Posted on 09/07/2015 3:07:04 PM PDT by EternalVigilance
Opinions are sometimes right, and sometimes wrong. But they aren't law.
In the early days of our government, Supreme Court opinions were so insignificant that Congress didn't bother preserving them. Opinions were left to individuals to keep track of, and were not congressionally-funded into official records until 1874, almost a century after our independence. Before Congress stepped in, Court records were printed and kept under copyright by private citizens and reporters, who sold them for profit.
Opinions of the Court were kept "loosey-goosey" for decades, and not preserved with certified integrity. Actual statute was held officially and carefully, in order to preserve its certainty as law. In 1874, when Congress had decided to finally begin funding and overseeing the printing of Supreme Court opinions, while leaving their actual production to be handled privately, it moved its own code away from private printers to be solely handled by the U.S. government.
To this day, the actual production of Court opinions is done by contract to private entities. (You are apparently even invited, as a private citizen, to help out with any errors before the official printing!) By contrast, actual federal code, the statute that is "on the books" because it went through the constitutional process of lawmaking, remains meticulously and faithfully produced by the U.S. government, start to finish.
Supreme Court opinions have always been treated as inferior to the United States code--because they are not the "law of the land."
BUMP
I agree 100%
What I think is a very important, timely piece, published by my brilliant and lovely wife today.
Bkmk
Yep. They call it “dicta”. It is of no legal consequence.
How exactly do you figure this qualifies as “News”?
Jeez. Just looking at this snippet shows what complete garbage this decision was. It had no basis anywhere in law or precedence. Just made up out of thin air. With a few paragraphs the entire history and purpose of marriage is erased within the borders of the US.
The only place the courts had any jurisdiction whatsoever was to discuss the contractual aspects of marriage. Tax policy, contractual rights, social security rights, etc. The court would be perfectly in it’s means to interpret that any two people could share the same policies and privileges provided to married couples. They had absolutely no ability to redefine it in this way.
Thanks for posting it on FR.
You know I don’t say this to you very often, but you’re 100% correct!
Love your post. I do not often bookmark a post, but this one i’m keeping.
It’s News/ACTIVISM, under which is the category “Editorial,” which is what this is.
I put it there because I thought it to be extremely valuable information for ACTIVISTS.
If the mods don’t like it, I’m sure they’ll put it elsewhere.
Which would be a shame, in my opinion.
You know what they say about Supreme Court opinions. They’re like ......, everybody’s got one.
I really don’t see how your vanity thread qualifies as “News”.
Nicely done!
Again, the category is “News/Activism.”
This is valuable information for Activists.
But I do appreciate you bumping the thread. Thanks.
Opinions are not dicta.
Thank you for referencing that article EternalVigilance. Please bear in mind that the following critique is directed at the article and not at you.
The author of the referenced article inadvertently overlooks that, where low-information citizens are concerned, citizens who have evidently never been taught the difference between legislative and judicial powers, that activist justices / judges can easily get away with making “laws” from the bench.
Also note that the Founding States gave Congress the specific power to remove from the bench justices and judges who legislate from the bench. The problem is that the corrupt, post-17th Amendment ratification Senate now refuses to protect the states as the Founding States had intended for it to do. Instead, the corrupt Senate harms the states by refusing to work with the House to impeach and remove Constitution-ignoring judges and justices from the bench.
The ill-conceived 17th Amendment needs to disappear, and corrupt senators and the activist justices that they confirm to the bench who legislate from the bench as well.
I didn’t mean the official court Opinion, I meant the Judge’s opinion i.e. musing. Meant opinion and not Opinion.
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