[Peace-discuss] Re: [Discuss] War on drugs

[John W.]

On Wed, Sep 24, 2008 at 10:07 AM, C. G. Estabrook <galliher at uiuc.edu> wrote:

The authority of the Supreme Court to declare an act of Congress
> unconstitutional is nowhere mentioned in the Constitution.  It was the
> result of a power-grab by Chief Justice John Marshall, on behalf of the
> property party.


Yes.  That said, though, judicial activism has been responsible for a number
of "great leaps forward", and for the negation of some very bad
legislatively-passed law.  Of course it has worked in reverse also.



> No telling what those crazy members of Congress might do (some of them were
> even elected by [some] people), so you had to have a way of stopping them.
>  As the first Chief Justice of the US put it, "The people who own the
> country ought to govern it."  --CGE


Well, personally I think that while a New England town meeting is a pretty
wonderful thing, I'm not so impressed by Congress on the whole.  I've never
felt that my elected representatives on the federal level represented ME in
the least - maybe because I wasn't affluent enough.  It's not only the
judicial branch that has historically favored the moneyed, propertied
classes.  And it doesn't happen only in America.

You lose some of your intellectual force by protesting too much, methinks.




> John W. wrote:


>> On Tue, Sep 23, 2008 at 9:54 PM, E. Wayne Johnson <ewj at pigs.ag <mailto:
>> ewj at pigs.ag>> wrote:
>>
>>    Au contraire, I really do disagree with you about the concept of
>>    constitutionality being based solely in the Supreme Court.
>>
>>
>> You mean, a law can be unconstitutional in your own mind?  :-)
>>
>>
>>    Although the Supreme Court can determine constitutionality and it is
>>    temporally the decision of the court that
>>    establishes ultimate decisions in controversial cases, the Supreme
>>    Court is by no means the sole determinate
>>    of constitutionality provided that people are indeed able to read.
>>
>>
>> Who else is, then?  The people?  It's a fine theory.  But try using that
>> argument in a court of law.
>>
>>
>>    It becomes an issue of money political winds and willingness to
>>    pursue that actually brings an unconstitutional law to the courts,
>>    sometimes nobody seems to care nobody wants to bother asking the
>>    question.
>>
>>
>> Well, why would anyone need to pursue it in the courts at all, since you
>> say that there's some other means of determining constitutionality?
>>
>>
>>
>>    Absolutely you are correct on the concept of amendments being
>>    constitutional, which was my point.
>>    If interstate commerce was sufficient authority to the Feds for
>>    Prohibition, why then did the government
>>    find it necessary to make an indisputable amendment?
>>    Since the constitutional amendment was necessary
>>    for the prohibition of alcohol consumption, why not for THC?
>>
>>    Why did  the Californians play dead on their law and allow
>>    themselves to be coerced?    Did they lack the resources and fortitude
>> to make the challenge?
>>
>>
>> It's never that simple in our ridiculously complex system of checks and
>> balances - both federal and state laws, which frequently overlap or
>> contradict one another, and three branches of government in each.
>>
>> There's plenty of information available if you Google it.  Try "California
>> medical marijuana federal enforcement", and make yourself a legal expert
>> like me.  :-)  Here's one particularly illustrative article (which may
>> illustrate also why I never went into the practice of law):
>>
>> http://writ.news.findlaw.com/amar/20071109.html
>> ...
>>
>
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