Tag: news

Federal Judge Rules Against Suspending Poor People’s Driver’s Licenses for Unpaid Court Fines

A federal judge has blocked Tennessee’s practice of suspending driver’s licenses for unpaid court fees without first determining if the debtors are too poor to pay. The policy, U.S. District Judge Aleta Trauger ruled yesterday, violates poor residents’ due process and equal protection rights under the 14th Amendment.

“[A]s applied to indigent drivers, the law is not merely ineffective; it is powerfully counterproductive,” Trauger wrote. “If a person has no resources to pay a debt, he cannot be threatened or cajoled into paying it; he may, however, become able to pay it in the future. But taking his driver’s license away sabotages that prospect.”

Trauger ordered the state to cease suspending licenses for unpaid court debts and to give all residents who had their licenses suspended for such reasons an opportunity to have them reinstated.

License suspensions for unpaid court fines, drug violations, and other non-moving violations came into the spotlight in 2014 following the police shooting of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri. Investigative reporting revealed the town’s rapacious use of fines and fees to generate revenue, sparking a nationwide look at how cities use petty fines and fees.

Many states across the U.S. passed license suspension laws to go after scofflaws, but civil liberties groups say they often trap poor residents in a debt spiral by depriving them of the means to make money in the first place.

The two lead plaintiffs of the case, James Thomas and David Hixson, were physically disabled and living in a homeless shelter, respectively. Both had their licenses suspended for unpaid court fines.

States across the country have suspended more than 7 million licenses, according to The Washington Post. Virginia alone suspends 900,000 licenses—11 percent of its total population—at any given time for unpaid fines and fees.

Tennessee suspended 146,211 licenses for unpaid court fines and fees between 2012 and 2016, according to the lawsuit. That doesn’t include suspensions for unpaid traffic fines.

Trauger’s decision was not a surprise. The judge lambasted the state’s policy in earlier decisions in a parallel case challenging suspensions for unpaid traffic fines—one commanding Tennessee to immediately reinstate the licenses of two lead plaintiffs, and the other allowing the lawsuit to proceed as a class action.

In both, Trauger wrote that the practical effects of Tennessee’s license suspension policies appeared to be at complete odds with the rules’ stated purpose—that is, collecting debt.

“Taking an individual’s driver’s license away to try to make her more likely to pay a fine is not using a shotgun to do the job of a rifle: it is using a shotgun to treat a broken arm,” the judge wrote last year.

Trauger noted that Tennessee towns and cities are “pervasively structured” around motor vehicles, and that one didn’t need “reams of expert testimony to understand that an individual who cannot drive is at an extraordinary disadvantage in both earning and maintaining material resources.”

In January, another federal judge in Michigan enjoined the practice when it is applied to the very poor, ruling that suspending licenses without determining the debtors’ ability to pay likely violates due process.

A lawsuit challenging Virginia’s policy was dismissed on technical grounds last year but still spurred the state to reform its practices. Nevertheless, Virginia still suspended nearly 1 million licenses last year.

The Tennessee lawsuit was brought by Civil Rights Corps, a group challenging bail policies and license suspensions in several states, as well as by the National Center for Law and Economic Justice, Just City, and the law firm Baker, Donelson, Bearman, Caldwell and Berkowitz.

“This is an incredible victory for low-income Tennesseans whose contact with the criminal system leaves them saddled with court debt and unable to get around in a state that lacks adequate public transportation​,” Civil Rights Corps founder Alec Karakatsanis said following the ruling. “Today, one immense barrier to escaping the cycle of poverty and criminalization has been removed​—people will be able to go to work, see their families and friends, get to the grocery store and doctor’s office, and do all of the things that we all take for granted and that give life meaning.​”

from Hit & Run https://ift.tt/2z9QhlC
via IFTTT

Virginia Pot Dealer Sends Worst ‘U Up?’ Text Ever

The Fairfax County Police Department (FCPD) posted a note on Facebook yesterday about a man who texted one of their officers “offering to sell them marijuana.”

“HMU if you wanna get together I’ve got some nice ins we can burn,” the text message read. The unidentified suspect obviously had the wrong number, but that didn’t stop police from pursuing the case further.

After setting up a meeting with the suspect, narcotics detectives were able to make an arrest, having discovered “more than a pound of marijuana” in the alleged dealer’s possession, according to the Facebook post. Authorities searched his home and found not only another pound of marijuana, but also “suspected Schedule I Narcotics, a firearm, and an undisclosed amount of money.” The suspect was charged with possession with intent to distribute.

Social media fame aside, it’s not clear what good came out of this story. A man seems to have made a dumb mistake, and police were quick to pounce. Had he been trafficking human beings instead of marijuana, perhaps the cops’ enthusiasm would be justified. But as it stands, all they really did was keep two pounds of weed off the street.

Marijuana is legal for recreational use in nearby D.C, as well as in nine states, so this man might not have even gotten in trouble in some places in the U.S.

It’s not the first time the FCPD has posted stories like this to its Facebook page—they seem to enjoy bragging about catching the dumbest and most unlucky lawbreakers. In March, the department released in-car footage of a man who, while being chased by police, jumped out of his car but forgot to put it in park. As a result, he was run over by his own vehicle:

from Hit & Run https://ift.tt/2zhy067
via IFTTT

NYT Shuffles “House Of Cards” Journo Who Slept With Congressional Staffer

The New York Times is reassigning a reporter at the center of a federal leak investigation who likened herself to the fictional House of Cards character Zoe Barnes – a young reporter who has an affair with an older member of congress. 

Following a deep internal probe, journalist Ali Watkins, 26, will be transferred to the NYT’s main office in New York City – where she will spend her time under a mentor on a new beat, the Times reported on Wednesday.

Federal authorities seized Watkins’s phone and email records as part of a probe into Congressional leaks, which led to the arrest and indictment of James Wolfe, 57, the longtime director of security for the Senate Intelligence Committee. Wolfe was booked on charges of giving false statements to FBI agents in 2017 about reported contacts with three reporters, according to the Washington Examiner.

Watkins has been covering national security for the Times since December, while her romantic relationship with Wolfe began in 2013 when she was an intern at McClatchy, ended last year. Watkins claims she didn’t receive information from the 58-year-old married Wolfe during the affair.

The Times said on Tuesday that it was conducting a review of Ms. Watkins’s involvement in the case, including the nature of her relationship with Mr. Wolfe, and what she disclosed about it to her prior employers. Ms. Watkins informed The Times about the prior relationship after she was hired by the paper, and before she began work in December. She has said that Mr. Wolfe did not provide her with information during the course of their relationship.

Journalists are supposed to abide by ethical rules that stipulate they cannot have personal relationships – including romantic relationships – with their sources. But Watkins claims she didn’t receive any information from Wolfe while they were together, according to the Times.

DOJ investigators seized emails and phone records belonging to Watkins in what the NYT described as the first instance of the Trump administration seizing the personal communications of a journalist. Watkins was later informed of the seizures in a letter that she received in February, which informed her that “years worth of records for two email accounts and a phone number of hers” had been accessed as part of the investigation.

According to the New York Times, Watkins was approached by FBI agents back in December and asked about the nature of her relationship with Wolfe – questions that she (wisely) declined to answer at the time. Watkins says she was also approached last June by somebody claiming to be a government agent, and who also brought up Wolfe. The man later told her that he was aware of her relationship with Wolfe, and asked if she could help him ferret out leakers. The Washington Post reported this week that the man who approached Watkins was Jeffrey Rambo.

After the encounter with Rambo – which she said unnerved her – Watkins disclosed the nature of her romantic relationship with Wolfe to her editors at Politico.

The Feds say Wolfe lied about the nature of his relationship with Watkins until he was confronted with a photograph of the two of them together. However, Wolfe was in regular contact with multiple journalists who covered the committee, including meeting them at restaurants and bars as well as the office building where he worked. Wolfe pleaded not guilty to three counts of making false statements to a government agency – charges on which he could face up to 15 years in federal prison.

via RSS https://ift.tt/2z9PBwA Tyler Durden

Trump Administration Rescinds Obama-Era Guidance That Encouraged Schools to Consider Race in Admissions

DeVosPresident Donald Trump’s Justice Department plans to roll back a pair of Obama-era affirmative action decrees that pushed colleges to consider race as a factor in admissions.

The new guidance, which discourages race-based admissions, will essentially reconstitute the approach the federal government took under George W. Bush. The Bush administration had sternly reminded schools that they could consider race in admissions only if they had absolutely no other method of achieving diverse classrooms. This was consistent with Supreme Court precedent that has permitted affirmative action but narrowly limited its use.

But Barack Obama’s administration, in 2011 and 2016, issued recommendations that encouraged schools to think of diversity as a compelling state interest and to embrace race-based admissions as a tool to achieve it. This wasn’t necssarily at odds with Court precedent, but it very well could have sent a message to schools that diversity at all costs was the top priority.

The Trump administration’s decision was first reported by The Wall Street Journal. The Justice Department—which had been tasked with “re-evaluating” past policies that were considered legally suspect, according to The New York Times—is taking the lead here, though the decision impacts the Education Department. A spokesperson for the Education Department has confirmed to me that the administration is returning to the Bush-era position, per the new guidance.

Progressives will see this move as a deliberate attempt to weaken affirmative action at a time when race-based admissions policies are coming under serious scrutiny. Asian students who say they were denied admission to Harvard because its policies discriminate against them on the basis of skin color have sued the university. That lawsuit recently forced Harvard to pull back the curtain with respect to its admissions information, revealing that officials consistently underrated Asian applicants on subjective criteria like “personality,” even though Asians tend to outperform other applicants in virtually every respect.

The Harvard lawsuit is really just making an uncomfortable truth more obvious: When admissions officials discriminate in favor of one racial group, they must discriminate against other racial groups. This is wrong and legally suspect. It’s an issue a post-Kennedy Supreme Court should certainly revisit. In the meantime, the Justice and Education departments deserve commendation for distancing themselves from a policy that is racially discriminatory to its core. Good riddance.

from Hit & Run https://ift.tt/2z7CBHN
via IFTTT

Why The Carpet Is About To Be Pulled From Under The Junk Bond Market

Last week we noted that ever since the start of 2018, an odd divergence has emerged in credit markets, where Investment Grade bonds have seen their spreads leak progressively wider, hitting levels not seen in 2 years, while the bid for higher yielding, and much more risky, junk bond debt has been seemingly relentless, with high yield spreads near all time lows.

There have been various reasons offered to explain this divergence, with Bank of America suggesting that IG weakness is “due to supply pressures in an environment of reduced demand that began in March and extended through last week, plus the Italian situation, which is about systemic risks running through the global IG financial system.”

Meanwhile, it believes the strength in HY is mostly due to the lack of supply of higher yielding paper.

Blackrock agrees, and today, in a blog post by BlackRock’s Richard Turnill, the Chief Investment Strategist picks up on this theme and writes that Investment grade (IG) bonds typically outperform their high yield counterparts when uncertainty rises – like now – given their higher quality and lower default risks.

The chart below echoes the one shown above, and confirms that recently this hasn’t been the case. The bars on the left depict the recent under-performance of IG. Yield spreads have widened versus Treasuries, putting downward pressure on prices. The move in the high yield market has been much more muted. The bars on the right show why. Actual, and anticipated, IG issuance has rapidly escalated amid a surge in mergers and acquisitions (M&A) activity, particularly in the media sector (overall IG issuance is still down just over 1% due to large repatriated cash balances providing less incentive to issue debt).  Yet high yield issuance has slumped. The shrinking high yield market is not part of the M&A boom, and many high yield firms are issuing via loans rather than bonds.

Others have also jumped on the “issuance” bottleneck, with Goldman today noting that trends in the HY primary market have been closely watched this year, as a significant decline in issuance has provided a strong tailwind to spread performance.

Specifically, as the chart below shows, year-to-date HY supply of $104 billion is down 26% versus this time last year, and this favorable technical has allowed HY spreads to remain much more resilient versus IG peers. For context – and as shown in the chart on top – prior to last week, HY spreads were unchanged versus the start of the year (at 339bp) while IG spreads widened from 94bp to 123bp over the same period. HY spreads even touched multi-year lows earlier this year despite facing sizable cumulative net outflows.

The tide may be shifting, however.

According to Goldman calculations, the junk bond dam may be cracking and last week’s HY new issue volumes of $7.2 billion were the highest since mid-March (Exhibit 1), and this increase in supply appeared to pressure HY market performance.

  • First, the higher supply was accompanied by weakness in HY spreads. Last week saw significant decompression between IG and HY: the OAS of the Bloomberg Barclays HY index widened from 339bp to 363bp while the IG index finished unchanged on the week (Exhibit 2). While negative idiosyncratic developments for some HY issuers and escalating trade tensions likely also played a role, the spike in HY supply is one of the key drivers according to Goldman. The HY spread weakness is even more striking considering oil – an important driver of HY investor sentiment given the Energy sector’s large market weight (14.4%) – rallied over 8% to close the week at $74.15 (a level not seen since 2014).
  • Second, the acceleration in HY bond issuance may be related to some early signs of new issue indigestion in the leveraged loan market. According to data from LCD Research, last month, upward price-flex activity outnumbered downward price-flexes (ratio of 1.26x) for the first time since February 2016. This price-flex imbalance was even more pronounced for M&A deals (1.46x), which we believe was likely related to Q2 2018’s record-setting level of institutional M&A volumes ($84.2 billion). Looking ahead, we continue to view HY M&A activity (particularly for larger deals) as the key catalyst to fuel a sustained acceleration in HY bond supply.

Looking at the recent supply burst, Goldman concludes that while it is premature to expect the large year-to-date HY supply deficit to narrow rapidly from here, especially given the seasonally slow summer months, last week’s price action is indicative of the growing fragility of the HY market’s (technically-supported) relative outperformance.

Today Blackrock reached a similar conclusion – get out of HY and into IG despite the recent pain – however due to more fundamental reasons: “investment grade valuations have become more attractive relative to those of high yield. Yields for short-maturity investment grade corporates are now well above the level of U.S. inflation. We see these assets again playing their traditional portfolio role—principal preservation, especially in an increasingly uncertain macro environment.”

uncertainty around the growth outlook has widened, with the U.S. stimulus’ boost to activity on one side–and trade war risks on the other. This greater uncertainty−along with rising interest rates−has contributed to tightening financial conditions and argues for higher-quality ballast in portfolios.

Combining the sudden shift in the supply picture, with the ongoing weakness on a relative value between IG and HY, the message is clear: it is only a matter of time before the carpet is pulled from underneath what, until now, has been one of the most bizarrely resilient asset classes.

via RSS https://ift.tt/2KxzNsZ Tyler Durden

Will the Future Have No Work or Just Less Work?: Podcast

Imagine it’s sometime in the future, but not so far in the future that you’re not still putting together flat-packed furniture.

You realize you need to drive some screws into the bookcase or whatever it is you’re assembling. Instead of rummaging through your garage or basement for your goddamned electric screwdriver, you tap out “rent a drill” on your a smart phone app. A few minutes later, a package arrives at your door. It contains a drill, you drive the screws, you send the drill back. Total time: 10 minutes. Total cost $2.50.

That’s a scenario from Tomorrow 3.0, a new book by Duke University economist and political scientist Michael C. Munger. Subtitled Transaction Costs and the Sharing Economy, it takes a long look at what he says is, after the Neolithic and Industrial Revolutions, the third great economic revolution in world history—a revolution that is already well under way.

I talked with Munger about the future of work in a gig economy, the possible need for a guaranteed basic income, and why laws and policies designed to preserve the labor status quo inevitably increase the pace and magnitude of disruption. Co-editor of The Independent Review, Munger also explains how he came to his libertarian beliefs and how he designed the arresting cover of his latest book.

Subscribe, rate, and review our podcast at iTunes. Listen at SoundCloud below:

Audio production by Ian Keyser.

Don’t miss a single Reason Podcast! (Archive here.)

Subscribe at iTunes.

Follow us at SoundCloud.

Subscribe at YouTube.

Like us on Facebook.

Follow us on Twitter.

from Hit & Run https://ift.tt/2tYUy5z
via IFTTT

US Political Center Is Being Devoured From Both Right And Left

Authored by John Rubino via DollarCollapse.com,

President Trump will soon nominate his second Supreme Court justice. The first, Neil Gorsuch, has so perfectly replaced the late Antonin Scalia that it’s safe to assume retiring justice Anthony Kennedy’s successor will be in the same mold – which is to say formidable and unapologetically conservative. The result will be a solid conservative majority that’s more definite and less flexible on the issues where Kennedy was a swing vote.

And that’s if Notorious RBG manages to hang on through the Trump era. If she goes (and at 85 she’s likely to go soon one way or another) Trump will be one of those extremely rare presidents who gets to name THREE justices, thus extending his influence from four years to an entire generation.

Among the possible results of such a conservative judicial super-majority are the reversal of rulings that made abortion and gay marriage the laws of the land, making both state-level issues once again, where they’ll further polarize already-divided electorates.

Meanwhile, the Democrats are lurching waaayyy left.

The implosion of the moderate Clinton wing of the party began during the past presidential election, when huge parts of the left openly supported socialist Bernie Sanders. This group now sees Elizabeth Warren – Bernie Sanders with a penchant for verbal street fighting – as the ideal candidate next time around. And despite a fairly consequential set of primary elections last Tuesday, pretty much all anyone is talking about is Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, a latina “democratic socialist” who unseated a previously entrenched moderate incumbent and is now a lock to win a Bronx congressional seat in November – on a Sanders-esque platform of free everything for everyone and wide-open borders.

Each side is, as a result, finding it really easy to dehumanize the other. After Trump’s press secretary and family are evicted from a restaurant because the owner opposes Trump’s immigration policy, Democrat Senator Maxine Waters encourages liberals to make this a pattern by confronting White House officials in public whenever possible. Waters then gets death threats and responds “If you shoot at me, you better shoot straight.”

But wait, there’s more. This past Saturday:

 

More than 500 arrested as women rally in D.C. to protest Trump’s immigration policy

 

They came from all over, took planes and buses from 47 states, slept at friends’ homes or in churches and prepared to be arrested Thursday in Washington, D.C. Most of the participants were white women, stumbling over the syllables of Spanish-language chants. Many had never faced arrest before. But here they were.

Capitol Police said 575 protesters were arrested and escorted out of the Hart Senate Office Building in a mass demonstration that called for the abolishment of the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency, and an end to migrant family detentions and the Trump administration’s “zero tolerance” immigration policy.

They were charged with unlawfully demonstrating, a misdemeanor.

“I have two kids, and as a white mother, there is almost no circumstance that they would be taken away from me – ever,” said Victoria Farris, who slept Wednesday night in All Souls Church after participating in civil disobedience training. “I was awake one night because I couldn’t sleep thinking about all those [immigrant] mothers and terrified children. I realized I had to do something more than protest, more than make a sign and march.”

Just after 3 p.m., protesters were rounded up in groups of a dozen or more and led out of the building.

“Abolish ICE,” they shouted as more were moved out. “Shut it down.”

And Sunday:

Riot in Portland as far-right marchers clash with anti-fascists

A riot was declared in downtown Portland, Oregon on Saturday evening as the city exploded into its worst protest violence of the Trump era.

More than 150 supporters of the far-right Patriot Prayer group fought pitched street battles with scores of anti-fascist protesters. In total, nine people were arrested.

The far-right march had started near Schrunk Plaza in the city centre, where the rightwing group had held a rally, led by the Patriot Prayer founder and Republican US Senate candidate Joey Gibson.

As soon as the group left the plaza, they clashed with anti-fascists who had been waiting across a heavily barricaded street nearby.

As the two groups came to blows, Department of Homeland Security officers fired non-lethal ammunition towards the counter-protest.

What does all this late-1960s-esque turbulence mean and how does it tie into the populist wave that’s sweeping the rest of the world?

The simple answer is that when a society borrows too much money it loses the ability to keep its people happy.

The big systems stop working as pension plans and local governments run out of money, inequality becomes a chasm as the people with assets get richer while the people with debts sink into poverty, and disaffected voters lose faith in the establishment to address their needs. And they come to hate the people on the other side of major issues — even though those people are frequently also victims of the elites’ predation.

Each election becomes an adventure in which formerly fringe candidates do progressively better until they end up taking power. At which point the discredited center evaporates and everyone chooses one extreme or the other, losing any remaining shred of empathy for their political opponents.

And media accounts like this become the conventional wisdom:

Is America headed toward a civil war? Or is the civil war already starting?

White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders was even kicked out of the Red Hen restaurant in Lexington, Virginia, because the owner and employees disliked her politics. This seems like a small thing, but it would have been largely unthinkable a generation ago.

And, in a somewhat less “soft” manifestation, Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen was bullied out of a restaurant by an angry anti-Trump mob, and a similar mob also showed up outside of her home.

Will it get worse? Probably. To have a civil war, soft or otherwise, takes two sides. But as pseudonymous tweeter Thomas H. Crown notes, it’s childishly easy in these days to identify people in mobs, and then to dispatch similar mobs to their homes and workplaces. Eventually, he notes, it becomes “protesters all the way down, and if we haven’t yet figured out that can lead to political violence, we’re dumb.”

Political contempt is the problem
Marriage counselors say that when a couple view one another with contempt, it’s a top indicator that the relationship is likely to fail. Americans, who used to know how to disagree with one another without being mutually contemptuous, seem to be forgetting this. And the news media, which promote shrieking outrage in pursuit of ratings and page views, are making the problem worse.

via RSS https://ift.tt/2MFvHLC Tyler Durden

Stocks Pump’n’Dump As “What China Giveth, China Taketh Away”

‘Murica, F**k Yeah…

Despite the holiday-shortened trading day, there was plenty of vol for everyone today…

Equity futures show the chaos best as PBOC Governor Yi rescued the world overnight but US investors used his overnight pump to dump their gains (not helped by China’s court ruling against Micron)….

 

In cash equity land, Small Caps remain green on the week…

 

The Dow closed below its 200DMA for the 7th day in a row…

 

Micron was a mess after the headlines…dropping to 2-month lows…

 

But Tesla is worse – down over 14% from its post-production goal highs…

 

Treasury yields tumbled today as stocks reversed around the cash equity open…

 

We are starting to see a pattern intraday in Treasuries – buying overnight, selling during US day…

 

The Dollar erased yesterday’s gains as China’s intervention rippled through markets but as stocks sold off in the last hour of the short-day, the dollar bounced a little…

 

The biggest news overnight (and into the open) was China’s intervention to rescue the Yuan from freefall…

 

But some context is important for this bounce…

China’s stocks managed to surge on the intervention but only CHINEXT is back to breakeven on the week…

 

Cryptos pumped and dumped today but ended the day unchanged, still up notably on the week…

 

PMs rallied on the dollar weakness but copper and crude faded…

 

Notably WTI tumbled after reports that the Saudis would increase production as Trump asked…

 

via RSS https://ift.tt/2KOj5Sc Tyler Durden

SCOTUS Short-Lister Amy Coney Barrett on Overturning Precedent and Judicial Deference to Lawmakers

Judge Amy Coney Barrett of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 7th Circuit is reportedly among a handful of finalists under consideration by President Donald Trump to replace retiring Justice Anthony Kennedy on the U.S. Supreme Court.

Barrett, 46, was confirmed to the 7th Circuit last October after undergoing a highly contentious confirmation hearing before the Senate Judiciary Committee. A committed Catholic who has written frequently about the intersection of faith and law, Barrett was questioned by Sen. Diane Feinstein (D-Calif.) about whether her religion would prevent her from serving as an impartial jurist. “The dogma lives loudly within you, and that’s of concern when you come to big issues that people have fought for for years in this country,” Feinstein said to the nominee.

Feinstein was undoubtedly referring to Roe v. Wade, the 1973 ruling that recognized a constitutional right to abortion. The senator’s implication was that Barrett’s religious views might lead her to limit or even overturn that decision.

Before her judicial appointment last year, Barrett was a distinguished law professor at Notre Dame University, where she produced a highly respected body of scholarly work. Because of her short tenure on the federal bench, that scholarship offers perhaps the best indication of what sort of Supreme Court justice she might turn out to be.

Consider her writings on the crucial issue of precedent. When is it appropriate for the Supreme Court to overturn one of its own prior rulings? And is it ever appropriate for the Court to overturn a precedent simply because a new majority disagrees with the methodological approach of its predecessor? In other words, would it be appropriate for a living constitutionalist Court to overturn a case like District of Columbia v. Heller because the later Court disagreed with the Heller majority’s originalist methodology?

Barrett grappled with such questions in a 2013 Texas Law Review article. In it, she sketched out and defended an approach that she called “weak” or “soft stare decisis.” Given the competing interpretive methodologies on the Court, she argued, “a more relaxed form of constitutional stare decisis is both inevitable and probably desirable, at least in those cases in which methodologies clash.”

“Were there greater agreement about the nature of the Constitution—for example, whether it is originalist or evolving—we might expect to see greater (although of course still imperfect) stability,” Barrett wrote. “In the world we live in, however, that level of stability is more than we have experienced or should expect in particularly divisive areas of constitutional law.” Reversing precedent “because of honest jurisprudential disagreement,” she concluded, “is illegitimate only if it is done without adequate consideration of, and due deference to, the arguments in favor of letting the precedent stand.”

As for her own approach, she wrote: “I tend to agree with those who say that a justice’s duty is to the Constitution and that it is thus more legitimate for her to enforce her best understanding of the Constitution rather than a precedent she thinks clearly in conflict with it.”

Barrett’s writings also reveal her to be a sharp critic of the libertarian legal movement. In a 2017 article for Constitutional Commentary, Barrett acknowledged that libertarian legal scholars such as Georgetown’s Randy Barnett have a point when they fault conservatives for placing too much emphasis on the notion of judicial restraint. “Deference to a democratic majority should not supersede a judge’s duty to apply clear text,” she wrote.

But Barrett then suggested that the libertarian legal movement has gone too far in the opposite direction by embracing a sweeping theory of economic liberty that is itself unmoored from constitutional text. What is more, Barrett defended the Supreme Court’s current approach in cases dealing with economic regulation, in which the scales are tipped in favor of lawmakers via the highly permissive standard of judicial review known as the rational-basis test. “Deferential judicial review of run-of-the-mill legislation,” Barrett wrote, is defensible on the grounds that such judicial deference “is consistent with the reality that the harm inflicted by the Supreme Court’s erroneous interference in the democratic process is harder to remedy than the harm inflicted by an ill-advised statute.”

Notably, that view not only places Barrett in conflict with the libertarian legal movement, but it also places her in conflict with another possible SCOTUS finalist: Judge Don Willett, who appeared on Trump’s original SCOTUS shortlist and was rumored to be among the finalists under consideration to replace Justice Antonin Scalia. Willett is considered to be in the running yet again for Kennedy’s seat.

In 2015, while serving as a justice on the Texas Supreme Court, Willett (who is now a federal appellate court judge) concurred in the case of Patel v. Texas Department of Licensing and Regulation. Willett’s opinion laid out an explicitly constitutional case for the judicial recognition and protection of economic liberty. (Willett favorably cited my book, Overruled, in this opinion.)

“The Fourteenth Amendment’s legislative record,” Willett pointed out, “is replete with indications that ‘privileges or immunities’ encompassed the right to earn a living free from unreasonable government intrusion.” To say the least, Willett displayed little patience for what Barrett has defended as “deferential judicial review of run-of-the-mill legislation.”

If Amy Coney Barrett gets the nomination to replace Justice Anthony Kennedy, I look forward to the Senate Judiciary Committee questioning her about these fundamental matters of legal theory and constitutional interpretation.

from Hit & Run https://ift.tt/2NnP8tM
via IFTTT

DNC Chair Tom Perez Declares Socialist Ocasio-Cortez “The Future Of Our Party”

The already-fractured DNC is having an identity crisis. While establishment Democrats Nancy Pelosi (CA) and Chuck Schumer (NY) battle it out with Maxine Waters (CA) over anti-Trump activism, the party is now mounting support for their new rising star – Democratic Socialist Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, after the 28-year-old political neophyte unseated the 4th most powerful Democrat in Congress last month in an upset primary win.

Ocasio-Cortez, a dues-paying member of Democratic Socialists of America (whose leadership has been openly calling for communism) – says that the US should abolish the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency (ICE), while also claiming that illegal aliens deserve a “right of passage” into the United States.

And despite being called out recently for projecting a blue collar “girl from the Bronx” image while growing up in a wealthy enclave, Democratic National Committee chairman Tom Perez told progressive radio host Bill Press Tuesday that Ocasio-Cortez represents “the future of our party.” 

Press: There was a primary in several states. Your home state of Maryland and also up in New York where the 4th most powerful Democrat in the United States, Congressman Joe Crowley was knocked out by a young woman, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez­­­ – 28 years old – never ran for office before – big progressive – calls herself a Democratic socialist, actually like Bernie Sanders did – she was a Bernie Sanders supporter, and in Maryland, Ben Jealous another strong progressive wins the Democratic nomination for governor. What’s this tell you about where the Democratic Party is going today?

Perez: Well, my daughters – I have 3 kids, two of whom are daughters, one just graduated college, one is in college, and they were both texting me about their excitement over Alexandria because, you know, she really represents the future of our party. She ran a spirited campaign. 

And while “Democratic insurgents” (as the Washington Post calls them) want to abolish ICE, the rest of the Democratic party is not behind her. Not even Bernie Sanders would commit to the notion. 

On Sunday morning, CNN’s Jake Tapper put the question to Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.): Did the senator, a democratic socialist and 2016 presidential candidate, the most prominent left-wing politician in the country, want to abolish ICE?

“I think what we need is to create policies which deal with immigration in a rational way,” Sanders said, evading the topic of ICE itself. –Washington Post

And until Ocasio-Cortez clarifies her positions vs. the Democratic Socialists of America, this is the future of the Democratic party.

via RSS https://ift.tt/2tOGzjC Tyler Durden