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naraburns  nihil supernum  1yr ago (text post)   38438 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of March 27, 2023

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Ah yes 1987... a year of great constitutional import when many questions about state and federal powers were resolved via a grand constitutional convention /sarc.

I have no idea why people treat these judicial precedents as anything but worthless paper. The state of California is litterally openly running a drug cartel with itself exercising a monopoly on illegal cannabis dealing within the state, collecting tribute form lower order kingpins violating federal law... and we're supposed to pretend our legal system operates on any principle except might makes right, and shamelessness?

If a governor even had federal agents arrested and cut loose before they could enforce warrants do you really think there's anywhere near enough political will to send troops and start a contitutional crisis?

Ah yes 1987... a year of great constitutional import when many questions about state and federal powers were resolved via a grand constitutional convention /sarc.

Section 2 of Article IV of the US Constitution (https://www.archives.gov/founding-docs/constitution-transcript#4) says

A Person charged in any State with Treason, Felony, or other Crime, who shall flee from Justice, and be found in another State, shall on Demand of the executive Authority of the State from which he fled, be delivered up, to be removed to the State having Jurisdiction of the Crime.

A plain-and-simple reading of that seems to agree that the Florida can't refuse the extradition. But there will be centuries case law working out the precise procedural details of how it has to happen. Apparently in 1987 one of the corner-cases got tweaked.

So when Alabama demands Governor Gavin Newsom to be extradited as the Kingpin in the case of a low level drug smuggler bring weed into the state that was "Legally" purchased in California... what do you expect to happen?

A procedural tar-pit.

The procedural rules are put in place precisely because the bare words of the constitution would allow that kind of shit you name. This is why people pay attention to precedent.

There's wiggle room. Trump has never been in New York since being charged, so he did not flee from New York. I don't think the courts would buy that, but it's not much of a stretch.

Yeah, I have no idea what the real law of the land is. Ask the real lawyers.

The point is that the 1987 decision upthread is clearly not some activist reach inventing constitutional rules out of whole cloth.

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