The Illinois Supreme Court today reversed the decision (below) of the appellate court and reinstated former White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel to the mayoral ballot in Chicago. As discussed earlier, the Supreme Court hit on the burden in overturning a factual finding of the lower court.
The court found that the appellate court did not establish that the finding of fact was clearly erroneous: “Given the record before us, it is simply not possible to find clearly erroneous the (Chicago Board of Elections’) determination that the objectors failed to prove that the candidate had abandoned his Chicago residence . . . We therefore reverse the decision of the appellate court and affirm the decision of the circuit court, which confirmed the Board’s decision.”
This effectively ends the matter since this is a ruling on state law. The United States Supreme Court generally defers such questions to the highest court of the state. The decision puts the burden on those challenging residency of a candidate — requiring a clear finding of intent by the candidate. It also armor-plates the decision of the election board in such matters.
The ruling turns on the standard for review, but also reaffirms the sole dissenter on the appellate court, Judge Bertina Lampkin, when she noted a long list of factors indicating an intent to return.
The Court dismisses the analysis of the appellate court, stating “its reasons for departing from over 100 years of settled residency law are hardly compelling and deserve only brief attention.”
The Court lays out the standard for this and future cases:
So where does all of this leave us? It leaves us convinced that, when determining whether a candidate for public office has “resided in” the municipality at least one year next preceding the election or appointment, the principles that govern are identical to those embodied in Smith and consistently applied in the context of determining whether a voter has “resided in” this state and in the election district 30 days next preceding any election. Thus, in assessing whether the candidate has established residency, the two required elements are: (1) physical presence, and (2) an intent to remain in that place as a permanent home. Once residency is established, the test is no longer physical presence but rather abandonment, the presumption is that residency continues, and the burden of proof is on the contesting party to show that residency has been abandoned. Both the establishment and abandonment of a residence is largely a question of intent, and while intent is shown primarily from a candidate’s acts, a candidate is absolutely competent to testify as to his intention, though such testimony is not necessarily conclusive.
The Court added its own view of the most compelling facts:
This is a situation in which, not only did the candidate testify that his intent was not to abandon his Chicago residence, his acts fully support and confirm that intent. The candidate told severalfriends that he intended to serve as Chief of Staff for no more than 18 months or two years before returning to Chicago. The candidate has continued to own and pay property taxes on the Chicago residence while only renting in Washington, D.C. As set forth above, the ending dates for the Woodley House lease and the Hermitage House lease were identical and coincided with the end of the school year of the candidate’s children. This supports an inference that the candidate intended to move back into the Hermitage House when the Woodley House lease ended. The candidate has continuously maintained an Illinois driver’s license setting forth the Hermitage House as his address and has never obtained a Washington, D.C., driver’s license. The candidate has continued to register his car at the Hermitage House address. The candidate registered to vote from the Hermitage House address in 1999 and has continuously voted from that address in every election through February 2010. Up and through 2010, the candidate did his banking in Chicago and had the Hermitage House address printed on his personal checks. The candidate left many personal items in the Hermitage House, including his bed, two televisions, a stereo system, a piano, and over 100 boxes of personal possessions. Although the candidate paid income taxes to the government of the District of Columbia, the candidate continued to pay state income tax in Illinois.
Here is the decision: Emanuel decision
Source: CNN
Mike Appleton: “The problem is that this case really had nothing to do with abandonment, but with residency. In my experience, the general rule is that a person is “residing” at a particular address if he or she is physically living there. This is not a particularly exotic legal issue.”
At first blush, and correct me if I’m wrong, but it looks like the court looked at the residency issue as if it were a domiciliary issue.
Hi Jill:
I wish I could say that whenever I file an appearance in an action, opposing counsel promptly moves to withdraw. However, that has never happened except in my fantasy life. And when I launch into one of my editorials at home, the response from my wife is usually a reminder that I haven’t taken out the garbage yet.
rafflaw:
I admit that I know nothing about Illinois law. But I thought the opinion was unnecessarily offensive.
I don’t want to be abused either.
Mike A.,
I would not want to be your opponent in a legal case! 🙂
Mike A.,
You may be right about the tone of the decision, but I think the Supremes got the Illinois law right. I am not a big fan of Rahm, but this case may have actually helped him in the polls.
I found the opinion interesting for a couple of reasons. First, the Illinois Supreme Court appears to have adopted a standard which is usually applied in cases involving whether a homeowner has “abandoned” a homestead, thereby losing the benefit of a property tax exemption or subjecting the residence to a judgment lien. In those instances, the courts have routinely held that abandonment is a question of intent: did the homeowner intend to permanently relocate? In the Rahm case, it is pretty clear that there was no abandonment based upon the evidence that Mr. Rahm had leased the residence to a third party for a limited term and had expressed to various people his intention to return after a specified period.
The problem is that this case really had nothing to do with abandonment, but with residency. In my experience, the general rule is that a person is “residing” at a particular address if he or she is physically living there. This is not a particularly exotic legal issue. Residency requirements imposed for candidates for public office are intended to insure that a person is going to have some familiarity with, and knowledge of, the community sought to be served, and to prevent politicians from moving about based upon perceived election prospects. Mr. Emanuel stopped living in his home as soon as he leased it to third parties. That’s why I noted in a previous post that I believed the lease to be a critical fact. Obviously the Illinois Supreme Court disagrees.
The second thing I find striking about the opinion is its belligerent, condescending and demeaning tone. The court virtually labeled the appellate panel morons. This is unprofessional and unwarranted. It is precisely the sort of ad hominem vituperation which appellate judges frequently condemn when it appears in legal briefs.
Rahm Emanuel may eventually be recognized as the greatest mayor in the history of Chicago. But that is not the point. This case was about statutory construction, not compliance with the will of a majority of the electorate.
RE: J. Vinny Einstein Aristole Da Vinci, PhD., January 28, 2011 at 12:52 pm
“Show me that my research findings are actually wrong with a clear and convincing rigorously scientifically verifiable demonstration.”
Yeah, sure, if we could only figure out what the f you are talking about.
#####################################
If I were “making a point,” that would be exactly the point I would be making.
Were I to conjecture, my conjecture might be that other people can understand my writing, research, and findings orders of magnitude more easily that I will ever understand how someone who did something could truthfully have actually done whatever it was differently than happened.
I have put more than 70 years into making some sort of sense, however unintelligible that sense may really be, of human society and its beliefs regarding law, violation of law, and purported justice.
I do not retaliate when other people treat me in harmful ways because I both know and understand that people who so treat me simply do not yet know and understand how to do otherwise.
Thanks for your help.
“Show me that my research findings are actually wrong with a clear and convincing rigorously scientifically verifiable demonstration.”
Yeah, sure, if we could only figure out what the f you are talking about.
This will likely be the longest comment I have yet made on this blawg, and I cannot determine whether all of it will get through except as I post it and learn what happens thereafter. If only part of it shows up, I will post it in sections, until it is completely posted, if that turns out to be possible.
What I here endeavor to describe is of the nature of a scientific revolution, in the sense of such as in Thomas Kuhn, “The Structure of Scientific Revolutions.” I have in hand the Third Edition, The University of Chicago Press, 1996. It is this edition which I used in the framing my doctoral dissertation.
I hold it not totally implausible that the scientific effort on which this comment is based may be of depth and detail without precedent in the annals of science.
The scientific issue is the nature of evil as an aspect of the human condition and the actual taking-away of the process of evil from humanity. I avow that the work I state that I have done and continue to do may be deemed unspeakably absurd by many, if not most, people now living.
There is a reason, carefully considered and evaluated, for my doing research about human society in the manner I do it. I simply tell too much too accurately by social convention standards.
There is a book, now apparently out of print, Valerian J. Derlega and Alan L Chaikin, “Sharing Intimacy: What We Reveal to Others and Why,” Prentice Hall, 1975. This book is one of the Harvard University “The Patterns of Social Behavior Series, Zick Rubin, General Editor.”
Chapter one, paragrapy one, sentence one “This book is about self-disclosure, the process by which one person lets himself be known by another person.”
Ibid, page 4, “Let’s consider why self-disclosure assumes so much importance in social relationships. Why do people feel lonely and alienated? Does self-disclosure promote intimacy in social relationships? Can we accelerate friendships by trading secrets?”
Ibid, page 11, “Yet as (Sidney) Jourard points out, “Normal personalities are not necessarily healthy personalities.”
Ibid, page 28, is “Figure 2-1 Hypothetical relationship between self-disclosure and psychological adjustment.” The figure shows an approximation of a semi-circle in which both low and high self-disclosure correspond to low psychological adjustment, and medium self-disclosure corresponds to maximum psychological adjustment.
When I bought my copy of this book in December, 1986, I was between my first psychiatric hospitalization on the 8-East unit of the University of Illinois Hospital and my second psych. hospitalization at Forest Hospital, in Desplaines, Illinois.
Recognizing that I might happen to have as poor psychological adjustment as is achievable in practice, I studied this book diligently, and decided to run self-disclosure to the very upper limit which I could achieve, doing so without any knowing intent to deceive whatsoever.
While I was in high school, my dad and I talked in depth and detail. He was puzzled as to why I was living what appeared to him to be a very rich and satisfying life when all the regular indicators he found indicated my having near zero psychological adjustment. He did not understand the way in which I am autistic, yet my mother did understand.
I am using, in my comments on this blawg, the method I have used throughout my whole life, I inform others about myself and my life to the very limit of my ability to do so. It is blatantly obvious to me that I violate almost every social norm I can find by doing as I do. Yet it is precisely the social norms I violate which are the social norms I observe to be what drives society into discord and destruction.
I do as I do because I care about people. I care about every person at parity with every other person. Thus, in a world of nearly 7 billion people, I live my life so as to care about other people essentially 7 billion times more than I care about myself.
When I first set out to take an introductory college psychology class, at the University of Illinois at Chicago, I learned in the first lecture that the purpose of the lab sections of the course were for teaching students how to properly use deception in psychology research.
Right after that first class session, I dropped the course. I was taking this class because it was a requirement for getting regular Chicago teacher certification. In short order, I found that a qualifying psychology class was available at the local community college, Triton College, and the course there did not include teaching how to use deception.
I have attempted to make clear that I am commenting on this blawg as an ordinary (unique) person whose whole life is research into the nature of human society because doing research as the ordinary course and activity of my life is the only remedy I have ever found for otherwise absolute social isolation.
If I were able to think that I had as much as one possession in this world (I have no such thought, though I do recognize that I seem to have been given stewardship over many “things,” methinks my most valuable possession of all would be the way in which I have been given to be autistic.
As an analogous simile, –(smile?)– it is as though I have a conscience which the standards of this world can never enter. Yes, time after time, the standards of this world have slammed into my conscience as though the standards are a pile driver larger than the whole universe, and the outer shape of my conscience gets battered as though nearly to smithereens.
Yet the inside of my conscience remains perfectly untouched, and I set about to repair the outer shape of my conscience after each indescribable blow from social conventions.
My main research tool, as I can fathom it, is having a conscience of an unborn fetus which this world can never successfully contaminate. In this manner, my research cannot ever be accurately or truthfully regarded as unethical.
With that as preamble…
I find that the Rahm Emanuel Chicago mayoral election issue, as it has wandered through the Election Board and the Courts, is a stunning illustration of the core of my research.
When a duly constituted election board makes a decision which is reversed on appeal and the appellate decision is reversed on subsequent appeal, methinks one premise of my research findings has been magnificently validated. The structure of law, as it presently exists, is of such complexity as to be at least as intrinsically corrupt as it is complex. Indeed the corruption is merely the complexity of the structure and the practice of a system of law which has unwittingly become unfathomably complex.
Ask me what has caused this unfathomable complexity, as I observe it, and I will comment that my sense is simply that the structure of law has become unfathomably complex because it is grounded upon errors of attribution which arrived in form and nature capable of actually being understood only within the past.
Borrowed from Wikipedia are the seminal references:
Ross, L. (1977). The intuitive psychologist and his shortcomings: Distortions in the attribution process. ‘In L. Berkowitz (Ed.), Advances in experimental social psychology (vol. 10, pp. 173–220). New York: Academic Press.
Jones, E.E. & Harris, V.A. (1967). The attribution of attitudes. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 3, 1–24.
Ross, so I understand, coined the term, “the fundamental attribution error,” circa 1977, based in significant measure on the ten-years-earlier published work of Jones & Harris.
In a social structure grounded in precedent going back thousands of years, 1977 (less than 35 years ago) or 1967 (less than 45 years ago) is scarcely a mere instant. Thus, I readily accept the possibility that any and every decent traditionalist will find my work and its findings absolutely atrocious.
My work, if found by humanity to be scientifically valid, absolutely destroys any and every form of the notion that it would be better had anything which has ever happened actually a happened other than as it happened.
This work destroys any validity that any form of authoritarianism can ever have. It destroys the notion that “the law” as made by humans can ever be above anyone in any way. It destroys the notion that conventional punishment (a hurtful penalty imposed as a forfeit for an infraction of human-made law) can ever be other than purely evil.
This work destroys the notion that guilt exists other than as what may be the most evil delusion that can ever exist.
I have asked thousands of people, who said to me that they had made mistakes they could and should have avoided, to describe to me a mistake the person actually made which the person is comfortable describing to me, and to describe what the person could actually have done to have avoided making the mistake which was actually made.
No one has been able to describe one actual mistake made and one actual process whereby the mistake made could actually have been avoided.
Yes, someone earlier on this blawg hauled out a science fiction notion of time-travel as rebuttal. The person, however, did not demonstrate the actuality of said time travel to me. So, absent the actual demonstration, I shall hold such time travel to be pure fiction and not really even science fiction.
The remedy is already on hand, and I have in hand the DVD of it. “My Cousin Vinny.” Originally copyright 1992, I have the 2000 DVD version with the Director’s Commentary.
Near the beginning of the Commentary, the director remarks, “The bad guy is the system.” It is my intent, as a Wisconsin Registered Professional Engineer, working in areas of my established professional competence, in the manner of an unequivocally valid witness, to “Prove beyond the shadow of a doubt” that, “The bad guy is the system”; and concurrently that, “There is no bad guy.” This blawg comment may be thought of as though it is a first draft of my “Opening Statement.”
I shall show that “The Adversarial System” is inextricably and irretrievably perfectly evil.
I shall show that “The Adversarial System” has never been possible to actually understand, because its core nature is of the essence of the impossible to understand.
I shall show that “The Adversarial System” is one of many names of “The Fundamental Error of Social Reality.”
I shall show that guilt, save as a delusion based on a mistaken understanding of the nature of mistakes, cannot actually exist.
I shall show that the affective state of “shame” is a necessary neurological response in reaction to the delusions of blame and/or guilt.
I shall demonstrate the process of jury nullification which will nullify The Adversarial System itself; and I shall show that this demonstration will eventually itself become that jury nullification.
I shall do all these things and more using only the methodologies of already established hard science research and findings, and I shall do them in accord with the Wisconsin Constitution, the U.S. Constitution, the Code of Ethics of the National Society of Professional Engineers, and my license as a Wisconsin Registered Professional Engineer.
I shall show that the claims here made are soundly scientific and not in any way or manner whatsoever, grandiose.
I shall show beyond the shadow of a doubt that I am putting to the test nearly a whole lifetime of diligent scientific research.
To understand the references I here make to the movie, “My Cousin Vinny,” I expect that it will probably be necessary for people to actually watch the movie in order to have necessary context for the spoken word excerpts I here use as illustrations of the scientific principles and findings of my research work.
Perhaps the very most critical scene in the movie, the one which I find best illustrates the predicament of The Adversarial System and its plausibly optimal replacement, is the scene in which Vinny cross-examines Mrs. Riley.
From the English captions, in accord with my understanding of fair use:
Vinny, “How many fingers am I holding up?”
Judge Haller, “Let the record show that counsel’s holding up two fingers.”
Vinny, “Your Honor, please, huh?”
Judge Haller, “Oh. Sorry.”
Vinny, “Now, Mrs. Riley, and only Mrs. Riley…how many fingers am I holding up now?”
Mrs. Riley, “Four.”
Vinney walks nearly fifty feet closer to Mrs. Riley, standing close to her.
Vinney, “What do you think now, dear?”
Mrs. Riley, “I’m thinking of getting thicker glasses.”
Very close to the end of the movie, Miss Vito and Vinny are driving out of town:
Miss Vito, “So, what’s your problem?”
Vinny, “My problem is I wanted to win my first case without any help from anybody.”
Miss Vito, “Well, I guess that plan’s moot.”
Vinny, “Yeah.”
Miss Vito, “You know, this could be a sign of things to come.”
At the very end of the credits, the final words of the captioning:
“Amen, brother.”
Last year, I bought a book, Henry Petroski, “The Essential Engineer: Why Science Alone Will Not Solve Our Global Problems,” Alfred A. Knopf, 2010. From the beginning of the first chapter, “Ubiquitous Risk,” the first two sentences:
“Our lives and those of our children and grandchildren are constantly at risk. Hardly a day passes, it seems, when there is not a story on television or in the newspaper about some new threat to our health and safety…”
I have searched for almost the whole of my life for a viable understanding of what threatens the health and safety of us, our children, and our grandchildren.
I searched established law, and found no answer. I searched established religion and found no answer. I searched established science and found no answer. I searched established history and found no answer.
I searched the whole of the past which I could find to search, and found no answer. I searched the whole of my life which I could find to search, and found no answer until now.
There is no answer, for the answer I have found, or perhaps better put, the answer which found me, is actually a question which is a question within a question virtually infinitely nested.
I found I needed to have a practical and practicable solution to an infinitely infinite regression. This practical and practicable solution exists within bioengineering as the verifiable methodologies of biological pattern recognition.
The verifiable methodologies of biological pattern recognition were my thesis adviser’s forte-fortissimo. I understand his hope was to improve the practical ability of physicians to detect cancer before it became difficult to impossible to treat.
The “cancer” that has always concerned me the most is human destructiveness. It is this form of “cancer” which I set out to understand sufficiently well as to enable effective cure.
By every test I have been able to devise, the cure is here, it is here now, and available to anyone and every one absolutely for free.
Because I found that nothing of the past actually contained an actual, effective cure, I set out as a design-build professional engineer, to accomplish both the engineering analysis and the engineering synthesis, and to do so by constructing an actual working model. That model is my actual life, here, now; for real.
How do I known and understand that the model of my lifelong bioengineering effort actually works? I actually, demonstrably, verifiably, live it. As I am in no way special, and am only an ordinary, “run of the mill” person, if I can live as I do, so can anyone and everyone else.
The pragmatic remedy is simply what Judge Haller said, “Oh. Sorry.”
To all those falsely accused, convicted, and being punished, “Oh. Sorry.”
To every dastardly deed ever done, “Oh. Sorry.”
To the Nazi Holocaust, “Oh. Sorry.”
To every actual and imaginable form of wrongdoing, “Oh. Sorry.”
While the actual events of the past which exist only in the past, no change can happen. To our interpretations of the past which we now make, the resolution of the infinitely infinite regression of compounded damage and destruction already accomplished is to re-interpret the whole of the past with, “Oh. Sorry.
Nothing more than “Oh. Sorry.” is actually necessary.
Nothing more than “Oh. Sorry.” is actually possible.
Everything which has ever happened is as the existence of existence both allowed and required. Nothing exists which does not exist. Existence can only make itself.
Existence can only make itself as existence can make itself by existing as it exists as a process of evolving creation and creative evolution of itself.
It has simply taken as much existence as existence has already made for these words and their viable meanings to exist, hence these words now are.
This may be so utterly simple that only the unborn can truly grasp it. I was never born into the world of human society. I was given a gift of autism such that it has absolutely ruled out my ever being so born.
I observe that, in the ordinary course of my daily life, I make several hundred trivial mistakes every day. Allowing that a typical person may make at least 150 insignificantly trivial mistakes every day (I, myself, make vastly more), and allowing that there are nearly 7 billion people on earth, I am inclined to guess that more than a trillion insignificantly trivial mistakes happen every day within humanity living on planet earth.
As my research method is of such scientific rigor as to need but one actual, truthfully-described insignificantly trivial mistake that really happened and a truthfully described actually-achievable process, actually achieved, to trash the whole of my life work completely and totally, methinks my argument as an exercise of valid philosophy of science is about as strong as any scientific hypothesis may ever be.
A trillion or so, or more, mistakes every day… Why can no one give to me even one real, verifiable demonstration of a mistake actually made which is actually being avoided after it has already happened?
Model “The Adversarial System” as a game, (using the science of game theory?) as did Robert Benson, Professor of Law, Emeritus, of Loyola Law School, Los Angeles, in his book, “The Interpretation Game, and model my encounter with “The Adversarial System” as though a game of chess, and, to The Adversarial System, I simply say, of its authoritarian, despotic, precedent-error grounded, purported “King”:
To the purported King, “Shah Mat! Long Live the Shah!”
To The Interpretation Game,” per se, I simply say, “C’est fini!”
Show me that my research is actually wrong with a clear and convincing rigorously scientifically verifiable demonstration.
Show me that my research findings are actually wrong with a clear and convincing rigorously scientifically verifiable demonstration.
Please…
‘Why was Noor Group apparently unaffected by the countrywide takedown order? Unknown at this point, but we observe that the Egyptian Stock Exchange (www.egyptse.com) is still alive at a Noor address.’
Egypt Leaves the Internet – Renesys Blog
http://www.renesys.com‘
Help Egypt – Join the Cloud!
http://www.accessnow.org
Egypt is fighting to be free of corruption and manipulation…as we speak the people are in the streets and the P’sTB have responded by cutting off the access to communications including the Internet…
Here’s what you can do. Contributing to the Tor network requires a bit of technical savvy and a devotion of your time and your computer’s resources. If that’s you, and you’re willing to learn about the Tor network, help reopen these channels of communication by joining the Global Proxy Cloud.
Please note that the concurring opinion also reversed the lower court, but in milder terms. So it was unanimous that the lower appellate court got the law wrong.
The Supreme Court correctly relied on its own 1877 decision, because that decision had never been reversed. It was still ruling case law. There were no later cases that reversed or revised it. The settled law in IL for 150 years has been that residence is determined by a combination of intent and action. The lower court tossed this, and set up an inherently unworkable conflict between voter eligibility and candidate eligibility.
The lower appellate court was profoundly antidemocratic in its decision. Even if this were a close case, and it was not, then it should have been resolved in favor of democratic principles. The voters should decided whether candidates have enough commitment to a community, not a couple of judges in a split decision.
If the concurring judges had a problem with ramifications, then they should have dissented.
Those “ramifications” are in the imagination. This was a case of statutory construction. If there are problems with tuition, police, or fire, then let the legislature address them.
I got this one right.
I knew this would happen. The Chicago Tribune heaped vituperation on the appellate decision, so did the New York Times. No legal analysis of course. I was waiting to see how the Illinois Supremes would concoct a basis for overturning the appellate court’s decision. Another results oriented decision. Activist judges!!! I guess this is another case where bad facts make bad law.
The majority unfairly slapped around the appellate court. I was pretty shocked to read what they said about the appellate majority opinion. It was uncalled for. Civility please. I liked the concurring opinion.
The majority relied on an 1867 case and ignored later contrary case law, transforming residency into a matter of intent rather than physical presense and effectively overruling their own prior case law. Instead of gob smacking the lower court, they should have been honest and just said they were reversing prior opinions. The concurring opinion points out that the result of the majority’s transformation of “residency” from physical presence to intention/domicile will have far reaching ramifications (in state tuition, fireman and policeman residency requirements).
Or maybe Rahm can get a job in the terror industry like his father Benjamin [in the terrorist group Irgun in the 1940’s] that NO ONE talks about.
Chicago! I’m truly sorry for your misfortune, but here’s your chance to show you have good collective character despite the whole “Black Sox” ordeal . . .
Vote anybody but Rahm Emmanuel.
People like him are part of the problem with politics in this country, not part of the solution. Send him his walking papers from public life. Don’t worry though! He’ll be able to get a job with his brother in an industry where weasels are still appreciated and indeed being a member of the family Mustelidae is a job requirement: as an A&R guy in the recording industry.
Makes sense and whats the Presidents home state? People working as employees of congress….
As predicted here:
http://jonathanturley.org/2011/01/24/court-rahm-emanuel-not-eligible-to-run-for-mayor/#comment-196700
It took the Supreme Court just two days for a 20-page opinion.
Now the election on the 22nd will be even more interesting! The Chicago news was on fire talking about the Supremes quick response.
The decision was unanimous to reverse.
Five Justices really, but really, slammed the lower court majority. They landed on them like a ton of legal treatises and casebooks.
Two Justice would have reversed them more mildly.
Those lower court justices appear to be toasted, well done, spread with butter and jam, with a fork sticking out.
Fade to candle flickering out after 15 minutes of brief notoriety.
What a relief …