So, I thought this would be a fun little exercise in “mob justice” - let’s actually decide how we would vote on these cases! For this week, there are three:
Van Buren v. United States. TBH, I’m not sure why this one even made it all the way to SCOTUS. Basically, a Georgia cop took money to look up someone’s license plate from his patrol car. It was clearly a violation of department policy, but apparently he was also being stung by the FBI, who hit him on a Computer Fraud and Abuse Act of 1986 violation. Good for them.
Dave Sides With The 7-2 Majority.
Garland v. Ming Dai. I think the court gets its first holding - section (a) - wrong: For starters, IMO the whole immigration court system is bullshit and applies an unjustly different standard to noncitizens. Sorry, but the Preamble and Declaration make it pretty fucking clear that we believe the rights enshrined in the Constitution are universal, so we’d better have a pretty good fucking reason to abridge them for noncitizens, and I’ve never seen such a reason presented in defense of our immigration courts.
Moreover, the majority is relying on some more general bullshit logic about certain presumptions not needing to apply at various levels of appeal. Sorry, but that’s absolutely absurd. Courts should aspire to get things “first time right”, not “first time well-possibly-wrong, MAYBE second time right, and hopefully you don’t need to go past that”.
On those same grounds, I’d likewise use (b)(1) and (b)(2) to declare the relevant portions of the Immigration Nationality Act unconstitutional. Which, again, the majority didn’t do.
Ironically, the entire court agreed on this case 9-0. Looks like Dave is the Lone Radical Progressive.
United States v. Cooley. This one’s tricky. It involves Indian sovereignty kind of working against a member of the Crow PD (yes, those Crow) in a stop where he found a non-Indian on tribal land, but the dude clearly was high on meth, had guns in the truck, and was later found with meth in it as well.
SCOTUS unanimously decided to overturn the 9th Circuit’s technicality. The 9th Circuit said the officer was bound by Indian sovereignty laws to only determine whether the suspect was non-Indian, and could only investigate further if he found more violations in the course of making that determination. But here’s the thing: The Crow PD officer *clearly* already had compelling evidence in the fact that the guy was high.
Look, I’m as suspicious of police powers as anyone else, but let’s not overcomplicate things. The 9th got it wrong, and the Court rightly calls their standard unworkable. It’s absurd to say, “hey let’s figure out if the guy’s Indian or not first, and we can’t investigate him if he’s not”. That basically defangs the entire investigatory power on the basis of race, which is stupid.
3. US v Cooley. Using my expertise from watching Netflix's Longmire (yes, really) Indian Sovereignty cuts both ways. There is a bright line that prevents US law enforcement from going into Indian sovereign land to investigate- unless both LEO's, white and Indian have agreed to cooperate. So even though dude was obviously "high" - also not the most important issue with Cooley, jeez - thus no investigation. However, I didn’t yet read the case and ruling yet...I need substack lessons to argue further. So, I should download the app on my PC so I can open other tabs and read and argue at the same time.
But again, I highly recommend Longmire - it really dives into issues like this, despite the odd fact that a small, reservation town in Wyoming manages to have one murder each week :)
Question on Garland v Ming dai - it is generally agreed upon that the equal protection clause apply to everyone in the US regardless of citizenship status? Seems like that isn’t settled law.
3. US v Cooley. Using my expertise from watching Netflix's Longmire (yes, really) Indian Sovereignty cuts both ways. There is a bright line that prevents US law enforcement from going into Indian sovereign land to investigate- unless both LEO's, white and Indian have agreed to cooperate. So even though dude was obviously "high" - also not the most important issue with Cooley, jeez - thus no investigation. However, I didn’t yet read the case and ruling yet...I need substack lessons to argue further. So, I should download the app on my PC so I can open other tabs and read and argue at the same time.
But again, I highly recommend Longmire - it really dives into issues like this, despite the odd fact that a small, reservation town in Wyoming manages to have one murder each week :)
Question on Garland v Ming dai - it is generally agreed upon that the equal protection clause apply to everyone in the US regardless of citizenship status? Seems like that isn’t settled law.