But still, state and local governments are bound by the 14th Amendment's "equal protection" clause[1], so if a city court makes arbitrary and whimsical decisions they can probably be sued for civil rights violations.
I must be reading this incorrectly because if this is what I think this is then states and local governments cannot discriminate based on citizenship. Please correct me (and sorry for going off a tangent) but doesn't this make what they're doing in Arizona unconstitutional?
The government argues (and many lawyers agree) that 3rd party business records are not covered by the 4th amendment and reading them is not a "search." The amendment is very clear on the government's authority to come into your house and look around, and while it seems like it should protect electronic communication, it doesn't (necessarily).
It's actually the Wiretap Act that protects telephone calls, not the 4th amendment. But there's no real analogue of the Wiretap Act for things like email and Facebook.
I think that the 3rd party doctrine is flawed in that the 4th Amendment specifically states that we are to be secure in our "persons, papers, and effects," which equates to the communications medium of the era of the Constitution's authors, and a parallel can be drawn with the US Postal Service, as our mail is supposed to be secure against external perusal except when the final provision of the 4th Amendment is met by issuance of a warrant describing the things to be seized or inspected.
The wiretap law should be revised to include other forms of electronic communications in order to thwart such applications of the feeble 3rd party doctrine.
I find it reprehensible that in the "Land of the Free" we allow our government to circumvent the letter and intent of the Bill of Rights in the name of "security" when these very circumventions are the antithesis of freedom.
Thanks... I actually hadn't thought about that aspect of it (that real estate court was still not established by Congress ;)
I've been reading up on that a bit since your comment, it's a pretty interesting topic because it touches on one branch's ability to influence another. It's a little troubling that a supreme court justice (Roberts, in this case) has the ability to fill this oversight court with whoever he wants. It seems that needs to be fixed.
He has to fill the court with federal judges that have been appointed by a President and approved by the Senate. That's a somewhat higher standard than whoever.
I wish more people understood this... I keep seeing comments about being appointed with no oversight... there was oversight when they were approved by the congress(Senate). If they aren't fit to be on this court, then perhaps they aren't fit to be federal judges.
Perhaps there are people one would trust to be judges when there's a full public record of their proceedings, but not when those proceedings take place behind closed doors with no public oversight.
My problem is the proceedings taking place behind closed doors and without any real oversight. Especially since DOJ/NSA/FBI have been outright lying to congress.
That real estate court was headed by someone more like an administrative law judge. Some states allow that sort of thing. In New York, towns and villages have elected justices who go to judge school for 60 hours. They preside over minor cases like traffic and "police court" type matters.
One of the more serious issues with the FISA court is that they appear to be only nominally distinct from the Executive. The staff seems to come from the DoJ, for example. I think this reflects the fact that this was until recently a sleepy backwater of the court system.
I wouldn't focus too much on the Chief Justice's ability to appoint the judges. Federal judges are very powerful people, and that power (and the permanence of their position) gives them more independence in terms of judgement than just about anyone.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Equal_Protection_Clause