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Green Crayons posted:If you aren't making a stare decisis argument, I don't see how that is any different than a Justice believing a case was rightly decided, but that case happened to be published before their time on the Court. How is that conversation supposed to go? No, I'm just saying that Kennedy and Scalia, unless they've changed their minds, are almost certainly going to rule the way they did back in those cases and are going to argue in favor of upholding those cases a lot harder than they would if they hadn't personally participated in them. I'm not saying the other judges did it as some kind of professional courtesy, I'm suggesting that these two judges pushed those two cases particularly hard because of their participation in those cases (although given how relevant they are, they would have inevitably come up either way) and that judges are occasionally capable of swaying other judges through well-reasoned and logical arguments. Also, and more importantly, the makeup and ideology of the Court usually doesn't change all that much in a mere twenty-five years, so while older cases get more weight in precedent in theory, in practice, the Court's opinion is more likely to have turned against the reasoning of a hundred-year-old case than a ten-year-old case.
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# ? Mar 1, 2014 18:17 |
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# ? May 8, 2024 07:11 |
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hobbesmaster posted:The supreme court says thats a legislative decision not a judicial one. So the branch would be handled by a separate branch?
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# ? Mar 2, 2014 01:06 |
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Hieronymous Alloy posted:If you look at the history of asset forfeiture decisions, the original modern asset forfeiture decisions from the Prohibition era took as their precedents a bunch of admiralty-law decisions from (I think?) the 1700's and 1800's that allowed legal proceedings against ships. The reasoning of those decisions was partly based on a sort of proto-corporate-liability doctrine for the ship, and partly based on various medieval common-law decisions based on the concept of deodand. Hieronymous Alloy posted:The problem is that the entire doctrine of asset forfeiture is medieval nonsense with as little inherent logic as charging a tree with murder because its branches fell and killed someone.
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# ? Mar 2, 2014 03:39 |
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Hieronymous Alloy posted:If you look at the history of asset forfeiture decisions, the original modern asset forfeiture decisions from the Prohibition era took as their precedents a bunch of admiralty-law decisions from (I think?) the 1700's and 1800's that allowed legal proceedings against ships. The reasoning of those decisions was partly based on a sort of proto-corporate-liability doctrine for the ship, and partly based on various medieval common-law decisions based on the concept of deodand. twodot posted:Even assuming this is correct, and the trail you've drawn here is quite sketchy (some unspecified cases in the Prohibition era were based on other unspecified cases in an unspecified 200 year period, ok). What you said was: Just to head things off here, the thing Hieronymous Alloy is talking about is a real thing - but also happens to be unrelated to the thing at issue in Kaley. He's talking about civil forfeiture, which is in fact more or less as he described (including its descent from admiralty law) and is somewhat better known in D&D because it's the kind of thing that drives activists nuts and makes journalists write long articles. Problem is, Kaley is a criminal forfeiture case, which is much more straightforward and has a much simpler origin, which boils down to the fact that Congress passed a law that says that if someone's convicted of certain crimes relating mostly to the mishandling of money, courts are legally required to "order that the person forfeit to the United States any property, real or personal, which represents or is traceable to the gross proceeds obtained, directly or indirectly, as a result of such violation", and Congress also passed a law that says that if someone is going to be prosecuted for a forfeitable crime, the government can seek a pre-trial asset freeze to prevent the defendant from getting rid of or using the funds before the trial ends. So they don't really have much in common, other than the name.
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# ? Mar 2, 2014 04:06 |
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twodot posted:Even assuming this is correct, and the trail you've drawn here is quite sketchy (some unspecified cases in the Prohibition era were based on other unspecified cases in an unspecified 200 year period, ok). What you said was: To give you an example of a contemporary civil forfeiture case, see the case of United States of America v. $124,700 in U.S. Currency.
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# ? Mar 2, 2014 05:46 |
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Paul MaudDib posted:To give you an example of a contemporary civil forfeiture case, see the case of United States of America v. $124,700 in U.S. Currency. twodot fucked around with this message at 06:03 on Mar 2, 2014 |
# ? Mar 2, 2014 06:00 |
Main Paineframe posted:civil forfeiture / criminal forfeiture This is what I get for shooting my mouth off without actually reading the thread and the linked cases that closely!
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# ? Mar 2, 2014 06:18 |
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Main Paineframe posted:No, I'm just saying that Kennedy and Scalia, unless they've changed their minds, are almost certainly going to rule the way they did back in those cases and are going to argue in favor of upholding those cases a lot harder than they would if they hadn't personally participated in them. I'm not saying the other judges did it as some kind of professional courtesy, I'm suggesting that these two judges pushed those two cases particularly hard because of their participation in those cases (although given how relevant they are, they would have inevitably come up either way) and that judges are occasionally capable of swaying other judges through well-reasoned and logical arguments. quote:Also, and more importantly, the makeup and ideology of the Court usually doesn't change all that much in a mere twenty-five years, so while older cases get more weight in precedent in theory, in practice, the Court's opinion is more likely to have turned against the reasoning of a hundred-year-old case than a ten-year-old case.
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# ? Mar 2, 2014 17:21 |
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Green Crayons posted:
Such changes are, on the whole, more likely to have taken place against older cases than against very recent precedents.
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# ? Mar 2, 2014 20:47 |
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Is "judicial activism" an actual thing in the legal domain, or is it just framing a court decision that you deny in a derogatory fashion? I tend to hear this phrase thrown around all the time whenever a case doesn't go the way of libertarian/ultra-conservative friends and it ultimately drifts into the domain of partisan noise. From a technical perspective, both ends of the political spectrum make decisions that can be interpreted as "judicial activism" if you consider it loosely based on existing law and being influenced mostly by political beliefs. Is it just stubborn, reactionary howling to the ever-changing interpretation of the law or is it seen as a serious issue in legal conversation?
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# ? Mar 3, 2014 01:04 |
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joeburz posted:Is "judicial activism" an actual thing in the legal domain, or is it just framing a court decision that you deny in a derogatory fashion? The latter. I would think the closest to reality "judicial activism" can come is just making things up whole cloth on the fly, which I think only includes Scalia.
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# ? Mar 3, 2014 01:17 |
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Chokes McGee posted:The latter. I would think the closest to reality "judicial activism" can come is just making things up whole cloth on the fly, which I think only includes Scalia. It's a derogatory term for when the a judge makes a decision someone does not like. Appellate level decisions are mostly policy-based anyway.
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# ? Mar 5, 2014 19:06 |
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The Court has granted cert in Holt v. Hobbs, a case challenging the no-beard policy of the Arkansas Department of Corrections violates either the First Amendment or the Religious Land Use and Institutionalized Persons Act (RLUIPA) and whether a 1/2-inch beard would satisfy the security goals of the policy. If the cert petition looks a bit strange, it's because Holt is representing himself and handwrote the whole thing.
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# ? Mar 5, 2014 19:14 |
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The Warszawa posted:The Court has granted cert in Holt v. Hobbs, a case challenging the no-beard policy of the Arkansas Department of Corrections violates either the First Amendment or the Religious Land Use and Institutionalized Persons Act (RLUIPA) and whether a 1/2-inch beard would satisfy the security goals of the policy. If the cert petition looks a bit strange, it's because Holt is representing himself and handwrote the whole thing. I dont see how he doesnt win this one. Wow that is pretty good Blue Booking for an inmate.
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# ? Mar 5, 2014 19:29 |
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The Warszawa posted:If the cert petition looks a bit strange, it's because Holt is representing himself and handwrote the whole thing. Beautiful handwriting, was my thought.
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# ? Mar 5, 2014 19:34 |
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The Warszawa posted:The Court has granted cert in Holt v. Hobbs, a case challenging the no-beard policy of the Arkansas Department of Corrections violates either the First Amendment or the Religious Land Use and Institutionalized Persons Act (RLUIPA) and whether a 1/2-inch beard would satisfy the security goals of the policy. If the cert petition looks a bit strange, it's because Holt is representing himself and handwrote the whole thing. Is the court going to appoint someone to argue Holt's position?
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# ? Mar 5, 2014 20:07 |
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Judicial activism is a euphemism for actually caring about the consequences your ruling might have, instead of circlejerking about ideological purity. Conservatives tend to care about intent and principle, but the effect any of it has on the real world is irrelevant. also, of course, their obsession with never-changing rules, denying that change exists and that laws ever have to adapt with the times, and a general literal-minded approach to everything. Anyone who unironically uses the phrase "judicial activism" and means it has the intellectual depth of a four year old.
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# ? Mar 5, 2014 20:07 |
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hobbesmaster posted:Is the court going to appoint someone to argue Holt's position? Holt has counsel now.
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# ? Mar 5, 2014 20:15 |
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euphronius posted:I dont see how he doesnt win this one. Pfft. What, he doesn't know that it's Dep't and not Dept.? In all seriousness, his Blue Booking is better than some of the attorneys/law students that I have cite checked for, and his handwriting puts my chicken scratch to shame.
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# ? Mar 5, 2014 20:20 |
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hobbesmaster posted:Is the court going to appoint someone to argue Holt's position? Doug Laycock at UVA is representing him now, but Holt was pro se through the trial and appellate courts.
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# ? Mar 5, 2014 20:32 |
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Spatula City posted:Judicial activism is a euphemism for actually caring about the consequences your ruling might have, instead of circlejerking about ideological purity. Conservatives tend to care about intent and principle, but the effect any of it has on the real world is irrelevant. It's not even that, it's just a derogatory term for decisions you don't like in 99% of cases. I'd say judicial activism would only be the case where a justice overturned all precedent and ignored all aspects of common law to suit their own interpretation. A conservative justice who overturned Civil Rights cases because he didn't believe the Founders would have wanted black people to have protections as a special class or something equally crazy would be judicial activism. Making a decision that fits with your ideology based on the written laws and precedent isn't activism so much as an unavoidable part of having human beings decide exactly what particular strings of words mean and how they apply to specific situations. So of course you combine case 1 with all the cases of 2 you disagree with because people with different opinions from you are factually wrong.
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# ? Mar 6, 2014 03:15 |
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The Warszawa posted:Doug Laycock at UVA is representing him now, but Holt was pro se through the trial and appellate courts. And lost
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# ? Mar 6, 2014 03:42 |
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Though it's arguably more pertinent to the Marriage Equality thread, I figure SCOTUS is going to end up dealing with this eventually. E.D.Mich. has struck down Michigan's gay marriage ban. Stay has been asked for from the Sixth Circuit.
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# ? Mar 22, 2014 04:15 |
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The Warszawa posted:Though it's arguably more pertinent to the Marriage Equality thread, I figure SCOTUS is going to end up dealing with this eventually. E.D.Mich. has struck down Michigan's gay marriage ban. Stay has been asked for from the Sixth Circuit. Decision is a pretty awesome read, and also designed to make it difficult for an appellate court to overturn. He basically said that the states witnesses had no credibility, which is a core function for trial judges and harder to overturn on appeal. Struck down under rational basis, also, meaning that I think the First remains the only circuit in which sexual orientation officially receives heightened scrutiny (as opposed to Kennedy's "really it's heightened but we can pretend it's still rational basis."
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# ? Mar 22, 2014 04:20 |
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Kalman posted:He basically said that the states witnesses had no credibility, which is a core function for trial judges and harder to overturn on appeal. I am not privy to the Sixth Circuit's particular standard of review regarding what degree of deference is given to the finder of fact regarding factual findings. But I assume that there is some amount of deference given for factual findings. In other cases, arguments supporting SSM bans have been voiced by the litigants themselves. On appeal, I presume a circuit court would review such arguments de novo, as they are essentially legal arguments going to an issue of law. But in this case, the district court sat as fact finder, attributed the anti-SSM arguments to particular witnesses, and then found those witnesses not credible. As you point out, the purpose of this tactic is clear: the court is trying to make it as difficult as possible to overturn his decision on appeal. I just wonder how successful he will be in manipulating the standard of review. That is, although determining witness credibility is clearly within the province of the fact finder, I wonder how the Sixth Circuit will characterize the anti-SSM arguments: will it review them de novo, because they go to the ultimate legal issue, or will it review them with deference to the trial court, because it's an issue of witness credibility?
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# ? Mar 22, 2014 04:42 |
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Kalman posted:Decision is a pretty awesome read, and also designed to make it difficult for an appellate court to overturn. He basically said that the states witnesses had no credibility, which is a core function for trial judges and harder to overturn on appeal.
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# ? Mar 22, 2014 05:27 |
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twodot posted:Whether or not the arguments presented meet rational basis isn't a matter of fact, so I don't see the difficulty you're talking about here. Even if that were the case, the appellate courts don't need to use the arguments presented to find a rational basis. (Regardless we should just let gay people get married) The arguments were presented by witnesses as factual evidence, not as legal argument from lawyers, so credibility is part of the evaluation. Because the arguments presented were based in factual evidence evaluated as untrustworthy, the appellate courts can't just say "we think the evidence is trustworthy actually", they have to say that the trial judge was wrong to some degree above and beyond simply they disagree with him (exact standard, as noted by Green Crayons, being circuit dependent, and I don't do anything outside of the Fed Circ so I have no idea what the 6th requires.)
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# ? Mar 22, 2014 05:32 |
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Sixth Circuit is "clear error" for factual findings of the district court, which I think is pretty common. The Second Circuit uses the same standard with a bit of a twist in that it treats oral testimony and documentary evidence slightly differently.
The Warszawa fucked around with this message at 05:41 on Mar 22, 2014 |
# ? Mar 22, 2014 05:38 |
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Chokes McGee posted:The latter. I would think the closest to reality "judicial activism" can come is just making things up whole cloth on the fly, which I think only includes Scalia. Or to highlight it another way: quote:Both Justices Steven Breyer and Clarence Thomas had conflicts of interest in the case — Breyer’s brother was the District Court judge on the case, while Thomas was corporate counsel for Monsanto earlier in his career, but only Breyer saw fit to recuse himself. Similar to the Citizens United case where Clarence's wife's income would be increased by his decisions, and he saw no problem jumping right in that one. Thomas is as big a piece of poo poo as Scalia. He's just less loud about it. quote:Common Cause President Bob Edgar cites appearances by Justice Clarence Thomas and Justice Antonin Scalia at retreats sponsored by Koch Industries, a corporation run by two major Republican donors who helped finance some of the new GOP groups founded after the ruling.
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# ? Mar 22, 2014 06:50 |
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Kalman posted:The arguments were presented by witnesses as factual evidence, not as legal argument from lawyers, so credibility is part of the evaluation. Because the arguments presented were based in factual evidence evaluated as untrustworthy, the appellate courts can't just say "we think the evidence is trustworthy actually", they have to say that the trial judge was wrong to some degree above and beyond simply they disagree with him (exact standard, as noted by Green Crayons, being circuit dependent, and I don't do anything outside of the Fed Circ so I have no idea what the 6th requires.)
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# ? Mar 22, 2014 07:10 |
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twodot posted:I don't think this addresses what I said at all. I don't think the judge said their facts were wrong, just that their facts weren't a rational justification of the ban, and even if that were the case, appellate courts don't need to consider the arguments presented in lower courts when deciding rational basis, so even if the arguments you are talking about here are completely dead, higher courts can still ask other people to present similar arguments. I think this is ultimately correct, insofar that the Sixth Circuit will probably qualify the witness testimony re: anti-SSM arguments as legal arguments rather than factual statements. Thus, the Sixth Circuit won't be hampered in invoking a plenary review of whether these arguments are sufficient to satisfy the rational basis standard. However, there is clearly room for the Sixth Circuit to conduct its review differently. I mean, the parties' arguments are essentially arguments about the "facts" of the consequences of SSM. It's not like these arguments are clear cut legal arguments, particularly considering the fact that the particular arguments the district court evaluated were those voiced by witnesses during a trial. Although an appellate court will apply law to facts de novo -- so, for example, the Sixth Circuit would assess whether rational basis is or is not satisfied depending upon the "fact" anti-SSM arguments -- deference is given to the fact finder about what those facts are. So much so, that the circuit court will not disturb the fact finder's factual findings on appeal unless there was clear error in making those factual determinations (thanks Warszawa). If the Sixth Circuit takes this direction, because the fact finder in this case determined the anti-SSM arguments to not have credibility, unless the Sixth Circuit finds clear error in that credibility determination, then the Sixth Circuit should not actually weigh these arguments when applying law to fact: that is, when determining if rationale basis is satisfied. That is to say, if this route is taken, there will be no credible anti-SSM facts to which the Sixth Circuit could apply its rationale basis review. The court would not evaluate the anti-SSM arguments under the rationale basis rubric. It would simply discard them as incredible. Essentially, then, the anti-SSM law would automatically fail because the state would be unable to provide any anti-SSM arguments that the Sixth Circuit could review. --- Edit: Also, in response to another comment of yours, appellate courts frequently do not allow litigants to assert arguments for the first time on appeal. Once again, I'm not well versed in how the Sixth Circuit handles that situation. But just because a litigant *could* articulate new arguments on appeal that favors their position does not mean that an appellate court will actually let them do so. Green Crayons fucked around with this message at 13:31 on Mar 22, 2014 |
# ? Mar 22, 2014 13:28 |
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twodot posted:I don't think the judge said their facts were wrong He totally did
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# ? Mar 22, 2014 13:33 |
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twodot posted:I don't think this addresses what I said at all. I don't think the judge said their facts were wrong, just that their facts weren't a rational justification of the ban, and even if that were the case, appellate courts don't need to consider the arguments presented in lower courts when deciding rational basis, so even if the arguments you are talking about here are completely dead, higher courts can still ask other people to present similar arguments. You should read the decision before commenting on this, because the judge literally said "The Court finds Regnerus' testimony entirely unbelievable and unworthy of serious consideration." Similar language for the other witnesses for the state. (And yeah, I don't know the Sixth again, but frequently you can't introduce new argument and you essentially never can introduce new evidence in appeal.)
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# ? Mar 22, 2014 16:19 |
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There's several things going on here in several posts, so instead of dissecting a bunch of posts, I'm going to breakdown the relevant issues as I see them. 1. Did Friedman ever assert the state witnesses were wrong? I'm still going to go with no on this one. He clearly thinks they are not credible, and that their arguments don't work to establish what they are trying to claim. This doesn't make their claims factually false, it just means that Friedman is going to ignore their claims (edit: and this distinction is relevant due to rational basis standard discussed in question 2): quote:The most that can be said of these witnesses’ testimony is that the “no differences” consensus has not been proven with scientific certainty, not that there is any credible evidence showing that children raised by 2. Even if we decide that Friedman's determinations of credibility are set in stone, and 100% of the data presented by the state can't be used in appeal, does that present a significant obstacle on appeal? I'm saying no, and I don't think there's been good argument otherwise. For rational basis, the state doesn't even need to present evidence, it just needs to argue there exists conceivable rational reasons, and the plaintiff has to shoot them down. You might argue that the plaintiff did in fact already shoot them down, so the government's appeal will fail, but that is certainly not a fact that Friedman determined (the real obstacle to appeal is that they didn't have a case to begin with, not that they lost some key evidence). quote:“The government [also] has no obligation to produce evidence to support the rationality of its . . . [imposed] classifications and may rely entirely on rational speculation unsupported by any evidence or empirical data.” Hadix v. Johnson, 230 F.3d 840, 843 (6th Cir. 2000). Rather, it is incumbent upon plaintiffs to refute “any reasonably conceivable state of facts that could provide a rational basis for the classification.” 3. What are the sorts of arguments that might be presented (and accepted) on appeal? I used some terminology poorly here. Clearly a wholly new argument like "commerce clause!" would be ignored. What I meant is that on appeal, you can argue that Friedman failed to consider an unstated rational reason, if that's true, this sort of argument might just get you remanded back to district court, but I think that would work fine for the government. However, I was not able to find good precedent on this matter, though FCC v Beach Communications sort of fits if you squint hard enough. I would appreciate if someone has more information here. Intuitively, expecting the government to exhaustively list every possible rational reason for a law doesn't seem like a good idea to me. It would be a strange handicap for what is supposed to be a deferential standard of review, and the only thing it would seem to accomplish is to encourage the government to list spurious reasons, though given that they unironically listed morality as a rational reason, that seems to be already happening.
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# ? Mar 22, 2014 21:00 |
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How does factually false interact with scientific conclusions? I mean, my view is that a scientific conclusion is an interpretation or an analysis of a set of data, in an attempt to explain what the data means. It's not false or true, so much as it is supported or not supported by the evidence collected. From the judges report, he appears to view the conclusions of the defense witnesses as not being supported. For example, he states that Regenerus makes conclusions that are on a different subject matter than what his actual study was about (emphasis in the original text): quote:Additionally, the NFSS is flawed on its face, as it purported to study “a large, random sample of American young adults (ages 18-39) who were raised in different types of family arrangements” (emphasis added), but in fact it did not study this at all, as Regnerus equated being raised by a same-sex couple with having ever lived with a parent who had a “romantic relationship with someone of the same sex” for any length of time. Whatever Regnerus may have found in this “study,” he certainly cannot purport to have undertaken a scholarly research effort to compare the outcomes of children raised by same-sex couples with those of children raised by heterosexual couples. Similarly, for Allen's study, he again argues (as Allen himself also notes) that only when failing to control for confounding variables does the study reach the conclusions that help the defense. When confounding variables are controlled for, the effect disappears (again, emphasis in the original text): quote:One of the major limitations of Allen’s study was that he could not discern whether a particular young adult’s academic decline coincided with a separation in the household. Id. at 120-121. This led Allen to acknowledge in a footnote that his “paper does not study the effect of growing up in a same-sex household, but rather examines the association of school performance for those children who lived with same-sex parents in 2006.” Defs.’ Ex. 15 at 4 (emphasis added). Moreover, when Allen controlled for parental education, marital status and five years of residential stability, he discovered that there was no statistically significant difference in graduation rates. Allen, Tr. 3/6/14 pp/ 128-129. For Marks and Price, the judge is solely arguing that they're not credible: quote:Marks, Price and Allen all failed to concede the importance of “convenience sampling” as a social science research tool. They, along with Regnerus, clearly represent a fringe viewpoint that is rejected by the vast majority of their colleagues across a variety of social science fields. So, I guess my question is - do the arguments made against Allen's and Regenerus's work mean that their conclusions are factually false, or how would that be classified? I'd consider them strong arguments that their conclusions are invalid, that they are not supported by the evidence presented, but I really don't know what that means with regards to concluding them factually false.
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# ? Mar 22, 2014 21:30 |
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moebius2778 posted:How does factually false interact with scientific conclusions? I mean, my view is that a scientific conclusion is an interpretation or an analysis of a set of data, in an attempt to explain what the data means. It's not false or true, so much as it is supported or not supported by the evidence collected. Social studies are worse at this, since humans are fickle and chaotic beings, and we don't have a clear idea of what makes them tick. For the matter of these cases though, what the judge and the plaintiffs experts are saying is this: We have had a lot of diligent people look at this, and a lot of equally diligent people look at their conclusions in peer review, and you have to start doing some rather dodgy science and forget a few key parts of the scientific method to arrive at another conclusion than "no difference". A scientific conclusion becomes, for all intents and purposes, a fact, when you get enough data to decide the limits at which it applies and can make accurate predictions within those bounds. Research is usually in the latter stages more about finding those limits, than deciding what the fact(s) are, very broadly speaking. Or to put it another way: There is no doubt in science about the fact that family circumstances growing up can raise or lower a childs wellbeing and later life performance. The gender of their parents, however, we are all but certain are not one of the factors. To change that conclusion, you also have to explain why all the others got it wrong (something they didn't account for that turns out to be crucial f.inst.). GhostBoy fucked around with this message at 18:23 on Mar 24, 2014 |
# ? Mar 24, 2014 18:17 |
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While that is all true, under rational basis review there is no requirement that legislatures base their decision on scientific fact, e.g., Ginsberg v. New York (1968). All that is required is that a reasonable person could agree that the legislation advances the state's intended purpose, here to improve the stability of families for children.
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# ? Mar 25, 2014 02:26 |
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I've studied and written a bit about the general issue of science in the courtroom in my work and career. Even before you get to the (massive) problems of judicial and legal scientific illiteracy and dueling experts, scientific information in the courtroom is inherently fraught. The short version is that the interaction between legal and scientific "truth" systems in regards to evidence is irreconcilably conflicted. Scientific philosophy (at least most dominant expressions of it) require tentativeness and falsificationism. It also is structured so as to be caustic to the idea of authoritative figures dictating epistemic truths. This places the system at odds with the requirements of the legal system, which requires that uncertain claims function as and be treated as true in the interest of the justice system, and that some actor (usually a legal one) makes that ultimate determination. Nowadays, thankfully, judges are getting better at couching their refutation or acceptance of scientific assertions in tentative or strictly legalistic ways- better to leave an opening for revision if something went wrong in the gatekeeping evaluation, or the research changes, or policy uncertainty forces a shift in framing the associated knowledge. It doesn't resolve the underlying tensions, though.
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# ? Mar 25, 2014 03:27 |
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Discendo Vox posted:I've studied and written a bit about the general issue of science in the courtroom in my work and career. Even before you get to the (massive) problems of judicial and legal scientific illiteracy and dueling experts, scientific information in the courtroom is inherently fraught. I agree that the concepts are different. And I agree that judges are getting better at recognizing the difference and this is good. But it seems like a lot of the underlying tension comes from linguistic conflation. We use the symbol 'truth' for two very different things. And it's convenient for people with certain positions to equivocate between the two as often as possible. (e.g. The creationist who rails against the problem of induction while assuming, because of induction, that the TCPIP stack is relaying his messages accurately) If we fixed the problem of type-errors (people trying to fit an empirical-truth answer into a logic-truth shaped hole) I'm not sure that there'd be much tension left. What do you see as being intrinsically unreconcilable?
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# ? Mar 25, 2014 13:35 |
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# ? May 8, 2024 07:11 |
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SCOTUS is hearing arguments in Hobby Lobby's contraception case today. Does anyone who knows more about this case have an idea of how it's likely to go? edit: And if Hobby Lobby wins will we see big corporations everywhere suddenly getting born again in order to save a few bucks on their insurance bill? Kro-Bar fucked around with this message at 14:23 on Mar 25, 2014 |
# ? Mar 25, 2014 14:15 |