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daisy71109 · 3 years

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Mandatory Minimums

This was a paper I wrote about mandatory minimum sentencing laws in the United States and the impact they have had for a class final. It is written in APA format, which is why there are parentheses with sources at the end of some sentences. there is also a list of resources that I used at the bottom. Yes, it is long, it was ~6.5 pages long w/ a double-spaced 12 pt. Times New Roman font.

Laws exist to keep people from doing whatever they wish to keep everyone living in society safe and happy, and people have been arrested for breaking those laws since they were created around the 22nd century BC. Although the nature of some of those laws has changed, many of them still stay the same–don’t murder, don’t assault people, don’t steal, just to name a few. However, the punishments for such crimes look much different from what we see today. While some places here in the United States still have the death penalty, many states have abolished it–largely because many see it to be a cruel and unusual punishment, something prohibited by the Eighth Amendment to the United States Constitution–and mostly it is only carried out if the person has committed murder or treason, or something of a nature similar to those, which differs greatly from long ago (aclu.org). In many ancient cultures, people who committed theft and were caught could face a public beating, or even death, while today they would be sentenced to time in jail or prison.

Jails and prisons are a way to keep criminals who have been convicted of a crime off the streets. It houses every type of criminal, some violent–like people who have committed murder, assault, or rape–and some not so violent–people who have committed theft or are found to be in possession of drugs. However, the United States has a problem. The United States holds about 4.2% of the world’s population, but it also holds at least 20% of the world’s prisoners. There are around 2.3 million inmates being housed in around 7,147 state and federal prisons, jails, correctional facilities, detention facilities, and many other facilities like those across the United States and its territories (Sawyer and Wagner, 2020). According to the U.S. Department of Justice Bureau of Justice Statistics, in 1979, there were 313,731 inmates across state and federal prisons in the United States, a number that increased by over 15,000 by 1980, following an upward trend in the number of inmates across the country (Kalish, 1981). By 1985, the number of sentenced prisoners was 481,616 (Minor-Harper, 1986), and by 1996, that number had skyrocketed to over 1.1 million–1,138,984 to be exact, according to Alfred Blumstein and Allen J. Beck’s Population Growth in U.S. Prisons, 1980-1996 (Blumstein and Beck, 1999). That number continued to increase, reaching around 2.3 million in 2020. The large increase in inmates was caused by a few policies implemented during the mid-to-late twentieth century–specifically around the 1970s and 1980s–that have continued to this day. Throughout the latter decades of the twentieth century, the United States heavily focused on the war on drugs, which eventually leads President Reagan to sign the Anti-Drug Abuse Act of 1986, which appropriated $1.7 billion to fight the drug war (NPR, 2007). However, that was not the only thing that the bill did. It also implemented mandatory minimums for drug-related offenses.

The Criminal Justice Policy Foundation states that “Mandatory minimum sentencing laws force a judge to hand down a minimum prison sentence based on the charges a prosecutor brings against a defendant which result in a conviction -- usually a guilty plea” (CJPF.org, paragraph 1). There are mandatory minimum sentences for a variety of different crimes–sex offenses, identity theft, illegal ownership or use of a firearm, and drug trafficking or possession. The minimum sentence given to someone found guilty for drug trafficking depends on what type of drug they had, how much of it they had, and whether they had been convicted of any prior drug felonies. In theory, giving different punishments for different situations makes sense, but in reality, the mandatory minimum policy in place has created a system that has allowed for thousands of people, especially people of color, to be locked away in prisons for years, and in some cases, for life.

Of the 2.3 million people currently incarcerated in the United States, around 450,000 of them are there because of drug-related charges (prisonpolicy.org). About 19.5% of people incarcerated in the United States are there because of drug-related charges, and that number will not be going down anytime soon unless something is done about it. Police across the United States make over 1 million drug possession arrests a year, many of which lead to prison sentences. And of course, because of the mandatory minimums, people of color, who disproportionately tend to be in the lower social classes, are largely the group who ends up going to prison for these drug-related crimes. Crack-cocaine and powder-cocaine are relatively similar, but with a few key differences. Powder cocaine was seen as a status symbol in the 1980s–it was seen as the fancy drug, the drug that rich people used–but crack cocaine was seen much differently–it was, and still is cheaper, and as a result, was used more by the lower classes. Because of this differing view, the mandatory minimum sentences differ, disproportionately affecting lower-income people.

For powder cocaine, you need 500 grams in order to get the mandatory minimum sentence of five years–unless you have previously been convicted of a drug felony, in which case the minimum is ten years. However, for crack cocaine, only 28 grams is needed for a person to get the mandatory minimum. And those are only the minimum sentences. People with no prior drug felonies who have the five-year minimum sentence also have a maximum sentence of 40 years, a number that increases to life imprisonment if someone has been convicted of a prior drug felony (United States Sentencing Commission, 2017). And as was mentioned previously, crack tends to be used by people of lower socioeconomic status–who are disproportionately people of color–because it’s cheaper, which leads to more and more people of color ending up in prisons with sentences of at least five-to-ten years. And while the mandatory minimum sentencing laws being discussed here are federal, states weren’t far behind in adopting their own versions. Mandatory minimum sentences, along with countless other policies and biases across the country, perpetuate a cycle of racist ideology that has lasted for hundreds of years.

Another major issue with these mandatory minimum sentencing laws is that they took the sentencing power away from the judges–who are arguably the most neutral party in the courtroom–and given it to prosecutors. The Criminal Justice Policy Foundation states:

“The justice system has been distorted by removing from judges the power to decide the proper sentence in their cases. The sentencing process now involves the rote consideration of a matrix of impersonal data dominated by often irrelevant drug quantities and other circumstances that can be shaped by the prosecutor's charging choices. The elimination of judicial discretion in sentencing has allowed prosecutors to acquire excessive power to impose sentences.”

The problem is, overwhelmingly, most of the elected prosecutors in the United States are white and male (Reflective Democracy Campaign, 2015 & 2019). And most isn’t just a slight majority here–as of 2019, 95% of elected prosecutors are white and 73% are male. And because the United States has a tendency to be racist–shown by these mandatory minimums, no matter how much people like to deny that they are racist–these prosecutors are going to be more likely to ask for harsher sentences, are going to attempt to place more charges onto the defendant, and get them sent to prison for longer. With these mandatory minimums, we focused more on sending people to prison, especially people of color, instead of rehabilitation–getting people who are addicted to these drugs off of them so they can hopefully go on and have a more successful life.

When mandatory minimums were first implemented, the United States was amid the war on drugs and was in an era where the stance of being tough on crime was normal. However, as previously mentioned, this war on drugs had heavy racist undertones, something confirmed in 1994 by former President Nixon’s counsel and assistant to the President for Domestic Affairs John Ehrlichman when he said:

“The Nixon campaign in 1968, and the Nixon White House after that, had two enemies: the antiwar left and Black people. You understand what I’m saying? We knew we couldn’t make it illegal to be either against the war or Black, but by getting the public to associate the hippies with marijuana and Blacks with heroin, and then criminalizing both heavily, we could disrupt those communities. We could arrest their leaders, raid their homes, break up their meetings, and vilify them night after night on the evening news. Did we know we were lying about the drugs? Of course we did.” (eji.org, 2016)

However, just because something is broken, and has been broken for a long time, doesn’t mean that it cannot be fixed.

For starters, there is H. R.7194, also known as the Mandatory Minimum Reform Act of 2020, which was introduced to the House of Representatives by Representative Maxine Waters of California's 43rd congressional district on June 11, 2020 (congress.gov). In the bill's text, there is a sentence reading, “To eliminate mandatory minimum sentences for all drug offenses,” and also included is a list of amendments to a variety of sections of the Controlled Substances Act. Representative Waters isn’t the only one calling for the reform, or outright elimination of mandatory minimums. The American Civil Liberties Union, the Criminal Justice Policy Foundation, among many other groups are all in favor of reforming or eliminating mandatory minimum sentences. Alongside that, there have been some calls to release the people who were convicted of nonviolent drug offenses back into society, due to people knowing the reason behind the existence of the mandatory minimum, the fact that some drugs–marijuana in particular–are no longer being villainized like they used to, and that more people are understanding addiction and realize that sending people to prison doesn’t have the effect of stopping drug use people thought it did.

However, just doing one, and not the other fails to completely solve the problem. If you release non-violent drug offenders but keep the mandatory minimums, the cycle is just going to continue, and hundreds of thousands of people, especially people of color, are going to be put back into prisons due to low-level drug offenses. If you get rid of the mandatory minimums but don’t release non-violent drug offenders, you still have hundreds of thousands of people who are serving potentially life sentences for just possessing drugs. Focusing on rehabilitation instead of sending people to prison would help to combat the system that has been in place for decades–a system that criminalizes people for needing help but not being able to get it. Not only would this help to reverse some of the damage done by racist policies that were put in place under the guise of being tough on crime, and it would also alleviate some of the tax burden on Americans or would allow for more money to be spent on social programs like drug rehabilitation programs. As of 2017, the United States allocated over $7 billion dollars to the federal prison budget, which exceeds the $5.5 billion allocated to care for all the homeless people in the United States (cjpf.org).

Another option–although it has a much lesser impact–is just to reform the mandatory minimum laws and not release anyone who has been previously convicted of a non-violent drug crime. Reforming the mandatory minimum laws would look more like changing the amount of a drug that is required to reach the mandatory minimum threshold or reducing the minimum sentence instead of just completely getting rid of them. The problem is, you would still have hundreds of thousands of people in prison for nonviolent drug offenses, and you would still allow a system to exist that disproportionately negatively affects people of color.

Overall, mandatory minimum sentencing laws negatively impact poorer people and people of color the most, causing hundreds of thousands of them to be sent to prison for years for what is, for many, just a nonviolent drug offense. People are being separated from their families and sent to prison, some for life, over policies that were created under the guise of being tough on crime, but were in actuality just inherently racist and playing off of the fears of white Americans, something that has been admitted by several people who worked in various presidential administrations or campaigns over the years. These laws need to be repealed, and the people who were convicted of nonviolent drug offenses need to be released in order for the United States to move forward and atone for its racist past. Without repealing the laws and releasing those people, we are allowing for a racist system that has profited off of people of color to stand and continue.

References

Blumstein, A., & Beck, A. J. (1999). Population Growth in U. S. Prisons, 1980-1996. Crime and Justice, 26, 17–61. https://doi.org/10.1086/449294

Bureau of Justice Statistics , & Kalish, C. B., Prisoners in 1980 (1981). Washington, D.C.; U.S. Dept. of Justice, Bureau of Justice Statistics.

Bureau of Justice Statistics, & Minor-Harper, S., State and Federal prisoners, 1925-85 (1986). Washington D.C.; U.S. Department of Justice Bureau of Justice Statistics .

The Case Against the Death Penalty. American Civil Liberties Union. (n.d.). https://www.aclu.org/other/case-against-death-penalty.

Covington, J. (1997). The Social Construction Of the Minority Drug Problem. Social Justice, 24(4 (70)), 117-147. Retrieved April 26, 2021, from http://www.jstor.org/stable/29767045

House Judiciary and House Energy and Commerce, & Waters, M. [Bill], Mandatory Minimum Reform Act of 2020 (2020). Washington D.C.

Justice For All: Who Prosecutes in America? Reflective Democracy Campaign. (2015, July). https://wholeads.us/research/justice-for-all-report-elected-prosecutors/.

Legal Information Institute. (n.d.). Eighth Amendment. Legal Information Institute. https://www.law.cornell.edu/constitution/eighth_amendment.

Mandatory Minimums and Sentencing Reform. CJPF.ORG. (n.d.). https://www.cjpf.org/mandatory-minimums.

Netflix. (2016). 13Th. https://www.netflix.com/watch/80091741?tctx=0%2C1%2C%2C%2C%2C. (I highly recommend watching this on Netflix, it is very good)

Nixon Adviser Admits War on Drugs Was Designed to Criminalize Black People. Equal Justice Initiative. (2021, March 19). https://eji.org/news/nixon-war-on-drugs-designed-to-criminalize-black-people/.

NPR. (2007, April 2). Timeline: America's War on Drugs. NPR. https://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=9252490.

Sawyer, W., & Wagner, P. (2020, March 24). Mass Incarceration: The Whole Pie 2020. Mass Incarceration: The Whole Pie 2020 | Prison Policy Initiative. https://www.prisonpolicy.org/reports/pie2020.html.

Tipping the Scales: Challengers Take on the Old Boys Club of Elected Prosecutors. Reflective Democracy Campaign. (2019, October). https://wholeads.us/research/tipping-the-scales-elected-prosecutors/.

United States Sentencing Commission, Mandatory minimum penalties for drug offenses in the federal criminal justice system9–64 (2017). Washington D.C.

Wagner, P., & Bertram, W. (2020, January 16). "What percent of the U.S. is incarcerated?" (And other ways to measure mass incarceration). Prison Policy Initiative. https://www.prisonpolicy.org/blog/2020/01/16/percent-incarcerated/.

#racism #mandatory minimums #drug issues #drug arrests #arrests #america #united states #war on drugs #politics #political stuff #democracy #democrats #reform #end racism #prison #prison system

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glittergummicandypeach · 4 years

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Rights, Religion, and Property - American Greatness

The State Department’s Commission on Unalienable Rights has issued a report on the rationale to pursue human rights as a primary goal for American foreign policy. Rights have a bipartisan pedigree. In our modern history, it was the Democrat Jimmy Carter who first defined human rights as a U.S. foreign policy mission. But Republican Ronald Reagan and his Secretary of State George Shultz made rights advocacy a constant component of their hard-nosed negotiations with the Soviets.

Barack Obama took a different path. Reacting against his predecessor George W. Bush’s policy of democracy promotion, he and Secretary of State John Kerry proved largely oblivious to rights concerns—most egregiously in the disregard for human rights in their negotiations with Iran.

It is surely time to bring rights back to the forefront of foreign policy—that is the context of the commission’s report.

There is also a second context: the evident fragility of the rights agenda around the world.

The hope that China would liberalize has been disappointed, putting the world’s largest population under the heel of a regime that does not respect human rights or the rule of law. Add to that Russia, Iran, North Korea, and more, and we quickly find that more than half of humanity lives under regimes hostile to human rights. The end-of-history consensus that the collapse of the Soviet Union meant democracy and rights would spread quickly is a thing of the past.

Intellectual criticisms have also eroded the foundations of the human rights project. A cultural-relativist skepticism rejects anything universal, including the universalist claims of human rights. Environmentalists believe human needs, including rights, cause vast ecological damage. Meanwhile, technology continues to generate ever more intrusive mechanisms of surveillance and infringement on our private sphere.

This crisis of the rights agenda everywhere demands an examination into its relationship to American foreign policy.

What the Commission Did and Didn’t Do

The task of the commission was neither to enumerate all possible rights nor to rule on current rights debates but to provide a foundation for American foreign policy concerning the promotion of rights.

The commission’s report explores the topic along two coequal routes. First, it examines the treatment of rights in American political thought, beginning with the historical documents from the era of the Revolution and the Constitutional Convention, but treating as equally foundational the subsequent history, the Civil War, and the abolition of slavery, women’s suffrage, the 20th century recognition of economic and social concerns, and the civil rights movement, just as it points to ongoing current debates.

Controversies surrounding the death penalty, abortion, or same-sex rights will be resolved in public discussion and elections and ultimately through legislatures and courts. Asserting a secure place for rights in foreign policy requires that those rights reflect the consensus in the self-governing democracy.

The commission’s second approach involves the treaties and other international commitments that the United States has entered into. These include especially the principles of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, in the adoption of which the United States played a central role, thanks to Eleanor Roosevelt acting on behalf of the State Department.

The report also emphasizes other nations must meet the same treaty commitments and similarly respect all rights. A foreign policy for human rights, therefore, must respect both the democratic will of the nation and the network of international agreements.

A Hierarchy of Rights?

The report has received both positive and negative responses; among the latter, one objection needs rebuttal, the assertion that the report accords higher status to some rights, in particular religious liberty and property rights, and that it therefore diminishes the importance of other rights. This is simply not true.

On multiple occasions, the report describes all rights as interdependent and equal, and it explicitly rejects the notion that the United States or any other country may choose to respect some rights in order to ignore others. The commission did not invent any “hierarchy of rights,” as some incorrectly allege—although existing international law, in fact, does distinguish between some rights that must never be abrogated, such as a prohibition on genocide, and rights that in an emergency might face restrictions, as we have seen freedom of assembly drastically curtailed during the pandemic.

Moreover, Congress itself has chosen to mandate through statute that special attention be paid to certain rights by establishing special offices to monitor religious freedom violations and human trafficking. Attention to these two areas does not excuse the United States from fulfilling all its other obligations, but these two specific areas have special grounding in American history and self-understanding: religious freedom enjoys pride of place in the Bill of Rights, and human trafficking addresses forms of modern slavery, i.e., the evil that tore the country apart in the Civil War. There is no shame in devoting efforts to stop slavery today.

While the report does not mount an argument to prioritize religion and property, which includes the ownership of one’s own body and labor, it does point out, as a historical claim, that religion and property rights were of prominent concern to the American Founders and are therefore deeply rooted in American political thinking.

Rather than disputing that claim concerning the historical record, critics instead have displayed clear hostility to the substance of these specific rights, engaging in versions of a standard secularist dismissiveness toward religion and bizarre skepticism toward property rights. In short, it is the report’s critics, rather than its authors, who are promoting a hierarchy of rights by trivializing the importance of religion and attacking property in ways that are symptomatic of our contemporary cultural crisis.

The Real Quarrel Over Religion and Property

Religion played an obvious role in the formation of early American political thought; witness the appeals to a “Creator” and to “Nature’s God” in the Declaration of Independence.

Today’s opponents of a connection between religion and rights dismiss that appeal. They reject the proposition that rights have any pre-political source, be it in a religious sphere, or in nature, or in some other metaphysical understanding of the human condition itself as bestowing dignity. By denying any claim of rights prior to political acts, they instead reduce all human rights exclusively to the positive law of legislative acts, which implies that it is ultimately the state—and not a creator, nature, or the mere fact of being human—that endows the rights.

This statist perspective is explicitly at odds with the origins of American thinking, which posited a liberty prior to law, thanks to a mix of Lockean liberalism and Biblical teaching (to which the Founders added a strong dose of civic republicanism). Yet by treating the state as the fountainhead of liberty, contemporary opponents of religious sources leave us only with rights that have been granted by the largesse of politicians. They cast us in the role of servants of the state, never answering to our conscience of a higher morality, but always obligated to “just follow orders,” which was the maxim of the defendants in the Nuremberg war crimes trials.

Eliminating any understanding of liberty derived outside of government paves the way to blind obedience and subordination to state power. It also renders no right “unalienable,” since what the state gave, it might take away.

While secularism drives the effort to diminish religious freedom, it is a progressive redistributionist vision that pushes back against the tradition of property rights. This current animus toward property may also reflect a countercultural “post-material” disdain of worldly possessions in general.

Whatever its origin, the suspicion of property rights ignores the central issue: the right to one’s property is the basis for liberty and the pursuit of happiness. As late as the 17th century philosopher Thomas Hobbes, it was commonplace to assume that might makes right and that the strong could violently seize what the weak could not defend. Property was never secure.

In contrast, it was John Locke—whose writings were a major influence on the Founders—who introduced the novel principle that one has a legitimate claim on one’s own property, including one’s body and the fruit of one’s labor: “every man has a property in his own person: this no body has any right to but himself. The labor of his body, and the work of his hands, we may say, are properly his.”

How the right to property is upheld in particular circumstances always depends on specific political processes. It could take the shape of defending corporations or, alternatively, by breaking up monopolies. Yet property rights clearly provide philosophical grounding for robust criticism of any system, including slavery and human trafficking, that denies laborers their due. Denying the right to private property is the road back to serfdom.

It is therefore strange to see progressive critics eagerly lining up against property rights, unless their ulterior motive in fact involves enhancing the power of the state to expropriate, no matter how much liberty would be diminished.

Property rights, like religious freedom, place limits on the scope of state power. The animus against these liberties betrays an aspiration to expand the reach of government even further than is already the case. Given that prospect, the project of the Commission to think through our legacy of rights has been all the more urgent.

This content was originally published here.

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maxwellyjordan · 6 years

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Tribute: Formidable teacher, friend and still “somewhat of an enigma”

Sionaidh Douglas-Scott is the Anniversary Chair in Law at Queen Mary University of London and an honorary research fellow at Lady Margaret Hall, University of Oxford.

It seems, and of course is, a long time ago that I first met Justice Anthony Kennedy in Salzburg, Austria, in July 1993. I had been invited to co-teach a course on fundamental rights in the United States and Europe with him, to take over the European part from an older, eminent U.K. academic who had just returned to the bar and was no longer available. I was a young academic, teaching in the law school of King’s College London, a law school well-known for its focus on European law. I was nervous, somewhat overawed at the prospect of co-teaching with a U.S. Supreme Court justice, and I wondered if my connection with this course would outlast the summer. It seems to have done so, because I am still teaching that same course, with Anthony Kennedy, in 2018.

The course is run by the University of the Pacific McGeorge School of Law, with which Justice Kennedy has a long-standing connection, having taught in their night program when he was still in Sacramento. The McGeorge course has been frequently confused with the famous Salzburg seminar, which was founded in 1947 to encourage the revival of intellectual dialogue in postwar Europe (although Kennedy also interacted with the Salzburg seminar). Nonetheless, McGeorge was well ahead of the curve, running one of the oldest U.S. international programs in Salzburg, with innovative internships and trips to Eastern Europe, well before other U.S. universities became interested. Kennedy has been teaching in this program since the 1980s. The location in Europe indicated a desire to broaden the outlook of U.S. law students – a generation back, far fewer had traveled overseas than is the case today. Law students from elsewhere in Europe – e.g., Russia, Spain, Denmark and Turkey – also joined the program, adding to its diversity. A large network of “alumni” of McGeorge’s Salzburg programs has grown up, now numbering many influential U.S. and European lawyers and judges.

When I arrived, back in 1993, to co-teach that first time, Salzburg, and Europe, was a different place. Austria had not yet joined the European Union. The Berlin wall had recently come down, and new democracies, fresh from the Soviet bloc, had either just joined, or were in the process of becoming members of the European Convention on European Rights (It now has 47 members, but back then, it numbered about half of that.). Kennedy certainly took great interest in that phenomenon, making frequent trips to advise and be consulted by those fledgling democracies.

The McGeorge summer program has been lucky enough to teach its courses in the law school of Salzburg University, surely one of the most beautiful law schools in the world. Sited immediately below Salzburg’s striking hilltop medieval Festung (Fortress), the law school is housed in the 17th-century Prince Archbishops’ (former rulers of Salzburg) palace, in palatial buildings set around courtyards. Many classrooms are lavishly frescoed (although usually not air conditioned, which can be a problem in Salzburg’s often blistering summer heat). It is a wonderful environment for American law students to be taught personally by a Supreme Court justice and to encounter other systems of law (often) for the first time. We structured our fundamental-rights course around selected case extracts, and teaching was interactive – usually Socratic method, with frequent joint sessions or dialogues between Kennedy and myself. Kennedy loves teaching and takes a real interest in students. He was more than happy to spend time with them on social evenings in Salzburg, where students could talk with him and his wife Mary, along with other professors on the course. I was interested by the huge status of Supreme Court justices in the U.S. – many of them household names for lawyers and nonlawyers alike. This “veneration” contrasts with the position in Europe, where the senior judiciary are often far more distant figures, and books about Supreme Courts and particular judicial philosophies much rarer.

Salzburg is a very beautiful city, rightly world-famous for its summer festival encompassing music and the arts, but that part of Austria, so close to Bavaria and the German border, was also the Nazi heartland, and a formidable place to be focusing on human rights. Justice Kennedy and I co-taught cases on arrest, search and seizure, torture, the death penalty, privacy and freedom of expression, and in so doing, we touched on all of the crucial issues of the day. The course’s subject matter – fundamental rights in Europe and the U.S. – clearly emphasized the continuing importance of human rights, but also introduced students to new legal systems and ways of thinking. And this exposure to “foreign” law, as it turned out, seemed to be a matter of considerable interest to Justice Kennedy.

In the course of his career, Justice Kennedy became a leading exponent of employing international law to assist in interpreting the United States Constitution. This marks his approach as cosmopolitan but also contentious. Did Kennedy’s 30-odd years teaching in Salzburg have any impact on his approach? It is hard to say – Supreme Court justices make many judicial visits to other countries’ courts, providing ample opportunity for judicial mind-broadening, and of course, education plays its part – in Kennedy’s case, a spell at the London School of Economics, studying for the LLM degree. Yet, I would think that all of those summers in Salzburg, co-teaching a course that necessitated reading and discussion of so many cases from the European Court of Human Rights, must have played their part.

Some of the most interesting classes we co-taught were those that revealed a significant difference in U.S. and European approaches. An early point of comparison was the contrasting approaches taken by the U.S. Supreme Court and European Court of Human Rights to the criminalizing of male homosexual acts. In 1981, the European Court had decided Dudgeon v U.K., ruling that laws against gay sexual activity violated the European Convention on Human Rights. Yet when the Supreme Court heard Bowers v. Hardwick, in 1986 (on similar facts), Dudgeon was not even argued by lawyers before the court. Twenty-five years into teaching in Salzburg, I am still teaching Dudgeon, but Bowers is no longer on the course syllabus. In 2003, in Lawrence v. Texas, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that states could not criminalize sex between consenting adult homosexuals. In his majority opinion in Lawrence, Kennedy cited Dudgeon: “[T]he decision [in Dudgeon] is at odds with the premise in Bowers that the claim put forward was insubstantial in our Western civilization.” And of course, in 2015, the Supreme Court, with Justice Kennedy writing for the majority, ruled in Obergefell v. Hodges that the Constitution guarantees a right to same-sex marriage.

In these (and other) decisions, Justice Kennedy appeared to adopt a vision of a living Constitution, one evolving with societal changes, a view very much in contrast to those of originalists such as the late Justice Antonin Scalia. But an evolving approach very much accords with the approach taken by the European Court of Human Rights, which stresses that the Convention is a “dynamic” instrument that changes with the times.

A comparative approach accepts that judges throughout the world encounter cases based on similar facts, and have many values in common. However, one area in which Europe and the U.S. seem to have diverged concerns proscribing hate speech. Kennedy is well-known as an enthusiastic supporter of the First Amendment. But supporting the First Amendment sometimes requires difficult decisions, such as Snyder v. Phelps, the Westboro Baptist church case, in which the U.S. Supreme Court held that public, virulent, highly offensive protests conducted outside military funerals are protected by the First Amendment. This decision contrasts with some European cases, such as Vedjeland, in which the European Court upheld a ban on anti-gay hate speech, and U.K. cases in which “poppy burning” (The poppy is a long-time symbol of remembrance of the war dead in the U.K.) at military parades has brought convictions for incitement and public-disorder offenses. These decisions illustrate a greater willingness in Europe to take into account the hurt and offense of those confronted with this conduct. Kennedy and I long debated the difference between our two jurisdictions, but neither was able to persuade the other of the rightness of their own jurisdiction’s approach (although I found it intriguing that Kennedy could recite word-perfectly the poem that begins, “In Flanders fields the poppies blow, Between the crosses, row on row”)

Reciting a poem on poppies was only a small part of Kennedy’s literary achievement. For several years, Kennedy taught two courses in the McGeorge Salzburg Program, the second being Law and Literature (an interest elsewhere reflected in “The Trial of Hamlet” mock trials over which Kennedy has presided for years in the U.S.) which could lead to open-air Greek drama recitals in the palace courtyards. This course followed immediately after Fundamental Rights, giving Kennedy a very busy morning indeed. And yet, to be sure, this was only part of his work. Much of the rest of his day would be taken up with cert petitions, and then, of course, there were numerous work-related trips across Europe, which Kennedy also had to fit in during his time in Salzburg. How did Kennedy find the time – and the energy – for all of this? Work, of course, was not the whole of it. Friends and family were important as well. He was accompanied every year by his wife, Mary, and frequently by children, and then grandchildren, family being central to him. Over the years, too, other judicial figures joined us, if only briefly, in teaching this course – memorable to me are Justices John Paul Stevens, Antonin Scalia and Elena Kagan, as well as Richard Goldstone and Navi Pillay.

I suspect it’s rare for an American judge to spend as many summers teaching in Europe as has Kennedy. In July 2017, as a consequence of this longstanding connection, he was awarded the freedom of the city of Salzburg. On the other hand, one should maybe not overstretch the “European” or cosmopolitan approach. Perhaps it would be more accurate to say that Kennedy sees his role as one of promoting the rule of law, and American ideals, drawing on foreign approaches where beneficial. Last summer in Salzburg, his good friend, the Salzburg lawyer Wolfgang Berger, had arranged an evening of discussions over Brexit between Kennedy, myself and Gina Miller (the litigant in the famous “Brexit” case that determined the U.K. government must seek the U.K. Parliament’s permission to instigate Brexit). Gina Miller is a fervent opponent of Brexit, and for me, Brexit represents a rejection of both Europe and the European approach to law that I have spent a lifetime studying. And to Kennedy, the judge who has shown such an interest in foreign, and particularly European law, what does Brexit represent? I do not know. I sensed a certain ambivalence there, and agreement that “taking back control” could be a thing of value.

I have learned so much from 25 years of co-teaching with Justice Kennedy in Salzburg. Kennedy is a formidable teacher, and I could not have had a better introduction to the study of the U.S. Constitution. However, in the end, even after 25 years of friendship, Kennedy is still, to me, somewhat of an enigma.

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pure-decadence-blog1 · 7 years

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Yesterday, Terry Lewis (41) killed a woman known as the legislature in the state of Virginia U.

Yesterday, Terry Lewis (41) killed a woman known as the legislature in the state of Virginia U stream movies online The woman, Terry Lewis, was abducted by a drug addict in her blood. She was convicted of her husband's murder and left a son. Although he was still recovering from the trial in the world's most populous country, the United States Court of Appeal, the "unlettered, educated" watchmen. The death of the convicted person has been the first in the USA since 1912. The largest public in the world will be civilized. But if such a thinking is so prevalent among us, we are making mistakes. Which country reflects on its heritage and civilizatoin is still following the laws of ancient times. Yes, obviously, it would be wise not to comply with the practice of transmitting drugs into the blood of a criminal if there are many ways in which the death penalty is serious. Unlike the Taliban of Afghanistan, sorry for their failure now, the US does not comply with the Shariat Law, Combined Analytics, deciding rapidly and resolving those sentences publicly by scratching, striking death, death by fear, shooting and blood-red for many crimes. There is no alarm for demanding requests except for any kind of mercy from above, all of which is done quickly, briefly for those who look to see their hearts appealing as drumbeats gland- working time goes out in the mind in the personal sense of each one. Obey us, follow us or something else ......... Compared to the Taliban and those who follow and apply Sharia law and letters in the spirit, I hate to call those nations, and what kind of U.S. It does not turn, not the death penalty, not the public, without the spotlight - the complicated ways of abusing the word is bad for Uncle Sam teaching and teaching the lesson of any wrongdoing or not the best way. Individual abolitionists went down completely to the breach of the sentence calling it "law enforcement" and "to enter law". Who cares about democracy? The campaign for the elimination of this harmful practice continues to work hard despite the social, moral, and moral levels of human society. Unfortunately, civilization, civilization, or inheritance does not matter to a few countries, India is not another, when it comes to the heart. The "eye for eye" of the kind of reasoning, the reason for such an insurmountable and shocking view, and the persecution of the nation seems to be not always coming down, while crime covers the whole world. These refer to other things - relationships, money, brain, education - to some degree, - lack of intelligence, poverty, unemployment, other civilizations, religion, and wealth by n "a little human, changing differently. It is impossible to get into the critical needs of the supervisors that are urgently needed, thus leading to happy problems in the case of a few deaths, the most influential and often confused rules. all-different kinds - I wonder if the criminal does anything, all have the chance to get down. More countries than Europe have lost the cost of death, which reminds people of other things over time. But this is the 21st century. We are moving forward in almost every area and the laws of the land that are important to the land will have different changes. The 2015 Immigration Service has been ratified by a number of national organizations just a few years ago to investigate the ways in which people are seeking a job that does not recognize them as well as the decision to make a decision power. By providing face-to-face punishment from the face of the world, one does not think of leaving all suffering. Without law enforcement, civilian penalties may take place after a rally on the back of the house depending on the end of their crime. He will do or allow them to meditate on their past, new, or repentant actions, to be forgiven, and to give them opportunity after they have finished their talk to make people people live in society.

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blazemaster9-blog · 7 years

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Exploiting health for profit, the hidden schemes of the DEA Proposal rough draft

Throughout my life I have seen changes in the drug industry yet one thing remains the same. People are getting sick and not just physically but mentally. Each day I hear of death, depression, cancer, and heart disease. Time and time again I hear the benefits of such medications as Vicodin, Xanax, Paxil, Zoloft, Adderall, Chemotherapy, radiation, antibiotics and sleep aid. I hear that there is a solution to every problem you could have and the answer always comes in the form of a drug. What I don’t hear is the side effects that these drugs cause. Although I see these effects on people I care for many require drugs to combat these side effects and there is no answer just a problem, more drugs.

Growing up I was a wild child as I may still be, I love to adventure explore, create and question. I am never satisfied doing just one thing, I’m always on to the next. It is great! I know I can complete a many great things in my time on this earth and will not stop for anyone. Although my teachers thought differently while I continued to fidget, drawing pictures and being unruly as I shouted across the room to my palls. That type of behavior just wasn’t right. I would need to see a specialist as many had before me little did I know I was not the only one. I was diagnosed with ADD then the journey began I was given Ridelin and I began to feel funny.

I can’t remember if I got any more work done but I know I was still a wild child, running around playing as young boys do. Cops and robbers, knights and dragons. Yet I always felt like an outcast I must have been high, and I couldn’t sleep at night my mind would race as I wasn’t on the medication during those hours. I told my parents I felt funny and didn’t want it I didn’t take it some days. We informed the doctor who said the dose must be too low it was increased and the next thing you know I’m sitting in class drooling. Now I thank God for my father who was not particularly for this treatment and allowed me to discontinue use. As the years went by I noticed this drug was no longer given to children and that it was essentially methamphetamine. Yet I’ve never concluded why this was even allowed to happen I guessed that it was about money as I find many friends who have been through a similar struggle I was amazed to find how common drugs really are and home many people are dependent on these substances to be happy or just to live.

This is only the beginning as I’ve seen much destruction as I’ve come across crews of young men and woman popping pills, people who don’t know how to deal with tragedy and mask the pain with substance it’s only a temporary patch leading to a breakdown or to death. Some survive but they are not fully alive the drugs take hold as their health diminishes keeping the prisoner captive in a way where He or She cannot do all that they are made to do. It is a sad story but I’ve seen many set free through a battle of withdrawals and hard times. Some were incarcerated others found a love greater than the drug’s effects.

I find that there are many natural solutions to these issues of life that we face. We all face struggles and sickness but we don’t have to turn to the deception that the many doctors have fallen too. The FDA has set its standards against these natural time-tested solutions. As they regulate food and drugs they have set their focus on approving new drugs and preventing any opposition, they are funded by the pharmaceutical companies via the Prescription drug user fee act of 1992 which allowed the FDA to collect fees from drug manufacturers to fund the new drug approval process. These fees are high and now that they are in place the FDA considers dietary supplements and even organic food with claims to cure illness and benefit our health as drugs and require an approval process which is 3x more rigorous then that of a new drug costing between $150,000 to $1.2 mil per submission.

Furthermore, the manufacturer is expected to pay these high fees with the penalty of federal raids and incarceration as all assets and research are seized in an investigation based on as little as innuendo or allegations. Essentially destroying the business and making it impossible to afford a defense to a charge that could result in a life term. Thus organic and holistic health products are not allowed to state that there products can cure diseases or benefit health without legal action. Claiming that these dietary supplements are a regulated heavily for the safety of the consumer, however there have been 0 deaths from these supplements for as long as the CDC has been keeping track as they are based from food although overdoses of these substances can be a risk . Meanwhile around 100,000 people continue to die each year from prescription drugs.

While many agree something need to change, there are different views. Some suggest a complete uprising of the American people to regain democracy in this country. The Organic consumers organization wants to eliminate corruption of the regulatory system. Demanding the trade of natural goods and raw products and the growing of trading of organic foods. Others such as the Natural solutions foundation would encourage pressuring legislature to remove illegal activity from the FDA and add harsh punishments for the transgression on the law which is a common occurrence without anything but a fine. These individuals say that the penalty should be even greater as to include jail time for the responsible individuals who are contributing to the release of dangerous drugs released illegally through false testing. The time is coming for the American people to take back control of their health and the way we manage our food, the process is broken and in dire need of reconstruction.

Jacob Tomczak

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blazemaster9-blog · 7 years

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Exploiting health for profit, The hidden schemes of the DEA Proposal rough draft

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