As noted the California Supreme Court did cite Baker v Nelson based upon the Supreme Court dismissal of the case "for want of substantial federal question." In short the claim was not about the 14th Amendment's equal protection clause nor was there any conflict with another court's decision in the United States. The case was dismissed by the US Supreme Court and not adjudicated. In addressing Prop 22 the California State Supreme Court was addressing the 'equal protection clause' of the California State Constitution and not the equal protection clause of the 14th Amendment which is why Baker v Nelson was cited. Prop 22 was struck down because of the State Constitution and not the US Constitution and, like Baker v Nelson, there no reason for the US Supreme Court to become involved "for want of substantial federal question." We can note that when Prop 22 was ratified by the People of the State of California the California State Supreme Court could not adjudicate whether it violated the 14th Amendment. The "State Courts" cannot address issues based upon the US Constitution which can only be litigated in a federl court. The California State Supreme Court could only rule on whether Prop 8 met the State Constitutional conditions for amendment and could not address the federal question which was adjudicated by the 9th District Court. Of course when the US Supreme Court addressed Prop 8 it denied standing to the "defendant" as they were not the representatives of the State of California. This decision resulted in a default judgment for the "plaintiff's" rendering all of the arguments presented in the 9th District Court moot. The 9th District Court was required to grant the default judgment on behalf of the plaintiff's in the Prop 8 lawsuit based upon the claims made by the plaintiff's as there was no opposition to their lawsuit.
The patent laws require a change of significance if it addresses an existing patent. It is the idea that is patented and that is what the US Supreme Court is going to be called upon to address. If the software doesn't create a significant change then it is not patentable. Using an example from geometry we could look at the Pythagoren theorem as an example. It is expressed as a^2 + b^2 = c^2 and could initially be referred to as the "length" of the legs of the triangle but can also be expressed as the "volume" (area) of the squares created by the legs of the triangle. It doesn't change the actual formula though so changing "length" to "volume" doesn't change the formula. Simply making a change in the software that doesn't change the basic function of the software is not patentable.
Back to the good ol' days o' buyin' politicians an' elections... Supreme Court strikes down overall limits on political contributions 2 Apr.`14 WASHINGTON The Supreme Court, in a 5-4 decision, ruled Wednesday that limits on the total amount of money individuals can give to candidates, political parties and political action committees are unconstitutional.
I don't have a real problem with this. Where I have a problem is when political contributions are hidden from public scrutiny by channeling them through 501(c) political organizations where the donors are not identified. PAC's have long had to identify their donors but 501(c) organizations like the Tea Party Patriots, National Organization for Marriage, and the Organizing for America (OFA - a rebranding of the Obama for America PAC) are all allowed to hide their donors which denies the American voter the knowledge necessary to be an informed voter. These 501(c) organizations suppress their donor lists for nefarious political purposes and this practice needs to be banned. A simply change to the law on 501(c) organizations requiring them to provide a list of major donors over a specified amount (e.g. $1,000) would fix the problem.
Who controls Jerusalem?... US Supreme Court to Review Jerusalem Birthplace Law April 21, 2014: WASHINGTON The U.S. Supreme Court on Monday agreed to weigh the constitutionality of a law that was designed to allow American citizens born in Jerusalem - the historic holy city claimed by Israelis and Palestinians - to have Israel listed as their birthplace on passports.
Aereo case before the Supreme Court... INTERNET TV CASE: JUSTICES SKEPTICAL, CONCERNED Apr. 22, 2014 WASHINGTON (AP) Grappling with fast-changing technology, Supreme Court justices debated Tuesday whether they can protect the copyrights of TV broadcasters to the shows they send out without strangling innovations in the use of the internet.
Beginning the dismantling of reverse discrimination... Michigan affirmative ban is OK, Supreme Court says April 22, 2014: WASHINGTON (AP) A state's voters are free to outlaw the use of race as a factor in college admissions, the Supreme Court ruled Tuesday in a blow to affirmative action that also laid bare tensions among the justices about a continuing need for programs that address racial inequality in America.
Is abortion free speech?... High Court To Consider ACA Funding of Abortion in First Amendment Case April 22, 2014 Susan B. Anthony List (SBA) President Marjorie Dannenfelser once again defended her groups claim that taxpayers will be forced to pay for abortions through the Affordable Care Act (ACA) following oral arguments in a First Amendment case now before the U.S. Supreme Court. See also: Scalia: Political Speech Advances Values, Not Personal Attacks April 22, 2014 During oral arguments at the Supreme Court Tuesday, the justices appeared skeptical of an Ohio law that bars people from making false statements about political candidates.
The Supreme Court, in this decision, did not remove the requirement under the Equal Protection Clause for the State of Michigan to address the inequities based upon racial discrimination but did establish that it was up to the State, and the People of the State, to determine how to address the issue. The problem now exists for Michigan to address the issue of racial discrimination in some other manner than Affirmative Action. I will wait to see what Michigan does to address this problem as racial discrimination does violate the Equal Protection Clause of the 14th Amendment. One possible avenue is to address generational economic discrimination by using the lifetime earning of the parents to provide a foundation for special considerations related to college admissions. While not "race based" we do know that African-Americans typically only have 60% of the earnings when compared to white Americans so they would receive preferential treatment based upon historic economic disadvantage.
Will the Supreme Court stick it's thumb in the political pie... Supreme Court Politics of Campaign 2016 April 24, 2014 WASHINGTON Theres no shortage of issues for this years congressional midterm elections and the presidential showdown in 2016the state of the economy, health care and foreign policy all figure into the mix.
The concern is rather premature considering that virtually none of the current crop of potential Republican candidates have any chance of being elected if they're running against a moderate Democrat. They're way too far to the "right" for most independents to support and without independents, that represent 40% of American voters, no one gets elected. Certainly anyone associated with the Tea Party movement is going to fail if nominated and it's doubtful the Republican Party will put up a moderate Republican that could compete with moderate Democrat because there doesn't appear to be any nationally recognized "moderate" Republicans anymore.
Ginzburg has said publicly she wishes to reach the 23-year mark like her idol Louis Brandeis (1916-1939). That would be 2016. The last time a justice tried to retire during a Presidential campaign was 1968. Earl Warren announced his retirement shortly after Lyndon Johnson withdrew from the race in March. Johnson attempted to elevate his friend and 1965 appointee as associate justice Abe Fortas to chief, but the Republican Senate minority filibustered and he withdrew, as did Johnson's nominee for Fortas' seat. Nixon won the election and started by replacing Warren with Warren Burger. He was not in the Senate before the election, but suspected something was wrong with Fortas. Sure enough he had a small consulting contract that constituted a conflict of interest, so he resigned. The Democratic Senate rejected Nixon's first two nominees, so he panicked and appointed Harry Blackmun, leading to the death of 60 million babies and the damning of the country. If Ginzburg retires this year the Republicans can easily claim her thoughts were political. They might filibuster a nominee, but almost anyone will make it through. If Republicans take the Senate they will fight hard against any nominee until the end of the term. They might regret it but it will be following a tradition (1828, 1837, 1843-45,1852,1865-69, 1880-81, and the above). Since Hillary is a potential candidate, Ginzburg and Breyer might prefer to wait until her plans are clear, since being appointed by Bill and replaced by Hillary is poetic. Breyer has had the least important 20 years on the court since the beginning of the 1900s. He has to outlast Ginzburg to achieve some level of importance. Once he gets there, they may have to carry him out.
We should note that "conservative" and "progressive" interpretations of the US Constitution do not align themselves with "social-conservative" and "progressive-liberal" political ideology as both "social-conservatives" and "progressive-liberals" both rely on both "conservative" and "progressive" interpretations of the US Constitution. "Social-conservatives" would deny this but examples such as District of Columbia v. Heller that Republicans support are progressive interpretations of the US Constitution. In Heller the Supreme Court cited the "Right of Self-Defense" of the person but the US Constitution does not enumerate a Right of Self-Defense. In is an unenumerated Right protected by the 9th Amendment and unenumerated Rights are subject to Supreme Court interpretation which is "progressive" in nature. Conservatives would have argued against a "conservative" interpretation of the Constitution in Roe v Wade where the "preborn" were granted a limited "right to life" at natural viability based upon "potential personhood" because a "conservative" interpretation would have struck down ALL laws that restricted abortion at any time. Only "persons" and not "potential persons" have protected Inalienable Rights including the Right to Life. Roe v Wade was actually a huge "win" for the social-conservatives based upon a "progressive" interpretation of the US Constitution but they generally fail to recognize that fact.
There is however another definition of conservative within the judiciary, and it would have made a huge difference if the lineup of the court had been different in the 1970s. The conservative approach of a judge has little to do with low taxes, protecting gun owners and opposing sin through tough laws. The Constitution is not consistently aligned with what either liberal or conservative politicians want and good judges on both sides see it that way. The conservative approach to the judiciary means writing narrow conclusions that have little reach beyond the specific case they are ruling on. I only wish that the Roe versus Wade cases went that way. There were actually two different cases tied together. Considering them as a unit seemed like a good idea because the court was overloaded with cases in that era. The messup I described above had stalled the court for four years. When Warren was expecting to be retired soon after the start of the 1968-69 term, they limited their agenda for that year. When they had to wait until the start of the next year for a new chief, there was a backlog of cases. Then came Fortas' resignation and another vacancy. Several tough cases were set in a growing file to be heard when the court again had nine members. It was early 1970 before Blackmun was there and many cases were postponed until the 1970-71 session. Four different justices lost time to illnesses that year, especially justice Harlan who was also going blind. Hugo Black was completing his 34th year at age 85 and wasn't sure if he could come back in the fall. He and Douglas, completing his 32nd year, were pressing to get their favorite subjects addressed before it was too late. That included the abortion cases. In September 1971 Black and Harlan got checkups on the same day to see if they could last the term. Both were pronounced terminally ill and retired. Black died immediately. Harlan lingered for a few months. Powell and Rehnquist were approved and joined in January, having missed the abortion hearings. Douglas had assigned Blackmun to write the decision with an apparent four-two majority (Douglas, Brennan, Marshall and Blackmun versus Stewart and White with chief justice Warren Burger uncommitted). Four-two and four-three votes are law but taken less seriously. Blackmun was too busy studying baseball statistics to add a comprehensive list of the game's greatest players before 1946 as a preamble to his decision on the anti-trust laws. (Maybe he should have switched jobs with Bowie Kuhn.) They decided to rehear the case in the fall of 1972. Powell joined the majority side. As a specialist in health laws he sided with doctors. One of the laws required a political conference for every proposed abortion. Rehnquist was opposed, justifying his personal objections on the grounds that the plaintiff had no standing to sue. The chief remained neutral. Even Blackmun might have written a more narrow decision except Marshall insisted he make it legal until the sixth month because women in the back country might not know they're pregnant until the start of the fourth month. Blackmun also asked Stewart how he could win his vote. Stewart said what he was proposing would only be right if he declared that the Constitution does not recognize unborn children of any age as alive. He didn't expect Blackmun to go that far, but when he did, Stewart had to switch his vote. The chief joined the winning side (as he often did in those years) and made the announcement the day Lyndon Johnson died, to keep it from being the top news story of the day. If Burger had joined the winning side initially he could have written a decision that would have only negated government interference in individual medical cases but left general laws against casual abortions legal across the board. That really was the right side constitutionally. Douglas, Brennan and Marshall wanted it fully legal, and spen their careers on the court trying to stretch the Constitution to change the country. John Paul Stevens was not like them. The decisions he was responsible for 1994-2010 are narrow and represent the conservative judicial approach even though they may advance the political liberal cause.
Generally speaking the majority of Supreme Court cases do result in a very narrow decision although there are exceptions and generally the entire Supreme Court agrees when much broader decisions are to be reached regardless of their individual opinions on the case before them. The issue of a broad v narrow decision is really outside the specifics of the case before the Court but instead is based upon whether the decision can be limited or must be broad in scope. For example in Hollingsworth the Supreme Court had to be a broad decision related to federal law as the case of inheritance taxation by the federal government and the other 1,100 other federal laws where "marriage" was the criteria had to be broad to cover all persons in the United States. A person could not have "inheritance" rights under federal law but not have joint bankruptcy protection as well. At the same time the Hollingworth decision was also narrow as it didn't address the Right to equal protection under the law for same-sex couples under state law. The Supreme Court could have addressed equal protection related to State marriage laws in it's Prop 8 decision but instead rejected the Prop 8 appeal based upon a lack of standing by the defendents because they were not representatives of the government of the State of California. Because the defendents didn't have standing it automatically established a default decision Prop 8 was unconsitutional based solely upon the complaint by the Plaintiff's. All of the arguments in court on Prop 8 became moot. Because the case was rejected due to a lack of standing it didn't establish any Constitutional precedent and since the lawsuit only address California Prop 8 it's effects only addressed California and didn't even extend to the entire 9th District of the Court. Roe v Wade, by necessity, had to address all state abortion laws as it hinged upon the Rights of the Woman to have an abortion that could not be limited to a single state. A woman couldn't have a right to an abortion in one state and not have that right in another. But given the option the Supreme Court always attempts to issue a more narrow decision but ultimately that also leads to additional adjudication because of the narrow decision. The Court must weigh whether a broader decision will head off what would fundamentally be a repeat decision of it's prior decision. Had Roe v Wade (that also included Doe v. Bolton) been narrow then the Supreme Court would have had to hear the same case again and again based upon individual abortion laws in other states.
That's good, though I'm quite sure Burger or Powell would have written a narrower decision subject to less passionate arguments afterwards. Those two would have continued to write related opinions for 13 more years, by which time Stevens and O'Connor would have influenced the decisions and state legislatures would have hammered out their versions. Perhaps some bold Congressmen would have done the right thing and proposed a constitutional amendment on the subject so the matter would be settled the right way. In any case, do you agree with my general premise that the court interpreted many cases far too widely from 1940-1990 (when the liberals held a clear majority) but only a handful since with moderation assured? Do you feel that during the era of Republican dominance (1869-1940)the court also decided cases too broadly? If so, which group did more harm to the country?
It is going to be interesting to see how the court handles these two cases going forward in the subsequent decisions on appeal. The Court attempted to make it clear IMO that it still considers marriage a state issue and will not be extending equal protection to gays for marriage in the DOMA case, however, some of the cases like the one out of Virginia seem to be on collision course with the Prop 8 case because of standing. I think these attorneys general are hoping that refusing to assign someone to defend these cases will result in a Prop 8 type ruling because they too suspect that under the DOMA case, they have no chance of getting a favorable ruling out of this Court so they are trying to win it on a technicality. the problem with that of course is that if they do not get a clear ruling on the merits, when the GOP comes back into power in those states, the law will be changed enough to reset it and then they will take it back up on its merit under the DOMA restatement that marriage is a state issue. My guess is that the SCOTUS will distinguish the cases somehow from Prop 8 to settle the issue on these cases to prevent the merry go round from continuing.
There is no way on earth that the prohibitions against same-sex marriage can survive Constitutional scrutiny. They're going to lose on both "equal protection" grounds and on "full faith and credit" grounds. I believe the Supreme Court knew that but was just buying time to allow public opinion to continure to move forward with approval of same-sex marriage. Most Americans already approve of it anyway seeing it for the marriage equality issue it really is.
My greatest concern is where a split decision upholds a law or action when I read the minority decision and it provides compelling arguments as to why it is unconstitutional. Just because it's a "minority" opinion doesn't imply that the arguments are not compelling for why the law or action should be struck down based upon the US Constitution.
If America approves of it, they can change the law through the legislative process in the respective states. The SCOTUS had the chance, has had other chances, and has not given homosexuals the equal protection ruling that you think is a given. Full faith and credit does not require that states change their laws to accommodate the whims of the most liberal state legislatures. There is a world of difference between recognizing marriages performed out of state and allowing the same marriages to occur in the state. Just because some states recognize common law marriage does not mean that every state has to allow their residents to become married that way as well. Rational scrutiny does not require that a state prove it has a compelling reason not to allow gays to marriage, merely that it has a legitimate reason in wanting straights to marry. The interesting thing legally here is whether the SCOTUS distinguishes around the ruling the the Prop 8 case to even allow these cases to be decided on their merits.
If it's unconstitutional then neither the state legislature or the people of a state can prohibit it. Hollingworth only addressed federal law so that is all that the SCOTUS addressed. DOMA Section 3 that prohibited the federal recognition of same-sex marriage violated the equal protection clause and that legal precedent is now being applied to state laws. If the prohibition against recognition of same-sex marriages under federal law violated the US Constitution then it's logical that the prohibitions against same-sex marriage under state law is also violate the US Constitution. Federal courts have been making that determination since the Hollingsworth decision. It does require a state to recognize the official records from other states and a marriage license is an official record from another state. If a state denies the recognition of the marriage status of a couple based upon an official record of marriage from another state then it is in violation of the full faith and credit clause. Of note ALL marriages, except same-sex marriage, from other states are recognized when the couple moves to a state where it wouldn't be legal. For example two 16 year olds can marry in Hawaii and move to Mississippi where the legal age is 21 but their marriage is recognized by Mississippi. If Kansas does recognize the marriage of a same-sex couple that legally marries in the state of Washington that later moves to Kansas then they get into a problem of "equal protection under the law" if they refuse the institution of marriage to same-sex couples if there are any state laws that would discriminate against a same-sex couple in Kansas. Allowing same-sex couples in no way disparages the "state's interest" related to opposite-sex couples marrying. The Rights of the Person and the State's Interests related to opposite-sex couples marrying are not diminished by allowing same-sex couples to marry. The Prop 8 case was unique so far in that the State decided to not defend the Constitutional Amendment created by Prop 8 and it had good cause not to defend Prop 8. Prop 22 that imposed the statutory prohibition had been struck down previously as being a violation of the equal protection clause so the State of California had legal precedent to support the refusal of the State to defend Prop 8. As noted the Supreme Court's rejection of legal standing by the defendents resulted in a default decision for the Plaintiff's based upon their lawsuit. The decision by the Supeme Court on Prop 8 has no bearing in the "standing" of a State in defending it's laws or constitution that prohibits same-sex marriage. The "State" does have "standing" to defend the laws and constitution of the State.
Well this isn't really the topic of the thread, so I will go no further than say that I think you misunderstand the equal protection clause and will be disappointed at what happens when the SCOTUS hears these next round of cases.
Granny says, "Dat's right - only Jesus can save us from the lefty lib'rals runnin' dis gubamint... Supreme Court: Its OK to Say Jesus in Prayers at Town Meetings May 5, 2014 -- The U.S. Supreme Court ruled today that the Town of Greece, New York did not violate the First Amendment mandate that Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, when it allowed clergy to invoke the name of Jesus and use other Christian language when giving opening prayers at meetings of the towns board.
Court rules on Camp Lejeune groundwater pollution, Texas death penalty... Supreme Court ruling muddies water in Camp Lejeune pollution case June 10, 2014 ~ The Supreme Court on Monday dealt a blow to North Carolina families trying to sue over groundwater contamination at a big Marine Corps base. See also: Texas execution appeal rejected by US supreme court Tuesday 10 June 2014 ~ Justices opt not to review intellectual disability claim of Robert Campbell, who was sentenced to death for 1991 rape and murder
I don't know that this actually presents a problem because the plaintiffs can, based upon the Supreme Court decsion, file a lawsuit in a federal court under federal law as opposed to a state court under state law. The only problem is if the time limit for filing a lawsuit in a federal court has already expired as well. If the time has expired under both the State and Federal law so that the plaintiffs cannot receive any personal damages compensation then I'd assume that North Carolina is now responsible to clean up any toxic after effects using taxpayer funding.
