1 Question to Dr. Froomkin...

Sir,

Do you accept that the Constitution of the United States of America is the
supreme law of the land and therefore the ultimate legal authority within
its borders?


    ____________________________________________________________________
   |                                                                    |
   |      Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make       |
   |      violent revolution inevitable.                                |
   |                                                                    |
   |                                          John F. Kennedy           |
   |                                                                    |
   |                                                                    | 
   |            _____                             The Armadillo Group   |
   |         ,::////;::-.                           Austin, Tx. USA     |
   |        /:'///// ``::>/|/                     http://www.ssz.com/   |
   |      .',  ||||    `/( e\                                           |
   |  -====~~mm-'`-```-mm --'-                         Jim Choate       |
   |                                                 ravage@ssz.com     |
   |                                                  512-451-7087      |
   |____________________________________________________________________|

At 12:45 PM 1/13/98 -0600, Jim Choate wrote:
>Do you accept that the Constitution of the United States of America is the
>supreme law of the land and therefore the ultimate legal authority within
>its borders?

Jim -
you and I are political theorists, and you're asking a political question,
though I'm not sure what kind of question you mean.
Froomkin's a law professor, though he's also got political opinions.
To a lawyer, the answer is that the Constitution ultimately means
whatever you can talk the Supreme Court into saying it means,
or whatever you or your opponents can talk a lower court into saying 
if the court's opinion is strong enough that the loser decides
it's not worth spending the resources to appeal, and the Supreme Court
has decided all sorts of things over the years depending on
the political climate.   Many legal and political theorists have
opinions about Marbury vs. Madison and the other cases in which the
Supreme Court decided that the Constitution said they're the ones
who get to decide what the Constitution means; you may have opinions
about that, or you could be asking Froomkin what he thinks about it.

On the other hand, the Constitution is a political compromise
between a bunch of long-dead politicians, in which they offered the
public a deal that they'd mostly stick within its limits
if they agreed not to ignore or overthrow them.  So you could be asking
if he thinks it's a good compromise, or you could be asking if
he's a Loyal American who agrees not to overthrow or ignore the
Constitution (as opposed to one of them pinko Commies),
or you could be asking if he's a Loyal American who believes the
Government isn't sticking to their end of the bargain and
therefore deserves to be overthrown.  Or you could be asking a
Lysander Spooner question about whether he thinks a bunch of
promises made by a bunch of long-dead politicians have any
authority over either the politicians or the people today.

So which question are you asking, and why?




				Thanks! 
					Bill
Bill Stewart, bill.stewart@pobox.com
PGP Fingerprint D454 E202 CBC8 40BF  3C85 B884 0ABE 4639

Jim Choate <ravage@ssz.com> writes:

It appears to me that your comments to Michael are based on your views
on the undesirability of the way the US judicial system operates in
practice today.  Michael is merely offering his expert opinion on how
various questions would likely be interpreted by the current legal
system.

Black Unicorn also tends to get flack from various people for stating
what I am sure is a realistic view of the way that certain legal
questions would be viewed by judges, the supreme courts etc.

Personally I am grateful to any one with legal expertise giving input
to legal questions on list.  Greg Broiles also adds useful comments in
this area.

Screams of "and you think this is a good idea?" and "but what about
the constitution" are misdirected; I strongly suspect each of the
three posters I mention above share your distaste for the redefinition
of meanings and blatant disregard for the fairly clear meanings of the
constitution.

Adam
-- 
Now officially an EAR violation...
Have *you* exported RSA today? --> http://www.dcs.ex.ac.uk/~aba/rsa/

print pack"C*",split/\D+/,`echo "16iII*o\U@{$/=$z;[(pop,pop,unpack"H*",<>
)]}\EsMsKsN0[lN*1lK[d2%Sa2/d0<X+d*lMLa^*lN%0]dsXx++lMlN/dsM0<J]dsJxp"|dc`

Hmmm ... this could turn out to be more interesting than the gun nutz 
threads ...

On Tue, 13 Jan 1998, Jim Choate wrote:

> Sir,
> 
> Do you accept that the Constitution of the United States of America is the
> supreme law of the land and therefore the ultimate legal authority within
> its borders?
> 
> 
>     ____________________________________________________________________
>    |                                                                    |
>    |      Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make       |
>    |      violent revolution inevitable.                                |
>    |                                                                    |
>    |                                          John F. Kennedy           |
>    |                                                                    |
>    |                                                                    | 
>    |            _____                             The Armadillo Group   |
>    |         ,::////;::-.                           Austin, Tx. USA     |
>    |        /:'///// ``::>/|/                     http://www.ssz.com/   |
>    |      .',  ||||    `/( e\                                           |
>    |  -====~~mm-'`-```-mm --'-                         Jim Choate       |
>    |                                                 ravage@ssz.com     |
>    |                                                  512-451-7087      |
>    |____________________________________________________________________|
> 
>