The Humble Libertarian original

Oh yeah. You read that headline right. Bet you never thought you'd read a headline like that. Judge tells the police to give a man his weed back: Joseph L. Robertson's Marijuana Will Be Returned By Cops Who Seized It, Judge Orders TACOMA, Wash. -- Police in Tacoma could soon be in real trouble over pot. The department could be found in contempt if they continue to refuse to return a small amount of marijuana seized from a man after a traffic stop. Municipal Court Judge Jack Emery repeated an order to police Thursday to return the drug to Joseph L. Robertson within seven days or they could be found in contempt. "Appeal or comply," Emery told assistant city attorney John Walker. "Or next week, show up, and I would advise you to bring counsel." The judge first ordered police to return the drug on Feb. 28, but they have refused, The News Tribune reported Friday (http://bit.ly/10hwiD9). It was seized in May of last year when an officer pulled over...

Yesterday, the closely watched “Obamacare” proceedings at the Supreme Court focused on the issue that most commentators are calling central to the debate over the constitutionality of the Affordable Care Act: mandates. The campaign of Republican presidential candidate and 2012 frontrunner, Mitt Romney, probably hates that mandates are the key topic of discussion in this week’s news cycle, and will be for the rest of the Republican Primary until the Supreme Court hands down a decision on what pundits are calling “The Case of the Century.” Or maybe not... Read the rest of my article at The Independent Voter Network . Wes Messamore , Editor in Chief, T H L Articles | Author's Page

There’s never been a better time in America for gun rights advocates. Starting in 2008 with the U.S. Supreme Court’s landmark Heller decision, continuing through 2010 with the McDonald case, and showing no signs of abating this Monday after the Woollard ruling was filed by a federal court in Maryland: in just a few short years the country has been swept with a wave of unprecedented court decisions that have amounted to nothing less than a revolution for gun rights and jurisprudence surrounding the Second Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. Before jumping to Monday’s Woollard ruling, which overturned some of Maryland’s notoriously strict gun control policy, a brief review of the “Second Amendment Revolution” is in order... Read the rest of my article at The Independent Voter Network . (It's one of the best I've written in a very long time!) Wes Messamore , Editor in Chief, T H L Articles | Author's Page

"The U.S. Supreme Court decided Monday not to review a California Supreme Court ruling from last June that upheld the constitutionality of vehicle stops made by California game wardens to make sure motorists leaving hunting or fishing grounds haven’t bagged any wildlife out of season. By denying review of the ruling, the nation’s high court handed California game wardens the authority to conduct vehicle stops without a warrant. While it was the National Rifle Association that joined the defendant’s legal counsel in requesting a hearing from the Supreme Court, the ACLU might have had more at stake than the NRA in a case that has more to do with the Fourth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution than the Second Amendment..." Read the rest of my article at The Independent Voter Network . Wes Messamore , Editor in Chief, T H L Articles | Author's Page

"In yet another showdown between the Obama Administration and the states, which are already challenging President Obama’s signature health care legislation in the nation’s highest court, the Supreme Court announced Monday that it would also be taking on Arizona’s controversial and tough immigration law, passed in 2010." Read my full coverage at the Independent Voter Network . Wes Messamore , Editor in Chief, T H L Articles | Author's Page

Eric Segall writes at Slate : Doing the right thing is easy when nothing important is at stake. Doing the right thing is much harder when there is a lot to lose. Elena Kagan is a loyal Democrat who owes her Supreme Court appointment to President Barack Obama.* She is poised to review the constitutionality of Obama’s health care statute, which, if invalidated, might do serious damage to his re-election campaign as well as the Democratic Party. Even though it would be a hard decision to make, Elena Kagan should recuse herself from hearing challenges to the act. So far it appears that only Republicans and conservatives want Kagan to recuse herself from hearing the case, while liberals and Democrats take the opposing view. I have been a liberal constitutional law professor for more than 20 years, and a loyal Democrat. I believe the Affordable Care Act is constitutional and that it would be truly unfortunate for the country (and the party) if the court strikes it down. I also recognize...

Yesterday the Supreme Court agreed to take up the "ObamaCare" law that many conservatives and libertarians say violates the Constitution. The Cato Institute's Ilya Shapiro explains just how landmark this decision is going to be: "the Supreme Court has now set the stage for the most significant case since Roe v. Wade. Indeed, this litigation implicates the future of the Republic as Roe never did. On both the individual-mandate and Medicaid-coercion issues, the Court will decide whether the Constitution’s structure — federalism and enumeration of powers — is judicially enforceable or whether Congress is the sole judge of its own authority. In other words, do we have a government of laws or men?" We live in interesting times. Tweet Wes Messamore , Editor in Chief, T H L Articles | Author's Page

From my most recent CAIVN article: In all fairness, critics of the Robert Court's First Amendment decisions don't seem to base their opposition on judicial philosophy and interpretation of the law as written. For them, the issue is not whether a law violates the Constitution's prohibition on abridgements of free speech, but whether they happen to like the outcome of the free exercise of a particular kind of speech. Note that their objections to the court's recent rulings are rooted in the negative results they perceive as stemming from speech they don't like, whether it's political speech or video games that they find obscene. Read the entire article here. Wes Messamore , Editor in Chief, T H L Articles | Author's Page

Is George Soros trying to "stack" U.S. courts with judges favorable to his political agenda in order to circumvent legislatures and democracy by writing law from the bench? That's what critics are saying , who charge that George Soros has spent $45 million through his Open Society Institute fund in a systematic "campaign to reshape the judiciary." As a blogger at Left Coast Rebel recently noted , "progressive" and Democratic groups and politicians love using the scaaary Koch Brothers and all their corporate money as a bogeyman to raise funds from their constituents and supporters. He provided quotes from fundraising emails all from this past week alone that used the Koch Brothers as a political foil to rile up donors. In just one week, donors got emails from Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-CA), the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, Rep. Steve Israel (D-NY), and Democratic strategist James Carville asking for donations to combat all that dirt...

Today’s ruling vindicates the constitutional first principle that ours is a government of delegated, enumerated, and thus limited powers. Like Judge Hudson in the Virginia case, Judge Vinson recognized that the individual mandate represents an unprecedented and improper incursion beyond those powers: the federal government, under the guise of regulating commerce, cannot require that people engage in economic activity. And this is as it should be: if the only limit on congressional power were Congress’ own assessment of the wisdom of each assertion of such power, the Constitution would be obsolete — as would any conception of checks and balances. Read the rest of Ilya Shapiro's article at Cato-at-liberty.org Ilya Shapiro is a senior fellow in constitutional studies at the Cato Institute Grant Davies , Regular Columnist, T H L Articles | Author's Page | Website

In this excellent video, commentators discuss the question: Should the Supreme Court practice judicial restraint? In his cover story from the July issue of Reason, Associate Editor Damon W. Root discussed how the debate over judicial activism is dividing the conservative legal movement. Root sat down with Reason.tv Editor in Chief Nick Gillespie to discuss libertarian and conservative legal theories, judicial activism, Elena Kagan's nomination, and more. Matt Collins , Regular Columnist Articles | Author's Page

Not so shocking video: During her confirmation hearings, Senator Coburn asks Supreme Court nominee Elena Kagan if the government has the Constitutional power under the Commerce Clause, to require all Americans to eat three vegetables and three fruits a day. She sidesteps the question by saying it would be a "dumb law." Then she says that the question of whether it's a dumb law is different from the question of whether or not it's Constitutional, implying that she thinks it is. If Congress passed such a law, we could count on Justice Kagan not to strike it down. That is her kind of judicial philosophy, the kind that says the Commerce Clause essentially permits the government to do anything it wants. Watch the video yourself: W. E. Messamore , Editor in Chief Articles | Author's Page Cross posted from YAL

"The Supreme Court ruling will open the door for California's concealed-carry permit laws to be challenged for giving local law enforcement too much personal discretion in deciding who receives the permits. The state's assault weapons ban and safe handgun regulations could also be vulnerable to challenges in court." Read the whole article at CAIVN . W. E. Messamore , Editor in Chief Articles | Author's Page

In a recent article at Reason Magazine , Damon W. Root chronicles the debate between "majoritarian conservatives" and "libertarians" over the proper nature and role of the judiciary in a civil society. This article appeared on Young Americans for Liberty While I would tend to side with the libertarians in the debate as it's framed, I think some important clarifications to Root's article are necessary in order to better understand the judiciary's role. Perhaps the framework in this article is not Root's, but simply his description of the debate as it has been framed over the decades. I'll admit that I am not a scholar of jurisprudence, so I wouldn't know. In any case, it seems to me that the framework is flawed, or at best, unclear. The flaw lies in the definition of judicial activism. On the one side, Root has the conservatives opposing what they consider "judicial activism" which they define as a court which is very active in...

Last year as Solicitor General, current Supreme Court Justice nominee Elena Kagan argued in U.S. v. Stevens that, “Whether a given category of speech enjoys First Amendment protection, depends upon a categorical balancing of the value of the speech against its societal costs.” Are you kidding me? I assume at first blush you are all as grossly appalled as I was regarding that frightening, liberty-crushing statement. Yet, let’s think about this. Take the whole “yelling ‘fire’ in a movie theater” example. The state has limited that free speech precisely because of the societal costs. There is arguably no benefit in yelling “fire” when there is not one, except to gain some kudos from the rest of your teenage friends. And there is a serious negative effect that could occur through people stampeding each other in a rush to make it out the door first. Now, regardless of whether or not you think this kind of free speech should be protected, it currently is not. And perhaps, examples like this ...

With President Barack Obam’s recent nomination of Elena Kagan to the Supreme Court, prepare to start hearing a lot of confusing viewpoints about what it means to be a “constitutionalist”. So, I’ll start. Being a constitutionalist does not mean you believe the constitution is perfect – inerrant words directly from the mouth of God. After all, that’s what amendments are for, and why so many needed to be created so shortly after the constitution’s ratification. To clarify. To correct. So that interpreting the law wouldn’t require mass assumptions regarding “intent”. Which is exactly where we’re at today. Because most people claim to be constitutionalists. We just all have different understandings of what the constitution means… or should mean. But when a libertarian says they’re a constitutionalist, they mean that they believe in the rule of law. They believe the constitution serves to protect both the rights of the individual and the sovereignty of the states from the overreaching arm of...

Published with permission of Richard Hamblen: Brief Introduction to Hamblen vs United States (09-9990) Richard A. Hamblen was a commissioned officer in the state militia of Tennessee, the Tennessee State Guard, and battalion commander of the 201st Military Police Battalion. He committed an act of civil disobedience by defying the National Firearms Act of 1934 and building for his use, and the use of the soldiers in his command, firearms that are, in the words of the United States Supreme Court, in United States vs Miller , “part of the ordinary military equipment... of the type in common use at the time, which could reasonably contribute to the common defense”. Hamblen was tried and convicted in 2006 for violating the NFA of 1934 and the 922(o) laws. He served 13 months in federal prison, and 24 months of probation. His case was appealed to the Supreme Court at the exact same time as Heller vs DC . Certiorari was denied without comment. In December of 2008, Hamblen filed a petition for...

The Associated Press reports that Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens has confirmed his retirement, effective this June : "Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens, the court's oldest member and leader of its liberal bloc, says he is retiring. President Barack Obama now has his second high court opening to fill." John Paul Stevens' Questionable Legal Judgment The Cato Institute 's Senior Fellow in constitutional studies, Ilya Shapiro , writes today that John Paul Stevens is a man of unquestionable integrity and professionalism (not to mention that his rigorous fitness regimen is "the envy of men much younger than he" -well on his way to one hundred years of age, John Paul Stevens actively swims, runs, golfs, plays tennis, and can probably do more push-ups than you). Sadly, as likable as John Paul Stevens is, Shapiro points out that he has a marked penchant for poor legal judgment: "While a friend of liberty in certain limited circumstances, ...