Supreme Court Upholds DACA

[Trunkage]

Why should we want judges to make decisions based on public sentiment?

So reading some opinions. Aletto was keeping to the letter of the law. Gorsch was keeping in the spirit of the law. The latter was more swayed by current public sentiment IMO.

Sexual orientation isnt spoken of in these laws. Back then, homosexuals were illegal in my country. So it was never going to be added back then. It would be added if written today becuase public sentiment has changed even if the law hasn't been updated

Edited to fix a mistake

 

[thebobmaster]

To throw my hat briefly into the discussion, I believe that, while public sentiment shouldn't be the deciding factor in legal decisions (there's a reason we have "innocent until proven guilty", after all), I think that any decent lawmaker should be able to take a look at a changing social landscape and be willing to adjust decisions based on that. In the early 2000's, being LGBT was something to hide, lest you lose your job without any hope of reprisal. That's changed as social awareness that being LGBT doesn't actually change how you work as a person.

As far as DACA goes, however, I believe this is more of a "if it ain't broke, don't fix it" situation. The only people benefiting from DACA are those who came to the US as a child, and presumably grown up in that culture. In addition, DACA only applies as long as the recipient stays clean, so you can't even argue about crime rates among illegals, because as soon as an illegal becomes part of that statistic (on the side of the perpetrator, at least), they lose access to DACA.

While the way a law is written is very important for enforcing it, there is definitely a "spirit of the law" element to human issues such as "should this group of people lose their protection without warning and be deported?" To ignore the intent of the law and focus on how it was worded is, in my opinion, missing the point of the Supreme Court. The purpose of the Supreme Court is to weigh whether the letter or spirit of the law is what matters. Both are important.

 

[Agema]

The point I was trying to make is, what do you believe is and is not allowed to be interpreted by judges and what do you consider to be good social pressures on these judges and bad pressures? My issue is that I would like to hope we could make laws that would solve a potential issue that even has an example all the way back in the bible.

I think interpretation is inevitable. The law is not like science, where there's an objective reality that can be measured and accurately defined. It's about principles, and interpretation. That the nine theoretically most brilliant lawyers in the land can end up utterly at odds 5-4 over the same issue exemplifies how interpretation can vary. We can also consider that Supreme Courts can and have effectively overturned older Supreme Court rulings, or applied very different principles to come to a different conclusion on a similar if not near-identical matter.

Fundamentally, the law is about the orderly and effectively running of societal rules, thus society itself. If the law is not achieving that, there's a problem. The base responsibility for making laws lies with the legislature, but given that interpretation is inherent, I think the judiciary also has a mandate to interpret law in a constructive fashion for the good of society. If the judiciary can make a decision that will have a clearly, severely damaging effect on society or a great number of people, I think they have a responsibility to consider their decision carefully, because it goes against a lot of the basic point of the law. I almost dread to use the term given its vague meaning and flaws, but "common sense" matters.

If we think about principles, I think lynching (usually black) people for the societal satisfaction a racist, ruling white clique offends deep, fundamental US principles of what society (and thus the law) is supposed to achieve, like a right to life, equal treatment before the law, etc. However, let's say that cotton thieves are beginning to become a massive problem, so cotton thieves all get a 10-stretch to make an example of them, when roughly equivalent thievery of other things gets only 5. This offends somewhat against equality before the law, but it's still within major fundamental principles, sentencing guidelines, and may theoretically be societally useful to dampen down a specific problem.

I would suggest another principle is the idea that the government has the mandate to make law. Take a massive, major policy act. I would suggest the role of the courts would generally be to facilitate legislation unless it is clearly illegal or otherwise offends a fundamental principle, because otherwise the courts start usurping governance. If the courts are refusing legislation on what appear to be controversial, tangential or weak reasoning, I think that's getting problematic.

 

[Specter Von Baren]

I think interpretation is inevitable. The law is not like science, where there's an objective reality that can be measured and accurately defined. It's about principles, and interpretation. That the nine theoretically most brilliant lawyers in the land can end up utterly at odds 5-4 over the same issue exemplifies how interpretation can vary. We can also consider that Supreme Courts can and have effectively overturned older Supreme Court rulings, or applied very different principles to come to a different conclusion on a similar if not near-identical matter.

Fundamentally, the law is about the orderly and effectively running of societal rules, thus society itself. If the law is not achieving that, there's a problem. The base responsibility for making laws lies with the legislature, but given that interpretation is inherent, I think the judiciary also has a mandate to interpret law in a constructive fashion for the good of society. If the judiciary can make a decision that will have a clearly, severely damaging effect on society or a great number of people, I think they have a responsibility to consider their decision carefully, because it goes against a lot of the basic point of the law. I almost dread to use the term given its vague meaning and flaws, but "common sense" matters.

If we think about principles, I think lynching (usually black) people for the societal satisfaction a racist, ruling white clique offends deep, fundamental US principles of what society (and thus the law) is supposed to achieve, like a right to life, equal treatment before the law, etc. However, let's say that cotton thieves are beginning to become a massive problem, so cotton thieves all get a 10-stretch to make an example of them, when roughly equivalent thievery of other things gets only 5. This offends somewhat against equality before the law, but it's still within major fundamental principles, sentencing guidelines, and may theoretically be societally useful to dampen down a specific problem.

I would suggest another principle is the idea that the government has the mandate to make law. Take a massive, major policy act. I would suggest the role of the courts would generally be to facilitate legislation unless it is clearly illegal or otherwise offends a fundamental principle, because otherwise the courts start usurping governance. If the courts are refusing legislation on what appear to be controversial, tangential or weak reasoning, I think that's getting problematic.

Bravo.