Senator John Cornyn has announced that he will pose a "daily question" raised by Judge Sotomayor's record and opinions every business day from now until the start of the confirmation hearings on July 13. As the press release explains: "The goal of the Daily Question series is to encourage a civil discourse that focuses on what is important: Judge Sotomayor's record and judicial philosophy." Insofar as the question helps to keep the discussion over Judge Sotomayor focused on substantive legal questions, this seems like a good idea to me (and much better than the name-calling and psychoanalyzing that we've seen in recent weeks).
Today's question is "What is the proper role of foreign and international law in interpreting the United States Constitution?" In his release, Senator Cornyn explains how this question has been raised in some of Judge Sotomayor's speeches and decisions, in particular a 2009 speech before the ACLU of Puerto Rico. Senator Cornyn concludes:
In my view, the Constitution does not give federal judges the "freedom of ideas" to devise new ways to limit the democratic process. Judges must follow the law and the Constitution. They are not "free" to enact "good ideas" into law when their "creative juices" flow. That is a job for the people acting through their elected branches, not a job for judges tasked with following the law. In light of Judge Sotomayor's address at the ACLU of Puerto Rico, I hope Judge Sotomayor can explain how she reconciles her views of foreign and international law with the properly limited role of the judiciary in a democratic society.
Related Posts (on one page):
- More Questions for Sotomayor:
- 20 Questions for Judge Sotomayor:
- Did Judge Sotomayor Issue an Advisory Opinion?
- Senator Cornyn's "Daily Question" for Judge Sotomayor:
...which is what today's question is about...
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The public could play along too, by reading the cases, and taking in the explanations as expressed by experienced judges.
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If a nominee can't get right that Miller's indictment was quashed before trial (because the trial court found the 1934 NFA to be afoul of the 2nd amendment), and that the District Court would have reinstated that procedural status on a finding that a short barrel shotgun is any part of the ordinary military equipment or that its use could contribute to the common defense, then the nominee is clearly unable to read and construe simple precedent, and should be disqualified.
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As to Presser, I'd grade the answer on whether or not they noticed the case was about constitutional protection for conducting parades.
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I don't expect anybody in the Senate to put a nominee to the test I suggest; because the Senate is just as gun-rights hostile as the Courts are; maybe moreso. The Senate approves of faulty jurisprudence, when they support the ends obtained.
Breaking news: Posner and Easterbrook explicitly agree with Sotomayor.
If reasonable minds can disagree as to what a law means, shouldn't that law be found unconstitutionally vague?
Not under current law, no. Void for vagueness only applies in limited circumstances (mostly free speech). Lots of reasonable people can and do disagree about the meaning of lots of laws.
Her choice of words suggests that she knows judges aren't really supposed to do this, but it's okay sometimes as long as they mean well and are really smart.
Snarky? Check.
Intellectually dishonest? Check.
Harmful to future Republican electoral chances? Check.
Just another day in the Republican caucus.
Make your own venue. She's appearing in public, so grab a video camera and go out and ask her the question above or something even better.
As for "Judge Sotomayor's record and judicial philosophy", I'd say that her strong support for AffAction is definitely part of her record, as is the fact that for six years she was a member of this group. It's also important to note that I've been reliably informed that she is not a robot. She might keep doing on the SC what she's done before, or she might not. Thus, all the things she's said outside court - here in the real world - matter. That's also the way to defeat her: by turning public opinion against her. If her support were halved - something that would be fairly easy to do - that would at least strengthen weak GOP backbones. Since AffAction only has about 20% support, and since support for groups that give awards to those who propose genocide are probably even lower, turning public opinion around shouldn't be that difficult if people did things in the right way.
In other words, she takes a reasonable mainstream position on the issue of affirmative action and belongs to a mainstream Latino civil rights group.
I think that the trend of conservatives trying to define every mainstream liberal position as "extremist" is a neat trick. Earth to conservatives-- you guys are losing elections right and left. You might want to worry more about whether your own positions are actually on the political extreme.
Stop your tiresome advice, and let us find out whether or not affirmative action is a popular political position and let us shamefacedly experience how wackily self-destructive Republicans can be. Again, why are you given those who constantly thwart the building of the New Jerusalem counsel?
Except here, of course.
I didn't say that it had majority support. I don't think it does. But it isn't "extreme"-- it is perfectly within the mainstream.
That's my point. You guys have a losing political platform filled with unpopular issues, and you are calling out Democrats as extreme for espousing an issue that, while not having majority support, isn't exactly costing us elections and never has. (And I should disclose, I am not exactly a big supporter of race- and gender-based affirmative action programs. I just don't think that a position that is taken by 35 or 40 percent of the public is "extreme".)
Go ahead, keep doing this. I really don't care if you guys ever win another election.
Allow me to defend Cornyn on this one (even though I don't agree with his goal). Unless you find some smoking gun (say that Sotomayor was building bombs in Bill Ayers' apartment in the 1970's or something), you can't stop a nomination with something that comes up at the hearing. (Indeed, even with something apparently scandalous, like the Clarence Thomas sexual harassment allegations, it is difficult to do.)
So the only way Cornyn can build opposition to the nomination is to get out in front and get arguments into circulation that might cut into her support over time before the hearing. (This is the real reason why the GOP preferred a later hearing for her.) This is a perfectly legitimate political tactic and people who support her nomination have to be prepared to mount a defense.
It could even lead to substantive discussion among bystanders, even though no one seriously expects the nominee to engage the issue yet.
But notice how the question has not raised the substantive level of comments here. They quickly reverted to partisan squabbling, including remarks about make-believe issues of "genocide" and "the New Jerusalem."
Or is the Talmud not foreign or international?
Yeah, it's perfectly mainstream to belong to an organization that calls itself "THE RACE." Nothing questionable about it at all.
In any case, from this:
The NCLR is only a "mainstream Latino civil rights group" in the sense that many groups are more extreme than they are. For instance, they aren't aztlan.net or MEChA, even though they have given grants to the latter among other interesting groups.
P.S. Some people might remember this guy, the one who ran a school and who didn't want to drink from the "white water fountain". That school is/was funded by the NCLR.
Don't refer to it by some innocent-sounding acronym. It's name is THE RACE.
It's not worth explaining what "la raza" really means to non-Spanish speakers. In any event, it doesn't mean "the race" in the usage the organization makes of it.
Further, NCLR is in fact the major Latino civil rights group. Many mainstream liberal and conservative Hispanics belong to it. It's the NAACP for Hispanics.
Again, bottom line, this is an exercise in conservatives defining the mainstream as "extremism". And it only harms conservatives.
I think you're only half right. Your proposed answer is snarky but not accurate. Art. I Sec. 8 Cl. 10 applies to the powers of Congress, not the judiciary.
If Congress chooses to define an offense under the Law of Nations, the judiciary undoubtedly has the authority to interpret that law. The controversial issue is when the Court uses international law the United States has not subscribed to.
Of course, that clause certainly wouldn't give the Court authority to consider foreign law (as opposed to international law).
The more someone talks about civility, the better the chances are that he is an asshole.
Actually, you are not quite grappling with what Mark is getting at. The Torture statute is the logical example.
The Torture statute was enacted to comply with US obligations under the Convention Against Torture. It basically imported a definition of torture from international law, although you can argue it narrowed it somewhat. Now, everyone agrees that federal courts can interpret that statute, right?
Now, if a federal court finds a decision of, say, a French appellate court interpreting a similar torture statute that was also enacted to comply with obligations under the torture convention, can it cite it as persuasive authority, assuming the US torture statute is not completely clear on the point at issue? Doesn't the fact that Congress was defining and punishing an offense under the Law of Nations suggest that it can? And yet my understanding is that many conservatives would get quite upset about this.
I certainly hope Orin didn't write that. Because I'd hope Orin would be smart enough to know that for the last, oh, eight hundred years or so, judges have been making law as well as following the laws enacted by the people's representatives.
To play devil's advocate, though, I'd think that when a state legislature enacts a version of a uniform statute, they're consciously choosing to adopt the body of interpretive decisions that have grown up around that uniform statute in other states. In fact, that would probably be seen as an advantage, the fact that your courts don't have to write upon a blank slate in interpreting the uniform statute. But is it likely that Congress thought in those same terms when they adopted the torture statute? Is there any evidence that it intended to adopt the body of international law on the subject, or that it saw the existence of an established body of foreign law as an advantage?
Those are my questions for day 1...
That's a weird question. I don't think courts refuse to use out-of-jurisdiction caselaw as persuasive authority without specific legislative intent that they are permitted to do so.
In other words, it isn't just UCC cases where courts will use persuasive authority from other states. If California has an trespass statute, and the question is whether, say, unauthorized access to computers constitutes a form of trespass, and there aren't any California cases on the subject, I would certainly expect the California courts to look at cases from other jurisdictions with similar statutes whether or not the legislature had specifically intended that the courts do so.
And, in actuality, I would argue that implementing the Torture Convention is a lot closer to the UCC anyway. The Convention specifically says that every state-party has to enact laws banning torture. The President signed it and the Senate ratified it. It seems to me that the reasonable legislative intention is that there is going to be a sort of uniform, transjurisdictional rule prohibiting torture. Under those circumstances, it seems mighty questionable to say that you can't look to authorities from other signatories which adopted a similar legal rule.
I, a partisan Democrat, wishes that Senator Cornyn had hired Dangermouse instead of Orin Kerr.
Yep, me too. Josh Marshall and Matt Yglesias have basically gotten this right-- it's amazing the extent to which a lot of conservatives want to fight Sotomayor on various grounds that are essentially proxies for her being Hispanic. In addition to being basically offensive, that's just about the most obviously losing political strategy imaginable given the present and future trends in the demographics of the country.
Again, I defend Sen. Cornyn for his questions. Even though I don't agree with his agenda, and even though I doubt it will actually end up working, this is the absolutely correct strategy for building opposition to a court nomination. He's fighting this on the merits and raising legitimate questions which Sotomayor's defenders need to have answers for.
And, "rhubarb" doesn't mean "rhubarb" in the way that I use it. However, that doesn't really matter because everyone else uses "rhubarb" to mean the vegetable.
Likewise, whatever the NCLR wants to fancy "la raza" meaning - and no matter its historical roots - the fact remains that there are people who are definitely not "raza" and people who are, and that distinction is along racial lines. Would Fujimori be "raza"?
Now, that's not really it, is it? Isn't it more how she's manifested the fact that she's Hispanic? That is, if a Republican whose only manifestation of being Hispanic were, say, watching soccer, then it wouldn't be an issue, right? The fact is that no political figure is really against her because of her being Hispanic per se; they just oppose the fact that she's manifested that by joining far-left racial power groups, constantly supporting AffAction, and so on.
Actually, Scalia was using the Talmud as a contrast to what he believes the proper approach is to interpreting the due process clause. That's far removed from citing foreign law as authority.
In addition to Dilan's example, consider this issue:
Congress passes a law, claiming its authority for the law under the "law of nations" clause. Can the Court declare that the statute is unconstitutional because the issue is not part of the law of nations?
If it can't, then the result is that Congress gets to define the "law of nations" however it wants, no matter how absurd that may seem. If it can, then it must refer to an independent body of international law which sets out the boundaries of the law of nations.
Yeah, yeah, conservatives are all racists. Yawn. And it has nothing to do with the fact that SHE's the one who's joining radical exclusionary groups. Nope. The people who are in those groups aren't the racists, it's the people asking why Sotomayor joined such groups that are the racists.
The lib playbook never changes. Sotomayor joins an explicitly racial group, but conservatives are racist for asking about it. What, is this bizarro world?
Oh, and I have no problem attacking her on other grounds. But since racialist attitudes permeate her thinking, it seems appropriate to ask those questions.
By the way, when did you stop beating your wife?
Do you speak any Spanish?
Well, first of all, that's MECHA, not NCLR. In other words, it has nothing to do with the group Sotomayor is a member of.
Second, MECHA is a Mexican and Chicano student activist group formed in the 1960's. Student groups that formed during the 1960's often have ridiculous, revolutionary language in their charters. (Ever hear of the Port Huron Statement?) It was that kind of an era and student groups didn't know any better.
Plenty of former members of MECHA have become productive members of society, politicians, judges, public officials, etc. And so far, none of them have turned out to be revolutionaries. So you have two choices. Either believe that they are all closet revolutionaries plotting against the US. Or that they just wanted to join a Hispanic student group while they were in college and didn't give a crap what was in the charter. I'd say the second is more likely.
"It would be interesting to hear about the practice of the thing, or even simply to hear whether he agreed to do this in order to shoot down Sotomayor or for some loftier purpose."
It's a teaching moment. OK's a prof. Occam's Razor.
Owen,
"Bringing a Message of Hope and Deliverance to White Christian America! A Message of Love NOT Hate!"
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The DC amendment came AFTER the Heller decision. Congress was plenty happy with the local ban on personal possession of a handgun at home, as long as the Courts were upholding it. As for not wanting to push a scary-looking weapons ban, the issue is one of timing, not inclination. Same with the private-sale loophole and mandatory registration. Congress would pass those tomorrow if it believed doing so was in the interest of incumbency protection. It was Congress that passed the 1934 NFA (struck down by a Federal Court as afoul of the 2nd amendment), and Congress that overlooks when Courts engage in outcome-oriented jurisprudence in order to avoid binding precedent.
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I'll concede that the national parks amendment represents a concession to common sense.
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All that being said, the point of my post was that no Senator will not challenge a nominee on the Presser, Miller, or Heller decisions, because doing so opens up a can of worms and risks exposing a fairly substantial house of cards, build on lies.
Obama's people have no doubt already prepped Sotomayor about what kinds of questions she'll have to answer, because she is paying courtesy calls on senators already. And hearings, the administration usually is in touch with congressional staff to find out what kind of questions will be asked at the hearing.
1. The NCLR has funded at least one MEChA chapter.
2. Current MEChA members conduct segregated graduation ceremonies right there at UCLA; past members like TonyVillar, GilCedillo, and RaulGrijalva frequently act more like paid agents of the MexicanGovernment than patriotic Americans.
3. Some of the white defenders of the NCLR - even if they have perfect Spanish - would have a "great deal of trouble" convincing those who are actually "raza" that they're "raza" too. I'm sure white nationalist organizations use similar code words, such as having a different meaning for "The People" or "The Community" than the generally accepted definitions.
Are you so certain that La Raza excludes non-Latinos from membership? The registration form on the La Raza website contains no questions concerning ethnicity.
Oh, and the organization is called the National Council of La Raza, or "La Raza" -- not the "The Race."
The NCLR is only a "mainstream Latino civil rights group" in the sense that many groups are more extreme than they are.
The link he provides in support of his contention that La Raza is the modern-day equivalent of the Black Panthers says that the group is funded by radical elements such as "the Ford Foundation, the U.S. government, ad major corporations such as HomeDepot and General Motors."
I shudder for the future of the Republic.
You are a moron. QED.
(Then again, David Beckham did play for Real Madrid...)
And if MECHA were some evil conspiracy, that would matter. In the real world, though, MECHA is a harmless college student group.
I don't know if you ever went to college, 24ahead, but if you did, and you had any experience with student activist groups, you'd know exactly how meaningless the MECHA charter is.
Current MEChA members conduct segregated graduation ceremonies right there at UCLA; past members like TonyVillar, GilCedillo, and RaulGrijalva frequently act more like paid agents of the MexicanGovernment than patriotic Americans.
24, you really need professional help. MECHA members graduate with everyone else. Like many student groups, they also have separate ceremonies at the time of graduation to honor their members. You make this sound sinister, but you apparently have no idea how graduation at a major university works.
As for Antonio Villaraigosa (for anyone reading this, since you are a bigot, you refuse to call the Mayor of Los Angeles, who unlike you is an extremely successful person, by the name he has gone by for decades, instead insisting on calling him "Tony Villar"), Gil Cedillo, and other Hispanic politicians, if you have evidence that they are committing treason, you can certainly present it to the Department of Justice. Of course, there is no evidence-- you just think that any successful Hispanic politician must be a potential subversive.
Some of the white defenders of the NCLR - even if they have perfect Spanish - would have a "great deal of trouble" convincing those who are actually "raza" that they're "raza" too. I'm sure white nationalist organizations use similar code words, such as having a different meaning for "The People" or "The Community" than the generally accepted definitions.
24, if you look at the NCLR's record, you will see a typical, traditional civil rights organization. Of course, to you, that's an abomination, but that's because you oppose civil rights for Hispanics. But given that there's nothing about NCLR that should offend a normal person (as opposed to bigoted lunatics), there's no reason to get all mad about "la raza".
Take the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, for example. The only salient difference between it and its predecessor -- the Universal Declaration of Human Rights -- is that the ICCPR has teeth. Specifically, it states that each State Party undertakes to "ensure that any person whose rights or freedoms as herein recognized are violated shall have an effective remedy, notwithstanding that the violation has been committed by persons acting in an official capacity." ICCPR, art. 3, sec. 3(a). Accordingly, the only conceivable purpose of that treaty is to create enforceable rights.
Under Article 19 of the Vienna Convention on the Law of Treaties (we are not a signatory, but it has been treated in courts as authoritative), reservations may not be made if they are "incompatible with the object and purpose of the treaty." VCT, art. 19(3). Moreover, a signatory to a treaty "may not invoke the provisions of its internal law as justification for its failure to perform the treaty." Id., art. 27.
Under the Foster (v. Nielson, 27 U.S. 253, 314 (1829), overruled in part by United States v. Percheman, 32 U.S. 51 (1833) (reinterpreting treaty in light of new evidence regarding meaning of ambiguous term). doctrine, a court must ascertain whether the instrument was intended by its makers to establish directly enforceable rights, or only to impose an obligation on one of the political branches. See Frolova v. Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, 761 F.2d 30, 373 (7th Cir. 1985) ("Whether a treaty is self-executing is an issue for judicial interpretation."); Restatement (Third) of Foreign Relations Law of the United States § 111, cmt. h (2004) ("Whether an agreement is to be given effect without further legislation is an issue that a court must decide when a party seeks to invoke the agreement as law."). It is an objective analysis: Treaty provisions are self-executing if they “require no legislation to make them operative.” Whitney v. Robertson, 124 U.S. 190, 194 (1888).
"Courts of the United States have final authority to interpret an international agreement for purposes of applying it as law of the United States." Juda v. United States, 13 Cl. Ct. 667, 678 (Cl. Ct. 1987). "In construing a treaty … we first look to its terms to determine its meaning." United States v. Alvarez-Machain, 504 U.S. 655, 665 (1992). "In determining whether a treaty is self-executing courts look to the intent of the signatory parties as manifested by the language of the instrument, and if the instrument is uncertain, recourse must be had to the circumstances surrounding its execution." Diggs v. Richardson, 555 F.2d 841, 851 (D.C. Cir. 1976) (emphasis added). But for some inexplicable reason, American courts have completely abdicated this constitutional responsibility, consistently treating the ICCPR as a legal nullity on the strength of the non-self-execution declaration alone, and always in a cursory manner. E.g., Sosa v. Alvarez-Machain, 542 U.S. 692, 734-35 (2004); Hain v. Gibson, 287 F.3d 1224 (10th Cir. 2002).
One wonders how, in light of the Supremacy Clause and its treatment of treaties, how the President and Senate have legal authority to enact a treaty without making it the supreme law of the land.
Until these troubling questions are answered, I will refuse to belong to any groups!
What's good for the gander is also good for the goose.
“International law is a part of our law,” The Paqueete Habana, 175 U.S. 677, 700 (1900), and has been an integral part of our law since the dawn of the Repub lic. E.g., Pennington v. Coxe, 6 U.S. 33 (1804). International human rights law is invariably recognized in our courts, Sosa v. Alvarez-Machain, 542 U.S. ___, 124 S.Ct. 2004.SCT.0000127, ¶ 100 (2004) (Versuslaw), having at least the status of federal common law. Filartiga v. Pena-Irala, 630 F.3d 876 (2d Cir. 1980). The United States Supreme Court reaffirmed this principle again in Roper v. Simmons, 543 U.S. ___ (2005), in holding the juvenile death penalty to be unconstitutional.
The key to understanding Roper is in Justice Scalia’s wilting dissent, wherein he accuses the Court of declaring “that the Constitution has changed,” and nullify ing our country’s reservations to the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR). Id., Scalia slip op. at 1, 16 (dissenting opinion). Scalia observed that the basic premise of the Court’s argument was “that American law should con form to the laws of the rest of the world,” attempting to refute the premise by poin t ing out numerous instances (e.g., the ‘exclusionary rule’ of Mapp v. Ohio) where our law is “distinctively American.” Id. at 18. But in every instance cited, Ameri can law granted more rights than recognized under jus cogens interna tional law.
If “international law” has no impact on our law, Justice Scalia’s objections to Roper are irrefutable. After all, if laws enacted by our nation’s legislatures pro vide the “clearest and most reliable objective evidence of contemporary values,” Penry v. Lynaugh, 492 U.S. 302, 331 (1989), and most death penalty jurisdictions allow the execution of juvenile offenders, it is silly to say we have reached a “con sensus” to the contrary. On the other hand, there’s something intrinsically embar rassing about our engag ing in a practice so barbaric, even Saudi Arabia won’t do it.
It is said that the Bill of Rights is ‘not a ceiling, but a floor.’ While individ ual state constitutions routinely acknowledge rights not protected by federal law, e.g., Tattered Cover v. City of Thornton, 44 P.3d 1044 (Colo. 2002) (enhanced privacy rights for Coloradans), states cannot deprive their citizens of rights guaranteed by the federal Constitution. By the same logic, the Roper Court holds that, while our Constitution acknowledges more rights than jus cogens international law, it cannot deprive a person of rights recognized thereunder.
If I were a candidate, I'd be salivating at that question.
I for one do not oppose civil rights for Hispanics. I oppose special privileges for Hispanics, in the form of preferential hiring and college admissions. I also oppose special privileges in the form of ignoring widespread violations by Hispanics of immigration law and laws against identity theft. The problem with NCLR, Tony Vilar and Gil Cedillo is that they want such special privileges for Latinos.
I hardly think that the "loss" of your vote matters.
Confirmation hearings are pretty useless these days, it seems to me. Lots of platitudes and posturing all the way around, and usually nothing much really happens. So maybe this would lay the groundwork for a more informative and useful approach.
The intended audience isn't her. So far, the questions he's "asked" are the kind of questions her handlers will already have anticipated unless they are complete morons. So even as we speak, she's already memorized non-answers to these questions, and would have done so regardless of what the senator is doing.
The intention appears to be to generate interest in these questions, perhaps enough to force the media to pay attention to them when they get asked instead of hiding information from their audience.
There's an inconsistency here: Since the answer is only ever going to be a "non-answer", why should the media care? Why do you accuse them of "hiding information" if all they're doing is exercising their sifting function by not spending too much time on a "non-answer"?
The point of this question is a type of push-polling. The asking of the question is a way of communicating to the senator's potential supporters that, no matter what "non-answer" Sotomayor comes up with, in reality she's one of those evil internationalists. As such, this is simply a way of rallying the troops, trying to get enough momentum to avoid a cloture vote, or at least to give the Senator an excuse to vote against her himself.
The fact that someone joins an organization with such language doesn't imply that they support those things. Obviously, most didn't. But it does imply that they're far enough towards that organization's stated position that the organization itself is only a bit further out.
Would you accept "plenty of politicians are former members of the KKK, yet none of them have ever lynched anyone"?
Think about it this way: If judges are free to disregard the law whenever its objective application leads to a result they cannot stomach, is there anything left of the rule of law?
For all his shortcomings, Robert Bork was spot-on: We don't live in a Republic governed by the rule of law, but under the iron rule of unelected and unaccountable judocrats. All we have is a tenancy-at-will in our liberties, as opposed to a portfolio of inalienable rights.
Authoritarian governments tend to have little quirks where just by chance, they happen to support something that some people in the West like. Sometimes they even support it to a degree that we can legitimately argue is too much. The Nazis were noted animal rights supporters, for instance, but we wouldn't say that anyone who doesn't support animal rights to the same degree as the Nazis is doing something so heinous even the Nazis would avoid it.
Or another example: the Saudis won't execute juveniles. They also won't execute important, politically connected people. Yet we don't think that their refusal to execute important, politically connected, people is worthy of emulation just because it's an area where even the dictatorship is more lenient than us.
(And in truth, it's not hard to Google it up and find that Saudi Arabia does indeed execute juveniles.)
Can we just make it clear that anyone who insists on calling Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa by his correct name, calling him "Tony Villar" instead, is a hateful, prejudiced, racist anti-Hispanic bigot? Because there really isn't any other reason for doing it.
It's basically equivalent of the racists who insisted on calling Muhammed Ali "Cassius Clay". Unfortunately, Villaraigosa can't repeatedly punch people in the face and ask "what's my name?" until they get it.
Do you speak any Spanish?
Have you been to the "Plaza de la Raza" in Lincoln Heights? Or do you think they won't let you in because you aren't Hispanic.
You may have been living here 20 years, but you must have been too closed-minded to learn any actual information about our Hispanic population.
How does it imply that? Where's the proof that typical MECHA members on college campuses even know the content of the charter?
At least where I went to college, MECHA was essentially the Hispanic and Latin American Students Association. There wasn't another group. So Hispanics joined it for perfectly harmless reasons-- and they didn't give a poop about the charter.
You'd almost think they simply make assumptions about Hispanics based on their ethnicity or something.
Seriously, guys, you are basically libeling people. Maybe you need to get to know some more Hispanics.
The most radical importation of foreign law into the US is of course Louisiana's adoption of France's Napoleonic Code. Long after it became part of the US, Louisiana kept its version of the old Roman civil code. Chafed by its many disadvantages but wanting to keep a civil code, Louisianans looked around for something more up-to-date. They settled on the revised French code of 1804 (the so-called Napoleonic Code mentioned in A Streetcar Named Desire), and adopted it in 1825.
There was one interesting tidbit in the last half minute or so, very applicable to the Ricci case. Have people noticed it?
From your link:
In short, said Miller &Chevalier partner Timothy O'Toole, "it looks pretty mainstream to me."
Empathy did not mark Sotomayor's handling of this case. But the prisoner was going against the current: only 1 out of 740 prisoners gets his habeas petition granted:
A 2007 report by Vanderbilt University Law School and the National Center for State Courts, for example, showed that out of 2,384 randomly selected habeas corpus petitions filed by state prisoners in noncapital cases in 2003 and 2004, only seven had been granted.
Nobody would apply this reasoning to the KKK. "The KKK was the only general community service group available then. It was no worse than joining the Elks. I certainly didn't persecute any black people when I was a KKK member, and most people didn't even know that that was its purpose".
...!
Racist! Racist Racist Racist! Limbaugh-Hannity-Cheney-right-wing-noise-machine-Fox News-BUSH!
durrrr...
Obama
Because it wouldn't be true.
That's right. And if there were evidence that MECHA had acted as a criminal conspiracy to commit acts of violence against racial, ethnic, and religious minorities (as the KKK did for decades), you'd have a point.
The whole point is that for some conservatives, a Hispanic civil rights group AUTOMATICALLY is equivalent to the KKK. But there's no reason-- other than anti-Hispanic prejudice-- why one would apply that presumption.
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