https://www.europesays.com/uk/48081/ Judge blocks parts of Trump’s overhaul of US elections #APTopNews #ColleenKollarKotelly #ConstitutionalLaw #DCWire #DistrictOfColumbia #DonaldPalmer #DonaldTrump #Elections #ElonMusk #ExecutiveOrders #GeneralNews #HarmeetDhillon #lawsuits #MichaelGates #Politics #TrumpLawsuits #U.S.News #UnitedStates #UnitedStatesGovernment #us #USA #Voting #WashingtonNews
Glad to see that #MRFF (Military Religious Freedom Foundation) is yet again stepping up to stop the #US #Miltary from violating the #firstamendment
As I've said elsewhere, this is the most judicially activist #SCOTUS in history. It has outright voided part of Art2§4 already, and neutered part of the 14th Amendment.
Everyone has this idea that they are textualists or originalists. But no originalist would have ignored #AlexanderHamilton's Federalist 69.
They're judicial activists, happy to be erroneously viewed by everyone as entirely the opposite.
There is a small crumb of comfort from the #ConstitutionalLaw perspective.
The U.S.A. constitution is currently on version 1.26.
The constitution of Eire is currently on version 2.38.
The French constitution is currently on version 5.25.
There's a piece of humourous computing folklore from the 1990s about not buying version 1 of anything. (-:
A Statement from #ConstitutionalLaw Scholars on the government's funding cutoff at #ColumbiaUniversity
— Eugene Volokh, Michael C. Dorf, David Cole, & 15 other scholars
The #USgovernment may not threaten #funding cuts as a tool to pressure recipients into suppressing #First #Amendment protected #speech.
#law #Constitution #CivilRights #FreeSpeech #RightToProtest #FreedomOfAssembly #ThoughtPolice #ViewPointDiscrimination #dissent
https://www.nybooks.com/online/2025/03/20/a-statement-from-constitutional-law-scholars-on-columbia/
Actually, the Founders got the idea from a quite perverse understanding of the way that the U.K. government worked in the early 18th century. The "separation of powers" came from Montesquieu's understanding of the way that the U.K. worked.
But it didn't work that way at the time, and we didn't in fact realize what (others thought that) Montesquieu thought that we had until 2005 when the Lord Chancellor was *finally* split into its legislative, judicial, and executive parts. Even now, we are still a monarchy and the "separate" powers still emanate from one person.
Moreover, the Founders did anticipate such things. They wrote about "tyrants" quite a lot, in fact. Remember the "refreshing the tree of liberty with the blood of patriots and tyrants" thing? That was old Tommy son of Jeff. There's lots of stuff from that time about mad tyrants (including George 3, who actually was mentally ill in some way) and preventing them.
Being funded by tariffs is not a #DonalDJTrump fantasy. It is lunatic nostalgia.
Prior to the 16th Amendment to the federal constitution, it was how the United States of America worked. Income tax at a federal level was unconstitutional until the 20th century. They actually *tried* to impose a federal income tax, because tariff funding wasn't sufficient, and it came apart in court.
The 16th Amendment demonstrates how Trump's vision already did not work.
A quick post on Dellinger v. Bessent, in which a District Court upheld the power of Congress to protect some federal employees by statute. This will shoot up to SCOTUS and might be an opportunity for it to revisit Humphrey’s Executor. The Court is poised to embrace an extreme version of the Unitary Executive theory, which would allow the President to terminate any federal employee, even those whom Congress tried to insulate from caprice.
#law #contracts #FederalWorkers #Litigation #ConstitutionalLaw #SCOTUS
In general, this comes under the heading of the U.S.A.'s idea of free speech being that the government cannot even compel mere politeness, a principle that has seen (on its flip side to this) a whole range of decisions on what constitutes "fighting words", one of the get-outs that the free speech principle has.
https://core.ac.uk/download/pdf/232671605.pdf
It's worth noting that strict textualists could strike "fighting words" down.
Unlike Article 10 of the ECHR, the 1789 French Déclaration, and modern constitutions (art. 19 India; art. 5 GBD; art. 40 Ireland), the buggy, version 1, U.S.A. Constitution has no statement that freedom of speech has any limits at all.
One amusing thing is that the "fighting words" doctrine is pure 1940s judicial activism, and the current John G. Roberts SCOTUS is the *most* judicially activist court in history when it comes to asserting things that aren't in, or are even counter to, the text of the Constitution.
Constitutional scholars say Article 2 does not grant the president unlimited power, despite Trump's legal arguments. A political science professor explains why the Supreme Court may ultimately have to decide how far executive authority can go. https://buff.ly/3Xeij8b
#constitutionallaw
#DonaldJTrump has declared a state of emergency on the whole U.S.A./Mexico border in order to impose tariffs, and declared an ongoing invasion of the U.S.A. by poor people:
Further executive orders have mobilized the whole U.S.A. armed forces for sealing the border.
Note that these tariffs are only paused.
#DonaldJTrump has declared a state of emergency that for one thing bypasses the normal consultation processes of the Endangered Species Act, and also mobilizes the U.S.A. Army for oil drilling:
https://whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/2025/01/declaring-a-national-energy-emergency/
#DonaldJTrump has declared a state of emergency in order to designate drug cartels as foreign terrorists:
#DonaldJTrump has declared a state of emergency on the whole U.S.A./Canada border in order to impose tariffs:
Note that these tariffs are only paused, ironically as a result of something that #Canada had already committed to doing during the Biden administration.
#DonaldJTrump has declared a state of emergency in order to issue an executive writ of attainder against Karim Khan of the ICC:
This writ of attainder amongst other things prohibits the donations of "food, clothing, and medicine, intended to be used to relieve human suffering" to Khan or anyone connected to xem who has "materially assisted, sponsored, or provided financial, material, or technological support".
Of course executive orders can affect you as a private person. Arguments that you are not the executive are disingenuous and historically ignorant.
Many times in history, executive orders that affect ordinary citizens have begun with declaring a state of emergency. von Hindenburg did that, for one very famous example.
#DonaldJTrump has so far declared not one but four^H^H^H^Hfive states of national emergency:
@MelvilleSpence @swisslet @WiteWulf
I didn't think that you were. (-:
But the recent barmy SCOTUS decision wasn't based upon the actual text of the Constitution, but upon extending a lot of prior SCOTUS precedent so far that it actually neuters the part of the Constitution that implies that a POTUS can actually commit "high crimes and misdemeanours" at all (Art2§4). It's not textualism, nor originalism; quite the opposite, in fact.
@MelvilleSpence @swisslet @WiteWulf
They didn't according to the actual text, though, and #AlexanderHamilton was quite forceful about this *not* being the case in Federalist Number 69.
The "good chaps" explanation isn't really right. They very much *did* envisage bad chaps getting into power, and wrote about it. But they didn't expect a situation where the legislature and judiciary would be outright complicit in making the POTUS a king.
Other tidbits that may have passed you by in the deluge:
The idea that the "founding documents" of the U.S.A., including a Constitution with a Three Fifths Compromise, an assumption that everyone is a "he", & a marked failure to gain an Equal Rights Amendment for over 100 years, are sexist and racist …
… is officially Un-American.
The legal scholars who have analysed this for many years will love being called "irrational".
https://whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/2025/01/restoring-americas-fighting-force/
