Wrong Court ruled on Arizona Law

In a stunning development that could potentially send the nation into a Constitutional crisis, an astute attorney who is well-versed in Constitutional law states that the ruling against the State of Arizona by Judge Susan Bolton concerning its new immigration law is illegal. The attorney in question submitted her assertion in a special article in the Canada Free Press. Her argument states in part, “Does anyone read the U.S. Constitution these days? American lawyers don’t read it. Federal Judge Susan R. Bolton apparently has never read it. Same goes for our illustrious Attorney General Eric Holder.

But this lawyer has read it and she is going to show you something in Our Constitution which is as plain as the nose on your face.

“Article III, Sec. 2, clause 2 says: “In all Cases affecting Ambassadors, other public Ministers and Consuls, and those in which a State shall be Party, the supreme Court shall have original Jurisdiction. In all the other Cases before mentioned, the supreme Court shall have appellate Jurisdiction.” In other words, the Judge in the Arizona case has absolutely no Constitutional jurisdiction over the matter upon which she ruled. As the Constitution makes abundantly clear, only the U.S. Supreme Court can issue rulings that involve a state. This means that neither Judge Bolton nor the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco , to which the case is being appealed, have any legal standing whatsoever to rule on the issue. Thus, U.S. Attorney-General Eric Holder filed the federal government’s lawsuit against the state of Arizona in a court that has no authority to hear the case.

Or, alternatively, you have bought into the law school revisionism of the powers of the Supreme Court whose decisions have been allowed to overide the Constitution. However, the powers of the Judiciary were as carefully circumscribed as the other two branches of the US government. Clearly, that cannot be allowed ever. Equally clearly, the Supreme Court has made wrong decisions more than a few times. So much for the inviolability of "precedent!"

Defiant is absolutely correct and your response shows complete ignorance of the Constitution and the powers and jurisdiction of the SCOTUS.

Art. III, §2 gives the Supreme Court original jurisdiction over certain types of cases, including cases in which a State is one of the parties. There is a significant difference, however, between "original" jurisdiction and "exclusive" jurisdiction: Art. III, §1 gives Congress the power to create "inferior courts" (i.e., district courts), and in doing so, Congress has given jurisdiction to the inferior courts that overlaps the original jurisdiction of the Supreme Court, including jurisdiction to hear cases in which a State is one of the parties.

In addition, under the Separation of Powers doctrine, the Supreme Court, since its earliest days, has interpreted the original jurisdiction clause to mean concurrent jurisdiction, as opposed to exclusive jurisdiction, with the jurisdiction of the inferior courts that Congress has created. Indeed, by its own rules -- again, under the Separation of Powers Doctrine -- the Supreme Court has limited its original jurisdiction, with few exceptions, to appellate jurisdiction from the inferior courts that Congress has created under Article III. (One of the exceptions is that the SCOTUS has retained original jurisdiction over cases between two states that involve territorial boundaries.) Thus, the Supreme Court could have exercised original jurisdiction, over the Arizona Immigration Case, it has by rule and precedent chosen to to defer to the the concurrent jurisdiction of the District Courts.

Lastly, before you blame "law school revisionism" and liberal activist judges for overriding and perverting the Constitution, please note that the Supreme Court precedent and rulemaking authority to limit the exercise of the Court's original jurisdiction, goes back to the days of Chief Justice John Jay (one of the authors of the Federalist Papers) and Chief Justice John Marshall, at a time when the Justices on the Supreme Court who made the rules and precedent to limit original jurisdiction, were the Founding Fathers of our great nation.

There were no federal circuit courts at the time of the writing of the Constitution—only the Supreme court is mentioned as the federal court. Circuit courts, and in fact the whole federal judicial system itself, were set up as a kind of extension of the Supreme Court, therefore when the Constitution says the Supreme Court has original jurisdiction, this functionally means federal courts have original jurisdiction, instead of local or state courts.

If they have “appellate jurisdiction” it means that state and local courts could try a case, but, the case could then be appealed to the federal courts.

Therefore it appears this is a stupid and ill-informed article.

Any first year law student—or just someone who’s had paralegal training (as I have) can tell you this.

It’s been very windy with gusts up to 50+ earlier this week. Yesterday was cloudy and around 70. Today, sunny and low 70’s but rain coming later this evening. I think the balmy days may be over.

I spent 11-1 downtown working Kiwanis Peanut Day. Then again from 4-5 out at Wal-Mart. Beautiful day, but I hope the rain holds until I finish that last shift. Three more weeks and my term as president ends. I’m looking forward to that. I’m letting the new guy do more and more as well. Heh.

Yeah, golf will double shortly for the Snowbirds. We don’t have that problem here. We’ll golf through October, maybe into November. Then it’ll be March before the courses open again. Rarely, we’ll have a Winter that allows us to golf through the season, but Winter’s been getting colder the past few years, and I don’t expect that to happen this year. Anyway, I have my little membership at a local 9-holer, so I don’t worry about it.

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