Posted on 10/25/2011 11:49:30 PM PDT by Danae
Full title:
JustiaGate: CEO Tim Stanley Claims Innocense After Blocking Access To Wayback Machine Snapshots Of All Supreme Court Cases Published By Justia.
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Warning what you are about to read is epic. You were warned! ~D
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Yesterday, in a stunning development, Justia CEO Tim Stanley blocked Wayback Machine access to all US Supreme Court cases published by Justia.com. This is the epitome – the textbook definition even – of hypocrisy. As Dianna Cotter previously reported:
“Justia founder Tim Stanley has for years prided himself and his companies on principles of ‘freedom of information’. On June 19th, 2008, Stanley addressed the Legislative Council Committee at the Oregon State Legislature with the following…
‘In the end, we both recognize the importance of providing the public with online access to our nation’s laws because such actions promote understanding, participation in and respect for our democratic institutions and legal system.’
Furthermore, commenting on a legal dispute Justia had with the State of Oregon, Stanley stated:
“We agree that public policy demands that state laws remain in the public domain. To otherwise permit the State of Oregon or any other governmental body to restrict access to the laws that govern all of us would make a mockery of the legal doctrine that all persons have presumed knowledge of the law. “
Does Tim Stanley believe that his publication of Supreme Court cases should be held to the same open standard? Not so much.
(Excerpt) Read more at naturalborncitizen.wordpress.com ...
Placemark. I love this thread.
;-)
I just read Donofrio’s latest. Very interesting and his responses to comments/questions are always interesting too.
This has gone viral!
Oh my gosh it is good to hear someone else understands and can see the simplicity of it!! lol
Sure it does. If this Donofrito chump can't even spell
it makes you wonder what ELSE he's gotten wrong.
Saying it does is an asinine Alynski tactic.
Yeah, "Alynski".
Like mocking stupidity didn't exist until ALINSKI invented it.
Your position isn't very strong if you have to remove parts in order to satisfy your viewpoint…I've explained why there's a legal precedent expressed in Minor and you're trying remove the parts of the syllabus that agree with me.
Edge, misstating my position will not support your argument. You are smart enough to know my proposed removal of Section 2. of the syllabus was offered solely to encourage you to focus on the relevant portions of the decision.
Most readers will understand the court would not have taken the case if Minor had not been a citizen; the fact she was even an ordinary citizen prompted the court to decide the issue of whether the Constitution or the 14thA gave her the right to vote. There were no arguments heard on NBC, they were not necessary, Minor qualified as a citizen. Nor did the decision apply only to natural born citizens.
If you change your argument from “the court decisively ruled on NBC” (which it did not for reasons stated here and upthread) to “there is legal precedent”, as you seem to do above, then we agree.
Indeed, Minor has enormous legal value to our NBC argument.
“Between those two and WKA we do have a very solid legal argument for the precise definition of NBC. But I am no lawyer.”
Have you ever considered contacting an actual lawyer with real expertise? You’re in Washington, right? Here’s the faculty list of the University of Washington Law School:
http://www.law.washington.edu/Directory/Default.aspx?vw=FAC&pg=1
Try emailing the Constitutional Law professors. If they all say you’re wrong, and that natural born citizenship doesn’t require both parents to be citizens, will that affect your opinion?
If you haven’t sought the opinion of real legal experts yet, why not? Is it because you’re afraid they will all disagree with you?
Expanding on that a little: placing a "robots.txt" file on the web site is effectively construed to mean that the site owner (and presumed copyright owner of the materials) is explicitly refusing permission for other entities to copy his material.
If Wayback refuses to comply with such requests, then they set themselves up for infringement lawsuit, even though in this case the material (supreme court cases) should be considered public domain.
There are exactly two ways to be a citizen of the US:
(1) Be a citizen-by-birth (natural born citizen), wherein the circumstances of your birth convey citizenship automatically, or
(2) Be a naturalized citizen, where you have successfully gone through the legal naturalization process and been awarded citizenship papers.
I submit that a person who is not a "natural born citizen", nor gone through naturalization, is not a US citizen in any respect.
(1) Be a citizen-by-birth (natural born citizen)...
I am trying to get out the door and will get back to you later. But let me ask: Do you believe the founders would have allowed the 35 year old son of two parents newly arrived from England at the time of his birth to serve as the CinC?
If you do, please help me with this:
"no person except a natural born citizen, or a citizen of the United States at the time of the adoption of the Constitution, shall be eligible to the office of President,"
Do you have a theory on why the founders allowed ordinary citizens to serve as president on the first day of the nation, but required presidents born after the first day of the nation to be natural born citizens?
iow birthers.
What exactly is the difference between "legal precedent" and the court "decisively ruling" on NBC??
Most readers will understand the court would not have taken the case if Minor had not been a citizen; the fact she was even an ordinary citizen prompted the court to decide the issue of whether the Constitution or the 14thA gave her the right to vote.
The 14th amendment IS the Constiution. There's no "or."
There were no arguments heard on NBC, they were not necessary, Minor qualified as a citizen.
You're missing the point. Minor's citizenship argument was based on the 14th amendment. That argument was rejected by the court because they viewed her as a natural born citizen, NOT a 14th amendment citizen.
Nor did the decision apply only to natural born citizens.
No one said it did.
Here's why Minor is decisive. Read this comment from Ex Parte Lockwood (thanks to danae for pointing it out):
In Minor v. Happersett, 21 Wall. 162, this court held that the word 'citizen' is often used to convey the idea of membership in a nation, and, in that sense, women, if born of citizen parents within the jurisdiction of the United States, have always been considered citizens of the United States, as much so before the adoption of the fourteenth amendment of the constitution as since; but that the right of suffrage was not necessarily one of the privileges or immunities of citizenship before the adoption of the fourteenth amendment, and that amendment did not add to these privileges and immunities.
Notice the part underlined. It's giving what the court held in Minor and then quotes the syllabus almost verbatim — in particular, the part you removed. The legal precedent about citizen parents is quoted as decisive in these two cases (counting WKA). Why would you choose to deny that??
Wrong.
Minor v Happersett has:
Additions might always be made to the citizenship of the United States in two ways: first, by birth, and second, by naturalization. This is apparent from the Constitution itself, for it provides [n6] that "no person except a natural-born citizen, or a citizen of the United States at the time of the adoption of the Constitution, shall be eligible to the office of President," [n7] and that Congress shall have power "to establish a uniform rule of naturalization." Thus new citizens may be born or they may be created by naturalization.My point, as per my earlier post, is that there is no distinction between being "citizen by birth" versus "natural born citizen". You are either (a) a citizen by birth (and as such a "natural born citizen"), or (b) a citizen by naturalization (having gone through the legal process to apply for citizenship, and it having been granted), or (c) not a citizen of the US at all.The Constitution does not, in words, say who shall be natural-born citizens. Resort must be had elsewhere to ascertain that. At common-law, with the nomenclature of which the framers of the Constitution were familiar, it was never doubted that all children born in a country of parents who were its citizens became themselves, upon their birth, citizens also. These were natives, or natural-born citizens, as distinguished from aliens or foreigners. Some authorities go further and include as citizens children born within the jurisdiction without reference to the citizenship of their [p168] parents. As to this class there have been doubts, but never as to the first. For the purposes of this case it is not necessary to solve these doubts. It is sufficient for everything we have now to consider that all children born of citizen parents within the jurisdiction are themselves citizens. The words "all children" are certainly as comprehensive, when used in this connection, as "all persons," and if females are included in the last they must be in the first. That they are included in the last is not denied. In fact the whole argument of the plaintiffs proceeds upon that idea.
Under the power to adopt a uniform system of naturalization Congress, as early as 1790, provided "that any alien, being a free white person," might be admitted as a citizen of the United States, and that the children of such persons so naturalized, dwelling within the United States, being under twenty-one years of age at the time of such naturalization, should also be considered citizens of the United States, and that the children of citizens of the United States that might be born beyond the sea, or out of the limits of the United States, should be considered as natural-born citizens. [n8] These provisions thus enacted have, in substance, been retained in all the naturalization laws adopted since. In 1855, however, the last provision was somewhat extended, and all persons theretofore born or thereafter to be born out of the limits of the jurisdiction of the United States, whose fathers were, or should be at the time of their birth, citizens of the United States, were declared to be citizens also. [n9]
My position is that Obama is either (a) or (c), since there is no evidence of his having applied for naturalization. Whether he is (a) or (c) hinges on US law at the time of his birth, and what it said about a child born of a citizen mother and a foreign father, and also whether he was actually born in Hawaii or elsewhere.
Yes, but if Justia added the robots.txt file recently, AFTER the Wayback Machine cached it, why should they honor that?
Per the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, you are safe from copyright lawsuit if you promptly remove copyrighted material upon receiving notice. I'm guessing that the Wayback people choose to interpret the presence of a robots.txt file as constituting such notice.
Bottom line: they are not likely to be making much money off of offering the service. They are not interested in spending money defending a lawsuit. It's their private site, and they are under no obligation to provide you the level of free service that you seem to feel entitled to.
Is it possible to make that point in an answer to the two questions posed?
That would have been a political decision, rather than a legal one. The Founders would not have elected a President if they were not certain he owed primary allegiance to the US. The Constitution, as written, would not have barred such a person.
"no person except a natural born citizen, or a citizen of the United States at the time of the adoption of the Constitution, shall be eligible to the office of President,"
Do you have a theory on why the founders allowed ordinary citizens to serve as president on the first day of the nation, but required presidents born after the first day of the nation to be natural born citizens?
At the time of adoption of the Constitution (1787) It would be really hard to be a "natural born citizen", over 35 years of age, of a political entity which DID NOT EXIST 35 years prior. The first seven presidents of the US (up to Andrew Jackson) were born as subjects of the King of England, citizens of Great Britain, if you count presidents born before 1776.
Andrew Jackson's parents had emigrated from Ireland two years prior to Andy's birth. I had not heard of any Constitutional challenges to his eligibility on that basis.
LOL WAAAAAAAY off. I am not in Washington. And yes I have consulted lawyers, and all of them are a lot more of use than your posts to me have been.
Because I admit I am not a lawyer doesn’t give you the ammo to pop off and assume I have not contacted any.
Your crystal ball is busted if you think “ALL” lawyers think Minor irrelevant. You are very very wrong on that. Shoot, even Justia thinks you are wrong, they are the ones who scrubbed the citations and text out of cases citing to it.
If I choose to use them as sources in an article I will let you know. Savvy?
Good point on the semantics. I will have to think about that. Thanks!
A good question that is at the heart of our disagreement, and I recommend you Dogpile it or ask your family attorney for an answer.
My brief response: precedent is an element of a prior decision that may or may not be binding upon future courts. The element may be dictum or it may be the actual holding. Dictum may be offered as a precedent and considered at the discretion of a subsequent court.
A decisive ruling (your term) can likely be defined as a final ruling by a court that has considered sufficient evidence supporting the legal and factual issues presented by the parties. Such rulings are generally binding locally but subject to review by local upper courts. Such a ruling by the USSC, as here, is generally honored by a subsequent USSC via the doctrine of stare decisis.
You can see how this fits in if you acknowledge Minor was not faced with the question of whether plaintiff was an NBC but was satisfied for the purposes of its ruling by the fact she was a citizen.
We have to stop somewhere, so I will stop with this: Read Lockwood closely and you will see it is not of much value. Unfortunately, it does not say "In Minor this court held....an NBC is one born of two citizen parents".
WKA had nothing to do with citizen parents, quite the opposite. There were some helpful views set out in the dissent, but those views were side observations not relevant to the holding.
Nonetheless, I would agree Minor and WKA are of great persuasive value.
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