MADNESS: 9th Circuit Court rules against Trump's legal travel ban

Town Heretic

Out of Order
Hall of Fame
If you have time and are inclined I'd be interested in what you think about the article I posted earlier National Review. Specifically their 1st and 3rd concerns.

Part of point #1 is that the court used "possibility of specific harm to confer general standing", but after reading the decision it appears that there were specific cases presented, not only the possibility, so I don't completely understand that.

It's simple, the person who wrote this for a magazine with an agenda is doing what he's suggesting the Court is doing, playing fast and loose with the truth. It's one reason why I posted the link and suggested people read through the holding. :cheers:
 

rexlunae

New member
seriously, how do you reconcile shaky and the clear wording of this statute "Whenever the President finds that the entry of any aliens or of any class of aliens into the United States would be detrimental to the interests of the United States, he may by proclamation, and for such period as he shall deem necessary, suspend the entry of all aliens or any class of aliens as immigrants or nonimmigrants, or impose on the entry of aliens any restrictions he may deem to be appropriate." ?

Well, that isn't the entirety of immigration law. The 1965 INA abolished restrictions on country of origin. It didn't explicitly curtail a President's discretion, but it could be interpreted to limit it.

And that's before you consider Constitutional limitations.
 

jeffblue101

New member
Part of point #1 is that the court used "possibility of specific harm to confer general standing", but after reading the decision it appears that there were specific cases presented, not only the possibility, so I don't completely understand that.

Michael McConnell a former appeals judge on the tenth circuit and current professor at Stanford addresses this point more in detail here.
This is the principle that only the persons legally injured by government conduct can sue to challenge its legality. The Ninth Circuit ruling effectively holds that states can challenge federal immigration policies on the ground that key state institutions are affected by the presence or absence of non-citizen students or faculty. That is unprecedented. It is like holding that a grocery store could challenge taxes imposed on its customers because they will have less money to spend at the store. The court did not seem to reflect on the broad implications of its ruling, but instead relied on technical readings of not-quite-analogous cases in different contexts.

The cases cited by the Ninth Circuit fall into two categories. One consists of cases in which the parties directly regulated by the law sue to block enforcement of the law against themselves on the ground that it violates the constitutional rights of others. Examples are the doctors in Roe, who would face criminal penalties if they performed an abortion and invoked the privacy rights of their patients, or the religious school in Pierce v. Society of Sisters, which was losing its accreditation and invoked the free exercise of religion by its students.

But in this case the State of Washington is not a regulated party. It is suing to block enforcement of the executive order against other people. The cases do not support any right of parties not themselves subject to a law to challenge a law based on the legal rights of others, even if they do business with those other people.

The second category consists of cases where the plaintiff has a special relation with the alien (spouse, for example) such that the plaintiff’s own constitutional rights are affected by the exclusion. The State has no special relationship with the affected aliens. True, in a narrow class of cases, states may sue parens patriae on behalf of their citizens, but aliens are not citizens of Washington.
 

jeffblue101

New member
It's simple, the person who wrote this for a magazine with an agenda is doing what he's suggesting the Court is doing, playing fast and loose with the truth. It's one reason why I posted the link and suggested people read through the holding. :cheers:

cheap shot, if he was playing fast and loose with the facts, why would a former circuit Judge also agree with him after he read through the cases cited?
 

Town Heretic

Out of Order
Hall of Fame
cheap shot, if he was playing fast and loose with the facts, why would a former circuit Judge also agree with him after he read through the cases cited?
You should stop getting your facts second hand and read the holding. It wasn't a cheap shot because the guy got it wrong. See kmo's comment on the point of actual vs potential. And three sitting, active judges empowered on the point (one of which, again, was Republican appointed) differ with your former circuit judge. It's possible to see the outcome differently, that's why courts hear arguments to begin with, but a fairer recounting of the difference is required or should be.
 
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