Define A Liberal

Off Topic Politics & World Issues
61

[quote]vroom wrote:

The government can only take away rights, it can’t give them, because these rights are inherent. People inherently have rights, because they are people.[/quote]

While I like the natural law stuff, what you said is not exactly true - minimum wage is a right afforded by government and nothing else. So is health coverage for the indigent - their right to health coverage is not a ‘natural’ right. Positive rights, etc.

Actually no, the government derives its power from the governed. Individuals are not at the mercy of the government, but they are bound by the laws that they assented to be created though majority rule.

Of course - the government is made up of people we elect. We don’t like it, we take it away. That’s basic.

Yep, and conservatives are completely on board with that.

And so long as the right is taken away by fair and due process, that is merely how the game is played.

To some degree yes, but many of these ‘right’ were ‘lost’ long before you had a chance to negotiate for them - as in, you have never had teh right to dance naked on public property because that hasn’t been a right since long before you were born.

Maybe - but I think some perspective is required. People who aren’t libertarians aren’t automatically interested in full control over people’s lives.

62

[quote]ExNole wrote:

The interpretation of the constitution is carried out in judicial opinions. The interpretation changes over time, based on these opinions. This, if not true commons law, at least is analogous, and I was not completely off base in saying so. The precedents are set over time in decisions, and the scope of the rights set out in the constitution are defined. [/quote]

If the scope of rights are set out and defined in the Constitution, it makes sense that the Court should resist the urge to keep changing the definitions - over time, the law hasn’t changed.

Common law is based on the idea that judges are charged with developing the law - Constitutional law is not. Judges are supposed to ‘progress’ the common law to some degree, because - and here is the kicker - the law is not codified. The Constitution is the opposite of that approach - the laws of the Constitution are written down on purpose so that they are sturdy in the face of change, i.e., to resist change in the face of whimsical popular will.

Big difference.

I didn’t say I was against welfare at all. You need to read better.

Not restrained enough. And this ‘evolving constitutional rights’ is nothing more than exactly what I wa talking about earlier - the judiciary deciding the law has ‘evolved’ and should be changed even when the legislature refuses to do so. Exactly my point - judiciary acting as a super-legislature, and you made my point for me.

Why modify the law? What is the purpose? The legislature modifies laws based on policy preferences - why would a court need to modify a law other than to impose its own values in place of the legislature’s?

63

[quote]thunderbolt23 wrote:
ExNole wrote:

The interpretation of the constitution is carried out in judicial opinions. The interpretation changes over time, based on these opinions. This, if not true commons law, at least is analogous, and I was not completely off base in saying so. The precedents are set over time in decisions, and the scope of the rights set out in the constitution are defined.

If the scope of rights are set out and defined in the Constitution, it makes sense that the Court should resist the urge to keep changing the definitions - over time, the law hasn’t changed.

Common law is based on the idea that judges are charged with developing the law - Constitutional law is not. Judges are supposed to ‘progress’ the common law to some degree, because - and here is the kicker - the law is not codified. The Constitution is the opposite of that approach - the laws of the Constitution are written down on purpose so that they are sturdy in the face of change, i.e., to resist change in the face of whimsical popular will.

Big difference.

If you are agaisnt welfare on the basis that it limits people’s autonomy, admitting that the lack of welfare can also limit people’s autonomy isn’t a very consistent position.

I didn’t say I was against welfare at all. You need to read better.

If the legislature passes a law that is invalid agaisnt the evolving constitutional rights, decided in judical opinion, its right to be invalidated. And how many laws are invalidated anyhow? The judiciary is remarkably restrained.

Not restrained enough. And this ‘evolving constitutional rights’ is nothing more than exactly what I wa talking about earlier - the judiciary deciding the law has ‘evolved’ and should be changed even when the legislature refuses to do so. Exactly my point - judiciary acting as a super-legislature, and you made my point for me.

Every judicial opinion, on every level, interprets the law, and in turn modifies it, if ever so slightly. Even legislatively passed laws must be in turn interpreted my judges to see how to apply them. It’s not as if the law gets passed and then that’s that.

Why modify the law? What is the purpose? The legislature modifies laws based on policy preferences - why would a court need to modify a law other than to impose its own values in place of the legislature’s?

[/quote]

It’s obvious why modify the law and why the constitutional rights need to be enumerated.

Take something simple like the first amendment.

"Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances. "

Thats the law as written.

It’s then up to the judiciary to interpret that law- i.e. make sense of what that actually means and how to apply it to actual cases.

It’s up to the court’s to decide what peaceably means, what petition means, exactly what is respecting an established religion. And every time they do, that changes the law.

2nd Amendment- The court decides what militia, well regulated mean.

And from those precedents the law evolves.

The actual facts of individual cases require the law to be interpreted eacht time. You can’t write down a law for every contingency. As each cases changes the law, the precedent changes. Most of them are miniscule.

Again, thats how our courts work. It’s not as if just recently the courts were filled with Berekeley radicals who started “legislating fromt he bench.”

If you don’t understand this, you need to do some reading.

As for supporting welfare but being against a nanny state- I have yet to meet anyone who supports a so called nanny state or big government. If you think that the current welfare program can be reformed, well thats a different argument.

64

[quote]thunderbolt23 wrote:
While I like the natural law stuff, what you said is not exactly true - minimum wage is a right afforded by government and nothing else. So is health coverage for the indigent - their right to health coverage is not a ‘natural’ right. Positive rights, etc.
[/quote]

You know what I’m saying, no need to disagree for the sake of disagreement.

Yes, again, this is a bit silly. Of course, this is true until the government empowers itself to the point that it can no longer be effectively controlled by the population.

This is the whole basis of the points I’m making, individual rights vs government power. The government accrues power whenever it makes additional rules that people cannot opt out of that it then has the ability to enforce. Creating a system of helping the poor does not require the accrual of such power, especially if people are not forced to accept such help.

[quote]Of course - the government is made up of people we elect. We don’t like it, we take it away. That’s basic.

Yep, and conservatives are completely on board with that.[/quote]

No, the founders had something a little different in mind. They actually encouraged the government to realize that the populace could choose to stop being governed, not just elect a different set of clowns.

I suggested otherwise?

I suggested otherwise? I still have the right to do it, although I will have to choose to face the consequences of such an action. Every one of us has the ability to exert our own behavior at any time… usually however we are busy earning a living and getting along so we can best provide for our young.

I’m not suggesting they are, but over time the government continually amasses more power, like a black hole absorbing mass, and at some point it becomes so powerful we cannot escape.

Big danger areas, for example, are incremental police powers over citizens and incremental control of the media.

65

[quote]ExNole wrote:
…
In short, Liberals don’t want judges to be judges - they want them to be all-wise oligarchic rulers that make policy that Liberals prefer because stubborn legislatures won’t, i.e., provide an end-around the legislative process. "

Wha?

Thats about as truthful as if I said the conservatives don’t like judiciaries because they won’t let them ignore the consitution. [/quote]

This is very truthful. I don’t know why you would deny it. Right now the judiciary is the liberals only source of power. Conservative Republicans control the legislature and executive branches.

I am sure that if the situations were reversed the conservatives would do the same thing.

66

Which rights are we talking about being pure judicial advocacy? Which rights have their basis in some legal standing?

It seems as if some of the arguments against economic rights go out the window with the 16th amendment. If you can point to a judicial action creating an economic positive right willy nilly where there isn’t one, I would like to know, but as far as I know minimum wages are covered under the Fair Labor Relations Act.

Enforcing affirmative action (outside the federal government, in private life) might be problematic, but there are grounds. Lyndon Johnson first proposed affirmative action as an executive mandate (no law passed or court ruling made), but only on companies or labor unions dealing with the federal government. There is no issue here. Affirmative action in colleges might be more problematic in private schools, but Brown vs. Board of Education might be brought to bear on schools receiving public money (although I honestly don’t know if this is the case). Equal Opportunity Employment, outside the Americans with Disabilities Act, is a social convention, so far as I know (I might be wrong here as well.

I’m not trying to assert what is and is not law, because my knowledge is admittedly shaky, but I would like to delineate these alleged acts of liberal judicial activism.

67

[quote]Zap Branigan wrote:
Right now the judiciary is the liberals only source of power. Conservative Republicans control the legislature and executive branches.

I am sure that if the situations were reversed the conservatives would do the same thing.[/quote]

I would concur, however, there is a much greater context for the usage of this power in the sheer volume of the Constitution, case law, and judicial precedent. Only so much of this can be altered or undone over a given time, given a truly dominant monolithic party firmly in control of the government. It seems like the conservative domination of government is over temporarily, as at the moment the Republican party is splitting into different factions over a bevy of different issues.

I would like to hear about liberal judicial activism that exceeds Congress’s disregard for the Constitution in passing the Terri Schiavo Act last year.

68

[quote]ExNole wrote:

It’s obvious why modify the law and why the constitutional rights need to be enumerated. [/quote]

If they are enumerated, you can’t add or subtract to them.

[quote]Take something simple like the first amendment.

"Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances. "

Thats the law as written.

It’s then up to the judiciary to interpret that law- i.e. make sense of what that actually means and how to apply it to actual cases.[/quote]

Yes, yes - applying the law to new situations os what the judiciary is all about. But there is a world of difference in applying the law and constantly changing meanings and adding new values to it that weren’t there before.

No, it doesn’t - it’s not the job of the court to change the law every time it interprets one in a case. That is foolish - and it stands in complete contrast to the very idea of precedent.

Judges interpret the law and with it come new ways to apply old laws to new situations - that is fine, that is what they do. I am not suggesting the law is completely statis, evem law that is made through judicial interpretation. But judges are under no duty to change the law just because it needs a’changing - i.e., they want to add or subtract to the meaning of the law based on policy preferences (as in Roe and Roper).

There should be no such thing as a ‘progressive’ judge. For example, the Equal Protection Clause never ever contemplated that heterosexual marriage violated its rules, so no judge should invent the concept.

Good one.

Yes, one that I have been suggesting since I started posting on this thread. Thanks for catching up.

69

[quote]vroom wrote:

No, the founders had something a little different in mind. They actually encouraged the government to realize that the populace could choose to stop being governed, not just elect a different set of clowns.[/quote]

Did they? You need to explain this out - this was essentially the argument of the Confederacy before and during the Civil War.

Moreover, show me where the Founders thought that people could just ‘stop being governed’. The Constitution contains a clause allowing the government to suppress Insurrections and Rebellions, so your are running out of options outside of electing new people to represent you if you don’t like the old ones.

But this is sophistry - if you get legally punished for the exercise of your ‘rights’, it is self-evident you don’t have that right recognized under law.

[quote]I’m not suggesting they are, but over time the government continually amasses more power, like a black hole absorbing mass, and at some point it becomes so powerful we cannot escape.

Big danger areas, for example, are incremental police powers over citizens and incremental control of the media.[/quote]

You continually harp on the growing police powers of the state, and to be frank, I think it is mostly hyperbole. I don’t think the dangers are quite the size and scope you suggest. Certain executive powers always get enlarged in wartime, and while these powers need civic audit, I suspect this is more a case that you actually want the problem to be there more than it is.

I don’t mean that to come off as insulting, I really don’t - but there is a general trend of wanting the dangers to loom larger than they actually do so the wannabe revolutionaries can get in a fervor over doing something important with their lives. I just don’t think we are there.

70

-“No, it doesn’t - it’s not the job of the court to change the law every time it interprets one in a case. That is foolish - and it stands in complete contrast to the very idea of precedent”

Every time the court makes a decision it either stregnthens or weakens the law. Precedent is old law, and every time the law is decided it either increases the scope of that law or limits it. Interpreting the law is making the law.

"But judges are under no duty to change the law just because it needs a’changing - i.e., they want to add or subtract to the meaning of the law based on policy preferences (as in Roe and Roper).

There should be no such thing as a ‘progressive’ judge. For example, the Equal Protection Clause never ever contemplated that heterosexual marriage violated its rules, so no judge should invent the concept. "

If a right to privacy had earlier been established by the courts, and then that right applied to contraceptives in Griswold, all that needs to be shown is abortion is another private medical procedure- that the fetus does not have personhood, or up to a certain point in gestation is not a person, and it follows that it should be legal. If you think the ability to buy contraceptives is something that state cannot impinge, then your problem with roe is not a legal debate. It’s a factual one over the difference of a fetus’s personhood. If you think that the state can impinge on your personal life enough to prohibit you from buying contraceptives, then we’ve reached an impasse.

As for Equal Protection Clause, it was not written with marriage in mind, but if you can show that heterosexual marriage is not an equal application of the law- it discriminates against homosexual couples- it should be invalidated. That’s applying an old law to a new situation. If you cannot discriminate against homosexuals looking for jobs or housing, why should you be able to deny them marriage?

As for changing meanings and recreating the law- how can you possibly expect the half a paragraph that makes up the 1st amendment to be used to decide every single first amendmen legal question? You cannot fairly apply the law unless the clauses have an accepted meaning- unless exactly what constitutes peaceable proteset is defined, and exactly what respecting a religion is.

When these decisions are made, it adds to the law.

Regardless of what you say, the law in the US is largely common law. It is not pure common law, but he same reasoning process applies. And statutory and constitutional issues are decided in the same process, after they have been passed in the legislature.

71

[quote]Zap Branigan wrote:
ExNole wrote:
…
In short, Liberals don’t want judges to be judges - they want them to be all-wise oligarchic rulers that make policy that Liberals prefer because stubborn legislatures won’t, i.e., provide an end-around the legislative process. "

Wha?

Thats about as truthful as if I said the conservatives don’t like judiciaries because they won’t let them ignore the consitution.

This is very truthful. I don’t know why you would deny it. Right now the judiciary is the liberals only source of power. Conservative Republicans control the legislature and executive branches.

I am sure that if the situations were reversed the conservatives would do the same thing.[/quote]

There is a difference between a judiciary that decides issues to help a political party, and a judiciary that just happens to come to the same conclusions as a political party. This is the same court that put Bush in office, no?

72

[quote]ExNole wrote:
… This is the same court that put Bush in office, no?[/quote]

The voters put Bush in office. The SC merely stopped a convoluted recount that was designed to exclude likely Bush votes and count misvotes as Gore votes.

This was not judicial activism in any form.

73

[quote]ExNole wrote:

Every time the court makes a decision it either stregnthens or weakens the law. Precedent is old law, and every time the law is decided it either increases the scope of that law or limits it. Interpreting the law is making the law. [/quote]

I never disagreed with that.

Then impasse it is - one thing I will grant Griswold is that it at least has the decency to refer to historical and traditional attitudes about the sanctity of the private home. While I disagree with the ruling, that is better than Roe, which does not even pretend to suggest that abortion had some unique traditional place in our philosophical thinking about rights.

The type of approach to judicial decisionmaking sounds like the same process that led to Dred Scott - and I want a process that avoids that.

You can discriminate against homosexuals looking for jobs. Second, if what you say is true, then polygamists can make the same argument. So can people who get taxed at a higher rate than those who don’t - after all, paying a different tax rate is most certainly treating people differently under the law.

In short, the Equal Protection Clause was not meant to cover the kinds of arguments you are making.

Of course the judiciary’s job is to decide what the law means - the Constitution is very sparse, for example. I am not arguing otherwise.

In the states, yes, but even the states are becoming more civil law in nature due to the rise of legislation.

You have it exactly wrong - the common law cannot trump a law the legislature has passed. There is no doubt the common law develops the law, but the common law has been diminished by the rise of representative government and legislatures.

Moreover, judicial decisions very much comprise a source of law, but if the common law in the state of New York has held X for 150 years, and the state legislature in Albany passes a law that changes the policy to reverse X to say Y, then the courts have no ability to say otherwise.

74

[quote]alstan90 wrote:
a liberal is in the middle… Because he can’t decide whether he wants to be gay and join the democrats, or rob some poor countries by joining the republicans.[/quote]

You mean like conficating oil fields? Oh wait, that’s the nut job in Venezuela whose doing that.

75

"Then impasse it is - one thing I will grant Griswold is that it at least has the decency to refer to historical and traditional attitudes about the sanctity of the private home. While I disagree with the ruling, that is better than Roe, which does not even pretend to suggest that abortion had some unique traditional place in our philosophical thinking about rights.

The type of approach to judicial decisionmaking sounds like the same process that led to Dred Scott - and I want a process that avoids that. "

To make abortion legal all you have to do is prove to the state that abortion is of the same form as contraceptive use. If the state cannot interfere with the former, it cannot interfere with the latter. To prove that, you only need to make the case that a fetus is not a human but a body process, legally speaking. If the two have the same factually, they should be the same legally. Its hard to see how forcing someone to have a child does not deprive them of their liberty under the 14th amendment, nor does the state have a compelling interest in it.

"You have it exactly wrong - the common law cannot trump a law the legislature has passed. There is no doubt the common law develops the law, but the common law has been diminished by the rise of representative government and legislatures. "

But the common law interpretation of the constitution can trump a law. If the court has found a basis for a right to privacy through the 14th, 1st, 4th,5th amendments, then a law that violates that can be trumped. The first mention of a right to privacy came in 1890, its not new. The due process clause has been interpreted to give a right to privacy. Its not explicit, but its not fabricated either.

76

[quote]lucasa wrote:
Liberal= Professor X, ALDurr, Harris447, vroom, thunderbolt23, FightinIrish…

Conservative= BostonBarrister, Zap Branigan, Headhunter, Rainjack, ZEB,…

:)[/quote]

Moron= lucasa

This is an example of the problem. People like you putting others into nice, neat little categories and attaching specific characteristics to those categories, regardless if they really fit those characteristics or not. Interesting though that you didn’t put yourself in either category.

77

[quote]zarathus wrote:
I would like to hear about liberal judicial activism that exceeds Congress’s disregard for the Constitution in passing the Terri Schiavo Act last year.
[/quote]

The silence is deafening.

78

[quote]ALDurr wrote:
lucasa wrote:
Liberal= Professor X, ALDurr, Harris447, vroom, thunderbolt23, FightinIrish…

Conservative= BostonBarrister, Zap Branigan, Headhunter, Rainjack, ZEB,…

:slight_smile:

Moron= lucasa

This is an example of the problem. People like you putting others into nice, neat little categories and attaching specific characteristics to those categories, regardless if they really fit those characteristics or not. Interesting though that you didn’t put yourself in either category. [/quote]

It kinda looks like you put lucasa in a category yourself.

It would be interesting to see how the individuals listed would respond to being in the corresponding categories. And, how they would define those categories.

79

[quote]terribleivan wrote:
ALDurr wrote:
lucasa wrote:
Liberal= Professor X, ALDurr, Harris447, vroom, thunderbolt23, FightinIrish…

Conservative= BostonBarrister, Zap Branigan, Headhunter, Rainjack, ZEB,…

:slight_smile:

Moron= lucasa

This is an example of the problem. People like you putting others into nice, neat little categories and attaching specific characteristics to those categories, regardless if they really fit those characteristics or not. Interesting though that you didn’t put yourself in either category.

It kinda looks like you put lucasa in a category yourself.

It would be interesting to see how the individuals listed would respond to being in the corresponding categories. And, how they would define those categories.
[/quote]

You are absolutely right, I did put him in a category. I did it purely out of the fact that I am tired of being characterized as a liberal simply because I don’t totally agree with some lines of thinking. I am tired of having labels thrown on me without any explanation on how someone came to that conclusion. I’m sure that I’m not the only one either.

Instead of the individuals being asked to respond to being put in the corresponding categories and how they would define them, why don’t the people that are doing the identifying define the categories and their rational for putting people in them. Let’s put the onus on the people creating the divisions rather than putting it on the people who are being divided, which seems to be the normal practice.

If you categorize someone, define the category and demonstrate how someone fits into that category. In otherwords, explain your own bullshit.

Of course, this may not happen because it is much easier to label than it is to explain how you came up with that label for someone.

80

[quote]ALDurr wrote:
zarathus wrote:
I would like to hear about liberal judicial activism that exceeds Congress’s disregard for the Constitution in passing the Terri Schiavo Act last year.

The silence is deafening.[/quote]

I didn’t like the Act then or now, but it being brought up is humorous - after all, it was Congress that made the new law, pursuant to their Constitutional powers. If the Act was unconstitutional, no problem - but at least the lawmakers were the ones making the laws, even if they were in error.

Compare that to liberal judicial activism, where panels of judges make law regardless of their constitutional duties or lack of electoral accountability. What happens when judges making law ‘get it wrong’ and they have life tenure?

Oh, and as for the ‘silence is deafening’ - melodramatic, and silly.