Tag Archives: courts

A State Court and the Citizens of the State

Posted on by
Reply

In last month’s elections, one of the ballot items was a South Dakota measure (apologies: the Argus Leader has a really intrusive set of popup ads) to limit

how much PACs, political parties, and individuals can give to candidates.

The measure passed by a slim 51%-49% margin, but nevertheless, the passage is by the voice of the citizens of that State.  The article at the link gives a summary of those limits.

Now a South Dakota judge has issued an injunction against implementing or enforcing that law.  Circuit Judge Mark Barnett, in issuing the injunction, acknowledged that the matter likely will end up before the South Dakota Supreme Court, and he said

This is just a stop on the bus route.  This is going to a much higher power and a much higher pay grade than me.

Never mind that it’s already been to the much higher pay grade—the good citizens of the State of South Dakota, whose employee the State’s government, including the court system, is.

Republican Governor Dennis Daugaard and his Chief of Staff, Tony Venhuizen, have the beginnings of a hazy understanding of the larger issue at hand.  Daugaard said that he’d

support rolling back the measure if it isn’t struck down in court[]

and Venhuizen said that

[t]he governor views the order as a good step that will give the courts and the Legislature time to sort out the “mess [in the current campaign funding system.]”

But only the beginnings of a hazy understanding.  Whether the law passed by the citizens is a good idea or not is a legitimately debatable question.  However, the matter is a political question and only a political question.  The courts have no role to play whatsoever in this or any political discussion.

Here is a case where a court has said the people have no voice; the court speaks in their stead.

Sexism in a Court

Posted on by
Reply

The singer Kesha, in a Manhattan court, is suing Sony and ex-producer “Dr Luke” over allegations of having been drugged and raped.  There are (unsubstantiated) reports that the presiding judge, Shirley Kornreich, should be removed from the case because she’s married to Proskauer Rose law firm partner Edward Kornreich, and Proskauer Rose represents Sony.

Kornreich says the move is sexist.

If it’s an issue at all, it’s an issue because women are now part of the professional work force[.]

Kornreich reveals her own sexism with that claim.  The move, if it existed beyond press reports (Kesha’s lawyers say they weren’t going to file any recusal motion), was about conflicts of interest from family ties connecting a judge to one of the litigants; it had nothing to do with the genders of the individuals who are—or might be—tied.

Gerrymandering, Politics, and Race

Posted on by
Reply

The (eight Justice) Supreme Court is going to take up the question of gerrymandering and Congressional districts in Virginia and North Carolina.  In fact, the case the Court is hearing is narrower than that:

drawing legislative districts based on race.

Never mind that the Democrats’ Voting Rights Act of 1965 mandates race-based districting: the VRA

generally prohibits reducing minority-voting power through redistricting[]

which, of course, explicitly requires race-based districting in order to “protect” that “power.”

Indeed, the whole divide[] between white and minority voters nonsense with which Jess Bravin opened his piece at the link is just a tacit summary of the Left’s racism.  We’re all Americans.  Full stop.  Any “divide” is nothing but an artificiality, fueled by the Left’s fundamental identity policies that end up masking real abuses.

Were the Left, and now the courts, serious about how bad gerrymandering is, they’d agree to its elimination altogether.  Congressional districts should be squares enclosing substantially equal sized populations, differing from those straight-line boundaries only at the borders between states, and drawn without regard to the Left’s identity politics concerning which special groups of Americans are resident in which districts.

Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?

Posted on by
Reply

Michigan elects its appellate court judges from each of four geographical districts, centered on Detroit, Troy, Grand Rapids, and Lansing.  Now the State’s government is playing games with that process.  Judge Donald Owens, of the Lansing district, intends to resign just before his term expires.

A Michigan appeals court judge is resigning four hours before his term expires on 1 January, allowing Governor Rick Snyder to pick a replacement.

No special election will occur; this will not be a particularly temporary appointment.  The appointed judge will serve until the next general election in the State.

The move might be convenient to Conservatism (Snyder is a Republican, which makes him conservative relative to the State he governs), this time, but only this time, this short-term time.  The move sets an ugly example, however.  We can argue the merits of elected judges vs nominated and legislatively confirmed or rejected judges, but the Michigan law is quite clear in its intent.  This move is nothing more than a naked attempt to circumvent Michigan’s law, the will of Michigan citizens as expressed by their elected representatives having passed this law, and the will of Michigan citizens as expressed by their election of their judges.

There’s Speculation and There’s Speculation

Posted on by
Reply

Kansas has a law that requires voters to prove they’re citizens—and so eligible to vote—before they’re allowed actually to vote.  A Federal trial judge issued an injunction barring enforcement of the law, and the 10th Circuit Appeals Court upheld the injunction.

After Kansas had shown that in a single county,

eleven noncitizens successfully registered to vote; and after it went into effect another fourteen were prevented from registering. These 25 cases are just the tip of the iceberg in Sedgwick County[,]

Judge Jerome Holmes, for the 10th Circuit, wrote

[W]e reject as based on conjecture Secretary Kobach’s invitation to consider as “just the tip of the iceberg” the twenty-five cases in Sedgwick County of aliens registering or attempting to register. The assertion that the “number of aliens on the voter rolls is likely to be in the hundreds, if not thousands” is pure speculation….

On the other side of the equation is the near certainty that without the preliminary injunction over 18,000 US citizens in Kansas will be disenfranchised for purposes of the 2016 federal elections….

Never mind that Holmes’ near certainty is pure speculation.  (I won’t go into the fact that folks wishing to vote in an election being run by a State also must be citizens of that State in order to be eligible to vote, not merely mythically generalized “US citizens”—a fact the 10th Circuit should be embarrassed that Holmes appears not to know.)