Odd. One of my continual disappointments is how often it happens that the proposition that a particular law or governmental action is wrong is met with "hey, that's the system". I can't help but wonder how such people would have greeted the proposition that slavery was wrong and unjust in, say, 1850 or so. "Hey, that's the system."
More to the point, you're ducking the various questions I've posted. I don't blame you a bit. The answers are likely to be embarrassing.
Here we have people who want copyrights to expire sooner rather than later, and they want to argue that point regardless of the mechanism employed to change it. Here we see people who would croak if the Supreme Court had ruled in favor of Gore, who want the Court this time, and this time only, to re-write legislation to suit them. Why? Because they want the copyrights to expire, and the legislative debate did not go their way. So to Hell with judicial restraint and the proper mechanism for amending law, let's have the Court do it.
No, Nick. In addition to declining to address the issue of whether the law is just or unjust, you're wrong about the mechanism to boot. I don't want the Court to intervene "this one time only", in order to provide me with my preferred outcome. Instead, I expect and demand that they intervene every time that Congress oversteps its bounds, exactly as the Constitution intends they should.
You have, in one fell swoop, obviated the courts entirely. I ask again - what is the Supreme Court for, if not to address whether a particular legislative action is consistent with the Constitution? Does that not imply that occasionally they will find an action that does not accord with the Constitution, or are we to expect the Court to simply rubber-stamp everything that Congress, in its infinite wisdom, deems proper? Because if that's the case, let's stop screwing around and pretending that the courts are a meaningful institution in this country, and just abolish them altogether.
But I just can't help casting my eyes over Article III one more time, and remarking on how much it certainly looks like a check on Congress. If the founders did not intend for legislation from the bench, and I don't think they did, then they surely also did not intend Congress to act as an entirely plenipotentiary body, acting without limit in any area they see fit. And yet, Nick Danger posits exactly such a thing, with his "unelected philosopher kings" formulation. You have created a standard whereby it is simply impossible for the courts to act in any meaningful way to check Congressional action. I am sorry, but this is not the system of government we were bequeathed. The answer to your fears that the courts will do too much is not to create a system where they do absolutely nothing at all - you throw out the baby with the bathwater, and then throw up your hands and say "hey, that's the system". Except that, hey, that's not the system, and never has been.
I am, as I think I should, using this platform to argue that this law was wrong, and not consistent with the Constitution. Pointing out that they now ostensibly have the power to do something is not a magic wand, and waving it about does not suddenly transform bad laws into good, or wrong decisions into right ones.
Yes, I know, you explicitly disavowed the notion that the system would necessarily produce right and good decisions. The thing is, I'm sort of attached to the idea of right and good decisions - I'm just funny that way, I guess. And if the Supreme Court won't step in and do the very job we as a society have assigned to them, by restricting improper Congressional actions, then yes, I will live with it, until such time as I can correct the errors of Congress and the Court. But that is the job we have given the Court.
Understand something: I do not know what the right number is. I do not claim to have any divine wisdom on the subject.
Congratulations. Now you can sit down with the rest of us regular guys and chew the fat. I don't claim any "divine wisdom" on what the "right" number is, either. But I do have an opinion, and something akin to a reasoned argument to support my opinion. Abandoning all claims to judging what a "right" number is is tantamount to admitting that you have no idea what a "wrong" number is, or even if there is a "wrong" number. Pardon me, but I'm not quite so deferential as all that to the divinely inspired wisdom of Congress, when they decree that copyrights should last a hundred years, or a thousand, or a million - none of which you can rationally object to, given your stated position. I prefer to maintain some basis for objecting when I am of the opinion that Congress has done wrong, and the courts have failed to render the proper decision. To each his own, I suppose.
I don't hear anybody saying that. All I'm saying is that "wrong" (as opposed to unconstitutional) decisions by Congress are to be re-visited in Congress. The use of the courts as a super-legislature to win battles lost in the political arena has gone far enough already in my opinion. I'm sick of it, and I applaud the Supreme Court's willingness to not do it here.
And stop putting words in my mouth. I have not stated that the Court has no function. I just do not think that the Supreme Court of the United States needs to be meddling in picayune crap like whether a copyright ought to be for 5, 10, 50, or 100 years. What I want them to rule on is whether law enforcement -- or even worse a copyright holder -- has the right under the Constitution to conduct a warrantless search of my computer to see if I have any copyrighted works. That, at least, is a genuine Constitutional issue. The one in this case is a transparently trumped-up "constitutional issue" that should have been disposed of by some district court judge, probably by fining the disingenuous lawyer who tried to slip it past him.
I'm sure you are, so long as you get to decide what is right and good. I'm not sure I trust you though, so I'm not ready to make you king. I'd prefer you work through your elected representaives to change this law that you don't like. And if you lose, you lose.
Courts aside, it is patently obvious that this whole "constitutional" argument was backed into by people who started not with the Constitution, but with "how do we get this number we don't like changed?" They lost in Congress, so they went to Court with a stupid, trumped-up "Constitutional theory" that says that Congress cannot change its own laws. Well, they fell on their butts, and I'm not surprised.