Category: Constitutional Law

Constitutional Law, Criminal law, International, Politics, Religion, Society

Saudi Arabia Uses Position On Human Rights Council to Block Human Rights Measures

125px-Coat_of_arms_of_Saudi_Arabia.svg220px-United_Nations_Human_Rights_Council_Logo.svgThe elevation of Saudi Arabia (in what appears now a secret deal with England) in 2013 to the United Nations Human Rights Council was to say the least controversial. After all, the Kingdom denies basic rights to women, bars basic religious freedom for non-Muslim (including the construction of any church in the Kingdom), engages in torture, and applies a medieval Sharia law that imposes grotesque and draconian punishments. It is widely viewed as the appropriate target (not a member) of the Council. Saudi Arabia has not wasted time in obstructing human rights measures. This week for example the Kingdom blocked plans for an international inquiry into human rights violations by all parties in the war in Yemen despite massive death counts among civilians in the last six months. It also announced at a meeting of the UN Human Rights Council in Geneva that it will opposed any and all protections for gay people as anti-Islamic.

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Academia, Constitutional Law, Religion, Society

New Jersey School District Grapples With Demand For Official Holiday For Eid al-Adha

SchoolClassroomThere is a new conflict over religious rights in public education in New Jersey where Muslim families demanded an official holiday for Eid al-Adha. The meeting erupted when the school board refused to create such a holiday just six days before Eid al-Adha, which would have required thousands to families to scramble to find accommodations for their children. It also raises the slippery slope of adopting some religious holidays and not others. For example, the Jewish community noted that their families do not have official holidays for Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur. The confrontations raises the question of why public schools should create religious holidays as opposed to giving students excused absences for such holidays, which New Jersey does.

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Constitutional Law, Criminal law, Free Speech, International, Media, Politics, Religion, Society

Le Pen To Stand Trial For “Inciting Racial Hatred” Due To Criticism of Muslims In France

Le_Pen,_Marine-9586Marine Le Pen, the leader of France’s far-right National Front, has been criminally charged with inciting racial hatred in the latest example of the rollback on basic free speech rights in France and other European nations. I have been a critic of the crackdown on free speech in France, including the hypocrisy of the government in the aftermath of the Charlie Hebdo massacre. In this case, Le Pen compared Muslim street prayers to a Nazi-like occupation, a statement that should be clearly protected as political speech in France. Instead, she will be pulled before a tribunal in another example of how free speech is being eviscerated by anti-discrimination and hate speech laws.

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Academia, Constitutional Law, Politics, Society

Muzzling Ole Mizzou: Missouri Law Professor Challenges Ban On Guns On Campus

University_of_Missouri_sealBarondes-RoyceUniversity of Missouri associate professor of law Royce de R. Barondes has placed himself at the forefront of the gun rights debate with a lawsuit challenging the ban on guns on campuses in the state. The lawsuit follows the gunning down of history professor Ethan Schmidt on the Delta State University campus. Schmidt was unarmed and Barondes does not intend to go so easily, it appears.

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Constitutional Law, Courts, Criminal law, Media, Politics, Society

Chicago Prosecutor Fired After Videotape Contradicts His Sworn Testimony On Witness Statement

ct-met-officer-shot-paris-sadler-0322-mh-jpg-20150828mosaic_anita143x176When the case of the shooting of a Chicago police officer in 2012 came to the chambers of Cook County Circuit Judge Thaddeus Wilson, the court saw something that it said was obvious to anyone who has done any practice in the criminal law: the statement of the mother of the suspect Paris Sadler was free of any corrections or edits. Since the mother Talaina Cureton said that she had edited and corrected the statement prepared by Assistant Cook County state’s attorney Joseph Lattanzio, it was a curious fact. However, Cook County State’s Attorney Anita Alvarez, long criticized for her policies such as prosecuting citizens who dare to video police in public, fought to block any effort to reexamine the statement and denied that her office omitted critical information. Now, it appears that one of those videotapes that Alvarez hates, existed showing Cureton editing the statement. Lattanzio has been fired. However, once again, without the videotape, Alvarez’s office would have likely succeeded in blocking the challenge and protecting the prosecutorial misconduct.

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Academia, Constitutional Law, International

Sir Christopher Greenwood, Turley and Others To Speak At Constitutional Conference

200px-UVU_SealJudge-Greenwood-1-240x300I have the honor today and tomorrow of speaking at the Utah Valley University’s annual Constitutional Conference sponsored by The Center for Constitutional Studies. The CCS, under Director Rick Griffin, has blossomed into an extraordinary center for intellectual exchange in Orem, Utah with figures regularly brought from all over the world to discuss a myriad of legal and policy questions. This conference is particularly fortunate to have a group of diverse academics and lawyers, including Judge Sir Christopher Greenwood, the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland Judge on the International Court of Justice. Sir Christopher will give a keynote address entitled “The Powers and Privileges of U.S. Presidents Abroad under International Law.” He is one of the truly towering figures in international law.

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Bizarre, Constitutional Law, Courts, Politics, Religion, Society, Supreme Court

Kim Davis Was Not The Only Kentucky County Clerk Who Refused To Issue Couples Marriage Licenses

By Darren Smith, Weekend Contributor

Casey Davis via MSNBC interview screen shot
Casey Davis via MSNBC interview screen shot

Kentucky was faced with another case of drama and failure to perform statutory duties and the federal courts. The Casey County Clerk announced that he would refuse to issue marriage licenses to couples who’s marriage he objects to.

The clerk, in a bit of irony, is named Casey Davis.

Davis insists that he has a duty to himself to violate state law but oddly he feels the Commonwealth should pay for an attorney to represent him.

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Columns, Constitutional Law, Courts, Criminal law, Free Speech, Lawyering, Media, Politics, Religion, Society

Kim Davis: Hero or Villain?

kim-davis-mugshotDefiant Kentucky county clerk Kim Davis has appealed the contempt order that has left her languishing in jail. At the same time, her lawyer has argued that marriage licenses issued without her signature are invalid — an interesting question given the state’s requirement that her signature be affixed to every such license. Below is my recent Washington Post column on Davis and how she fits within our collective social and legal iconography. Defiance is a heroic value when it is Martin Luther King violating police orders and standing unbent before biting dogs and swinging batons. It was inspiring to millions when King cited St. Augustine to declare “an unjust law is no law at all”. Such figures stood against not just our prejudice but our laws in their defiance. As Henry David Thoreau stated “Unjust laws exist; shall we be content to obey them, or shall we endeavor to amend them, and obey them until we have succeeded, or shall we transgress them at once?” Those who transgress upon unjust laws today are often heralded as heroes tomorrow from early American patriots to abolitionists to suffragists to desegregationists. Even today many praise Edward Snowdon for his criminal actions in disclosing a massive surveillance system of U.S. citizens even though those same laws are designed to protect our national security. Yet, Davis is using her public office to impose her religious values on neighbors. That contrast led to the column below.
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Constitutional Law, Courts, Politics, Religion, Society, Supreme Court

What RFRA Hath Wrought-Part 3

By Mike Appleton, Weekend Contributor

“Smith relegated our national commitment to the free exercise of religion to the sub-basement of constitutional values.”

-Michael P. Farris and Jordan W. Lorence, “Employment Division v. Smith and the Need for the Religious Freedom Restoration Act,” 6 Regent U.L.Rev. 65, 66  (1995)

Several years following the ratification of the Constitution, a man named Jonas Phillips was subpoenaed to testify on behalf of a defendant in a criminal case in Pennsylvania. The problem was that the trial was scheduled for a Saturday and Mr. Phillips was a devout Jew. He refused to be sworn on the Jewish Sabbath and was subsequently held in contempt and fined ten pounds, despite invoking the protection of the Pennsylvania constitution, which provided that “no human authority can in any case whatsoever, control or interfere with the rights of conscience. . . .”  Stansbury v. Marks, 2 Dall. 213 (Pa. 1793). Fortunately, the defendant waived Mr. Phillips’ appearance and the fine was discharged.

Jonas Phillips’ “rights of conscience” were deemed subordinate to the orderly administration of the judicial system in a state which boasted one of the most religiously tolerant constitutions in the young nation. Therefore, when the Supreme Court held in 1878 that rights of conscience likewise could not be raised as a defense to a charge of bigamy, the ruling was hardly earthshattering.  Reynolds v. United States, 98 U.S. 145 (1878). And the decision over one hundred years later in Employment Division v. Smith, 494 U.S. 872 (1990), appeared to confirm a principle that had largely guided free exercise jurisprudence since the nation’s founding: the Religion Clauses do not mandate religious exemptions from valid laws intended to be binding upon all of us. Yet the Smith decision produced a harsh political and academic reaction, resulting in legislation that has radically altered the free exercise landscape. How did that happen?

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Constitutional Law, Courts, Criminal law, Justice, Politics, Religion, Society, Supreme Court

County Clerk Who Refuses To Issue Marriage License To Gay Couple Says She Will Remain In Jail, So Be It.

By Darren Smith Weekend Contributor

kim-davis-mugshotAfter the Rowan County Kentucky Clerk, Democrat Kim Davis, defied a court order to issue gay couples marriage licenses, and was subsequently arrested by the U.S. Marshal’s Service and jailed, her husband stated that she chose to remain in jail rather than compromise her religious beliefs by performing her statutory duty. Her contempt of court ruling will stand until she resumes issuing such licenses and thus in jail she shall remain.

And so it should.

The issue is not the content of her religious beliefs that are on trial. It is that of failure to perform her duty and denial of a civil right as mandated by the Supreme Court. For this reason she has two choices: being in contempt indefinitely; or resigning her position. For the near term it is as simple as that. If she continues her defiance, a third party must step up, show some leadership, and make the decision for her by ejecting her from office.
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Bizarre, Constitutional Law, Courts, Free Speech

Citizen Cited For Displaying “Cops Ahead” Sign Has His Day In Court

By Darren Smith, Weekend Contributor

From screen shot: KOMO News
From screen shot: KOMO News

Last June we reported a rather upsetting incident involving the Seattle Police Department Motor Traffic Unit. Citizen Daniel Gehlke saw motorcycle officers set up near the intersection of 14th Avenue South and South Washington and begin enforcing stop sign and speed laws. Mr. Gehlke then obtained a Rubbermaid container lid and wrote thereon the words “COPS AHEAD! Stop at sign and light!” He stood nearby the intersection displaying the lid to warn drivers of the traffic unit’s presence and recommend compliance with the law.

Unfortunately for Mr. Gehlke the traffic unit took exception to this and cited him under a Seattle Municipal Ordinance making the display of a sign “bearing any such words as ‘danger,’ ‘stop,’ ‘slow,’” and more… [with] Directions likely to be construed as giving warning to or regulating traffic.” In the view of your author this was a highly suspect and chippy charge, and is only a minimally veiled pretext to retaliate against the citizen holding up the sign and thereby thwarting the number of tickets to be issued.

The Motor Unit officer issued Mr. Gehlke a notice of infraction having a $138.00 penalty. He then altered the sign to remove some of the words and continued his speech.  Now, Gehlke had his day in court.
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Bizarre, Constitutional Law, Free Speech, International, Media, Politics, Society

Shooting the Messenger: Reporter Forced To Confess To Contributing To Fall of Chinese Market

400px-Chineseart_ExecutionpaintingThe Chinese regime followed its recent market meltdown in true Maoist fashion this week. It dragged out a journalist, Wang Xiaolu, to confess that he helped start the crash. It cannot be the centrally planned, artificially dumped up system itself. No, it was a journalist.

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Constitutional Law, Media, Politics

License Plate Data Mining By Police Partially Curtailed By Red Tape After 80Gb Drive Got Full

By Darren Smith, Weekend Contributor

TRS-80 Model 1Those who strongly advocate for both privacy and efficient government are sure to be perplexed.

Oakland Police, which has a License Plate Recognition system that gathers thousands of its citizens’ license plate data via cameras, decided to reduce their license plate data-mining retention time after the underlying hard drive storing the data filled up, crashing the storage system. The culprit was a desktop computer running Windows XP on an 80 gigabyte hard drive.

If that wasn’t enough the replacement of this hard drive, at least, was curtailed by a firewall of red tape that seems to have prevented the city from buying a replacement drive. A one terabyte hard-drive can easily be found for fifty dollars.

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Bizarre, Constitutional Law, Politics

WA State Senators Declare Supreme Court Order “Unconstitutional”

By Darren Smith, Weekend Contributor

wa-constitutionA sign of the current education situation in Washington State took a turn for the obvious when, showing a fundamental lack of knowledge of basic civics, a coalition of Washington State Senators declared an order of the State Supreme Court to be Unconstitutional. That’s right, the several senators seem to have missed a key portion of their junior-high education relating to which branch of government has the ultimate say in constitutional matters and perhaps the workings of our tripartite government.

The claim of unconstitutionality stems from an open letter penned by several state senators describing the “constitutional crisis” caused by a rogue state supreme court. Previously the court held the state in contempt for failing to provide for the constitutionally mandated primary duty of funding basic education. It ultimately prescribed a penalty of $100,000.00 for each day the legislature failed to furnish the court with a suitable plan to address shortcomings enumerated in McCleary v. State.

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