Ann Coulter On Arizona Law: Esteemed Justice Brennan's Precedent Says It's Okay

Good piece. I trust she's right because she usually is about these things.

Brennan was of course the unscrupulous uberliberal Justice who made up whole sections of "constitution" to push his liberal agenda.

According to the Supreme Court's most recent pre-emption ruling [concerning a claim of preemption in prescription drug regulation], Arizona's law is not pre-empted because Congress did not expressly prohibit state regulation of illegal aliens. In fact, the Supreme Court has repeatedly rejected the pre-emption argument against state laws on immigrants – including laws somewhat at odds with federal law, which the Arizona law is not.

In the seminal case, De Canas v. Bica (1976), the court held 8-0 that a California law prohibiting employers from hiring illegal immigrants was not pre-empted by federal law.

The court -– per Justice William Brennan – said that the federal government's supremacy over immigration is strictly limited to: 1) a "determination of who should or should not be admitted into the country," and 2) "the conditions under which a legal entrant may remain."

So a state can't start issuing or revoking visas, but that's about all it can't do.

Manifestly, a state law about illegal immigrants has nothing to do with who enters legally or the conditions of their staying here. Illegal aliens have neither been "admitted into the country" nor are they "legal entrants."

Indeed, as Brennan noted in the De Canas case, there's even "a line of cases that upheld certain discriminatory state treatment of aliens lawfully within the United States." (You might want to jot some of this down, Mr. Holder.)

So there's no "field pre-emption" of state laws dealing with aliens, nor is there an explicit statement from Congress pre-empting state regulation of aliens.

On top of that, the Supreme Court has repeatedly upheld state laws on immigrants in the face of pre-emption challenges. Arizona's law is no more pre-empted than the rest of them.

Mark Levin also called the suit pure trash.

Unrelated, But Good: Coulter on what progressives mean when they say that discussions are wide-ranging and nothing is sacrosanct.

posted by Ace at 06:39 PM

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