that, as a consequence, the statutes were vague and uncertain, in violation of the Fourteenth Amendment, and that they violated his own and his patients' rights to privacy in the doctor-patient relationship and his own right to practice medicine, rights he claimed were guaranteed by the First, Fourth, Fifth, Ninth, and Fourteenth Amendments.

(Blackmun)​

And the resolution:

The Constitution does not explicitly mention any right of privacy. In a line of decisions, however, going back perhaps as far as Union Pacific R. Co. v. Botsford, 141 U.S. 250, 251 (1891), the Court has recognized that a right of personal privacy, or a guarantee of certain areas or zones of privacy, does exist under the Constitution. In varying contexts, the Court or individual Justices have, indeed, found at least the roots of that right in the First Amendment, Stanley v. Georgia, 394 U.S. 557, 564 (1969); in the Fourth and Fifth Amendments, Terry v. Ohio, 392 U.S. 1, 8-9 (1968), Katz v. United States, 389 U.S. 347, 350 (1967), Boyd v. United States, 116 U.S. 616 (1886), see Olmstead v. United States, 277 U.S. 438, 478 (1928) (Brandeis, J., dissenting); in the penumbras of the Bill of Rights, Griswold v. Connecticut, 381 U.S. at 484-485; in the Ninth Amendment, id. at 486 (Goldberg, J., concurring); or in the concept of liberty guaranteed by the first section of the Fourteenth Amendment, see Meyer v. Nebraska, 262 U.S. 390, 399 (1923). These decisions make it clear that only personal rights that can be deemed "fundamental" or "implicit in the concept of ordered liberty," Palko v. Connecticut, 302 U.S. 319, 325 (1937), are included in this guarantee of personal privacy. They also make it clear that the right has some extension to activities relating to marriage, Loving v. Virginia, 388 U.S. 1, 12 (1967); procreation, Skinner v. Oklahoma, 316 U.S. 535, 541-542 (1942); contraception, Eisenstadt v. Baird, 405 U.S. at 453-454; id. at 460, 463-465 [p153] (WHITE, J., concurring in result); family relationships, Prince v. Massachusetts, 321 U.S. 158, 166 (1944); and childrearing and education, Pierce v. Society of Sisters, 268 U.S. 510, 535 (1925), Meyer v. Nebraska, supra.

This right of privacy, whether it be founded in the Fourteenth Amendment's concept of personal liberty and restrictions upon state action, as we feel it is, or, as the District Court determined, in the Ninth Amendment's reservation of rights to the people, is broad enough to encompass a woman's decision whether or not to terminate her pregnancy.

(ibid)​

Indeed, in the 1990s, we used to hear about how "activist liberal judges" went and "invented" a right to privacy that didn't exist. It's been a long time for conservatives on this one, longer than I've been alive, in fact. They're in the habit of criticizing the right of privacy asserted in Roe, so we can expect their efforts to change their denunciations of privacy to be somewhat clumsy, as the most obvious landmark in that development is anathema to them.
____________________

Notes:

Blackmun, J. Harry. "Opinion of the Court". Roe v. Wade. Supreme Court of the United States. January 22, 1973. Legal Information Institute at Cornell University Law School. Accessed May 28, 2009. http://www.law.cornell.edu/supct/html/historics/USSC_CR_0410_0113_ZO.html

 

Evaluating such intent as it would apply to new circumstances (not the only criterion - consider the various amendments, etc) is one of those difficult tasks that requires wisdom and understanding of human life.

Hard to get that without personal experience.

 

Counting the nails

I wouldn't go that far. Rather, as I said a few weeks back, we might be able to start counting the nails.

Never underestimate the GOP. Conservative politics rely in large part on appeals to emotion. While I do believe the more arbitrary and partisan their opposition sounds, the more it will hurt them politically, we must also recall that Americans are quick to rally around some pretty desperate and insane causes.

Don't believe in expectations.
Don't believe in shooting stars.
If you make a stand on a dead-empty hand,
Never let 'em see your cards.

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .—Savatage
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ."New York City Don't Mean Nothing"​

 

Actually you are wrong. Intent of the Founding Fathers is NOT the prime reason (though, it can and should be taken into consideration). The Founding Fathers are dead. Dead people don't get a vote. What you're prescribing is something that was tried in Europe: Aristocracy. That is: A country is maintained in a manner that was set out some long time ago and adheres, slavishly, to the will of some creative group. The USA isn't some property that can be willed, aristocratically, to the people who inherit it on the SOLE requirement that the inheritors swear to keep it in the same exact condition of the creators.

What matters first and foremost is: literal meaning. (What do the words mean?) Then the ambiguities can be filled in using original intent. (What did the Founding Fathers intend, which actually can come close to literal meaning) and contemporary necessity. (i.e. applying the law to a society with changing ideals and technology.)

In other words, the Founding Fathers probably would never have liked the idea of abortion, but they never fathomed the concept either. Since they never spelled it out, and since the belief of "where human rights start" is ambiguous, the Supreme Court can extrapolate that abortion is legal out of the right to privacy and the ever ambiguous IX Amendment which states: "The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people." Since it doesn't expressly say who decides those rights, or when they begin, the Supreme Court has extrapolated that this contemporary procedure is fundamental to the privacy of a woman and that her body should not be infringed upon by any government entity within the USA.

Besides, if we governed the USA by what the Founders believe, then we'd have a wholly backward and primate nation.

~String

 

Tiassa,

The Constitution doesn't have to use the word privacy, again refer back to the IX Amendment,

“ The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people. ” ​

What don't you get about;

"shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people".

It is the Right of a Freeman to privacy, and that is what the Constitution is all about the Inalienable Rights of a Freeman, as granted by the Creator, and that those rights exist independent of any Enumeration of the Bill of Rights.

Original Intent of the Founding Fathers,

-All Rights Belong to the People-.​

So says the X Amendment

“ The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people. ”

 

Tilting windmills again, Mr. Roam?

And your point being?

Again, your point being?

You have this strange habit, Mr. Roam, of introducing bizarre side issues as if you prefer to argue against an issue of your own construction than what is actually before you.

Of course, I readily admit that knocking down your fantasies is much easier than actually dealing with reality. So don't let it be said that we disagree on everything.