“You’re a lawyer! What does this mean, really?”
Man, I don’t fucking know. In the last week an entire area of law I studied was more or less rendered entirely moot and now there’s one specific guy in the whole country who may be able to do anything he wants without recourse. This is kind of new.
It’s funny the only three “bad” grades I got in law school were in con law, admin law, and federal courts.
All three of those disciplines have since been nullified entirely.
Can I apply for retroactive Latin honors?
No don’t! It might be like comic books where now they’ll be considered collectors items from when we had a democracy! You can trade them with the underground society of historical preservationists for food :D 🙃
They don't even have to.
Notwithstanding Clause--basically says "fuck your opinions for 5 years, can be reapplied every 5 year by a vote of the legislature."
How Quebec was able to get away with some of its language laws, and how Sask and NB are currently enacting transphobic legislation.
As a French-Canadian egg living in Québec who staunchly opposes the language laws here...
I can only agree with that statement. In its entirety.
And can I say that I am incredibly scared ON ALL ACCOUNTS anytime anyone invokes that thing, because it was NEVER good, AFAIK?
Let's see, it's been invoked to:
- Restrict language rights (QC)
- Restrict religious freedoms (QC)
- Ignore same-sex marriage laws (AB)
- Overrule collective bargaining (SK, ON)
- Overruling local elections (ON)
- Enforce "parental rights" over trans kids (SK, NB)
Yeah...
And Poilievre vowed to use it to change laws as well, if he wins the next election.
One more to add to the pile, if it comes to pass, I GUESS.
And surprisingly, it's never used to EXPAND rights, only restrict them. HMMM... Weird how that goes, eh?
(You can tell I'm Canadian; I said "eh"!!)
Iain Banks had a brilliant way of phrasing it through the "Outside Context Problem" paragraphs in Excession: A concept so far outside of the norms that the norms simply halt, bent so far outside cultural framework as to break.
I mean this is going so far back it's less in the ballpark of lawyers and now familiar area only to the early intellectuals of liberalism during the Enlightenment who had to contend with monarchy
We have to now, 300 years later, seriously fight for rule of law again. 800 years since Magna Carta.
True, its contents are often misunderstood and its importance overestimated, but it is still significant as the first example of law that explicitly did apply to the head of state, hence it often being cited as inspiration for much of Enlightenment thought and, of course, the American Revolution
Even putting Presidential Immunity aside (which, geez), in the last four days they've invalidated a vast swath of Federal regulatory law and then announced that anyone can challenge those regulations, even if they've been in place for 100 years and everybody has acted in reliance on them.
I saw a lawyer trying to split this hair this morning and couldn't help but ask myself "have you been paying attention to anything in the last 2 weeks, let alone 8 years?"
Honestly I worry this is the prelude to installing clergy as judges. "Why bother with flawed secular law? We only need people to interpret the highest law of all."
ACB was already a test run of that.
Honestly, I can see that happening and the USA becoming a Theocracy with a touch of Third Reich.... Wait not touch, a whole ass bottle of that poured in.
I mean, he could have them jailed as an "official act," probably.
Even if that was later overturned, he'd be immune from prosecution for it, and in the mean time, he could have whatever court he wants.
For the record, he won't do that, because our national Democratic party will follow the rules even as their opponent continues to brazenly ignore them, but I suppose he COULD in theory.
His opponent absolutely will in practice, of course.
Just need 5 justices for a quorum on the supreme court.
Alito, Thomas, Gorsuch and Coach Brett seem like they'd enjoy an all-expenses stay trip.
We'll let Gorsuch out when there's an indigenous laws case.
Apparently several congress members are already talking about impeachment of the SCOTUS members. Their ruling is literally unconstitutional. If they want to play by that rule, Congress can rules lawyer back at them.
In theory, yes. However, impeachment going anywhere would require the consent of the very people who expect to benefit from this ruling and who have always made it clear that all they care about is power.
I mean the current ruling and the precedent we saw in every impeachment case so far leads to the conclusion that he can have the court usurped... It wouldn't be legal, but it wouldn't matter because SCOTUS just made the president an Absolute Monarch on a timer.
Or in other words the American Rule of Law is so thoroughly fucked that it's literally in shambles due to the highest court being filled with puppets and not honorable judges.
I mean...it was said that the parliament has this kind of power, one stroke with its feather and whole libraries of law are moot.
Didn't knew the judicial branch could inflict this kind of damage to itself.
It’s one of those things that you know is possible but you never think they would do because why would anyone with ironclad job security vote themself out of a job?
Some other guy could do stuff and say that specific guy told him to do it... and I think about everyone would believe it if the specific guy said he didn't remember telling other guy to do stuff. I'd love to be an other guy right now.
I've gotta wonder what law school curricula are gonna look like tomorrow. Are some classes just going to be cancelled for the rest of the semester? Group discussions about where this may end up?
It’s fine. The Court assured us in very clear and specific terms that anything sussy, skeezy, weird, off-putting, dodgy, sketchy or “unofficial” will still be totally appealable by the President in a years long legal battle that delays any kind of justice or consequences for their actions.
