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Sunday, August 7, 2022

Can the Rule of Law Be Overruled?

 


Friends, if there's one thing that the modern Left believes, it's that people it doesn't like are automatically guilty of...everything, while people it does like, usually for reasons of partisan affiliation or identity politics, are automatically innocent.  Evidence, per se, is beside the point.  That's why it's so scary when leftists become judges, or prosecutors, because the Constitution and the law, as they are written, quickly become mere loose guidelines in the hands of these creative thinkers.  Their subtle minds can explain to you all day long why Donald Trump is guilty of insurrection and fraud merely for questioning an election, while Stacey Abrams isn't.  They can also explain why the Constitution, which never mentions abortion, contains a right to an abortion, but which does mention a right to keep and bear arms actually doesn't protect gun rights in the least.  But I digress: the point is that, when people whose comprehension of "truth" and "law" is so slippery get control of, say, the FBI, or the Department of Justice, or a federal judgeship, or a state Attorney General's office, or become a city District Attorney, they quickly find that great swaths of constitutional interpretation and of federal, state, and local law are odious to them...and so they set about trying to abolish them, either by commission or omission.  It's the latter that I would draw to your attention today.  "Justice Democrats" across this country are advocating the non-enforcement of laws that they find racist, sexist, homophobic, or merely inconvenient.  The Biden administration is embodying this approach in its refusal to implement our nation's laws against illegal immigration.  Worse, many local prosecutors are, as a matter of policy and on principle, refusing to prosecute people charged with the commission of a long list of serious crimes, many of them violent crimes.  As a result, crime is surging, especially in urban areas, but the prosecutors elected by the deep blue constituencies in these areas actually congratulate themselves for rolling back the hyper-racist police state that supposedly oppressed minorities until the progressives came along to liberate us from law and order.  This article, though, is about a specific case in which a specific conservative Republican, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, took a stand against this trend of deliberate and shameless non-enforcement of the law.  He suspended an elected prosecutor in the Tampa area, and a firestorm of controversy has predictably ensued.  Was DeSantis in the right, legally and constitutionally speaking?  I have no idea.  That's ultimately up to Florida judges and Florida legislators to decide -- and, even more fundamentally, up to the people of Florida.  Personally, I'd say they'll all have their hands full, because the simple truth is that vast numbers of highly placed officials in our criminal justice system now believe that it is their duty not to uphold the law, but to undermine it in the interests of "social justice"...or, to be frank, they believe simply that "the law" is and ought to be whatever they say it is in the moment.  This is a very serious problem, and gubernatorial oversight and intervention isn't a perfect solution by any means, partly because Governors are just as likely to be part of the problem as they are part of the solution.  What do you think of Governor DeSantis's actions?  Is there a way we might bring these rogue prosecutors who refuse to prosecute, and judges who refuse to judge, and policemen who refuse to police, to heel?  I'm curious if you see any reason for optimism, because I'm struggling to find a silver lining myself.


https://spectatorworld.com/topic/ron-desantis-was-right-to-suspend-tampas-woke-prosecutor/

9 comments:

  1. RAY TO NICK

    When the major institutions of a society, like education (law schools are a good example), and people live in a society dominated by Left media, entertainment, and so on, what can you expect?

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  2. Dr. Waddy from Jack: As a high school senior I took a course titled "Problems of Democracy". In it the teacher presented the concept of the"democratic wager". This concept held that when we institutionalize democracy we take a chance on whether it can ensure justice. The "american" left has decided that it does not . The "Critical Legal Studies" school, which forcefully dominates many of our law schools (I mean, question it and you will have no career) inculcates this conclusion in many of lawyers (unto now the 3d generation ,which includes now some in the very legal "professional" heirarchy who now practice.)

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  3. RAY TO JACK

    Thanks for this comment. I must admit that I had absolutely no idea what "Critical Legal Studies" was. Seriously, no idea whatsoever. So, I appreciate your explaining it. Now it all makes sense. Thanks again for this comment..

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  4. Dr.Waddy from Jack: We have remained democratic and have chosen
    it on traditional grounds which insist on the precedence of gradual legal advance enhanced and enacted by established statutesand principled construction of Constitutional, statutory and case law. The "Critical Legal Studies " school conveniently poo-poos all that. "Why statutes are merely products of elites protecting their dominance and attendant privileges." " Their consequently enabled "court law" is merely their obsequious product. ""Therefore it is productive of justice to disable statutory law and its institutions and eradicate the rule of precedent in case law". " Let all case law be the product of incidental judgement by a properly educated platonian elite.

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  5. Dr.Waddy et al from Jack: Sorry , case law not "court law.

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  6. Ray, you're right: the crumbling foundations of law and order in America are entirely consistent with the crumbling foundations of every other aspect of our culture -- a culture which is despised by the very elite that we've tasked with upholding it. The comprehensive domination by the Left over EVERY major institution we have is enough to make a thoughtful conservative throw in the towel...or sign up with the Dark Side. Come to think of it, I ought to keep a BLM t-shirt hanging in the back of my closet just in case. I'm nothing if not adaptable!

    Jack, I think one could argue that "critical legal studies" is a rejection of both Roman law and common law in favor of a new form of theocracy. What is "law", and what is "true"? Simple: it's whatever the high priests of leftism say it is. Sounds like a religion to me. Reason barely registers for these people.

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  7. Dr. Waddy from Jack: During Obama's leisurely sojourne in our White House I heard a leftist publicly declare that Obama and his justice challenged AG Holder were justified in their refusal to enforce laws they did not like, by "prosecutorial discretion". Uhh, should a "prosecutor" with good legal cause decide that a certain law cannot or should not be prosecuted in a particular case, they may be justified. But for a prosecutor or a chief executive to demonstrate complete refusal to enforce any specific law within its purview is lawless and SHOULD be prosecuted against its presumptuous violator!!



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  8. Dr.Waddy from Jack: Be of good cheer; the November showdown draws near and our cause may thereby be of MUCH greater optimism.

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  9. Quite right, Jack: prosecutors don't get to nullify the laws they don't like!

    I hope you're right about November. I'm confident, but a tad uneasy.

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