Reply To: Political Statements
Hey, kids! Let’s discuss constitutional law!
1) Around 1917, it was understood that outlawing possession and sale of alcohol on the federal level would require a constitutional amendment. However, outlawing various other substances wasn’t seen as requiring a constitutional amendment. For the record, most drug laws started off as tax provisions with an interstate commerce context and gradually grew in scope over time, and conflicts between state and federal laws are relatively recent. What limits, if any, are there to the federal government’s authority to regulate the possession, use, and sale of substances?
2) The copyright clause of the constitution grants an effective monopoly “for limited Times” on certain forms of speech in order “[t]o promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts”. The first amendment establishes free speech and free press. How are these seemingly contradictory concepts to be reconciled? How can such a reconciliation be made to allow the extension of copyright for works that have already been created?
3) Under Article 2, Clause 5, only natural-born citizens of the United States are eligible to serve as President. John McCain was born in the Panama Canal Zone at a time when the citizenship status of children born there to US citizens was legally ambiguous. Is he eligible to serve as President?
4) Under the twelfth amendment, the President and Vice-President may not be inhabitants of the same state. In 2000, both George W. Bush (then Governor of Texas) and Richard Cheney (then CEO of Halliburton and living in Dallas) were arguably inhabitants of Texas. Cheney signed some papers to declare that he was an inhabitant of Wyoming. How legitimate was this move?
5) Conservatives demand that nominees for the federal judiciary not be “activist judges,” and liberals demand that those same nominees “respect precedent.” Does a knee-jerk embrace of precedent as sacrosanct condemn <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brown_v._Board_of_Education"Brown while defending Roe? Or is it necessary to argue that Brown was a mistake that must, in hindsight, be preserved due to the sanctity of precedent?
I’ll keep my opinions to myself for now, though my high opinion of Lessig probably makes my feelings on 2) clear.