SCOTUS 2023: Rice pilaf from Louisiana...is that like an ISIS video?

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Debate & Discussion > SCOTUS 2023: Rice pilaf from Louisiana...is that like an ISIS video?

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Paul MaudDib: May 3, 2006; TEAM NVIDIA:
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The US Supreme Court has declined to hear an appeal from Amazon and Overstock. The question is whether those companies have nexus in NY state for the purposes of sales tax collection.

quote:

Seattle-based Amazon has no offices, distribution centers or workforce in New York. But the New York Court of Appeals said Amazon�s relationship with third-party affiliates in the state that receive commissions for sending Web traffic its way satisfied the �substantial nexus� necessary to force the company to collect taxes.

It has been 20 years since the Supreme Court ruled in Quill v. North Dakota that a state�s efforts to require tax collections from out-of-state companies violated the Commerce Clause of the Constitution. It said the necessary �substantial nexus� exists when the out-of-state retailer has a �physical presence� in the state.

But that decision came before a revolution in online shopping, and the New York court said the old test may now be outdated.

�An entity may now have a profound impact upon a foreign jurisdiction solely through its virtual projection via the Internet,� the court ruled.

To underscore the judicial conflict over the issue, Illinois� top court last month struck down its state law, which was modeled after New York�s, but for different legal reasoning.

I don't really see the logic here. Affiliate referrers aren't getting W2's, they're basically being paid to drive traffic to the site. If you purchased Google AdSense ads to target specific products to specific interested consumers and Google had nexus in a state, would you logically have nexus as well? It seems to broaden to concept of "nexus" to "anywhere you do business, and anywhere your partners do business".

Paul MaudDib fucked around with this message at 22:12 on Dec 2, 2013

# ¿ Dec 2, 2013 22:06

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# ¿ Apr 27, 2024 10:53

Paul MaudDib: May 3, 2006; TEAM NVIDIA:
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jeffersonlives posted:

How? I see basically no connection between the cases outside of broad stroke media/interest group wailing, certainly no legal rationale. Citizens United is not substantively cited in any of the briefs in any of these cases, there's even only one errata citation to it in Clement's brief.

The case law is here, from Professor Volokh. The quote here is a decent summary.

Kalman posted:

Read CU carefully. CU's core logic deals with the concept that groups of persons (e.g., corporations) don't lose rights of those persons simply because they're a group. I'm not saying they'll cite to it - I'm saying expecting this court to distinguish between religious objections based on whether a person or a corporation exerts those objections is a dangerous expectation.

# ¿ Dec 4, 2013 18:35

Paul MaudDib: May 3, 2006; TEAM NVIDIA:
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Patience posted:

What would stop a business that didn't want to pay for any of their employees healthcare costs from convert to Christian Scientists? Or invent a religion to circumvent government regulation of industry?

This brings up a point that I've been thinking a little bit about. A burden cannot exist if there is a non-burdensome alternative course of action. Hobby Lobby could simply offer an equivalent subsidy to its insurance plan, and then it would be morally free and clear as far as "its money" is concerned. The subsidy would be directly equivalent to compensation, and Hobby Lobby would thus have no more moral consequence than a Muslim owner of a gas station whose employees use some of their wages to buy alcohol.

Or for that matter they could simply not offer a health care plan and pay the fine. Fines can be burdensome on religion, but that burden can be balanced by other interests.

Paul MaudDib fucked around with this message at 21:15 on Dec 4, 2013

# ¿ Dec 4, 2013 20:15

Paul MaudDib: May 3, 2006; TEAM NVIDIA:
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jeffersonlives posted:

Except of course it's relevant because nobody suggests corporations have all legal rights of a person. The Court doesn't even suggest they have all constitutional rights, nor does it suggest that the default state is that the corporation has the right.

This gets back to the question of "pass-through" rights. Volokh:

quote:

Let us focus on the three examples mentioned in the preceding post, but tied to closely held corporations. Imagine that a newly enacted law requires all markets to sell state lottery tickets. and say that a particular market is owned by a corporation that is wholly owned by members of a United Methodist family, who believe it�s against their religion for any business that they own, directly or indirectly, to sell lottery tickets. Or imagine the same as to a law requiring all markets to sell beer and wine, and owners of a Methodist or a Muslim family corporation object to this because they think selling wine is sinful. Or say that a law requires all gas stations to operate seven days a week, and say that a particular gas station is owned by a corporation owned by members of a Jewish or Seventh-Day Adventist family, who believe that it is wrong for any business that they own to operate on the Sabbath.

All the store-owning corporations, together with the individual owners of those corporations, sue, seeking an exemption from the lottery ticket mandate, alcohol mandate, or the seven-day-a-week mandate. Should all these claims be rejected, on the theory that (1) corporations lack RFRA rights, and (2) the owners of the corporations can�t raise RFRA claims because the burdens are imposed on the corporations and not on them?

quote:

1.
...
There are plenty of precedents as to corporations when it comes to the freedom of expression. Some people use Citizens United as shorthand for the proposition that corporations have First Amendment rights, but of course the Court has been treating corporations as having First Amendment rights for many decades. The Court upheld such rights as to a media business corporation in 1936 (Grosjean), and spoke of the free speech rights of a nonmedia business corporation in 1941 (Virginia Electric & Power Co.). The 1941 case was somewhat ambiguous, but later cases routinely cited it for the proposition that employers, clearly including corporate employers, had free speech rights (e.g., Thomas v. Collins (1945)).

There remained some uncertainty about the matter in the 1940s, but then by the 1960s the First Amendment rights of nonmedia business corporations became well-settled, and in First National Bank of Boston v. Bellotti (1978) the Court made this explicit. The debate on the Court since First National Bank of Boston has generally been whether corporate free speech rights can be limited for speech regarding elections, not whether corporations have free speech rights at all � both conservative and liberal Justices have routinely concluded that they do have free speech rights.

This having been said, the free speech cases are not directly applicable to religious exemption cases. For instance, free speech rights are justified partly based on the interests of individual listeners, not just the corporate speakers; that doesn�t necessarily carry over as to religious exemption cases. And indeed the Court has at times treated corporate rights differently in different constitutional areas. So the corporate speech line of cases is not necessarily helpful here.

quote:

2.
...
Do restrictions on corporations sometimes burden the religious practice of individuals? Sometimes, the answer is uncontroversially yes. Churches don�t believe or pray, either, but restrictions on churches interfere with the ability of individuals to participate in collective religious exercise.

Likewise, though for a different reason, with closely held corporations. If such a corporation is required to do something, the owners of the corporation may believe that this is obligating them to participate in that thing � as a matter of reality and of moral and religious obligation, setting aside the legal fiction. If they so believe, and they believe that this violates their religious beliefs, then the law substantially burdens their religious beliefs, even though it does that through imposing an obligation on a corporation. They face the same choice that sole proprietors or partners face: violate their religious obligations, violate the law and face the penalties for violating the law, or sell off their share of the business, which may be a very grave financial burden.

(For a slightly different approach, see my colleague Stephen Bainbridge�s Using Reverse Veil Piercing to Vindicate the Free Exercise Rights of Incorporated Employers. I agree with a good deal of what Steve says, but I focus on the religious beliefs of the owners of the corporation, and think it is not relevant whether, for instance, �the corporation�s articles of incorporation include a statement of purpose referencing religious beliefs and goals,� or �religious practices such as devotions, prayer, scripture reading, or worship services [are] routinely made a part of corporate meetings.�)

The matter is different, I think, with regard to shareholders in publicly traded corporations. Generally speaking, a public company stockholder could sell his stock with little cost, so the law won�t impose a substantial burden on him. To be sure, little cost isn�t no cost; but here is where the substantial burden requirement comes into play. (I realize that some people own stock through retirement funds and other mechanisms in which divestment is difficult; I�m inclined to say that this shouldn�t change the analysis, partly because such difficulty usually stems from private contractual constraints and not governmental obligations, but this is one area where my thinking is especially tentative.)

quote:

3. We can now return to the text of the RFRA. RFRA speaks generally of the rights of �persons,� and the Dictionary Act provides that, �unless the context indicates otherwise,� the word �person� �include[s] corporations � as well as individuals.� The context of RFRA � religious freedom � does indicate that the underlying rights being protected must be the rights of human beings, who can actually feel religious obligations.

But this context is quite consistent with the normal legal practice of protecting corporate rights as a means of protecting the underlying rights of human beings. When it comes to closely held corporations, letting the corporation stand in for its owners � when the owners object that a law requiring the corporation to do something will require them to violate their own religious beliefs � makes good sense.

And even if the courts conclude otherwise, and say that the corporation cannot itself bring the religious exemption claim, the owners should be free to raise their own claims. If we see through the legal fiction of the corporation in concluding that corporations lack RFRA rights, then we should likewise see how obligations imposed on a closely-held corporation can oblige its owners to be complicit in what they see as sinful behavior.

http://www.volokh.com/2013/12/03/rfra-allow-exemptions-burdens-imposed-corporations/

Obviously I highly disagree with the practical implications of this, but it's a straightforward combination of corporate law and the RFRA. The real problem is that the RFRA is a poorly-written bill that has far-reaching implications and that the PPACA did not exempt itself from it.

Paul MaudDib fucked around with this message at 22:29 on Dec 4, 2013

# ¿ Dec 4, 2013 22:24

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jeffersonlives posted:

I'd be very careful of accepting Professor Volokh's RFRA roadmap (which is largely couched in hypotheticals) as a substantive prediction of the Supreme Court's holding here. He's not really arguing what you think he's arguing.

Can you explain why he's not arguing what I think he's arguing, and give a counterargument or link a place I can find one?

Again, I just can't see this court going anti-religion and anti-corporation. Which of the conservatives would swing against corporate power and religions and avoid taking a stab at a black Democratic president's signature achievement, and why?

Paul MaudDib fucked around with this message at 22:48 on Dec 4, 2013

# ¿ Dec 4, 2013 22:40

Paul MaudDib: May 3, 2006; TEAM NVIDIA:
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Chuu posted:

I would argue that for most software patents this is not the case. The idea is the easy part, the implementation is the hard part. This really goes back to the burden of undue experimentation.

It's impossible to say whether "most" software patents the implementation is difficult. There are an awful lot of bullshit software patents out there - for example, when you're scrolling your phone screen and it hits the bottom, iphones bounce as they stop scrolling. That's patented. There's certainly not anything that's difficult to implement there, it's purely a patent on a program behaving a certain way.

I feel most real "innovation" in programs is a unique combination of data structure and algorithm and the implementation is obvious (not trivial in time, but obvious) once that's been described.

# ¿ Dec 7, 2013 19:09

Paul MaudDib: May 3, 2006; TEAM NVIDIA:
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Kalman posted:

Think of it this way - until the iPhone, did any electronic device use a slide to unlock function? It's not like touch screens were new, or lock screens, after all.

Yes, absolutely. Try the NeoNode N1m, debuted at CeBit in March 2002.

The patent office is not doing an appropriate job of assessing the significance and prior art of patents, and is leaving it to the courts to sort out (at great expense to anyone smaller than, say, Microsoft). The concept of patenting the fashion in which icons move around on a screen is totally absurd in the first place. Apple having the exclusive right for 28 years to have their UIs bounce when they stop scrolling does not advance the arts and sciences in the slightest. Similarly many of the "design patents" that are getting issued are also absurd and absusive - "a tablet PC with rounded corners" should not be patentable.

For all the talk about "streamlining regulation" and cutting red tape, significantly reducing the duration and scope of software patents would be something that would have a profoundly positive impact on the economy. There are very direct costs to these patents in terms of startups that get trolled out of business. The actual implementation (source code/binary) would be protected by copyright and is obvious to any practitioner of the art once the novel ideas have been described, so I'm at a loss as to why software implementations are patentable beyond corporate rent-seeking.

Paul MaudDib fucked around with this message at 23:11 on Dec 8, 2013

# ¿ Dec 8, 2013 22:32

Paul MaudDib: May 3, 2006; TEAM NVIDIA:
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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.

# ¿ Mar 2, 2014 05:46

Paul MaudDib: May 3, 2006; TEAM NVIDIA:
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Not My Leg posted:

But then courts end up in the position of judging the reality of religious beliefs, and that's a big no-no. There are portions of the country where you could probably convince a jury (and some judges) that the Islamic God objectively does not exist (how can he, the Christian God is the correct God). If the truth of religious beliefs matters, then convincing the fact-finder of the non-existence of God eliminates any protection for religious beliefs.

I'm not saying that this is analogous to Hobby Lobby, just pointing out that we don't want courts judging the accuracy of religious beliefs.

That's essentially what we already have, except instead of quibbling over whether a religious belief is "truly held" we quibble over whether whether the government has a "valid interest in restricting that conduct".

To wit, you can have a truly felt conviction that peyote makes you commune with the gods all you want, but restricting that is a legitimate government interest. Now, making sure that women have access to medical care? Totally not a legitimate government interest, you need to observe employers' religious beliefs.

In the end it boils down to the same practical outcome, which is whether you can convince a jury (or SCOTUS) that your particular form of religious observances should be protected. And it's not like there aren't situations where the government judges the sincerity of religious beliefs anyway, see: conscientious objectors. It's not exactly crossing the rubicon.

e: I guess I misread that. Requiring objective proof to make religious belief claims would never, ever happen.

Paul MaudDib fucked around with this message at 01:16 on Mar 27, 2014

# ¿ Mar 27, 2014 00:58

Paul MaudDib: May 3, 2006; TEAM NVIDIA:
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Kalman posted:

I think the Justices are quite aware of the cloud storage issue, which is why they will center the whole thing on retransmission consent instead, find Aereo to be a MVPD, and thereby allow the broadcasters to demand fees for transmission ( your "free in a local market" thing is a misreading of must-carry - broadcasters can force MVPDs in their local market to carry them but are barred from receiving fees for it; otherwise, the MVPD has to pay the retransmission fees.)

Avoids all the public performance issues entirely, doesn't touch cloud services because it's a separate statutory regime.

If you're retransmitting content when you're streaming video from your antenna to your mobile device, you're also retransmitting content when you stream your CD rips from your MyBook Live hard drive or from your TiVo.

In a practical sense there is no difference whether the first "transmission" of the content takes place over the airwaves or a physical disk, or whether you're streaming live TV or a recording from your TiVo, it's all just ways to send data with varying amounts of latency.

Except for services that specifically stream media direct from a service provider (eg Amazon or iTunes) it's impossible to do any sort of "cloud" product involving media and not have it be "retransmitted" somehow.

Paul MaudDib fucked around with this message at 19:38 on Apr 23, 2014

# ¿ Apr 23, 2014 19:30

Paul MaudDib: May 3, 2006; TEAM NVIDIA:
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Kalman posted:

Except that there is a legal difference between retransmission a user does themself and retransmission performed by a third party.

Mike Risch had a good post on Aereo yesterday: http://madisonian.net/2014/04/22/three-pictures-aereo/

What is the difference? Let's say I rent my TiVo from my cable company (companies like DirecTV rent DVRs which can do "cloud streaming"). Then a third party owns the device which is streaming me media, therefore the third party is retransmitting?

How is that any different from Aereo renting DVRs, except for the fact that in the first case the cable company is the party doing the renting and makes the profit? We've established that the physical location of the device makes no difference, so it doesn't matter whether the DVR is in my home or in an office somewhere.

Looks an awful lot like they're trying to shut down the competition for horning in on their DVR rental business. Plus the usual bullheadedness about sticking to 60s-era methods of content delivery of course.

Or to bring it back to cloud services, here's another example. Let's say I have a MyBook Live disk and I stream my music from it. I own the device, this is OK. Then one day it breaks, instead I upload my CD rips to Dropbox and stream from their server. They are performing retransmission, and this is not OK? (imagine instead of cd-rips I recorded a set from the radio or downloaded them from iTunes if that's a more suitable "transmission" for you). In both cases the "retransmission" is initiated by a user by performing a connection to some server, no matter what kind it is or who owns it, that's the act of performing transmission to me in this situation. Without a user connected to watch it, the box isn't going to retransmit a damned thing. Personal streaming is obviously a private performance. That's in contrast to a radio or TV rebroadcast, which happens whether someone's connected or not.

It really seems identical to the Betamax cases (or recording cassettes off the radio), except in the finest legal tradition they've thrown in "with a computer!" and demanded that everything change.

Paul MaudDib fucked around with this message at 22:16 on Apr 23, 2014

# ¿ Apr 23, 2014 19:47

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Kalman posted:

Cable company has already paid the broadcaster a fee to retransmit their content.

I think you're misusing the word "retransmit" here. DirecTV certainly pays the distribution fees to transmit the content, but I've never heard of them paying a fee to retransmit content later. Like, there's a line item on your DirecTV bill, "Fee For Streaming DVR Recordings"? Or DirecTV pays such a fee in aggregate separate from the initial license for the content? Can you provide evidence for this claim?

quote:

And? The rebroadcaster doesn't rebroadcast when it's turned off either, but you aren't going to argue that doesn't make it a rebroadcaster, right? The problem is that when a user is connected it retransmits, and the law doesn't really care that when a user isn't connected it doesn't. Your other examples don't fall into retransmission for a variety of reasons.

Maybe you should go into more detail, because I'm not really grasping this portion of your argument and it seems like you're seriously misusing some of these terms. A point-to-point transmission commanded by a user is not a "broadcast" in the legal sense under the FCC's definition. I do hold an FCC license (not that it's hard) and this is an important distinction. Broadcasts are things like TV stations, where the transmission does not have a specific destination or recipient and are intended for reception by the general public. We were talking about retransmission which is different to me.

Obviously you could not legally take your Aereo DVR and stream the content to the general public on Twitch.tv or something like that. No question there. But again I don't think it's possible to segregate off "cloud" services like Dropbox or Amazon S3 from Aereo with the definitions given. If they rule against Aereo, the definition will also effectively criminalize someone playing their recording of a radio set from the cloud ("retransmission in a different format"). Recording cassettes off the radio has been accepted since the 60s, and the only novel thing here is the fact that it's stored digitally on a computer instead of a cassette and you don't have sole ownership of the computer in question (you do own the recording, but not the hardware it's stored on).

Furthermore the distinction of "retransmit in a different medium", used in such a way, is fundamentally problematic to me. The initial format is radio waves, no question. If you stream the content to your mobile phone, the signal will travel over wires in a different encoding (data packets over internet) at some point, agreed. But if that's the standard, then does your TV not "retransmit" the signal when it converts FM modulated radio waves in air to component video signals in a wire to drive the picture tube? Why is transmitting across the internet (one stream to a personal device) fundamentally different, other than the wire to the "picture tube" being really long and using a different encoding?

quote:

Also, personal streaming is not obviously a public performance under the law - see Columbia v Redd Horne, 749 F2d 154, in which private "streaming" of videocassette into private booths was a public performance. Still good law in the 3rd as far as I know! Also note that YouTube videos are public performances, despite being streamed to a single entity in any one location and likely a different ephemeral copy for each entity given the realities of caching and CDNs.

Your cited case is about a company who tried to take videotapes licensed for private performances and use them to do public performances without paying for the license for the public performance.

That's irrelevant here because there's no question that a license was paid for a public performance. The TV station paid the licensing fee to broadcast the content. This is a question of whether additional fees must be paid to play back your private recording of the public performance. Betamax settled this firmly in the negative, but now they're trying to draw a distinction based on whether you own the VCR yourself or merely have rented it. That's a really awful distinction that has pretty well been shot down already, but it's now novel again because it's "on a computer".

If Aereo was letting you stream recordings from other people's DVRs then this case would be relevant, because you would definitely be publically performing using a copy licensed for private use. Or letting you stream recordings onto publicly-accessible streams like Twitch or something, which would be rebroadcasting.

Paul MaudDib fucked around with this message at 19:18 on Apr 24, 2014

# ¿ Apr 24, 2014 18:27

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KOTEX GOD OF BLOOD posted:

This was also my first thought. Are police officers setting up for a "tactical advantage" really equivalent to troops demanding housing under the 3rd? It's not like there's a well-developed 3rd Amendment jurisprudence to use as a guide.

One of those three cases that was decided on the 3rd was from corrections officers who were booted from housing while the National Guard performed was doing police work, which seems analogous.

quote:

In 1983, the Second Circuit ruled that the State of New York violated the Third Amendment rights of striking correction officers who were booted from staff housing by National Guard troops.

http://blogs.wsj.com/law/2013/07/05/forgotten-third-amendment-surfaces-in-nevada-case/

The national guard are more obviously "troops" than the police, but they were deployed in police work during the time in question. Ironically enough in this case the police were basically doing military work ("seeking a tactical advantage").

Paul MaudDib fucked around with this message at 20:06 on May 8, 2014

# ¿ May 8, 2014 19:44

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Allaniis posted:

I'm not surprised the Fed Cir reversed and found APIs copyrightable; the bar for copyright is really low. District Court's higher standard went against all prior case law.

I wouldn't say all prior case law. For example, clean-room reimplementations have long been considered non-infringing. The cleanroom process consists of one team of engineers who translate a program from code into specifications (which apparently is now independently copyrightable) and another team of engineers who re-translate the specifications back into an independent implementation of code.

quote:

A famous example of reverse-engineering involves San Jose-based Phoenix Technologies Ltd., which in the mid-1980s wanted to produce a BIOS for PCs that would be compatible with the IBM PC's proprietary BIOS. (A BIOS is a program stored in firmware that's run when a PC starts up; see Technology QuickStudy, June 25.)

To protect against charges of having simply (and illegally) copied IBM's BIOS, Phoenix reverse-engineered it using what's called a "clean room," or "Chinese wall," approach. First, a team of engineers studied the IBM BIOS�about 8KB of code�and described everything it did as completely as possible without using or referencing any actual code. Then Phoenix brought in a second team of programmers who had no prior knowledge of the IBM BIOS and had never seen its code. Working only from the first team's functional specifications, the second team wrote a new BIOS that operated as specified.

http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/65532/Reverse_Engineering?pageNumber=1

It's impossible to do a re-implementation if the API is now copyrightable, since if you don't use the API then the rest of the system has no way to call your code.

Paul MaudDib fucked around with this message at 18:27 on May 11, 2014

# ¿ May 11, 2014 18:25

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Mr. Nice! posted:

Are you making money off of wine shadowhawk? Is anyone? I don't think they're going to ever have issue with something like wine because by it's nature it is non-commercial.

Yes, there is a company who makes money off of providing paid support for a custom version of WINE (in the same vein as Red Hat Linux or something like that). Their gig is essentially ensuring that specific applications (mostly office type applications) run properly inside their version of the WINE system.

http://www.codeweavers.com/

There's also Transgaming, who leverages the core WINE technology to port specific programs (mostly games) directly to Linux instead of providing a generalized emulation environment. They used to be the ones who released the commercial Cedega/WineX fork of WINE.

https://transgaming.com/company/overview

More generally you should not assume that just because software is open source that no one is making money on it. Red Hat proved long ago that there's plenty of money to be made in supporting "free" software.

Paul MaudDib fucked around with this message at 21:57 on May 11, 2014

# ¿ May 11, 2014 20:16

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Kalman posted:

Honestly, the only real problem with it is that it's done silently, not that it's done - they really ought to at least issue errata or black lines or something to show it was changed.

No one expects the court to issue perfectly edited stuff, the entire problem the article identified is that they are silently editing non-trivial parts of binding legal documents with no kind of publicly-available edit history.

I don't think it's problematic as long as they're basically doing corrections. Editing important parts of decisions after the news cycle has moved on, or using it as a way to quietly fix incorrect statements of fact is pretty sketchy though. It smacks of the court getting it wrong and then burying the mistake.

On the other hand it's pretty difficult to actually tell what they're doing right now, because it's all happening behind closed doors. Opening up the edit history shouldn't really be a problem for them, but then we're talking about a group of people who don't like cameras.

Paul MaudDib fucked around with this message at 23:16 on May 26, 2014

# ¿ May 26, 2014 22:56

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Discendo Vox posted:

There is a system and policy for promulgating the changes, which is why Lexis and Westlaw had at least some of them recorded- the problem is that the process is isn't universalized and consistent. Another product of a state of affairs in which the publication of caselaw is effectively privatized.

They aren't recording the changes though - there's no way to look through Lexis and see that revision B of case 14-34835 changed three lines in paragraph 27. There's a system for silently propagating the new revisions, which isn't the same thing.

Paul MaudDib fucked around with this message at 23:15 on May 26, 2014

# ¿ May 26, 2014 22:59

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ayn rand hand job posted:

I agree, we need to store SCOTUS opinions on the blockchain.

I'll go start the wiki.

You do realize that a wiki is an example of a content-revision system that is publically available while supporting millions of editors, right?

It's an absolutely trivial problem to track revisioning in documents. Tools like "git" or "subversion" are widely used in the publishing world, and SCOTUS already uses them. This is 100% a matter of making the change logs public.

# ¿ May 27, 2014 19:14

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ufarn posted:

A database tracking the surreptitious changes to SCOTUS opinions is now available.

Good. SCOTUS should have been doing this on their own, but at least someone is tracking it now.

# ¿ Jun 12, 2014 19:25

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Hieronymous Alloy posted:

I think Kennedy being fooled by the labeling seems appropriate, and relative amount of juice seems like an extremely significant detail to me. If I buy something labeled "orange juice" I don't expect to get 99% apple with an artificial orange flavoring added. Hell, I'm not sure I'd have a problem with requiring simulated flavoring to be explicitly labeled as such in all cases.

This definitely happens. I used to drink a lot of iced tea with lemon juice, and to save money my dad bought a bunch of "Lemon Juice" from a dollar store. I tasted it and instantly knew it wasn't lemon juice. I looked at the ingredients and sure enough it was mostly "artificial lemon flavoring" and "lemon juice" was the last ingredient on the list. If you actually looked carefully the name didn't actually imply it was pure lemon juice, and it did contain some marginal amount of real lemon juice so it was probably perfectly legal.

My dad, of course, refused to believe that there was anything wrong with it, just his son being too stuck-up and good for the wholesome products he bought at the dollar store :smith:

It's probably still lurking at my parent's house somewhere, next time I'm there I'll check out the precise wording.

Paul MaudDib fucked around with this message at 04:44 on Jun 13, 2014

# ¿ Jun 13, 2014 04:41

Paul MaudDib: May 3, 2006; TEAM NVIDIA:
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I was thinking about this on the train tonight, I think there's a strong argument that computer programs are essentially an "artifact of nature" in the same way that, say, the Fibbonacci sequence is.

Using Turing machines yields some interesting properties about general computers. Essentially, there are an infinite number of computer programs, but there are only countably many computer programs. Turing machines allow a way to assign numbers to every possible computer program (algorithms, inputs, and resultant outputs) - there is a Turing Machine 1, Turing Machine 2, etc (not all of which halt). Every (computable) computer program, no matter how big, can be transformed into a Turing Machine, and then represented as the corresponding G�del number. It becomes really lovely for non-trivial programs, but you can do it programmatically.

To me at least, that sets the stage for the algorithms themselves to be unpatentable, in the same way you couldn't patent the Fibbonacci sequence. The algorithm itself isn't really important, knowing that it's Turing Machine 38876369 is sufficient to describe it, it's how you apply the algorithm. In the same way, parts of the Fibbonacci sequence probably aren't patentable as such, just the way you're applying the Fibbonacci sequence to solving real-world problems. This is also a rather obvious conclusion of Lambda calculus, in which computer programs are essentially the evaluation of mathematical equations, which is also not patentable. You can't patent an equation, and the method of evaluating it is obvious. There's a third type of machine, a recursive machine, which can also be mathematically evaluated, and the computing power of all three machines (Turing machine, Lambda calculus, and recursive machines) are all equivalent (Church-Turing Thesis), they're just different ways of processing the same result.

The "general computer/specialized computer" framework is clearly awkward as poo poo and SCOTUS doesn't seem to like it. It really clearly becomes absurd if you apply computational theory or number theory to it.

So far as I can see it is literally impossible to run a program on a general computer, they exist only in theory, which is incredibly :psyduck:

if you think about it. As soon as you load something into memory it becomes a specialized computer. They exist as an abstract class of computational machine within our legal framework. It's a totally valid thing in computer science but it's really weird to see it used legally.

e:

Shifty Pony posted:

The giant elephant in the room is the question of if a generic computer programmed a particular way can impart structural novelty to the invention.

This, and I think "no", clearly.

e2: The big thing is that Universal Turing Machines also require a input/program (operating memory and inputs are mixed together on a single tape), but there are extensions with separate memory/input/output tapes, the computing power is equivalent.

Paul MaudDib fucked around with this message at 08:22 on Jun 20, 2014

# ¿ Jun 20, 2014 06:41

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Kalman posted:

"Artifact of nature" doesn't mean what you seem to think it means.

You'll have to be more specific, because stuff like equations definitely aren't patentable, and computer programs are nothing more than an equation that is evaluated.

quote:

What Are Abstract Ideas?

Abstract ideas are concepts like pure mathematics and algorithms. You cannot patent a formula. However, you can patent an application of that formula. Thus, while you cannot patent a mathematical formula that produces nonrepeating patterns, you can patent paper products that use that formula to prevent rolls of paper from sticking together.
Can I Patent Software?

Although software functions by using algorithms and mathematics, it may be patentable if it produces some concrete and useful result. However, what cannot be patented is software whose only purpose is to perform mathematical operations. Thus, software that converts one set of numbers to another will not be patentable; but software that converts one set of numbers to another to make rubber will be patentable.

http://www.legalmatch.com/law-library/article/what-cant-be-patented.html

These two ideas are fundamentally at odds. Computer programs are pure mathematics, a formula to be evaluated, nothing more. This is a thing that computational theory tells us. Furthermore we can enumerate every possible computer program that could ever be written (countably infinite), so if anything they are even less inventive than the set of all possible mathematical formulas, where there are uncountably many possible formulas.

These statements may not make sense, but they are provably true.

In the lambda-calculus view, the algorithm itself is just a mathematical formula. The computer follows standardized rules to manipulate the formula and produce an output.

The turing computer model is the inverse of lambda calculus. The computer is just a standardized black box that takes a number and some input and produces an output. Specifically, since the output can also be encoded, the computer is really just a mathematical function with two parameters (program number and an encoded input). It really doesn't matter what function we use to evaluate, as long as it's Turing complete and everyone uses the same function.

From this perspective, probably the only inventive/patentable thing is what input you provide the program and how you utilize the output. On its face this argument only attacks the individual steps in an algorithm, but combinations of the sub-steps are just another program and therefore represent a different Godel number that satisfies a different set of criteria, the program number and input are evaluated by the same black-box function to produce a different result.

Patenting an algorithm is very closely akin to patenting a prime number. It's neat, it fits certain criteria that could be useful in certain applications, but that shouldn't make it patentable separate from the application.

Paul MaudDib fucked around with this message at 09:09 on Jun 20, 2014

# ¿ Jun 20, 2014 08:24

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So when are we going to get Hobby Lobby? If employers are going to be able to push religion on their employees let's just rip this bandaid off already :smithicide:

# ¿ Jun 26, 2014 17:08

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Lessail posted:

has scotusblog tried to downplay a bad opinion like this before

Sure, happens all the time. As mentioned there are some really classic ScotusBlog opinions on the VRA, where they take the same "don't worry Obama will just wave a magic wand and fix everything!" stance as they are right now.

quote:

But who will be able to cut through these radically irreconcilable meanings of the Court�s decision and lead forward on these explosive issues? No one is better positioned than President Obama. Having taught about the VRA for years as a law professor, he knows these issues � their history, their legal and policy consequences � thoroughly. Having run for office, state and national, he understands them from the perspective of the democratic process on the ground. And his natural temperament, honed by years of reflection about exactly these issues, is to appreciate the pull of both sides of this symbolic and practical struggle. Many voters, white and of color, chose him precisely in hope of his potential to move us forward on these and similar issues.

http://www.scotusblog.com/2013/06/shelby-commentary-what-does-the-courts-decision-mean/

The rest of the article is pretty much straight cheerleading for the "it's been 40 years guys, American society has changed and our laws need to keep up!" position the conservative wing took.

I've also seen some rather lovely stuff on patent law, where lawyers really lack an appreciation for just how obvious the claims are, and how destructive the whole thing is to innovation. Much like SCOTUS itself, the people who write SCOTUS are not always examining the full ramifications of their dumb legal game-playing - most especially when it keeps bread on their plates.

Basically at the end of the day ScotusBlog is still written by lawyers, who are real people who can be lovely and right-wing and stuck in their own little navelgazing legal world too.

Paul MaudDib fucked around with this message at 16:48 on Jun 30, 2014

# ¿ Jun 30, 2014 16:36

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Beamed posted:

It doesn't matter if Justices are out of touch, though, because their interpretation of the law should be the same regardless?(Yes, in theory, I know.)

Not really. You can always make an argument that the law is in favor of X, or the law is against X. The law is complex and self-contradictory and lawyers and judges pick and choose what parts of it they pay attention to and make interpretations about what those those parts of the law mean. There is no platonic "right interpretation" of the law that everyone knows (somehow), that's grade-school level fantasy bullshit. Insofar as a small minority of cases exist where the law is indeed so cut and dry, those are the 9-0 rulings, not the 5-4 party-line rulings.

In fact lawyers rather notoriously can always find some basis to make a stand on, even if it's just a last-ditch delaying maneuver.

Paul MaudDib fucked around with this message at 17:14 on Jun 30, 2014

# ¿ Jun 30, 2014 17:09

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Schlitzkrieg Bop posted:

Well presumably Hobby Lobby isn't buying OTC Advil for its pregnant employees. And also the fact that at a certain point lawyers and judges want to reach the actual legal arguments involved instead of bickering back and forth over whether someone's religious beliefs make them a hypocrite.

Prescription-strength Ibuprofen is almost certainly on their formulary. It's a standard thing that's covered in case you end up in the hospital, where they'll be giving you the big expensive pills they can charge you for instead of the $3 Wal-Mart bottle.

The bigger problem is that it doesn't even matter, there's no need for any sort of consistency or truthfulness of the beliefs, they just have to have some non-falsifiable claims about how they believe a product causes abortions and that's sufficient to start manipulating how their employees' compensation is disbursed. The Greens didn't give a poo poo about the fact that their health plan covered contraception until 2012 when it became a stick they could poke in that uppity President's eye, they continue to invest in companies that profit from producing and selling these (falsely) claimed abortion products, and they continue to cover other products which may induce abortions. Their beliefs are 100% consistent with punishing sluts and 100% inconsistent with preventing abortion.

But again that doesn't matter because it's an honest belief and my gut has convinced me of the truthiness.

Real hurthling! posted:

So apparently HL had 73 million invested in companies that make iuds and emergency contraception when they filed their case.

Paul MaudDib fucked around with this message at 18:20 on Jul 1, 2014

# ¿ Jul 1, 2014 18:02

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GhostBoy posted:

If you look at what the government can mandate regarding salary, the answer is "it's irrelevant" or "Maybe it does, but the law passes the test". Government has a significant interest in limiting how many poor people there are, and address this, in part, through the federal minimum wage laws. These say nothing that could be religiously objected to, or it can somewhat readily be shown that forcing a lower limit on wages is the least restrictive means to achieve this.

I'm sure there are other hypotheticals.

You should never make absolute statements about "what can be religiously objected to". There are religious arguments against income tax, unions, and medical treatment as an abstract concept. I'm absolutely sure you can come up with some bullshit about the moral virtues and inherent dignity of deep poverty or some just-worldism from the Prosperity Doctrine crowd. There's probably some ALEC staffer furiously brainstorming on a spiral pad right now.

"Least restrictive means" is totally in the eye of the beholder (in this case, a 5-judge Republican majority), and in practical terms can be rephrased as "a restriction which the Court finds acceptable".

Paul MaudDib fucked around with this message at 18:17 on Jul 1, 2014

# ¿ Jul 1, 2014 18:14

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Barlow posted:

Thankfully the legal test is not whether a belief is "true" but whether it is seriously held. Native Americans worshiping on federal land don't have to argue their beliefs are correct in any metaphysical sense to claim protection, if they did the government could just ignore any groups claim to having sacred areas and that would be pretty horrific. We don't require conscientious objectors in war to prove their is a God or that war is somehow objectively bad, we just require that they prove they believe that war is wrong according to the dictates of conscience.

Testing religious beliefs against "scientific fact" seems like it gets perilously close to establishing religion.

The claim that "contraceptives cause abortions" isn't a religious claim, though, it's a medical claim, a factual claim. "Abortions are bad" is the religious/moral claim in that argument.

Paul MaudDib fucked around with this message at 21:58 on Jul 1, 2014

# ¿ Jul 1, 2014 21:52

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Discendo Vox posted:

Does TPM actually say how the Supreme Court made this addition? I can't find it anywhere in the article. Scotusblog has nothing, and I'm not finding any other sources agreeing with this.

It sounds like they didn't "add" anything, it's the particular orders the court made. They ordered a bunch of similar cases dealing with other forms of contraception be re-examined in light of their current ruling.

quote:

Tuesday's orders apply to companies owned by Catholics who oppose all contraception. Cases involving Colorado-based Hercules Industries Inc., Illinois-based Korte & Luitjohan Contractors Inc. and Indiana-based Grote Industries Inc. were awaiting action pending resolution of the Hobby Lobby case.

They are among roughly 50 lawsuits from profit-seeking corporations that object to the contraceptive coverage requirement in their health plans for employees. Contraception is among a range of preventive services that must be included in the health plans, at no extra cost to workers.

The justices also ordered lower courts that ruled in favor of the Obama administration to reconsider thosedecisions in light of Monday's 5-4 decision.

Two Michigan-based companies, Autocam Corp. and Eden Foods Inc., both lost their cases in the lower courts. The justices ordered the 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals to reconsider its decisions against the companies.

http://talkingpointsmemo.com/news/scotus-says-hobby-lobby-ruling-applies-broadly

# ¿ Jul 1, 2014 22:05

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Discendo Vox posted:

It's very strange, because it seems to conflict with some of the limiting language of the majority opinion. Jeez, this case has been an absolute mess.

It's not really strange at all. This was an opinion that comes down to "employers may not be compelled to fund the purchase of contraception" and just uses a lot of words to cover it up. They opened up a legal hole big enough to drive an 18-wheeler through and then explicitly narrowed it down to basically "just contraception".

The "contraceptives equals abortions" thing isn't scientifically backed, but under the standard that doesn't even matter anyway as long as it's a sincerely held belief. This obviously opens up a massive can of worms that would be incredibly frightening to an 80-year-old WASP type (Muslim employers, Christian scientists denying medical care entirely, etc), so they then arbitrarily narrow it back down to "just contraception" with absolutely no justification at all, and then issue a bunch of rulings against methods which aren't even claimed to cause abortions anyway.

It's one of the more vapid rulings to come out recently, which is really saying something for the Roberts court. It's just them pissing on the black man while trying desperately to avoid the wind blowing it right back on themselves.

Paul MaudDib fucked around with this message at 22:33 on Jul 1, 2014

# ¿ Jul 1, 2014 22:22

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Discendo Vox posted:

FDA is going to be more accurate than "many doctors" 95-99% of the time.

It's always been a hugely politicized issue, pro-lifers created a cloud of uncertainty and then demanded the label say "may cause abortions". Nowadays even the FDA is beginning to admit that science is not on their side.

quote:

The notion that morning-after pills prevent eggs from implanting stems from the Food and Drug Administration�s decision during the drug-approval process to mention that possibility on the label � despite lack of scientific proof, scientists say, and objections by the manufacturer of Plan B, the pill on the market the longest. Leading scientists say studies since then provide strong evidence that Plan B does not prevent implantation, and no proof that a newer type of pill, Ella, does. Some abortion opponents said they remain unconvinced.

After The Times asked about this issue, A.D.A.M., the firm that writes medical entries for the National Institutes of Health Web site, deleted passages suggesting emergency contraceptives could disrupt implantation. The Times, which uses A.D.A.M.�s content on its health Web page, updated its site. The medical editor in chief of the Web site for the Mayo Clinic, Dr. Roger W. Harms, said �we are champing at the bit� to revise the entry if the Food and Drug Administration changes labels or other agencies make official pronouncements.

�These medications are there to prevent or delay ovulation,� said Dr. Petra M. Casey, an obstetrician-gynecologist at Mayo. �They don�t act after fertilization.�

The F.D.A. declined to discuss decisions about the effect on implantation or to say whether it would consider revising labels. But Erica Jefferson, an F.D.A. spokeswoman, acknowledged: �The emerging data on Plan B suggest that it does not inhibit implantation. Less is known about Ella. However, some data suggest it also does not inhibit implantation.�

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/06/06/health/research/morning-after-pills-dont-block-implantation-science-suggests.html?pagewanted=all&_r=1&

# ¿ Jul 16, 2014 17:27

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So question, with all the dumb cases that have been decided over the past 25 years on the basis of standing, how can anyone possibly have standing to sue over this issue? Who can demonstrate that they personally have been harmed by themselves or someone else getting subsidies to buy insurance? That doesn't make any sense.

e: I'm behind and this was literally just answered :downs:

Paul MaudDib fucked around with this message at 20:26 on Jul 22, 2014

# ¿ Jul 22, 2014 20:24

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computer parts posted:

There won't be any indictments if only because the DoJ is controlled by Dems right now. She also didn't do anything wrong, but that's another point.

Maybe not the most ethical thing, but eh.

This is more of a USPol question, but have there been more developments? Last I'd heard she had some stuff that wasn't classified when she received it but was later classified, and some stuff that they thought should have been classified but wasn't. No real smoking gun stuff.

# ¿ Feb 14, 2016 08:30

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evilweasel posted:

Given that Trump is going to be the nominee (or he'll be robbed at the convention) it is highly likely that a President Hillary gets a Democratic senate (for two years, then loses it in 2018 because the map is brutal then).

Man, we would have been so much better off with senators having 4-year terms so we don't have the echo-boom effect of the presidency flipping the Senate every 2 years. You could just alternate so that there's a seat up every 2 years. One would be the "good seat" and one would be the "bad seat" that's much tougher to defend, though.

# ¿ Mar 15, 2016 22:04

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evilweasel posted:

Also today in what is surely a rare event, the Supreme Court unanimously upheld the Federal Circuit in ruling that the Federal Circuit had no jurisdiction to review the grant of inter-pares review of patents (which makes it easier to have lovely patents canceled) and upholding their standards on that review.

edit: though Alito and Sotomoyer dissented from the first part and concurred in the second, whoops

Kalman posted:

Wouldn't count on it unless we change examination procedures.

The Cuozzo case doesn't really affect anything, except insofar as inter parties review already made it easier to invalidate software patents. The decision maintains the status quo instead of making IPRs more expensive.

Given the pro-troll decision last week, not a net positive.

Would either of you mentlegen care to provide or link a good summary of those cases and the implications of these rulings? I try to half-heartedly follow the status of our lovely-rear end patent system (no offense Kalman but you know I'm right :smith:

)

# ¿ Jun 21, 2016 01:57

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Jarmak posted:

Searches at the border is the archetypal example of a search being reasonable without a warrant and I can't check right now but I believe is the originating precedent. It's like bringing up yelling fire in a crowded theater to illustrate that the first is not absolute and getting the response "you idiot this case isn't in a theater".

You do realize that the case in which the "yelling fire in a crowded theater" argument was made was actually about distributing leaflets that opposed the draft, not actually about someone who yelled "fire" in a crowded theater, right?

So that's actually a pretty solid argument about that case in general.

ShadowHawk posted:

The referendum creating that impartial committee was written specifically to exclude the congressional races though, because Nancy Pelosi. It also came after the establishment defeated a very similar referendum (by Arnold) which did include the congressional delegation.

California's congressional districts are still quite gerrymandered (hence the 80% of seats with 60% of the vote)

Who cares? Now that Republicans have been essentially purged from the state government, California is functional again. It would be fantastic if we eliminated gerrymandering nationwide but that's not legally possible since the states get to run their own systems. Republicans have no problems doing it, as evidenced by the massive bias in US House seats, and in this case it's fixed a wildly dysfunctional system.

Now Cali just needs to get rid of Prop 13 and they'll be set.

(I would definitely be in favor of a nationwide VRA preclearance at all levels, if it could happen, but it probably couldn't)

Mr. Nice! posted:

Which is dumb as well. There have been threats of court stacking before and there has been definitely some partisan hackery on behalf of the court (CU), but the entire point of being a judge is to put aside personal bias and rule according to what the law says not what they feel.

Because of the nature of our government, the supreme court does end up making law, but it is supposed to be and for the most part does stay insulated from the political process.

This all comes down to whether you consider the job of justices to be to arbitrate law or arbitrate justice.

It's just naieve to claim that there is some objective standard of law that everyone knows in their heart of hearts. The law is voluminous and sometimes contradictory. Interpretation is the name of the game, everyone sees different scopes and different balance between those contradictory rights. Somebody's got to reconcile the right to marriage, race as a protected class, and bans on miscegenation. "Balls and strikes" philosophy is bankrupt and always has been.

Again, in practical terms having contraceptives and gay marriage is pretty awesome and I don't particularly care if that puts someone's nose out of joint.

twodot posted:

I don't understand how an objective reasonable person could think there is an appearance of impropriety if a bunch of people who consider themselves objective and reasonable with no special knowledge don't think there is an actual impropriety.

Person with conflict of interest refuses to acknowledge conflict of interest, film at 11.

quote:

Things couldn�t have been better, and then look what happened. They had to send a guy from the draft board around to look me over. I was Four-F. I had examined myself pretty thoroughly and discovered that I was unfit for military service. You�d think my word would be enough, wouldn�t you, since I was a doctor in good standing with my county medical society and with my local Better Business Bureau. But no, it wasn�t, and they sent this guy around just to make sure I really did have one leg amputated at the hip and was helplessly bedridden with incurable rheumatoid arthritis. Yossarian, we live in an age of distrust and deteriorating spiritual values. It�s a terrible thing,� Doc Daneeka protested in a voice quavering with strong emotion. �It�s a terrible thing when even the word of a licensed physician is suspected by the country he loves.�

Too bad there's no ethics board for the SCOTUS, they just get to use the honor system.

Paul MaudDib fucked around with this message at 05:36 on Aug 15, 2016

# ¿ Aug 15, 2016 05:22

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Feldegast42 posted:

If the GOP holds the senate Garland (or anybody else in the judicial branch) isn't getting confirmed for another 4 to 8 years, or a generation depending on how the chips fall. The only way that the GOP lets a liberal justice through is if the supreme court and federal judicial system dwindles down small enough to effect their donors, and even then they will find some way to turn it back around on the dems. Decorum in American politics is loving dead.

If he's not nominated in the next 4-8 years I think he probably isn't getting nominated period. He would be 71 years old, there would be very little point to appointing a justice who only has about a decade of statistical life expectancy left.

Frankly he's somewhat on the old side even now. Not disqualifyingly so, but he's a fair bit older than Kagan and Sotomayor when they were nominated, as one aspect of the compromise Obama and Clinton are trying to make to get a nomination through. Not that that's working particularly well, but Clinton still thinks he's the pick to make, so...

Paul MaudDib fucked around with this message at 07:16 on Sep 9, 2016

# ¿ Sep 9, 2016 07:11

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that's the constitutionally correct interpretation, the founders were A-OK with private citizens owning cannon and warships and basically anything up to and including a fortification and all supporting paraphernalia, but lol if you'd get anybody to admit that a well-endowed citizen should be able to buy an antiaircraft battery/etc. the beliefs have just shifted way towards state-centrism since even the mid 1800s let alone the 1700s. militaries just shifted away from militias and towards professional militaries.

the historical equivalent of an airliner flying past a private antiaircraft battery is a merchant ship sailing past a heavily armed privateer (licensed by the continental congress) but we just don't like that, despite the owner in question being much more readily accessible to the law should anything go wrong.

the actual answer is that the 2nd should be revised, but as it exists, yeah, it basically does and historically has been established to promote ownership of ordnance and any military-necessary weapons.

Paul MaudDib fucked around with this message at 05:08 on Jun 24, 2020

# ¿ Jun 24, 2020 05:02

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That Oklahoma case is wild. So like, Oklahoma is now a legal no mans land, go ahead and rape/murder cause it�s up to the tribe to prosecute you?

That�s a Thomas level crazy ruling right there, how did this get through?

Does everyone currently imprisoned get to appeal their conviction on the new lack of jurisdiction?

Is this the rare instance where something will get through Congress to immediately abrogate that treaty or does it stay a no mans land?

Paul MaudDib fucked around with this message at 18:08 on Jul 9, 2020

# ¿ Jul 9, 2020 18:05

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# ¿ Apr 27, 2024 10:53

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Rigel posted:

Oklahoma can still prosecute people who are not members of a tribe. Members of tribes can be prosecuted by the Feds, and in other existing reservations where this is already a thing, the tribes have set up their own legal system to prosecute crimes under tribal law.

The only thing making this different, is that this is an unexpected new (old) reservation with a lot of people in it. Lawyers with experience in tribal law elsewhere are about to see a lot of career opportunities in Oklahoma.

I assume that the tribes and the Feds will want to keep murderers and rapists in jail, but a tribe member serving time for a lower-level crime may get off now if the tribe and feds don't have time to deal with his burglary or whatever.

I thought there was pretty established case law that states don�t have jurisdiction over what happens on reservations even for non tribal members? where that usually comes up is people coming onto the reservations to rape/etc and tribes not really having the money to investigate/prosecute/jail, it is A Problem.

Regardless of the federal side it seems like this ruling basically should vacate all state level convictions in those areas immediately. After all regardless of what congress decides long term, at the time of the crime the state did not have jurisdiction.

SCOTUS may not have wanted to open that can of worms... but they did anyway. This is a child rape case in Tulsa after all. If he gets off, why doesn�t everyone else? Seems like a slam dunk equal protection claim.

Paul MaudDib fucked around with this message at 18:29 on Jul 9, 2020

# ¿ Jul 9, 2020 18:16

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Debate & Discussion > SCOTUS 2023: Rice pilaf from Louisiana...is that like an ISIS video?

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