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
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ACTION * May 2016
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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
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