[RD] Daily Graphs and Charts

[Terxpahseyton]

That looks like an unnecessarily convoluted way of saying "Lots of big wars 'til WWII. Suddenly no big wars, in cold war era and beyond." Whereas the categories "rising power" and "ruling power" are probably supposed to indicate some kind of substance which isn't there. Sort of like the balance-of-power theory.

 

[Cutlass]

No way was the USSR the dominant world power in the 1970s-80s. They were already past their peak at that point. And the US was more influential in more of the world.

 

[Terxpahseyton]

You are meant to put it in relation to the other power, not the world.

 

[madviking]

The new generation is like Prince Charles, just waiting for the queen to damn die already.

Spoiler biggish :

 

[Cutlass]

http://www.bloomberg.com/politics/a...e-court-to-turn-off-political-spending-spigot

 

[Arakhor]

That's fairly revealing, isn't it? I can't imagine how the SC thought for half a second that allowing the bottom ruling was even remotely sane.

 

[Hygro]

You are meant to put it in relation to the other power, not the world.

Suddenly it makes way more sense.

 

[Cutlass]

That's fairly revealing, isn't it? I can't imagine how the SC thought for half a second that allowing the bottom ruling was even remotely sane.

Political ideologues uninterested in law or justice.

 

[Mise]

Surely the SC is just ruling on whether something is, or is not, lawful, as stipulated under current law? Not whether or not something should be legal. It may not be sane to allow corporations and unions to make political donations, but the SC isn't ruling on whether or not it is sane. The SC is simply ruling on whether or not the laws of the land permit it. Those laws are the responsibility of the legislature, not the judiciary.

If anything it shows that a lot of the public misunderstand what the SC actually does. The "goodness" or "badness" of the SC's decisions should be judged on whether or not people agree with the SC's interpretation of the law as it stands at present (or stood at the time of the rulings), not on their agreement with the laws or statements themselves. In other words, "disagreeing" with the SC would mean something like, "I believe that the law as it stands at present does not allow corporations and unions from donating to political parties", and not "I believe that corporations and unions should not be allowed to donate to political parties".

 

[Terxpahseyton]

Trouble is that the SC's foremost responsibility are not just the laws of the land but the scripture of the holy fathers. And you can't just change that for... practical reasons. So it all hinges on interpretation. And that in the end - it seems - also hinges on political ideology. And hence also on what you think is sane.

 

[CavLancer]

I'm reading an ultra liberal book on the great depression and the supreme court is viewed as sticking its finger in the air to determine the political winds and making decisions accordingly. This was done to curry public favor when FDR was trying to reverse conservative judges by changing the rules the court lives by, ie through "packing the benches by adding new judges" to better achieve New Deal ends. So the court reversed itself on unpopular decisions to curry favor with the people or congress in reality, taking the steam out of FDR's sails. His amendment failed and his influence suffered. Slippery buggers. My view on the court is that they reverse the decisions made by elected governments and are therefore a tool to reverse the will of the people when somebody on high finds it inconvenient to their agenda, or maybe the rule of law is adjusted for the betterment of the judges as is convenient at the time. I say they should be cut to the bone and the will of the people prevail even when the court isn't trying to curry favor.

 

[Cutlass]

What the Supreme Court is supposed to do, when something is a constitutional issue, and not just a legal issue, is to judge whether or not the issue in question is consistent with the letter and spirit of what is written in the Constitution. This is not necessarily as simple as it sounds. As the US Constitution is vague and brief. On most issues it has nothing to say at all. And so the Court must infer from what has been said.

In doing this, the US is a 'common law' country. That is that much of our body of law is derived from judicial precedent rather than statutes passed by legislatures. And that precedent evolves over time. The state of Constitutional interpretation is in this way an evolving body of work, rather than fixed and immutable.

So consider the top case on that chart. Roe v Wade, the decision which made abortion legal, was not out of the clear blue sky, but rather was an evolution of the decision rendered in the earlier case of Griswold v Connecticut. The specific decision point in Roe was not that abortion is legal, but rather that the government did not have a compelling public interest in making it illegal, and so the presumption is that government should butt out of people's lives if it did not have a compelling public interest in the matter. The right to be left alone.

How this applies to Citizen's United is that the Constitution has nothing to say on the matter. So the body of statutory law and judicial precedent is where the action is. In this case the factors are the precedent on similar issues, the intent of the legislature, and the compelling public interest. Does the Court understand the intent of the legislature? Does the Court find a compelling public interest for or against the law? Does the precedent have anything to say on the issue?

In CU, the intent of the legislature is clear. The precedent, about 100 years of it, is clear. And the compelling public interest is clear.

And the Court made a decision which was opposed to all 3 factors.

 

[Mise]

The constitution has a lot to say on the matter of free speech, IMO.

 

[Camikaze]

The common law doesn't call for overtly normative choices. American constitutional law, however, does. Whereas in the UK or Australia rights evolve at the instigation of the legislature, often at a glacial pace, in the US you have this vague and bubbly Bill of Rights which acts as the wellspring of rights. One of the unfortunate side effects of having ingrained rights is that you have judges making essentially political choices, and thereby becoming political actors.

Of course, because American constitutional law is designed in such a way, the Supreme Court justices are doing precisely what they're meant to do when they make normative decisions. Noting that a Supreme Court decision is out of line with precedent is not the strongest argument to make. I don't know much about the Citizen's United decision, other than that it's a shame that it's been boiled down to a bizarre attack on the uncontroversial axiom that corporations are people.

 

[Cutlass]

The constitution has a lot to say on the matter of free speech, IMO.

People have speech. Money is not speech. And businesses are not people.

 

[Mise]

Even if you believe that, surely you can see how it can be argued the other way?? For a start, the CU case was, in fact, about what most people would call "free speech": CU wanted to air a film that was critical of a politician. That it ended up with much broader implications (and had its own myriad nuances) is another matter, but to say that it has nothing to do with free speech or that the constitution has nothing to say about it is crazy to me.

EDIT: And anyway, if one side is basing its case on free speech, then the case is about free speech. We sat on the sidelines don't get to decide that...

 

[Cutlass]

You can make the argument for speech. But you can also make the argument for compelling public interest, the will of the legislature, and precedent. In making the speech argument, one thing to keep in mind is that no persons' right to speech was infringed by the law.

 

[Hygro]

Money is basically an entity's word, though, which is pretty hard to parse from speech.

 

[warpus]

The $20 that's sitting in my wallet is a word?

 

[Hygro]

The $20 that's sitting in my wallet is a word?

Yes, it's a promissary note from the Federal Reserve, concluding back to the aggregate of the American people, and anyone else dealing in dollars, saying "our word is good".