ACtion Magazine - May 2016 - (Page 10)

High court, high stakes S ection 1 of Article III of the United States Constitution provides, in part, that, The judicial power of the United States, shall be vested in one Supreme Court, and in such inferior courts as the Congress may from time to time ordain and establish. The recent death of Justice Antonin Scalia left a vacancy on the Supreme Court, which has allowed politics to take center stage in that branch of government. It is irrelevant whether you viewed Justice Scalia as a conservative constitutional scholar or as a Justice who allowed his conservative beliefs to dictate his interpretations of the Constitution. In his dissenting opinion last year in a case involving another constitutional challenge to the Affordable Care Act (more commonly known as Obamacare), Justice Scalia criticized the Justices in the majority on that decision as engaging in interpretative jiggery-pokery in order to uphold the constitutionality of the challenged statute. I can safely guess that very few of us have ever used the word jiggery-pokery (meaning dishonest manipulation or nonsense with regard to someone's behavior). The vacancy in the Court due to Justice Scalia's death has again allowed the two major political parties to snipe at each other as a reflection of their respective publicly perceived political views (liberal and conservative). Each party wants to fill the vacancy with a person, who the party believes will support its political leanings and then make such views fit within the dictates of the Constitution. Though it is not necessary that a justice be a lawyer, it is not likely that a nonlawyer nominee will emerge. The number of Justices sitting on the Court has fluctuated from as low as five members to as high as 10 members before settling at the present total of nine Justices. An effort by President Franklin Roosevelt in the 1930s to increase the Court by another six Justices was quickly aborted after being met with strong public opposition. With only eight Justices currently sitting on the Court, there can be ties in cases being heard by the Court, an outcome significantly reduced with a ninth Justice on the Court (a tie is still possible if a Justice has to abstain from a vote due to a conflict of some sort). There have been some bare majority decisions by the Court affecting the lives of many more people than simply the parties in a particular case. Shown on many police shows or movies is a scene resulting from a 5 to 4 decision of the Supreme Court in 1966, Miranda v. Arizona. After the Court handed down that decision, since persons under arrest have to be given their Miranda warnings, including the right to an attorney, before they can be questioned by police. In 2000, the Supreme Court, by a 5 - 4 vote, decided Bush v. Gore, awarding the presidency to George W. Bush, even though 5($5$&%/2&.2))),77,1*6 x x x x 6HDOVRIIUHDUV\VWHPVRIURQW$&FDQVWLOOEHXWLOL]HG $YRLGVH[SHQVLYHUHDU$&OLQHUHSODFHPHQWZKHQWKHIURQW $&FRROLQJLVVXIILFLHQW $YDLODEOHIRUPRVW689¶VDQG9DQV 3OHDVHFDOOIRUSULFHVKHHW4XDQWLW\GLVFRXQWVDYDLODEOH RI OLQH DUWV O O X I QWS ND VWRF ODFHPH H S : UH $& 'HDOHU$XWRPRWLYH6HUYLFHV,QF +RSNLQV01 7ROO)UHH 10 ACTION * May 2016 ZZZGHDOHUDXWRPRWLYHFRP Keith Leonard, Esquire the Constitution assigns ultimate resolution of ballot disputes to Congress. The Supreme Court, in another 5 - 4 vote in 2010, decided Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission. In that case, the Court held that corporations have First Amendment rights that prohibit restrictions on their independent campaign expenditures. The decision in that case is essentially that corporate funding of independent political broadcasts in candidate elections cannot be limited. Just last year the Court, by a vote of 5 - 4, ruled in Obergefell v. Hodges that the Fourteenth Amendment requires that same-sex couples have the right to marry in every state. And in 2013, the Court, by a 5 - 4 vote in United States v. Windsor, ruled that a portion of the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) was unconstitutional under the Fifth Amendment; prohibiting the federal government from treating state-sanctioned heterosexual marriages differently from state-sanctioned same-sex marriages. And in 2009, the Court (in a 5 - 4 decision) decided in Arizona v. Gant that police may search the passenger compartment of a vehicle without a warrant after no one is in the car but only if it is reasonable to believe that the arrestee might access the vehicle at the time of the search, or that the vehicle contains evidence of the offense of arrest. The foregoing examples show why both sides of the political spectrum want to fill the vacancy on the Court, but only with the right (or left) kind of person. ❆ Remember that laws are constantly changing and are often not uniform throughout the United States. Do not place unqualified reliance on the information in this article. Always contact legal counsel for detailed advice. If you have a particular issue, law or problem you would like to see addressed in a future column, please contact me at KLeonard@LeonardSciolla. com, or Leonard, Sciolla, Hutchison, Leonard & Tinari, LLP, 215-567-1530. http://www.dealerautomotive.com

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of ACtion Magazine - May 2016

ACtion Magazine - May 2016
Tooling up for the A/C season
Outlook
Service Port
Leonard's law
Virtual View
Last Watch
Member Profile
Cooling Corner
Industry News
Association News
New Products and Services

ACtion Magazine - May 2016