{"id":5257,"date":"2010-05-12T14:37:36","date_gmt":"2010-05-12T18:37:36","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/?p=5257"},"modified":"2010-05-12T14:37:36","modified_gmt":"2010-05-12T18:37:36","slug":"elena-kagan-promotes-legal-fiction","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/5257\/elena-kagan-promotes-legal-fiction\/","title":{"rendered":"Elena Kagan Promotes Legal Fiction"},"content":{"rendered":"

No, President Barack Obama\u2019s Supreme Court nominee is not moonlighting as a shill for the latest John Grisham novel.\u00a0 Instead, a law review article of hers<\/a> peddles the notion that federal courts should try to divine a government\u2019s \u201cintent\u201d when deciding whether a regulation on speech is constitutional.<\/p>\n

According to CSNEWS<\/a>:<\/p>\n

In her article, Kagan said that examination of the motives of government is the proper approach for the Supreme Court when looking at whether a law violates the First Amendment. While not denying that other concerns, such as the impact of a law, can be taken into account, Kagan argued that governmental motive is \u201cthe most important\u201d factor.<\/p>\n

In doing so, Kagan constructed a complex framework that can be used by the Court to determine whether or not Congress has restricted First Amendment freedoms with improper intent.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

You\u2019d probably need a complex framework to figure out the single intent of a law that results from a process including hundreds of people, all with different backgrounds, educational levels, and points of view.\u00a0 Indeed, the exercise is a legal fiction whose use stretches back to the New Deal Court where justices poured over legislative histories, committee reports, and floor statements in the vain attempt to arrive at one, definitive purpose.\u00a0 Discovery of that purpose enabled the enlightened justice to then judge whether that purpose was proper.<\/p>\n

You can see the potential for abuse.\u00a0 If judges signal they will go beyond the plain text of a law to discern its intent, then members of Congress and the President will do everything they can to shade the law\u2019s meaning their way.\u00a0 Vapid floor statements, detailed presidential signing statements, even carefully worded statements of purpose in sub-committee reports suddenly become more important than the actual words that everyone agreed to.<\/p>\n

And who gets to pick the \u201cright\u201d document for finding the government\u2019s intent?\u00a0 None other than an unelected, un-consulted judge.\u00a0 Nice work if you can get it.\u00a0 We\u2019ll see if Elena Kagan does.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

No, President Barack Obama\u2019s Supreme Court nominee is not moonlighting as a shill for the latest John Grisham novel.\u00a0 Instead, a law review article of hers peddles the notion that federal courts should try to divine a government\u2019s \u201cintent\u201d when deciding whether a regulation on speech is constitutional. According to CSNEWS: In her article, Kagan […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":9,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[143,591,1264,1265,92],"class_list":["post-5257","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-posts","tag-barack-obama","tag-elena-kagan","tag-legislative-intent","tag-new-deal","tag-supreme-court"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5257","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/9"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5257"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5257\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5262,"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5257\/revisions\/5262"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5257"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5257"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5257"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}