One of my great disappointments with Free Republic is how often it happens that people treat a discussion of mechanism as an attack on a particular position. It is not unlike the political dilemma faced by conservatives who would prefer to eliminate the mechanism of Affirmative Action but who will face a barrage of criticism from Democrats that if they do so they are "racists."
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.
Understand something: I do not know what the right number is. I do not claim to have any divine wisdom on the subject. I only know that I do not want small panels of unelected people deciding these things. If it is true that the elected legislature is corrupt, and that it was bribed by Disney and others to make this extension, that is a horrible thing. But the cure is not to empower philospher kings to intervene. They aren't going to stop with our favorite interventions, they'll be intervening all over the place, just as the Florida Supreme Court did. I don't want that, and it has nothing to do with copyrights.
Petitioners do not challenge the life-plus-70-years time span itself. Whether 50 years is enough, or 70 years too much, they acknowledge, is not a judgment meet for this Court. Congress went awry, petitioners maintain, not with respect to newly created works, but in enlarging the term for published works with existing copyrights. The Limited Time in effect when a copyright is secured, petitioners urge, becomes the constitutional boundary, a clear line beyond the power of Congress to extend.To me and also it seems in some regard to the Justices dissenting this is an ex post facto law, even a theft.
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.