StageLeft
No Lifer
- Sep 29, 2000
- 70,150
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Our african american did great things for civil rights. Thomas has helped keep the discriminatory status quo.
This thread caused me to want to raise this issue theoretically in another thread. I was thinking of asking this same basic question but without a particular case as reference:
Should a Supreme Court Justice follow the letter of the Constitution if it means an innocent person will die, or should he interpret the Constitution to imply that justice is something we may not be able to define, but that we know it when we see it and killing an innocent person ain't it.
What I really wonder is if Scalia, a man of principle, ego, and reputation, with an eye on maintaining a particular judicial philosophy voted as he did to do that only because his was the minority opinion would not decide the person's fate. I wonder if he would have so voted if his was the deciding vote. I hope not, personally. I wonder also if his life were the one to go down if he would also have voted for his own death. How about if the fate of all humanity rested on the vote? Would constitutional consistency be more important than the whole human race.
The problem with folk who create absolutes is that they also create dilemmas that can't be logically resolved.
The right to life is absolute. The right to liberty is absolute. Abortion is not a clash between to absolutes and it is just a matter of which absolute is more absolute than the other, a joke created by illusions.
I had an interesting debate with LunarRay over the issue of how men judge at the Supreme Court level. I maintain that everybody judges according to what they feel justice is and LR according to what the law is. Not making a good case of defining his or my position, but it relates to this issue.
Doc Savage Fan
Lifer
- Nov 30, 2006
- 15,456
- 389
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I guess I'm missing the part where Davis has compelling evidence of his innocence. Can someone shed some light on this for me?
Every witness used to convict him has recanted their testimony with two exceptions. One is a person that fingered him two years after it happened, and the other was a suspect in the murder himself.
The USSC has simply told the lower court to examine the new evidence and see what it thinks, a perfectly reasonable decision considering the state of the evidence used to convict him.
I find it interesting that as an originalist Scalia claims he attempts to discern the intent of those who wrote the document, and rule accordingly. Apparently Scalia believes that those who wrote the Constitution believed that people convicted of a crime that they were later found 'actually innocent of' should be executed anyway.
That's not principle, that's stupidity. If he thinks our founding fathers did truly believe that, they were psychopaths.
StageLeft
No Lifer
- Sep 29, 2000
- 70,150
- 5
- 0
He may have voted minority to make a point. I do doubt he'd vote for his own death. And anybody with reason and heart would not vote in line with the constitution if it was clearly wrong, for to do so would be to argue that it never is wrong (amendments disagree with that, as does simple common sense).
Now, if his job is to strictly interpret the constitution and he voted for this guy's death and it was consistent with his job, all we can really say is that he takes his job more seriously than another man's life, which is detestable.
If this is how he interprets it, he would indeed have to think they were either psychopaths, or he is stupid, or he is simply an asshole. I don't see a fourth option.
Doc Savage Fan
Lifer
- Nov 30, 2006
- 15,456
- 389
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Thanks. Seven witnesses recanting their sworn testimony...that's odd...very odd. Do you know if the other suspect was his friend at the time?
What makes you and Scalia 'insensitive assholes' is the lack of morality - the satisfaction with the small-minded interpretations and lack of regard for moral issues.
I'm not advocating that Justices say 'gee, I'd like this moral outcome, so I'll ignore the law'. That's the straw men people like you use to defend your support of evil.
There have been decisions that require the Justices to have a better moral understanding and that is a legitimate part of their job - within the constitution, but how it's interpreted.
For example, does the constitution allow for 'separate but equal' to be put into law by the states? There's nowhere black and white (no pun intended) in the cosntitution banning it.
You and Scalia easily could - and the Supreme Court once did - say 'yes', the constitution allows for that, and it remained the law for sixty years. It took an Earl Warren - a 'greater' man who had the stature that he'd been nominated to run for Governor of California by both the Democratic and Republican paries in the same election - to recogjnize the 'moral issue', and to look at the constitution, and to recognize a better interpretation of the same words which said separate but equal was unconstitutional.
People like you try to twist that into 'Justices run amok', because you lack the moral understanding to tell the difference between the important moral aspect in such decisions, and the Justices simply ignoring the constitution and doind whatever they want. And so you cling to your narrow interpretations and take pride in your 'toughness' to be willing to (let others) pay the price for your narrow interpretations.
Another example is the right to birth control. There's no spefici right in the constitution to the right to those pills, and people like you can easily interpret the constotution to rule that way - which just happens to coincide with the personal morality of many of the judges who follow that ideology. But judges with a better sense of the nature of freedom looked at the constitution and found an interpretation which allowed for personal rights and freedom, a 'right to privacy', and ruled accordingly and controversially.
You understand the idea justices who ignore the constitution to be 'activists', but you fail to understand the opposite - the justices whose narrow interpretations ignore the constitution's instructions not to be so narrow. There are places the constitution *directs* a broader interpretation of the rights of the people - but lacking black and white words, the activists on your side ignore the constitution's instructions and its 'spirit' in chooseing the narrow interpretations.
You benefit from the great Justices who have used interpretations that give you more freedoms, even while you happily will deny others rights, to say you're 'tough' on it.
Is our society better off with the Court saying separate but legal is not allowed, that you have the right to birth control, that gay sex cannot be criminalized (as of 2003)?
I suspect you wanting to race to your straw man and say 'who cares if society benefits, the law is what matters'.
Are you going to deny that the constitution in its brief guidance has only one black and white interpretation for every one of millions of speciic issues that arise?
That's clearly not the case. Whichever side you choose, you are making a *choice* to pick one interpretation or another that says more about your ideology thatn the cosntitution.
Some people like specifc rules, and they are the ones more likely to want to claim the constitution is such a black and white document - however much they have to ignore its actual words to do so. The simple fact is IMO that you have a weakness that leads you to misinterpret the constitution and agree with rulings bad for the people of the nation.
We want Justices who work within the consitution and subvert theit own moral views to it - but we want justices who *have* a moral sense over ones like you who lack one.
You just defended the notion of executing an innocent man in defense of putting process ahead of justice - not some constitutional principle, but simply the bureacratic 'convenience' of the courts to limit appeals - and you did not show any concern to want to look closely at the constitution and the law for the purpose of preventing the murder of an innocent person, as a moral person would, but you rather 'pride' yourself on coldly accepting the injustice, *pretending* you were defending the constitution.
Lower level judges can apply the existing precedents and the simple interpretations. Supreme Court justices need a broader sense of the larger constitutional principles.
Our freedoms rely on their moral judgement in interpreting the consittution, not their indifference to the well-being of the American people as they interpret the document.
This is where the great quaslity of an Earl Warren who dedicates himself to reduce injustice in the country, following not violating the constitution, recognizing the better interpretation of that document that obviously said nothing specific about whether the state could have segregated schools. The inconvenience the court caused by ordering the bussing of children to achieve integration was very unpopular - and it was right. People like you would happily not pursue such better interpretations, priding yourselves on being 'tough' enough to look at the injustice done to the blacks and think that you were somehow defending a good principle by 'happily' not being concerned with their suffering so you could take the simple, narrow interpretation and claim it's the only right one.
IMO, you have to choose between two bad choices to defend your position - you either are consistent and apply your ideology to cases such as the ones I named, and defend denying rights now long recognizaed by our laws and popular; or you can agree with the rulings I mentioned which are in contradiction to your stated position as you become guilty of hypcrisy, jumping on the bandwagon with the 'popular' decisions of old that required less narrow interpretations, in violation of the standard you say you support.
Phokus
Lifer
- Nov 20, 1999
- 22,994
- 779
- 126
FYI, atreus21 admitted he would rather have minorities suffer under racial injustices rather than the 'tyranny of the minority' running rampant against the majority. I had his quote in my sig months ago.
You can see why he would be cheerleading scalia here.
Atreus21
Lifer
- Aug 21, 2007
- 12,001
- 571
- 126
Man, I wish you'd ease up off the dissertations. I'm very willing to respond civilly, but having to quote everything and respond to each paragraph involves more time than I have.
Whose morality are you talking about, incidentally, and why does it take precedence over the constitution?
Have you not yet figured out why nobody cares about the long stories you like to write? I wouldn't put it past you that you actually do believe users here support killing innocent men :roll:
Let's look at the situation here, either (1) Scalia is evil, or (2) someone picked a sentence that out of context, giving a different perspective than what his full opinion really is.
You obviously believe the former, for you you also believe all Republicans are all evil wealth hoarders / oppressors of the poor & of minorities. Myself, I lean towards the latter.
The case isn't about whether somebody is guilty or innocent. It's about court jurisdiction in appeals cases over the death penalty. Legally the guy's live is on no relevance, I think.
It's pretty clear how Georgia fabricates cases against innocent people and now the whole world sees it.
About time the backwoods southern assholes are exposed for what they are.
About time the backwoods southern assholes are exposed for what they are.
I vaguely remember something months ago about the prosecutor trying to save face on this one (could be wrong about this). It'll be interesting to see how this turns out. I don't have a strong opinion about it either way but there's definitely something hinky here.
You know georgia is where john wallace was from. He killed a man and had two different sheriffs covering for him and was incredulous when yet another sheriff ran him to ground.
You know georgia is where john wallace was from. He killed a man and had two different sheriffs covering for him and was incredulous when yet another sheriff ran him to ground.
Are you saying they should have picked all three?
And you should have both Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson to thank for that.
Bush Sr. would probably have appointed another David Souter to the supreme court if not for civil rights activists like them insisting that the replacment justice should be black because the predecessor was black.
That's akin to Bush nominating that idiot Harriett Myers to fill Sandra O'Connor's seat because they wanted her replacement justice to be female.
You are highly confused when you mix up the oppressed minority receiving some relif from the oppression with an oligarchy. Oligarchs have dominant, disproportionate power.
Oppressed blacks are not the ones receiving the vast majority of wealth and political power in this country that the oligarchs are receiving.
You are at risk of troll status when you say something that absurd.
Originally posted by: Lothar
Are you saying they should have picked all three?
And you should have both Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson to thank for that.
Bush Sr. would probably have appointed another David Souter to the supreme court if not for civil rights activists like them insisting that the replacment justice should be black because the predecessor was black.
That's akin to Bush nominating that idiot Harriett Myers to fill Sandra O'Connor's seat because they wanted her replacement justice to be female.
You are misrepresenting the history. The people who wanted the replacement for Marshall to be similar never wanted ANY black simply because of his skin color.
The motives Bush had were not his being bullied, it was him playing politics with race - he wanted a radical right-winger, and used race to get it.
If he had appointed a white radical right-winger, he might have faced another Bork loss, but by appointing a black rigt-winger, he was daring the Democrats to vote against a black.
Bush appointing Harriet Meiers had far more to do with his appointing a crony, the way he appointed his personal lawyer Alberto Gonzales, than with the liberal demands.
And it was a reckless act against the national interest, selfish and corrupt, like McCain picking Palin - Harriet Meiers had conspired with him in corrupt Texan politics years before.
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