Author Archives: eehines

Judge Shopping

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A Wall Street Journal editorial correctly decried this, and a letter writer to the news outlet’s Letters section correctly included the Northern District of Texas as a particular judge shopping target for bringing suits convenient to the Trump administration. The letter writer also pointed out that, as an attempt to mitigate, if not eliminate judge shopping, the Judicial Conference of the United States, strongly discourag[ed] the practice, and some Federal districts changed their rules to enhance random assignments of their judges—but those rules are District by District.

Lost in this kerfuffle (cynically so, say I given that judges as a group surely know better) is a nation-wide requirement of centuries-long standing [emphasis added]:

In all criminal prosecutions, the accused shall enjoy the right to a speedy and public trial, by an impartial jury of the State and district wherein the crime shall have been committed….

And

In Suits at common law, where the value in controversy shall exceed twenty dollars, the right of trial by jury shall be preserved….

For those of you following along at home, those are from our Constitution’s 6th and 7th Amendments, respectively.

For the quibblers of the lawyer class, the latter is easily extensible by statute to explicitly require the civil suit to occur in the State and district wherein the [cause of the tort] shall have [first occurred].

The ability of Congress to make such a thing explicit is in this nation-wide requirement of equally centuries-long standing:

The judicial Power of the United States, shall be vested in one supreme Court, and in such inferior Courts as the Congress may from time to time ordain and establish.

The District courts, as creatures of Congress, have their jurisdictional authorities set by Congress. This Congressional power over jurisdictional authority extends to the Supreme Court [emphasis added]:

…the supreme Court shall have appellate Jurisdiction, both as to Law and Fact, with such Exceptions, and under such Regulations as the Congress shall make.

Again, for those of you following along at home, those are from our Constitution’s Art III, Sect 1, and Art III, Sect 2, respectively.

All that’s required to eliminate judge-shopping is a renewed respect for and enforcement of our Constitution.

Disingenuosity Example

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And one that’s typical of the Leftist objections to the Trump administration’s temerity in enforcing our nation’s immigration laws. The example is a sign that’s ubiquitous at Leftist protests and at Leftist overt interferences with ICE arrests.

It’s certainly true that no human being is illegal. The disingenuosity of the Leftist “protestors” is centered there, as they ignore the underlying principle: what human beings do often is illegal. In the context of immigration, what human beings do that’s illegal is breaking into or sneaking into our nation in violation of our immigration laws. Their illegal behavior is compounded by the next crime they commit: hiding in some way, whether directly or through anonymity, and remaining in our nation illegally.

These intrinsically non-illegal human beings need to be apprehended and held accountable for their intrinsically illegal behaviors: jailed for their immigration crimes, or more simply deported.

But of course, Leftists and the politicians of their Progressive-Democratic Party insist that the actions of illegal aliens, perpetrated by intrinsically non-illegal human beings, also are intrinsically non-illegal.

False Premise

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The Biden administration had argued, in the course of its participation in a lawsuit against Tennessee’s law barring transgender-based treatments for children, that

A teenager whose sex assigned at birth is male can be prescribed testosterone to conform to a male gender identity, but a teenager assigned female at birth cannot.

The Supreme Court last week issued its ruling that the Tennessee law was, in fact, perfectly fine; the ruling was 6-3, with the three activist Justices voting in dissent. Chief Justice John Roberts wrote the Court’s opinion, and Justice Amy Coney Barrett wrote a concurrence centered on answering one of the objections in the dissent. Justice Clarence Thomas wrote a separate concurrence in which he took to task all the plaintiffs’ demand that the Court knee-jerk accede to so-called experts in the Executive Branch regarding transgenderism.

However, it would have been good if the Court had addressed one more item—the Biden administration’s false premise underlying its argument.

That erroneous premise is this: that sex is assigned at birth. This is blatantly false. Sex is assigned at the moment of conception, when the male sperm, carrying either an X chromosome or a Y, joins with the egg and its X chromosome. The subsequent union, the zygote, is then deterministically a male with an XY combination or a female with an XX combination. That male or female—boy or girl—result is carried on through subsequent development all the way through fetus development and birth. The sex determination is immutably fixed at that first moment of union; it is not “assigned” later.

Had the Court put that underlying false premise to bed, also, would have obviated a myriad arguments (legal, anyway) about the origins of an individual’s transgender situation.

All Too Typical

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Progressive-Democratic Party candidate for New York City mayor and currently sitting City Comptroller says it’s remarkable that he was arrested by ICE agents, two of whom were themselves immigrants, for his obstruction of their arrest of an illegal alien and that he’s sad and angry over the arrest.

This is all too typical of Progressive-Democratic Party politicians: they profess to see no difference between immigrants, such as those two ICE agents, and the illegal alien whom those agents were arresting.

It’s also all too typical of Progressive-Democratic politicians that they think laws, especially laws about obstructing law enforcement personnel, don’t apply to them.

These are just two more examples of Party’s intrinsic disdain for those law and order that isn’t of their construction.

No Way

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President Donald Trump (R) says “Iranian officials” had offered to travel to the White House to negotiate amid ongoing missile exchanges with Israel.

Trump should not waste his staffers’ time on meetings with Ayatollah Ali Khamenei’s staffers. If there’s to be a meeting, it should be between Trump and Khamenei, face to face. It also should not occur in the White House or Camp David or Mar-a-Lago.

Maybe such a White House meeting could occur, if it took place in the kitchen, or in a back hallway. Maybe, instead, hold it in a ground floor room in one of the rebuilt World Trade Center buildings.