Колдуэлл об американском Верховном суде
Jul. 28th, 2003 07:27 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
borislvinХорошая заметка из Financial Times за 5 июля, прочитал ее в самолете. Нашел, сохраняю - в сети, кажется, недоступна.
CHRISTOPHER CALDWELL
Passing judgment on America's identity crisis
Financial Times
Jul 5, 2003
Page 13
Sodomy in the Deep South does not generally preoccupy the elite readership of The New York Times. But the day after the US Supreme Court overturned a Texas law banning homosexual intercourse, the paper emblazoned the news across its front page in the three-inch headlines it usually reserves for military victories and domestic assassinations. It was right to do so. The decision asserted a new constitutional principle: that a longstanding tradition condemning a particular sexual practice as immoral "is not a sufficient reason for upholding a law prohibiting the practice". Dissenting justice Antonin Scalia correctly warned that such a principle leaves laws against prostitution, obscenity, bigamy and adult incest without a constitutional leg to stand on. Gay marriage, which a majority of Americans oppose, appears unstoppable. Meanwhile, in one of two "affirmative action" cases, the court gave the broadest mandate ever to the arcane system of racial favouritism that most Americans view as unjust and counter-productive.
This flurry of decisions in the course of 72 hours has led some Americans to reassess what kind of country they will be living in for the next generation. As such, the court has shaken assumptions about how the 2004 presidential election will be fought. It has set the scene for what could be the most vicious and strident US electoral campaign in living memory.
The problem is not that the nine-member court is too far "left". It is easy to point to decisions that are too far "right". Take California's sending a man to prison for 50 years after three minor arrests, two of them for stealing children's videos, which was held not to violate the constitutional prohibition of cruel and unusual punishment. The problem is rather that the court, meant to interpret the constitution, has jumped the rails of its own constitutional mandate. It has taken over functions that are rightly the legislature's. The big decisions that matter most to Americans - sex, abortion, race, the death penalty - are now made on the bench, with Congress demoted to some kind of glorified budget committee.
We know the court is legislating - not adjudicating - because the shallowness of its legal reasoning is admitted by the very scholars and interest groups who most loudly applaud the political outcomes it produces. Thus Albert Hunt of The Wall Street Journal defends Justice Sandra Day O'Connor's decision on affirmative action while granting that she "will be criticised from both sides for illogical, opaque reasoning". Dahlia Lithwick, Supreme Court commentator for Slate, the online magazine, writes: "She got it morally right, even where she's logically wrong." The legal scholar Jeffrey Rosen, best known as a defender of civil liberties against the court's encroachment, warns that in the Texas sodomy decision, "the Court embraced and extended a sweeping and amorphous right to sexual liberty" that is hard to locate in either "the text or history of the constitution".
The court's results-oriented adjudication goes under the euphemism "legal pragmatism". Starting with Roe vs Wade - the 1973 decision that absolved politicians of having to pass general legislation on abortion - Republicans have tended to oppose it, Democrats (tacitly) to embrace it. In 1987, the Supreme Court nomination of Robert Bork, Yale legal scholar, was rejected by a Democrat Senate - not for lack of qualification but for lack of respect for Roe. In the 2000 election debates, Al Gore became the first presidential candidate to vow that he would nominate justices based as much on their ideology as their qualifications.
Yet it is George W. Bush who could be the biggest loser from the Supreme Court's recent arrogation of powers. Even if the court's role in the 2000 elections - blocking Mr Gore from selectively requesting recounts in hand-picked Democratic constituencies - was a proper one, its justices never arrived at a common justification for their intervention. This tainted Mr Bush's victory and implicated him in judicial activism. Worse, it radicalised Democrats, transforming loyalists into activists and organisers. Public reminders of Bush vs Gore do not help the president.
Now Mr Bush faces political problems with the court itself. The nine current justices have served longer without a vacancy than any court in 180 years. There is likely to be at least one retirement before the election and the Senate will confirm all new judicial nominees. Every senator knows the stakes of the new dispensation: nominating justices means nominating one's legislative masters. So senior Democrats have demanded "meaningful consultation" on the next justice and threatened to block anyone who would "turn back the clock". That means no conservative justices. Full stop. If, on the other hand, Mr Bush should nominate a liberal from his own circle - such as Alberto Gonzalez, his affirmative-action-praising White House counsel - he could face a revolt within his own party. The same holds if, as rumoured, he elevates Mrs O'Connor, the author of the affirmative action decision, to chief justice,
Even if Mr Bush escapes a court retirement, he faces formidable short-term problems. Gay groups will be seeking marriage rights in Massachusetts and other states. Last week Bill Frist, the Senate majority leader, a moderate Republican, proposed amending the constitution to stop gay marriage - a move that has panicked Mr Bush. "This is a matter for lawyers to assess," said Ari Fleischer, his spokesman. (Not in a democracy, it isn't.) Such an amendment could pass and a battle between its supporters and detractors would rally Republican activists. But that kind of "culture war" rallying is just what Bush seeks to avoid, since it would scare the more politically liberal constituencies - particularly Jews, Hispanics and suburban women - that he has been wooing.
The president's problem is that the court's decisions have brought into focus an identity crisis in the country at large - one that has deepened since September 11 2001. The US is now engaged in a war that its citizens believe in passionately. They just cannot decide whether it is in defence of the beleaguered values and traditions of the Christian west, or of the right to climb into bed with whomever you like.
The writer is a senior editor at The Weekly Standard
CHRISTOPHER CALDWELL
Passing judgment on America's identity crisis
Financial Times
Jul 5, 2003
Page 13
Sodomy in the Deep South does not generally preoccupy the elite readership of The New York Times. But the day after the US Supreme Court overturned a Texas law banning homosexual intercourse, the paper emblazoned the news across its front page in the three-inch headlines it usually reserves for military victories and domestic assassinations. It was right to do so. The decision asserted a new constitutional principle: that a longstanding tradition condemning a particular sexual practice as immoral "is not a sufficient reason for upholding a law prohibiting the practice". Dissenting justice Antonin Scalia correctly warned that such a principle leaves laws against prostitution, obscenity, bigamy and adult incest without a constitutional leg to stand on. Gay marriage, which a majority of Americans oppose, appears unstoppable. Meanwhile, in one of two "affirmative action" cases, the court gave the broadest mandate ever to the arcane system of racial favouritism that most Americans view as unjust and counter-productive.
This flurry of decisions in the course of 72 hours has led some Americans to reassess what kind of country they will be living in for the next generation. As such, the court has shaken assumptions about how the 2004 presidential election will be fought. It has set the scene for what could be the most vicious and strident US electoral campaign in living memory.
The problem is not that the nine-member court is too far "left". It is easy to point to decisions that are too far "right". Take California's sending a man to prison for 50 years after three minor arrests, two of them for stealing children's videos, which was held not to violate the constitutional prohibition of cruel and unusual punishment. The problem is rather that the court, meant to interpret the constitution, has jumped the rails of its own constitutional mandate. It has taken over functions that are rightly the legislature's. The big decisions that matter most to Americans - sex, abortion, race, the death penalty - are now made on the bench, with Congress demoted to some kind of glorified budget committee.
We know the court is legislating - not adjudicating - because the shallowness of its legal reasoning is admitted by the very scholars and interest groups who most loudly applaud the political outcomes it produces. Thus Albert Hunt of The Wall Street Journal defends Justice Sandra Day O'Connor's decision on affirmative action while granting that she "will be criticised from both sides for illogical, opaque reasoning". Dahlia Lithwick, Supreme Court commentator for Slate, the online magazine, writes: "She got it morally right, even where she's logically wrong." The legal scholar Jeffrey Rosen, best known as a defender of civil liberties against the court's encroachment, warns that in the Texas sodomy decision, "the Court embraced and extended a sweeping and amorphous right to sexual liberty" that is hard to locate in either "the text or history of the constitution".
The court's results-oriented adjudication goes under the euphemism "legal pragmatism". Starting with Roe vs Wade - the 1973 decision that absolved politicians of having to pass general legislation on abortion - Republicans have tended to oppose it, Democrats (tacitly) to embrace it. In 1987, the Supreme Court nomination of Robert Bork, Yale legal scholar, was rejected by a Democrat Senate - not for lack of qualification but for lack of respect for Roe. In the 2000 election debates, Al Gore became the first presidential candidate to vow that he would nominate justices based as much on their ideology as their qualifications.
Yet it is George W. Bush who could be the biggest loser from the Supreme Court's recent arrogation of powers. Even if the court's role in the 2000 elections - blocking Mr Gore from selectively requesting recounts in hand-picked Democratic constituencies - was a proper one, its justices never arrived at a common justification for their intervention. This tainted Mr Bush's victory and implicated him in judicial activism. Worse, it radicalised Democrats, transforming loyalists into activists and organisers. Public reminders of Bush vs Gore do not help the president.
Now Mr Bush faces political problems with the court itself. The nine current justices have served longer without a vacancy than any court in 180 years. There is likely to be at least one retirement before the election and the Senate will confirm all new judicial nominees. Every senator knows the stakes of the new dispensation: nominating justices means nominating one's legislative masters. So senior Democrats have demanded "meaningful consultation" on the next justice and threatened to block anyone who would "turn back the clock". That means no conservative justices. Full stop. If, on the other hand, Mr Bush should nominate a liberal from his own circle - such as Alberto Gonzalez, his affirmative-action-praising White House counsel - he could face a revolt within his own party. The same holds if, as rumoured, he elevates Mrs O'Connor, the author of the affirmative action decision, to chief justice,
Even if Mr Bush escapes a court retirement, he faces formidable short-term problems. Gay groups will be seeking marriage rights in Massachusetts and other states. Last week Bill Frist, the Senate majority leader, a moderate Republican, proposed amending the constitution to stop gay marriage - a move that has panicked Mr Bush. "This is a matter for lawyers to assess," said Ari Fleischer, his spokesman. (Not in a democracy, it isn't.) Such an amendment could pass and a battle between its supporters and detractors would rally Republican activists. But that kind of "culture war" rallying is just what Bush seeks to avoid, since it would scare the more politically liberal constituencies - particularly Jews, Hispanics and suburban women - that he has been wooing.
The president's problem is that the court's decisions have brought into focus an identity crisis in the country at large - one that has deepened since September 11 2001. The US is now engaged in a war that its citizens believe in passionately. They just cannot decide whether it is in defence of the beleaguered values and traditions of the Christian west, or of the right to climb into bed with whomever you like.
The writer is a senior editor at The Weekly Standard
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no subject
Date: 2003-07-29 06:51 pm (UTC)"We will not adopt a literal construction of a statute if the consequences of such construction are absurd or unreasonable." Champigny v. Commonwealth, 422 Mass. 249, 251 (1996)
Буквальный смысл выкидывается запросто.
no subject
Date: 2003-07-29 07:55 pm (UTC)Интерпретация намерения законодателя - вещь нужная и полезная. Например, я помню свой давешний спор с saul_paradise о том, правильно ли рассматривать первую поправку как инструмент навязывания федеральной воли штатам. Он считал, что да, а я - что нет. Чтобы разобраться, я нашел и прочитал записи дискуссии в конгрессе по поводу принятия этой первой поправки - они доступны в интернете. Из этой дискуссии очевидно, что принималась поправка с единственной целью, а именно - защитить граждан и штаты от угрозы всевластия федерального правительства, как инструмент mitigation федеральной власти по отношению к правам штатов и граждан, и никоим образом не наоборот. Вот это и есть то, что я называю нужной и продуктивной интерпретацией.
no subject
Date: 2003-07-30 02:12 pm (UTC)Суд делает две вещи:
1. Обнаруживает абсурд и необходимость переписать закон. При этом ему легислатура пофигу.
2. Смотрит на треп легислатуры и определяет где треп reasonable а где unreasonable (то что абсурд -- unreasonable).
3. Переписывает закон, принимая во внимание только reasonable треп легислатуры и отметая ee unreasonable треп.
И первое действие (определение абсурда) и второе действие (определение резонности) происходят без обращения внимания на мнение легислатуры и без конституционных ограничений.
Релевантная цитата из Attorney Gen. v. School Comm. of Essex, 387 Mass. 326 (я в принципе могу все дело поставить):
"Therefore, a strict reading of the statutes involved might lead to the conclusion that any private school pupil under sixteen residing in Essex and living more than two miles from the private school he attends, must be provided with transportation.
Such a reading of the statutory language, however, leads to absurd consequences. Under the construction described above, a child living in Essex and attending private school in Boston, Worcester, Albany, or New York, would be entitled to transportation to and from his school every day.
We will not adopt a literal construction of a statute if the consequences of such construction are absurd or unreasonable. We assume the Legislature intended to act reasonably. VanDresser v. Firlings, 305 Mass. 51, 53--54 (1940). "
Суд обнаружил абсурдность сам без помощи легислатуры и конституции. А какой текст суд подставил вместо текста данного легислатурой и из каких соображений --это не то что мы обсуждаем.
no subject
Date: 2003-07-30 02:31 pm (UTC)Из того, что вы прислали, я вижу "абсурдность" в весьма узком смысле. Это вовсе не так "абсурдность", которую вы подразумевали, говоря о запрете на мастурбацию. Запрет на мастурбацию может быть абсурден в глазах одних людей, но вполне обоснован в глазах других. Здесь же речь идет об абсурдности в смысле невыполнимости, в смысле, так сказать, опечатки в тексте. Не видя решение целиком, я не могу судить о нем полноценно (например, мне неизвестно, что именно решил суд, какие изменения внесло его решение по сравнению с текстом закона и т.д.), но, судя по всему, законодатель просто забыл упомянуть территориальные ограничения - типа, "если школа расположена в графстве Эссекс или в любом из непосредственно соседних графств", или "но не далее чем на 50 миль", или что-то в этом роде.
Смешивать эти два понимания "абсурдности" - на мой взгляд, совершенно абсурдно само по себе.
no subject
Date: 2003-07-30 03:30 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2003-07-30 03:54 pm (UTC)Касательно мастурбации - видимо, когда закон принимался, законодатель имел в виду именно мастурбацию, а не убийство тещи топором. Язык меняется, меняется словоупотребление - поэтому возможен анализ изначального мнения законодателя. Мало ли, может быть, тогда под мастурбацией все-таки понимали нечто совсем иное?
Осуществимость запрета на мастурбацию играет, очевидно, роль строго противоположную той, что придаете ей вы в данном контексте. Если запрет неосуществим, то закон мертв и не возникает повода для его оценки судом. Если же суд рассматривает этот закон, то не иначе как в контексте некоего дела, каковое не может не состоять в реальном осуществлении такого запрета или оспаривании правомочности такого осуществления.
no subject
Date: 2003-07-30 04:17 pm (UTC)И исходя из этого предположения анализируют ход мыслей легислатуры и что она имела ввиду. Как запрещение на мастурбацию и act reasonably совместимы я не усмотрю.
no subject
Date: 2003-07-30 06:52 pm (UTC)Суд же руководствовался совершенно другим значением абсурдности. Я готов еще раз пояснить это значение.
А именно, он не обсуждал содержательную сторону закона. Он исходил из того, что законодатель волен устанавливать любой закон (постольку, поскольку не нарушает конституцию штата). Исходя из этого суверенитета воли законодателя, он оценивает положения, касающиеся технической реализации этой воли. И если они вступают в явное, вопиющее противоречие с этой волей, он их аннулирует. В частности, в вашем случае, похоже, "воля" выражалась в оплате транспортировки школьников, а реализация воли была прописана недостаточно четко, допуская абсурдные толкования.
В случае мастурбации никто, включая вас, не сомневается, что законодатели, принявшие этот закон когда-то очень давно, имели в виду вполне ясную цель - запрет мастурбации. Глупо или нет, но это факт. Если жители штата (а ведь это вопрос жителей штата, не правда ли?) обеспокоены этим запретом, то могут избрать депутатов или губернатора, включающих в свои программы отмену данного закона. Они могут поставить его на референдум. Всё в их руках, от запретного члена до разрешающего закона. Демократия называется.