The JPFO pretty definitively demonstrated that the 1968 gun control act very closely paralled Nazi gun control laws - indeed taking many passages virtually verbatim. In their research they show the doppleganger sections side by side.

[Thank you Thomas Dodd, Chris's father BTW. Dodd was at Nuremberg and had access to all the Nazi laws during the trials, and asked for a translation of same from the library of congress just prior to the 1968 GCA.]

This "foreign law" thing isn't new by any means - we've been shackled with it for almost 40 years now.

"...through this back-door judicial importation of "foreign law"... the liberal activists of the judiciary have now created a new basis for flat-out judicial lawmaking".

Ace,

As Justice Ginsberg and a majority of the Supreme Court have successfully exercised your above stated option and cited foreign law in a decision (Lawrence v Texas) , perhaps it's time to dispense with the euphemistic term "judicial activism" and add the more accurate term "judicial lawmaking" to our argot.

Respectfully,

rcl

She's an idiot in the strict sense of "private person." Under color of public office, she's introduced her own private means of judging. She's openly rebelling--engaging in revolution--against the Constitution and the Congress. As John Locke makes plain in the Second Treatise on Civil Government, when the legislative power has been usurped, it must be restored to the legislature. Rebels against the power of the legislature have re-belled; they've returned to the very state of war against which we erected the legislature in the first place. Locke fittingly says that between such rebels and the legislature, there is "no judge on earth." The people must make their appeal to Heaven, and they must make their appeal to Heaven while their appeal to Heaven can still succeed.

The Senate Republican Policy Committee published a great paper last September, essentially recommending that Congress strip the judiciary of any power to consider certain issues. I'm more and more in favor of this every day, which rather defies elementary mathematics, as I was 100% in favor when I first read it.

PDF file

I'm sure there's a foreign law somewhere that we can use to allow Megan to become 310% in favor.

Other than the fact that it can give policy outcomes that liberal judges prefer, what is the attraction of foreign law? Even if that is the only real reason, there has to be some fig leaf of logic (or at least "logic") here explaining why we should want to start considering, say, the Uzbek Model Professional Responsibilty Code.

But if so I haven't heard it. It really seems that the judges just started saying one day, "Of course it's very important that we consider foreign sources of law," and that was that. It was now important that we consider foreign sources of law. We were never at war with EastAsia.

I actually believe in "global norms" and I know a thing or two about them. You know what? They've historically been imposed by legislatures or autocratic executives, not courts. And let's also remember some of the charming global norms that have prevailed--eugenics, fascism, Marxism, planned economies, population control, anti-DDT hysteria, anti-GM food hysteria, etc.

Thanks for the great link Megan.

Second that. Totally awesome.

International law means the end of free speech. International law is full of rules against hate speech. However, hate speech is interpreted to any speech against the present government.

These hatred laws are used to stifle dissent against the government and is the main reason for existence. For instance:

1. A group of Brits demonstrated against the proposed EU constitution in Brussels. They were charged with a hate crime.

2. The second largest party in Belgium was outlawed using hate crime laws because they spoke against unlimited Muslim immigration.

3. In France, you can be jailed for criticizing the President.

The end result will be that any judge in the US who believes in international law will jail you for criticizing the Democrats.

By the way, Ace. No one gets more than 10 years for murder in Germany. Most murderers serve less than eight years with time off for good behavior.

Has she or the other judges said yet how foreign law should guide the court on its most famous issue? Countries where abortion is illegal outnumber those where it is legal by nearly 2 to 1. Surely someone has asked her this by now and I've missed it.

Ginsberg is a crusty douchebag and the only good thing about her getting placed on the Supreme Court is that she's too old to last much longer.

Yeah, that's insensitive. If any of you Lefties want to whine about it, please take a plunger and shove it down your hypocritical throats. I've had it with activist judges defecating on the Constitution and then demanding respect.

Later,
bbeck

When we needed titanium from the one place on earth besides the Soviet Union that it came from, South Africa, the Left never stopped shrieking about Human Rights and Apartheid! They called Republicans racists, Nazis, White Men Oppressors who were trying to commit genocide against Africans and on and on ... Republicans stated the truth: titanium is one of the seven strategic minerals necessary for an industrial economy, without which a modern industrial economy cannot function (which mattered not a whit to the Left, until of course, it would affect them). But when the Soviet Union fell, we could get titanium from Russia and did so. We no longer needed to keep South Africa from being taken over by the Russian Communists and withdrew our support. The South African regime toppled immediately and the Left lost interest in Human Rights as suddenly as Bill Clinton was elected and decided to tilt towards China. In other words, the Left never really gave a shit about human rights, they were always nothing more than a club to beat on the Right with whenever they could. The Left has ignored Human Rights abuses in regimes they are sympathtic to, like Cuba for a long time.

All of this goes to show that the Left really has no principle, no guiding morality, no ultimate truth: the Left is an Opportunitic Virus that seeks to destroy its host while enjoying the benefits of living off of it.

Justice Scalia, ROPER v. SIMMONS, dissenting:

More fundamentally, however, the basic premise of the Court’s argument—that American law should conform to the laws of the rest of the world—ought to be rejected out of hand. In fact the Court itself does not believe it. In many significant respects the laws of most other countries differ from our law—including not only such explicit provisions of our Constitution as the right to jury trial and grand jury indictment, but even many interpretations of the Constitution prescribed by this Court itself. The Court-pronounced exclusionary rule, for example, is distinctively American. When we adopted that rule in Mapp
v. Ohio, 367 U. S. 643, 655 (1961), it was “unique to American
Jurisprudence.” . . .
The Court has been oblivious to the views of other countries
when deciding how to interpret our Constitution’s
requirement that “Congress shall make no law respecting
an establishment of religion. . . .” . . .
And let us not forget the Court’s abortion jurisprudence,
which makes us one of only six countries that allow abortion
on demand until the point of viability.

Here is another questionable relinquishing of judicial sovereignty.
In 1993 two young Alaska Native men were convicted of an armed robbery in Everett, Wa. The judge handed over the sentencing portion to the tribal elders and they sentenced the young men to banishment to an uninhabitated island.
It's in the news again because one of the men reoffended. That story is here.
Should the U.S. judiciary honor requests/demands from tribal entities for crimes that involve tribal members? What if they are committed away from the tribal area and involve non-tribal members?
There are many instances of this kind of deference, especially in fish and game matters.

It's be interesting to apply "global norms" to abortion, but this Court would never do that of course.

Interestingly, it would not be hard to find an instance of international law that would cause Justice Ginsberg to be executed.

Don't think she'll be reaching for any of those, do you?

What a miserable excuse for usurping the legislative function.

Both Ginsburg and Breyer are the leading advocates of following a higher, international law. Ginsburg has also been influential in leading the growing lazy or senile Sandra Day O'Connor by the nose towards International law. This spares O'Connor from Scalia's ridicule, because unlike O'Connor's other brainless decisions based on her personal feelings - like the country needing 25 more years of affirmative action though it is not legally justified or gay anal sex being protected - Scalia and others know O'Connor just follows Ginsburg.

The Soviets called folks like Ginsburg and Breyer "Cosmopolitans" - meaning they had no loyalty to Russian culuture, law....only what suited the Cosmopolitan's wealth and values the best - especially if it lay in a country outside their own.

02:03 PM post.

I heard about that case and while the judge had trepidation about it, and negotiated until he got assurance that it set no precedent, it was a good experiment. One I thought worth doing.

If you have been up in Alaska, you would know that NA's have real problems with alcoholism, petty crime, drugs inc. glue-sniffing, and that tribal authorities lost much of their traditional power and standing...and trying to restore the authority of tribal leadership in managing tribal affairs is thought to be a good thing.

So, as sovereign nations, but nations under the US Constitution, was exile to a remote tribal island cruel and unusual? No one, inc. the two facing jail, thought so, but it was a sucky island and they had nothing there but time to read and subsistance fish for breakfast, lunch, dinner.

Guess it didn't work out for one, but it renewed tribal authority and leader's stature.

Hope experiments like that a allowed to continue.

And in the case of foreign law, some make real sense like requiring public, posted apologies from slanderers & libelers. And European law has a practice where a judge NOT rewarded like American prosecutors are for # of convictions obtained does an impartial investigation of the crime - with no motive to purely seek to win convictions of any accused, simply for lawyer's career enhancement.

And some Asian countries use legal public shaming - a more genteel version of the wooden stocks in Puritan America - very effectively to deter crime.

And there is corporal punishment. Some countries with very low crime rates flog a punk until he cries like a bitch instead of jail time.

Simple coming she why school crime, simple warm list which.