The Hawaii Supreme Court handed down a unanimous opinion on Wednesday declaring that its state constitution grants individuals absolutely no right to keep and bear arms outside the context of military service. Its decision rejected the U.S. Supreme Court’s interpretation of the Second Amendment, refusing to interpolate SCOTUS’ shoddy historical analysis into Hawaii law. Dahlia Lithwick and Mark Joseph Stern discussed the ruling on this week’s Slate Plus segment of Amicus; their conversation has been edited and condensed for clarity.
The conservatives on the supreme court are crap historians and even worse judges.
Originalism is nothing more than a mechanism for the Supreme Court to undo past precedent they don’t like. Welcome to the new lochner era.
Hopefully we end this one like we ended the last, with a wave of socialism and a tough president willing to pack the court.
Sorry Loving v Virginia, it didn’t used to be widely understood that the equal protection clause would forbid inter racial marriage bans. After all, both white and black people are forbidden from marrying other races by those laws. There, equal. That’s how it was historically understood, heck it was illegal in 16 states still at the time and widely disapproved of.
But this presumes origialism is some coherent philosophy in the first place, instead of an excuse for partisan hackery cherry picking by Heritage Foundation stooges to get the conclusion they want.
Count me in favor of packing the court, not like there’s any integrity to jeopardize. More to lose by doing nothing while they continue to rampage.
The next two civil rights I’m guessing we lose are gay marriage (Obergefell) and contraceptive access (Griswold). Obergefell because it was already close and hating anyone that’s not cis is in vogue now on the right. Griswold because it was determined on exactly the same lines as Loving and Roe (In fact, Griswold is what underlay roe) and there’s enough religious nuts out there that feel like contraceptives are sinful.
We may lose sodomy as well (Lawrence)
*not cis and straight
The Senate already changed the number of justices to 8 for a year. I don’t see why it would be wrong to add extras after they admitted the count doesn’t matter.
When was that?
When Pubs neglected their constitutional duty to appoint Garland
Ah. I hadn’t thought of it that way.
More judges are needed to right the wrongs of the federal Supreme Court!
This is such a great argument for why we must pack the court to fix this injustice.
Do nothing, and we will surely suffer the partisan revisionism. Pack the courts, and there’s at least a chance to right the ship.
And the major questions doctrine is just there to change laws they don’t like.
In practice, “Originalism” refers to a quality of the judgements. Each ruling is its own original interpretation of the Constitution very clearly independent of any others.
Hopefully we end this one like we ended the last, with a wave of socialism and a tough president willing to pack the court.
Given the current crop of politicians moving through the state and federal seats, I’m not holding my breath.
Yeah, it’s not going to be anytime soon. And I really don’t know what will change things.
Both of those assume good faith
The liberal judges on SCOTUS still recognize 2A, though maybe with a few more restrictions. You wouldn’t see them pass this decision.
I don’t know how they would have decided on this specific case, but I’m happy to see anyone standing up to the extreme extent the modern court has taken things with the second amendment. DC vs Heller, which started this nonsense not allowing basically any effective gun control legislation to stand, was a close decision, 5-4. The dissenting opinion was even written by a conservative registered republican, appointed by a republican president (John Paul Stevens, yes he was considered a conservative appointee, but looked more liberal over time as the court got more extreme around him): In a dissenting opinion, Justice John Paul Stevens stated that the court’s judgment was “a strained and unpersuasive reading” which overturned longstanding precedent, and that the court had “bestowed a dramatic upheaval in the law.”
Our current judicial extremism on gun rights is out of control. More recently a gun control law that had stood for a hundred years in New York was struck down. And yes it was 6-3 with all the liberal justices strongly dissenting. Our current interpretation of the second amendment is an extreme modernist interpretation twisted by people like the Federalist Society and NRA, with plenty of money from gun manufacturers and other interests flowing in.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/District_of_Columbia_v._Heller https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_York_State_Rifle_%26_Pistol_Association,_Inc._v._Bruen
Popular opinion.
Sure, if Alabama can ignore SCOTUS, why not?
And Texas.
And Florida
Speaking of Texas laws, could the rest of us pass a law that allows private citizens to sue anyone in possession of guns?
Yes, but then you’d have to enforce it.
A big problem with modern “well if you do X then I’ll do Y” is that - even in brighter blue states like California and Minnesota and Vermont - the local Sheriffs and Police Departments are all still Fash AF.
I think the fact that there’s no government enforcement is what allowed that to work in Texas. You couldn’t challenge the state, because it’s private citizens that are “enforcing” the law through civil action.
You couldn’t challenge the state, because it’s private citizens that are “enforcing” the law through civil action.
Its private citizens who are alerting sheriff’s deputies and local pd by filing these complaints. They’ve effectively created a kind of legal framework for anti-abortion SWATing.
The system only works because the cops/prosecutors/judges are assumed willing to play along. Specifically, Ken Paxton - the state AG - is fishing for pregnant woman and their attendant physicians to hook and hammer. He’s outsourced the process of detective work to his horde of little online gumshoes. But the ability to exercise violence on anyone spotted is still reserved to his friendly officers corpse.
I think a better idea would be for anyone who is carrying must have insurance, but that’s not too likely either
I agree, but Texas didn’t pass a law requiring women to get baby insurance, so it didn’t fit as well.
No one in their right mind would expect a law to operate like that, and it’s really just to create fear. No, it could only be passed by someone whose goals are power, fear, intimidation, control. While I wouldn’t rule Dems out of those intentions, I do have higher expectations of their constituents.
Sure, right after we pass a law that allows gun owners to shoot anyone who sues them. That makes about as much sense as what you said.
That makes about as much sense as what you said.
Someone should have told Governor Abbot that. Granted it’s been struck down now…
Texas’ abortion law, passed last year as Senate Bill 8, empowers private citizens to sue anyone who “aids or abets” an abortion after about six weeks of pregnancy.
The law is extremely broad — anyone, regardless of where they live or whether they have a connection to the person obtaining an abortion, can bring a lawsuit against anyone who helps someone obtain an abortion in virtually any way.
https://www.texastribune.org/2022/03/24/texas-abortion-law-legal-challenges/
That’s exactly what I was referring to, though I had no idea it’s been struck down. Good to hear!
I figured as much, but clearly knowledge of that bit of the law never made it to the fox news crowd.
Are you sure the law has been overturned? I couldn’t find anything about it, but did see this from a couple months ago that speaks as if the law is still on the books: https://versustexas.com/texas-abortion-law/
Yep that’s some dumb shit that they never should have done, I agree.
Only republican led states are allowed to ignore scotus.
Afaik it hasn’t worked out for Alabama (any of the times)
It’s an amazing case because the Hawaii Constitution has a provision that is the same as the Second Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. It literally uses the exact same words as the Second Amendment. And Justice Eddins said: Even though the provisions are the same, we will not interpret them the same way, because we think the U.S. Supreme Court clearly got it wrong in Heller when it said the Second Amendment creates an individual right to bear arms.
The bill of rights protects rights, it doesn’t create rights. That is a pretty fundamental concept.
In regards to rights not being created…
Rights are a created and codified concept. Whether or not something is a right or not is decided by someone somewhere down the line. There is always a foundational document that expresses the right because in it’s absence you don’t really have a right you have either a privilege that can be taken away by a valid or at least powerful authority or you have a grey area where simply no law or social norm applies until further regulation is created. This is subject to change over time and location.
Rights as we understand them today are not naturally occuring. The idea isn’t even particularly old in the grand scheme of things. Before that point laws definitely existed but they were pretty simplistic operating codes there was no higher echelon of law that superceed other law particularly just layers of powerful people who interacted with the law. If you were basically in charge of the law you could rewrite it as you saw fit and your potential consequences were pissing off someone who could band together and rebel against your authority. If you felt secure enough you could re-write anything through decree. Rights are a feature that was conceptualized or created from scratch in 18th century philosophy with the rise and design of modern concepts of democratic government.
The 2nd Amendment itself is a wonderful example of a non-universal right. Out of all the governments in rhe world today only four have a version of a right to firearms. The USA, Guatemala, Mexico and the Czech Republic. Of those only the US and Guatemala have no restrictions on both firearm type and a required licencing program. Outside of that guns are most often regulated but legal. Exceptions being situations like Japan where there is an almost total prohibition but where guns are legally purchasable ownership is covered under variation of regular property rights against government seizure sort of like how your car is.
You technically do not have a right specifically to a car. They are just legal to own without a licence and illegal to use without one. But use and possession are two independent principles. The right to property is subject to laws banning or regulations of specific things but also Constitutional rights against illegal seizure. There are a lot of things one can only legally possess only with an appropriate licence and that isn’t a violation of property rights.
Rights are a created and codified concept. Whether or not something is a right or not is decided by someone somewhere down the line. There is always a foundational document that expresses the right because in it’s absence you don’t really have a right you have either a privilege that can be taken away by a valid or at least powerful authority or you have a grey area where simply no law or social norm applies until further regulation is created.
Do you believe the second amendment creates a (individual or otherwise) right to bear arms?
Rights as we understand them today are not naturally occuring. The idea isn’t even particularly old in the grand scheme of things. Before that point laws definitely existed but they were pretty simplistic operating codes there was no higher echelon of law that superceed other law particularly just layers of powerful people who interacted with the law. If you were basically in charge of the law you could rewrite it as you saw fit and your potential consequences were pissing off someone who could band together and rebel against your authority. If you felt secure enough you could re-write anything through decree. Rights are a feature that was conceptualized or created from scratch in 18th century philosophy with the rise and design of modern concepts of democratic government.
Historically, deciding who ascends to the throne when a king dies or how to distribute a man’s property after his death was based on birthright, at least in some cultures. Birthright is an old concept. I believe our modern conception of natural rights or human rights has evolved from that. The development that accompanied democracy was the idea of equal rights, and we’re still working on that.
The 2nd Amendment itself is a wonderful example of a non-universal right. Out of all the governments in rhe world today only four have a version of a right to firearms.
The text of the amendment is “arms,” not “firearms.” Those terms are not interchangeable.
The USA, Guatemala, Mexico and the Czech Republic. Of those only the US and Guatemala have no restrictions on both firearm type and a required licencing program.
In what sense does the United States have no restrictions on firearm type?
Outside of that guns are most often regulated but legal.
Firearms in the United States are regulated. Businesses that buy and sell firearms must have a license.
You technically do not have a right specifically to a car. They are just legal to own without a licence and illegal to use without one.
You only need a license to operate a car on a public road. No license is required for driving a vehicle on private property.
I am unsure how your individual takes are relevant to the passages you quoted or are at best fairly surface level abstractions or dodges of main topic at hand… and on a personal note I must say that I am quite tired of this style of engagement where an entire post is chopped up, regurgitated and replied to in short, low effort dismissals. If you can’t write your own damn paragraph, don’t bother.
I will leave this with an answer to your first question. Yes. Laws and legal theory are CREATIONS. Somebody wrote them, had intentions for their use which they tried to write in such a way to illustrate their intent because intent, letter, cultural continuity of precedent and effect to obtain peaceable justice are four independent vectors under which justices balance their individual rulings between. Rights are a body of law. Every single individual part of the operating system of the legal system is essentially optional and it CREATES the rubric for what is a legitimate use of force on behalf of the State. You are simply used to the one into which you were born and are choosing to believe it represents a universal truth. That whole legal possession of in(un)alienable rights was at one political considered a completely radical idea and it had critics. The “Divine Right of Kings” is tracable in an English sense to the Magna Carta which outlines the rules of legal succession which served as a constitutional document. You can trace the application of rights to the populace at large back to the English Bill of Rights from 1689 based largely on the ideas of John Locke and his contemporaries which mostly gained traction as a knee jerk response response to the perceived flippancy and overindulgences of James II but those rights are exceedingly foreign to our modern eyes for not the least reason they are very stratified by class. Your fun fact of the day is the UK didn’t legally have the very basics of human rights outlined as we know them in the American modern conception of them on their books until 1998 which was also when they officially repealed the death penalty since it was an ultimate violation of their conception of rights of the person.
Perhaps ask oneself if the original Constitutional right to “Life” is truly protected in the US when the State and the states under that Constitution are allowed to schedule the killing of people. That phrase “Life, Liberty and Pursuit of Happiness” is a rip from John Locke’s “Life, Liberty and Property” in which his definition of “Life” meant “to live a style of life free from government interference.” This is what has been interpreted as the US Constitutional definition. UK Human Rights Act of 1998 protects a right to “life” as in a right to breathe, think have a pulmonary rhythm etc. Thus while both promise a right to “life” only one is explicitly understood as a protected right to be alive. You have no perfect Constitutional right to be alive in the US.
Every law requires interpretation at it’s point of judgement both ways because the question “what is law” in a broad philosophical sense is something every court grapples with every day. Your take is very much overly simplistic.
… And please don’t try and post “gotchas” because I didn’t list particular nitty-gritty aspects of individual laws I mention. My posts are long enough and I need to truncate them somehow.
on a personal note I must say that I am quite tired of this style of engagement where an entire post is chopped up, regurgitated and replied to in short, low effort dismissals.
I would like to apologize for that. It is a defense against people who act in bad faith.
I will sit down and give you a proper reply when I have time.
>I must say that I am quite tired of this style of engagement where an entire post is chopped up, regurgitated and replied to in short, low effort dismissals.
i don’t mind short, low effort comments. but the meticulously quoted, but page-long comments bother me a great deal. each thread can contain its own topic, and when it necessitates addinional threads, that can happen. writing multiple-page essays back-and-forth is a genuine academic venture, and this is a link aggregation comment section.
I also do not mind short low effort comments either though they often fall into “short, quippy and wrong” issues but the series of quotations in response to each individual part of a prior post is the engagement style I’ve learned to expect of the very self-centered and close minded.
They generally don’t want to have a discussion with an actual discussion of ideas, they want to take the least amount of effort to dismiss the post as wrong out of hand and be done with it.
Not really. Rights are a man-made construct. A social contract that a people agree on. There’s nothing inherent about them.
A society could, for example, decide that certain people had the right to eat human babies, beat their wives. That would be just as legitimate as anything else.
By the same token, a society can decide that certain things are explicitly NOT rights, or to decide which rights take precedence over other rights.
None of this is defined by some divine ordnance, or law of nature. It’s all people.
Rights are a fascinating concept. While I agree with you practically that we definitely create the social contract that “gives” people rights, that’s not really how rights are conceptualized in law. In the Western conception, rights are, by definition, not “given”, they are “inalienable”, meaning that you have rights even if someone has taken away your practical ability to exercise them. The rights themselves, separate from your ability to exercise them, are indeed considered “inherent”. In the olden days, this was often codified or framed in terms of religion, but it doesn’t have to be. Calling rights “natural” or “self-evident” are other ways of framing their “inherent-ness”.
Of course, in reality it isn’t so simple. We separate “natural” and “derived” rights. There aren’t many natural rights. Things like the right to life, to self-determination, and to freedom of conscience are considered natural rights (in the West, anyway), while something like the 2nd amendment to the US Constitution would be considered a derived right. Derived rights, of course, are rather more subject to interpretation since they rely on a chain of reasoning from a more natural right, and that chain of reasoning is subject to challenge.
Except, that many black folk in the US did not have a right to life or self determination at the beginning. So even these “inherent” rights aren’t so inherent until society agrees to grant/create them.
They had the “right” but they weren’t able to exercise it. The moral wrongness of withholding their inherent right to life, etc. Is what created the moral impetus to free the slaves. It is a subtle but important difference. If rights are inherent, they can’t be removed without violating the moral fabric that those rights are based on. Thus, when a government removes the ability to exercise an inherent right, that is what makes that government’s action “wrong” and not just “different”.
I’m not buying that. Slavery has been a staple of civilizations all through history. There’s no universal law of nature that any being has any right to life, freedom or self-determination.
The “moral fabric” isn’t some universal constant either. It too is a function of society. In the U.S., for instance, in 1776 there was no moral problem with slavery. Time went by and morality in the country evolved such that slavery, for many, was no longer acceptable. But it wasn’t that the moral fabric of U.S. society was violated in 1776, it was just different in 1776.
Who knows, in another 100 years people might consider something that is normal today to be some huge violation of something that should be a human right.
Yup, fair enough. If I wasn’t clear, I’m not necessarily arguing that I believe in the concept of inherent rights. I’m an atheist, so I have a bit of trouble with it, too. Nonetheless, it has a very long tradition and underpins the modern concept of rights. At least conceptually, we lose something when we say that rights are contingent rather than inherent.
The concept of natural rights is great for people who believe in God and are arrogant enough to speak for him. Not so much for rational people.
The fact that our supposedly secular legal system is based around religious gobbledegook is something I try not to think about.
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“A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.”
As written, the right to bear arms only applies to people who are in a well regulated militia.
The modern use of “regulated” isn’t the same as it was then.
Regulation had to do with training and equipment. The idea was that militias, as opposed to a standing (“Regular”) army, weren’t always trained and armed when they were called to arms. The idea of a “well-regulated militia” was for civilians to already have weapons and understand their use if they were needed.
So a requirement for a well-regulated militia is for civilians to have the right to own and use weapons.
Is it antiquated? Maybe. But saying that “well-regulated” militia was meant to limit access to firearms is an argument based on either ignorance or dishonesty.
Well not quite. Well regulated did also include training and they did not consider the average person to be well trained enough to qualify for the phrase.
False, George Mason quote “I ask, sir, what is the militia? It is the whole people except for a few public officials.” George Mason wrote a draft of what became the second amendment
As written, the right belongs to ‘the people’. That’s everyone. It can’t be infringed because that would interfere with their ability to form a well regulated militia, which is necessary to secure freedom.
English is hard sometimes, but not that hard if you try.
Right. Because rights are created by God, right?
Rights are not created, bestowed, issued, manufactured, or handed out.
They aren’t a license or a badge or something physical.
Right. Just like God.
I think the important thing is to remember how important it always is to fight for them, at any rate.
I would argue all gods are created since there is zero evidence that they exist outside our imaginations.
That’s correct, the right for schoolchildren to live should always be fought for.
First and foremost. Though that argument in practice drifts annoyingly towards anti-abortion arguments, which are a different situation.
The rights of an existing citizen should always come before the rights of a theoretical future citizen. Requiring a potential mother to donate time and blood against her will is a very tiny step away from requiring US citizens to donate blood against their will to save a different life. Do you know what kind of shitstorm there would be if they started blood typing people in border states so that they could commander citizens to take their blood to help injured noncitizen immigrants?
If the government flipped to an ultra socialist majority, the precedent that is ok for the government to override your right to bodily autonomy when it seems it necessary to save a life, could take a pretty dark turn, mandatory blood donations, marrow, that extra kidney you aren’t using… All that could be fair game in the name of life.
Interesting argument. I prefer to draw a distinction between a fertilized embryo and a human. The idea that a fetus has the same rights as an awake, thinking, feeling person is absurd. If fetuses have rights, then liver cells should too.
The bodily autonomy arguments are a little less effective imo. The right does not genuinely believe in freedom or rights period, much less bodily autonomy. Thus, body autonomy arguments will not work. They simply don’t really believe in it. They believe people are a resource, to be used up, just like coal or oil. As soldiers or workers or breeders or whatever. They won’t admit it, but that’s kinda how they feel. Kinda that whole old-school “work to live” line of thinking.
Btw, I hope I’m not confusing you, but I’m not actually a conservative. I’m simply willing to sound like one whenever it helps me to communicate a point to someone. I’m no genuine christian though, Jesus, while real, was a human man, nothing divine about him.
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Internet atheists see any mention of God or religion as an opportunity to hijack a discussion.
internetreligionists see any criticism of religion as out-of-line and personally insulting.Can you explain why religion should have been a part of this discussion before someone else brought it up?
Yes.
What’s the difference between an “internet atheist” and an atheist?
It’s a little like this:
Key & Peele - Office Homophobe
invidious link
youtube link
I am a vegan.
You should do crossfit.
I use Arch btw
When it’s literally a discussion of where rights come from and theists suggesting they come from God (while avoiding the word God and pretending they mean something else), it’s not hijacking. You’re the one trying to hijack to discussion to talk about how much you hate atheists.
Whoa. That’s a bit too philosophical, bud! We like to keep things simple and superficial around here.
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::sigh::
This is a bad ruling; Hawai’i is saying that their state laws and traditions take precedent over federal laws, the US constitution, and SCOTUS rulings. It’s intentionally trying to undermine the concept of the rule of law in order to get the result that they want. That’s not a “devastating rebuke”, it’s a toddler screaming about not getting candy in the supermarket.
This is counter to the concept of the rule of law, and should be seen as an embarrassment, not something to celebrate.
That’s not a “devastating rebuke”, it’s a toddler screaming about not getting candy in the supermarket.
It appears Hawai’i is parroting decisions by redder states, in an effort to force the SCOTUS to rule broadly on the question of Supremacy (or, at least, try and split the baby in some coherent way).
This is counter to the concept of the rule of law
Its counter to the concept of Federalism, but right in line with the Seperatist theory of law that quite a few modern day politicians happily espouse when it suits them.
just like cannabis and other laws in states taking precedent over federal laws?
Texas is another example and abortion is a state by state issue too as is medical and vehicle insurances
driver’s licenses are a state by state thing too as is voting not a federal thing all state by state and education standards are state by state and SNAP benefits
US should have gotten things more united and settled before it was too late and shattering instead of waiting to cry and moan about it afterwards
I already responded to that. Local laws do not supersede federal marijuana laws, as you will quickly discover if you try to purchase a firearm. (And, BTW, if you are a ‘legal’ user of marijuana and buy a firearm, that’s a federal felony.)
SO YOU AGREE that there is no Constitutional right to carry.
WTF are you on about? I didn’t make any argument about “constitutional” carry. Moreover, the Bruen decision said that states could impose carry restrictions, just that the restrictions had to be reasonable and apply universally (neither of which is the case in New York, either the state or the city).
As far as the states that no longer require a permit to carry? By saying that states may make reasonable restrictions on carrying firearms, SCOTUS has implicitly said that states may have permitless carry. …And TBH, since my state enacted permitless carry several years ago, I don’t believe that there’s been a significant rise in gun violence (aside from the spike seen across the country during the pandemic).
I think that it’s just a non-issue.
That said, I would hope that people that choose to carry would get some training, practice, and learn when they can legally use lethal self-defense. Which, sadly, mostly people do not.
Supremacy clause strikes again.
A state law that contradicts federal law is facially invalid. My state could make a law saying that it was legal to make and sell machine guns, but the NFA of 1934 and FOPA of 1986 both say no, and I guarantee that anyone that tried to follow state law in that case would end up in federal prison.
We saw the same thing in regards to reproductive rights, prior to the Dobbs decision; states would pass laws banning reproductive choice for women, and they would immediately be struck down by courts as invalid because Roe had already said those laws were invalid. Until federal law changes–or SCOTUS rules a different way–the law is that, regardless of what a state says, marijuana users are not allowed to own firearms.
…And, FWIW, federal courts may end throwing that out in the wake of the NYSPRA v. Bruen decision. I think that there are a few cases currently working their way through the system.
The US is akin to the EU, American states are like European states
There’s no federal system for the EU, every country is fully autonomous.
So you can see why states are so defiant when the union tries to impose laws over them
Aren’t US states like counties? Like the states have a narrow set of rules they decide over and the rest comes from the top down.
I think this also. I don’t think this is good, but it’s not without precedent considering how Federal law and marijuana legalization works on a State level superceding Federal.
Truthfully this is just another ruling denying Federal as law of the land.
Marijuana laws don’t supersede federal law though; the fed. gov’t simply chooses not to enforce the laws in states that have legalized it, and citizens of the legal states don’t have standing to sue the gov’t and compel them to enforce the laws. (And yeah, I agree that marijuana needs to be descheduled completely so that this isn’t an issue.) (IIRC, they would need to demonstrate a personal harm caused by lack of enforcement to have standing to sue.)
In point of fact, if you purchase legal marijuana, either for recreational purposes or medical reasons, you are ineligible to purchase a firearm; this is made very clear on form 4473, where it specifically states that even if it’s legal in your state, it’s still a federal crime that makes you a prohibited person.
It is ultimately all rooted in the same concept, a rejection of the Supremacy Clause.
This is just another salvo in the kind of language that leads to either a civil war or a secession, and it being made by the “good guys” doesn’t stop that.
I… Don’t think that’s really the case. I don’t think anti-2A states like HI and CA are trying to delegitimize the Supremacy Clause, I think they truly believe that they’re on the right side of history when they’re undermining civil rights. OTOH, I would agree 100% that Texas for instance is trying to undermine the supremacy clause and force a gov’t showdown.
…Which, if Biden is smart, he will avoid doing until and if he wins the election. I would bet a lot of money that Abbot has engineered this to be an election year stunt, esp. since senate Republicans torpedoed their own deal on immigration reform. If Biden goes after Abbot before the election–even though precedent is clearly on his side–he energizes the far right. If he does it the day after he wins the election–regardless of whether he becomes a lame duck or not–then Republicans don’t get to use that.
marijuana legalization works on a State level superceding Federal.
it really doesn’t, though. federal agents can and still occasionally do assert the supremacy of federal prohibition over state level legalization, it’s just that they’ve been directed not to in most cases. you can absolutely still be arrested for possession and when I was getting my card they made an effort to point that out and told me not to bring it to the post office or national parks or anything else like that where the law enforcement is likely to be federal rather than state or local.
Considering Hawaii is, by UN definition, illegally occupied? Good. Hawaii should be it’s own nation.
How does that make Hawaii different from the rest of the US? Or most of the Americas?
Not too familiar with the US but didn’t Texas just recently just set a precedent that the supreme court can just be ignored. Doesn’t the legal system there work off of precedent so that’s a thing you can just do now?
I call it the you and what army precedent. Things will get interesting from here on out.
didn’t Texas just recently just set a precedent that the supreme court can just be ignored
Did George Wallace set a precedent by standing in the schoolhouse door?
No. That isn’t how legal precedent works.
This is asserting we have no rights outside of what the federal or state constitutions allow, which is a bad precedent to attempt to set. The Bill of Rights Amendments do not provide us with rights, they instead protect us from government limitations of certain rights that are inherent. People seem do not understand the juxtaposition of granted rights vs protected rights in these contexts when diacussing these kinds of cases.
Does the Hawaii state constitution specifically deny the right to keep and bear arms outside of military service?
Even if it did, it wouldn’t matter as the US constitution is the ultimate authority and contradicts that opinion. It would take a few years to get to the Supreme Court though.
No, it does not. Many residents have AR-15s and similar to defend against destruction from wild boars and axis deer.
More of this.
The supreme court is supremely illegitimate. Ignore all their rulings.
Does this apply to the border? Asking for a friend.
Sure seems like it does in practice.
Remember, Hawaii is the the only US state so far taken by force.
What do you mean? Most of the county was taken by force. Taken from indigenous tribes or Mexico and originally from the British. Really Alaska is the weird one. We just bought that.
The British and the US government are actually two different governments. So I said US state not British anything.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Overthrow_of_the_Hawaiian_Kingdom
Mass immigration and creating an abusive lawless space called “the frontier” versus direct military overthrow are two different things.
What are you taking about? The vast majority of the US was claimed by the US government, not the British. Also, do the indigenous tribes in the mainland not count as a “government” to you or something? Their land was 100% taken by force. Along with the original war against the British and subsequent wars with Mexico, I’d say that user is completely correct.
“Yeah but uh like we can blame someone else for that so we get to enjoy the spoils of their sins except guilt-free” - Americore Brainworms
That’s a pretty shit take, even by American standards. Toss in pretending Hawaii is the only one and even conservatives are going to clown on it.
You’re telling me the trail of tears wasn’t the British’s doing?!? 😭😭😭 /s
illegally by US marines and a gun boat and the Queen told the people to stand down thinking the US government would do the right thing
Well there we go; the stupidest thing I’ll read today.
