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OCCUPY THE LEGAL SYSTEM
By
Pat E. Hearse
This last Defense Act has posed a strange issue. Obama is now being sued over it (by Chris Hedges) as it allows for him, Obama, to decide to lock up a U.S. citizen, even in the U.S., using the Armed forces to do so. No lawyer, no notification, no warrant, nothing – just the President decides “You – outta here” and the pentagon locks him up, tortures him, whatever.
To most Americans, this looks pretty stupid. I mean, where the hell does he get off deciding that he can lock me up without any due process? How much of the Constitution and the Bill of Rights does this violate?
I mean, they are talking about Occupy Wall Street and how shook up everybody is. Well, they are. Verizon backed off their $2 fee for paying their bill by phone and banks freaked out about ATM fees and, oh yes, remember SPOA? The attempt to censor the net? Even the real right wing sponsors of the bill chickened out of that.
Well, this is nothing compared to this act. Yes, we have the occupy movement and its strength is the vast sympathy is has. My generation had to occupy Dean’s Offices, ROTC Buildings, pour blood on draft records, fight police goons in Chicago as the Mayor exhorted the goons to “shoot to maim or kill” any protestor. They killed Fred Hampton while he was sleeping. Man, we had to do all sorts of shit and the war continued anyway. Do we have to revived to “good ol days and charge the White House?” Comon now.
So, what is the debate now?
Even some Occupy people are wondering if Chris Hedges has “standing” to sue the President over this bill. I think everyone has standing.
But it is a technical legal term and so we have to be careful. Now, I am very smart, intelligent, knowledgeable, have done research about things that happened 400, 500, 2,000, and to some extent even 10,000 years ago. I don’t have to do any more of that crap. Hell, I’m a Ph.D. and don’t have to do anything, so there! I can argue both sides of any question, but I am not an attorney.
So what the hell is this about standing?
I asked an attorney after explaining the bill.
He said, “Sounds to me like they’re laying down.”
So get up!
So I found a discussion of “standing” and reprinted it here. You gotta read the small print on legal documents, but I’ve taken care of that. How? Ah, I just made it big print. I like computers.
But first, some real important stuff.
Rick Perry has quit and he supported Gingrich. I guess he will find out about it soon. Meanwhile, I guess this means Turkey can get back into NATO and we will increase its foreign aid to zero.
Except Gingrich’s ex-wife number 2 appeared on TV to say he wanted an open marriage and this is supposed to give him trouble with the marriage forces of the religious nutbags. Forget it. Nothing bothers Newt and, besides, he is a Catholic now. He went into
That small confessional
There the guy’s whose got religion’l
Tell you if your sin’s original
If it is try playing it safer
Drink the wine and chew the wafer
2,4,6,8
Time to transubstantiate…
And Tom Lehrer, in the Vatican Rag, solved that problem. (It’s on You Tube.)
Mitt Romney was told he was part of the 1% and he replied that the 99% guy was “tearing this country apart!” That’s telling him Mitt. We gotta pull together, no?
Isn’t it time to bomb something?
I’ve said all along that the best thing Obama has in his re-election bid is the Republican field.
Where were we? Oh yeah, standing.
Well, as I said, I think we all have standing because our Constitution is being attacked and, hence us, in our pursuit of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. Our right to due process has been taken away. We lost our rights and Obama, by signing the Bill, took them away. Hence, he is the defendant and we have standing to sue him.
But I say, let Chris do it. Go Hedges!
Meanwhile, Republicans and rednecks, the terms seem to go together, want to bomb Iran, invade it. Even Israel is saying they may wait awhile, but them they are too busy bombing Palestinians (got some yesterday in Gaza) to bother with Iran.
Carter, when he was President, did not start one war and all the prisoners in Iran were returned alive. Hence, he was a one-term-president. Obama still has Afghanistan, but he has been called “the worse president since Carter,” by Gingrich, I think.
Word has leaked out that Rick Santorum’s wife had an abortion by the doctor who delivered her and then she had an affair with him, but that might be a lie and it was mailed out anonymously by someone pretending to be from Ron Paul’s campaign and Paul really couldn’t give a damn about Santorum’s sex life, such as it is.
And if West wants me to delete their definition, all they have to do is comment at the bottom of the publication and it will go out. If they want to make a big deal about it, well, maybe we will have another “Dark Day”?
Next, I’m trying to get permission to re-publish an account of the cyber warfare against Israel because of war crimes against the Palestinians. (Who actually exist, no matter what Newt says.)
They have a debate tonight on one of the Cable news networks, but I will be otherwise occupied. I’m sure I’ll hear about it.
Standing
West's Encyclopedia of American Law
2005
STANDING
The legally protectible stake or interest that an individual has in a dispute that entitles him to bring the controversy before the court to obtain judicial relief.
Standing, sometimes referred to as standing to sue, is the name of the federal law doctrine that focuses on whether a prospective plaintiff can show that some personal legal interest has been invaded by the defendant. It is not enough that a person is merely interested as a member of the general public in the resolution of the dispute. The person must have a personal stake in the outcome of the controversy.
The standing doctrine is derived from the U.S. Constitution's Article III provision that federal courts have the power to hear "cases" arising under federal law and "controversies" involving certain types of parties. In the most fundamental application of the philosophy of judicial restraint, the U.S. Supreme Court has interpreted this language to forbid the rendering of advisory opinions.
Once a federal court determines that a real case or controversy exists, it must then ascertain whether the parties to the litigation have standing. The Supreme Court has developed an elaborate body of principles defining the nature and scope of standing. Basically, a plaintiff must have suffered some direct or substantial injury or be likely to suffer such an injury if a particular wrong is not redressed. A defendant must be the party responsible for perpetrating the alleged legal wrong.
Most standing issues arise over the enforcement of an allegedly unconstitutional statute, ordinance, or policy. One may challenge a law or policy on constitutional grounds if he can show that enforcement of the law or implementation of the policy infringes on an individual constitutional right, such as freedom of speech. For example, in tinker v. des moines independent community school district, 393 U.S. 503, 89 S. Ct. 733, 21 L. Ed. 2d 731 (1969), high school officials in Des Moines, Iowa, had suspended students for wearing black armbands to school to protest U.S. involvement in the vietnam war. There was no question that the parents of the students had standing to challenge the restrictions on the wearing of armbands. Mere ideological opposition to a particular government policy, such as the Vietnam War, however, is not sufficient grounds to challenge that policy in court.
A significant economic injury or burden is sufficient to provide standing to sue, but in most situations a taxpayer does not have standing to challenge policies or programs that she is forced to support. In Frothingham v. Mellon, 288 F. 252 (C.A.D.C. 1923), the Supreme Court denied a federal taxpayer the right to challenge a federal program that she claimed violated the tenth amendment, which reserves certain powers to the states. The Court said that a party must show some "direct injury as the result of the statute's enforcement, and not merely that he suffers in some indefinite way common with people generally."
Although the Supreme Court made a narrow exception to this prohibition on taxpayer suits in Flast v. Cohen, 392 U.S. 83, 88 S. Ct. 1942, 20 L. Ed. 2d 947 (1968), granting standing to a taxpayer to challenge federal spending that would benefit parochial schools, the Court has never gone beyond that. In fact, there is some doubt as to the vitality of the Flast decision. In 1974 the Court denied standing to a taxpayer who sought to challenge Congress's exempting the central intelligence agency from the constitutional requirement under Article I, Section 9, Clause 7, that government expenditures be publicly reported (United States v. Richardson, 418 U.S. 166, 94 S. Ct. 2940, 41 L. Ed. 2d 678). Since Richardson the Court has continued to maintain the traditional barrier against taxpayer lawsuits.
The issue of standing has played a crucial role in class action lawsuits, especially those filed by environmental groups. In Sierra Club v. Morton, 405 U.S. 727, 92 S. Ct. 1361, 31 L. Ed. 2d 636 (1972), the Court denied standing to an environmental group that was challenging a decision by the secretary of the interior. The Court ruled that the sierra club had not demonstrated that its members would be substantially adversely affected by the secretary's decision. Later environmental class actions have overcome the standing hurdle by including specific harms that group members would suffer, thus avoiding the Court's rule against generalized concerns.
The issue of standing is more than a technical aspect of the judicial process. A grant or denial of standing determines who may challenge government policies and what types of policies may be challenged. Those who believe that the federal courts should not increase their power generally believe standing should be used to limit access to the courts by persons or groups seeking to change public policy. They believe the legislative branch should deal with these types of issues. Opponents of a strict standing test complain that plaintiffs never get a chance to prove their case in court. They believe that justice should not be denied by the application of judicially created doctrines such as standing.
cross-references
Judicial Review.
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