Posted on 01/03/2003 10:20:05 AM PST by farmfriend
If a judge overturns a jury verdict because he doesn't like it, that is what I call judicial activism If he upholds it, that is respecting the jury's judgment. I don't see how upholding a Jury can be considered activism. And, if you fer referring to the award of attorney fees to the winner ... Well, that's just 'loser pays' in action. Something tort reformers seem to desire.
Maybe it would help to understand your position if we have a common definition of activism? I suggest Websters for the definition. If you define otherwise, please indicate it.
Or is your disput with Juries, and not lawyers?
Oh stop being oblivious to the obvious! You're supposed to be reasonable and see everything my way, right? (grin)
That is a part of one of the definitions. Epistemology or Ontology? What is reality or what is the meaning of reality? Try here for an improved understanding of, IMO, real philosophy.
I agree that the forces of evil can invade either camp in an on-going feud and that's what you accurately described. My feud is with mystical liberals in positions of power who pragmatically believe the constitution is a "living breathing document," subject to each cause of the activists that spring up from our leftist dominated institutions of higher/lower learning.(now indoctrination)
We're not in any major disagreement. Actually, we're on the same side in this war, just different fronts. I, of course, consider my front to be the most important one, and you consider yours such. That is the way it should be. The problem is that all fronts on our side sem to be working independently without co-orination with the others; frequently ending up at odds with one another and wasting valuable time and energies. That is why I take a pragmatic approach to the situation. If it doesn't work, it doesn't get my support. Complaining about the legal system seems to accomplish nothing. While we waste time and strength on attacking lawyers and judges, the liberals, those whom we both oppose, are coordinating and using the system to their advantage. We could be doing the same, but we don't. That is why they are winning and we are losing.
BTW, congrats on learning to us a law library and how the courts work. Very few people do. Have you considered a bit of legal activism on your own? An educated pro se can be a frightening thing to a liberal lawyer or judge. And a respected thing to a conservative one. Another reason why I oppose loser pays. The law is a weapon. It always will be. Lets use it as such for a just cause, not remove it from our reach. the liberals will have access to it's full use under any circumstance.
True, but...
The judges should have thrown out the whole ESA as unconstitutional, as a violation of the fifth, ninth and tenth amendments.
http://www.ca9.uscourts.gov/ca9/documents.nsf/855cafdb74bf4619882567f4006847a2/1acbaf4157698697882567f400694e46?OpenDocument Main site: http://www.ca9.uscourts.gov/
Wow. What changed your tune?
I agree, however, don't you think the feds have managed to gain control by perverting the "commerce clause" claiming since these are interstate rivers, they have control by virtue of "interstate commerce"?
In the winter of 1983, archival research expert David Dodge, and former Baltimore police investigator Tom Dunn, were searching for evidence of government corruption in public records stored in the Belfast Library on the coast of Maine.
By chance, they discovered the library's oldest authentic copy of the Constitution of the United States (printed in 1825). Both men were stunned to see this document included a 13th Amendment that no longer appears on current copies of the Constitution. Moreover, after studying the Amendment's language and historical context, they realized the principle intent of this "missing" 13th Amendment was to prohibit lawyers from serving in government. So began a seven year, nationwide search for the truth surrounding the most bizarre Constitutional puzzle in American history -- the unlawful removal of a ratified Amendment from the Constitution of the United States. Since 1983, Dodge and Dunn have uncovered additional copies of the Constitution with the "missing" 13th Amendment printed in at least eighteen separate publications by ten different states and territories over four decades from 1822 to 1860. In June of this year (1991), Dodge uncovered the evidence that this missing 13th Amendment had indeed been lawfully ratified by the state of Virginia and was therefore an authentic Amendment to the American Constitution. If the evidence is correct and no logical errors have been made, a 13th Amendment restricting lawyers from serving in government was ratified in 1819 and removed from US Constitution during the tumult of the Civil War. Since the Amendment was never lawfully repealed, it is still the Law today. The implications are enormous.
The story of this "missing" Amendment is complex and at times confusing because the political issues and vocabulary of the American Revolution were different from our own. However, there are essentially two issues: What does the Amendment mean? and, Was the Amendment ratified? Before we consider the issue of ratification, we should first understand the Amendment's meaning and consequent current relevance.
The "missing" 13th Amendment to the Constitution of the United States reads as follows: Not so. Consider some evidence of its historical significance: First, "titles of nobility" were prohibited in both Article VI of the Articles of Confederation (1777) and in Article I, Sections 9 and 10 of the Constitution of the United States (1787); Second, although already prohibited by the Constitution, an additional "title of nobility" amendment was proposed in 1789, again in 1810, and according to Dodge, finally ratified in 1819. Clearly, the founding fathers saw such a serious threat in "titles of nobility" and "honors" that anyone receiving them would forfeit their citizenship. Since the government prohibited "titles of nobility" several times over four decades, and went through the amending process (even though "titles of nobility" were already prohibited by the Constitution), it's obvious that the Amendment carried much more significance for our founding fathers than is readily apparent today.
To understand the meaning of this "missing" 13th Amendment, we must understand its historical context -- the era surrounding the American Revolution. We tend to regard the notion of "Democracy" as benign, harmless, and politically unremarkable. But at the time of the American Revolution, King George III and the other monarchies of Europe saw Democracy as an unnatural, ungodly ideological threat, every bit as dangerously radical as Communism was once regarded by modern Western nations. Just as the 1917 Communist Revolution in Russia spawned other revolutions around the world, the American Revolution provided an example and incentive for people all over the world to overthrow their European monarchies. Go Here for the rest of the article.
"If any citizen of the United States shall accept, claim, receive, or retain any title of nobility or honour, or shall without the consent of Congress, accept and retain any present, pension, office, or emolument of any kind whatever, from any emperor, king, prince, or foreign power, such person shall cease to be a citizen of the United States, and shall be incapable of holding any office of trust or profit under them, or either of them."</font /color="ff0000">
At the first reading, the meaning of this 13th Amendment (also called the "title of nobility" Amendment) seems obscure, unimportant. The references to "nobility", "honour", "emperor", "king", and "prince" lead us to dismiss this amendment as a petty post-revolution act of spite directed against the British monarchy. But in US modern world of Lady Di and Prince Charles, anti-royalist sentiments seem so archaic and quaint, that the Amendment can be ignored.
HISTORICAL CONTEXT
LOL! But I thought Honor was imortant!
Ah yes the BAR, that would be the British Accreditation Registry.
Maybe Cornwallis was right.
You can't leave stuff like that hangin out there! Cummon, dang it!
If'n ya don't splain stuff to the stupid, like me, we might go racin off to "Maritime Law," and fringy flags an stuff like that!!! Is that where we're goin?
If not, then where? I gots losted!!!
I have the feelin I shud no bedder since I wached the "Patriot" movie an actually seen Cornwallis, right?
"a holy war will now begin on America, and when it is ended America will be supposedly the citadel of freedom, but her millions will unknowingly be loyal subjects to the Crown." He went on to explain what would seem to be a self contradiction: "Your churches will be used to teach the Jew's religion and in less than two hundred years the whole nation will be working for divine world government. That government that they believe to be divine will be the British Empire. All religions will be permeated with Judaism without even being noticed by the masses, and they will all be under the invisible all-seeing eye on the Grand Architect of Freemasonry"I have no other source for this quote, so I hold it as interesting but not definitive. If it is true, it fits the Phoenican/Canaanite pagan v. Babylonian/Judaic model upon which I have mused.- Jonathan Williams, Legions of Satan, 1781
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