r/Law_and_Politics

Excerpts:

You needn’t be a law-of-war expert to render judgment on Trump’s threat this week. If he wants to bomb power plants and clean-water facilities, seemingly to punish the Iranians as a way to get leverage over the regime, it’s obviously immoral. But there’s also a term in international law for deliberately targeting civilian infrastructure to inflict suffering on a population. That word is “war crime.”

And if he carries out war crimes with impunity, the West will have lost whatever moral authority remains in its grasp. The Geneva Conventions, the laws of armed conflict, and the architecture of rules designed to spare civilians from the worst of war are symbolic of all that we stand for in the West — of how democracy restrains our inner demons. But those principles are not self-enforcing. They’ve endured because Western nations, led by the United States, treated them as binding on themselves first. The moment America becomes the country that bombs desalination plants and calls it diplomacy, we have not merely broken a rule. We have announced the rules are dead. Every authoritarian watching in Moscow, Beijing, and Pyongyang will take notice.

It’s one thing to hear someone online at Walmart impart ‘Trump is a nut case’, but quite another when you hear it from responsible and respected members of congress, intellectuals, and now a man who knows Trump intimately.

And there certainly seems to be good cause for the conjecture.

How often have we seen the president ramble and babble while standing with a glassy-eyed vacant stare, seemingly unaware of the others in the room, or when he seems cognizant of them, can’t remember their names?

He installs tariffs, removes them, re-installs them at higher rates, then lower rates for some while increasing them for others in a continuing cycle of confusion and blithering bewilderment, turning the White House into an assisted living facility.

And toward what end? The tariffs are raising consumer costs to newer levels, have turned all our friends and partners against us while practically donating untold billions of dollars to Russia with the elimination of sanctions. and his single handled increase in the price of oil.

We now stand alone against the whole world and if China, Russia, or North Korea, individually or collectively attacked, we would be doomed!

Look in his eyes, congress, and make an honest determination of whether a rational human being is nodding at his desk, or a paranoid dullard who controls the destiny of our country.

See this – Boldface mine:

 

Trump 'clearly insane' and 'mentally gone': ex-White House lawyer

Story by Nick Hilden •

© provided by AlterNet

According to President Donald Trump’s former attorney Ty Cobb, the president is “clearly insane,” and his erratic social media behavior proves his “insanity and depravity.”

Speaking on the Jim Acosta Show Tuesday evening, Cobb had nothing but harsh words for his past client, saying that Trump’s actions in Iran and social media “screeds” prove that he’s mentally “gone.”

“It’s not a surprise that we’re in this much trouble,” said Cobb. “It’s not a surprise given the fact that the cabinet will not invoke the 25th Amendment for a man who’s clearly insane. And this war highlights that. And these screeds that come out nightly, at 2 a.m. or 4 a.m. or whatever time Trump decides to vent without oversight, it highlights the level of his insanity and depravity.”

Cobb — who worked closely with Trump as his special counsel during the first term investigation into Russian election interference — has become an outspoken critic of the president. The attorney asserts that he never voted for Trump, and following Cobb’s departure from the White House, he said the Russia investigation was not a “witch hunt” as the president suggested, called Trump a “disaster for the Republican Party and called him “one of the greatest threats to our democracy.”

ttps://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/trump-s-former-white-house-lawyer-says-he-is-clearly-insane/ar-AA1ZWwB7?

This piece looks at the legal structure of the White House AI framework, especially its call for Congress to preempt state AI laws while preserving some state police powers. If Congress displaces state regulation, what would a legally sufficient federal replacement need to include on liability, enforcement, and scope? I’d be interested in reactions to the preemption design and whether this kind of framework is likely to hold up as durable legislation rather than political theater.

On the status of abortion in American constitutional law, renowned legal scholar Ronald Dworkin once wrote:

"It seems [superficially] more democratic, and also better suited to the inherent complexity of the issue, that different groups of Americans should be permitted to decide, through political action state by state, which solution fits their own convictions and needs best. That first impression is misguided... Leaving the abortion issue to state-by-state politics will not... mean that each woman will be able to decide which solution best fits her convictions and needs. ...abortion-related fatalities were 40 percent higher before Roe v. Wade. Blacks suffered most."

"...a fetus has no interests [during early pregnancy because] nothing has interests unless it has or has had some form of consciousness — some mental as well as physical life... People who think that abortion is morally problematic, even though a fetus has no interests of its own, [believe] that human life is intrinsically, objectively valuable... ...a belief in the objective and intrinsic importance of human life has a distinctly religious content. ...the right to procreative autonomy, from which a right of choice about abortion flows, is well grounded in the First Amendment... [So] we must insist on religious tolerance in this area... ...if Roe is wholly reversed... a dark age for the American constitutional adventure... will be confirmed, spectacularly..."

The U.S. Supreme Court's recent decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization thus appears to have spectacularly ushered in a dark age of American law. Yet, the different opinions of that decision reflect a light at the end of a tunnel, in the following respects:

1. By leaving contraceptive freedom intact, the majority left open the question of whether abortifacient medications and the termination of preconscious conceptuses are morally equivalent to contraception — a First Amendment matter of conscience per Dworkin's argument, which goes to the heart of pro-life opposition while having the potential to pass the majority's "history and tradition" test;
2. As the Chief Justice explained in his partial concurrence, complete reversal of Roe was unnecessary to resolve the 15-week ban issue in Dobbs, and so that part of the majority opinion can be treated as non-binding obiter dicta, clearing the way for a distinguishable First Amendment case that shifts the focus from privacy to conscience;
3. Since a bare majority revoked a right held for fifty years, while the dissenting justices represented a historical consensus, the Dobbs dissent remains arguably correct on the basis of stare decisis alone, maintaining that "all that has changed is this Court" rather than the underlying law, facts, or attitudes.

In that context, another quotation from Dworkin might be apposite:

"We cannot assume... that the Constitution is always what the Supreme Court says it is... The extent of community indifference to anti-contraception laws... would never have become established had not some organizations deliberately flouted those laws...  We must also reject the [view] that if the law is unclear a citizen may properly follow his own judgment until the highest court has ruled that he is wrong.  This fails to take into account the fact that any court, including the Supreme Court, may overrule itself [and thus overrule an overruling]  ...if the issue is one touching fundamental personal or political rights, and it is arguable that the Supreme Court has made a mistake, a man [or pregnant woman or healthcare provider] is within [their] social rights in refusing to accept that decision as conclusive."

Sources:

Ronald Dworkin, Freedom's Law, chapters 1 & 3

Ronald Dworkin, "Civil Disobedience," Taking Rights Seriously