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Comment by giantg2 | Hacker News Reader

"Ideally this would be coming from the legislature"

You mean legally?

The US is a common law country: legal judgments are one of the three pillars of common law, along with legs&regs and common practice (things that have always been that have been neither established nor prohibited by either of the other two pillars).

IANAL. IANAA, but I have lived all my life in a common law country, FWIW.

If you say that in court you will be called a Sovereign Citizen and told to shut up (ask me how I know...). Even though we are a common law country, the judicial rulings are supposed to be based on statute, regulations, case law, and customs. It seems this ruling takes it further than that. It seems the only basis is the government caused harm doctrine and the application in this case seems contrary to other cases/issues. The courts are required to take other doctrines into account too. For example, if these policies are enacted by elected representatives, then the court would have to find that the aggrieved people were guaranteed those treatment services, shelter, or to be released somewhere else by right in order to overcome that will of the people doctrine. I think that's a hard sell since the legislature hasn't (to my knowledge) cemented that as rights in these circumstances.

I have my popcorn ready to watch the appeals process and policy discussions this should engender. I expect that much of the ruling will be struck down, but cannot help but think that the state-caused-danger has legs.

Ultimately, my guess is that a superior court will set the judgement aside while upholding some elements as correct, then direct the city and county to address those specific elements deemed to have merit.

The end result would be legislative change in the context of elements deemed valid.

Or perhaps I am overly optimistic....

Yeah, the courts generally say that you have to accommodate or remedy whatever the general request or grievance. They generally do not write/rewrite policy. That's supposed be for the executive and legislative branch to come up with.

It should be interesting to watch. My guess is we won't hear the final result for a few years... as usual.

> Yeah, the courts generally say that you have to accommodate or remedy whatever the general request or grievance. They generally do not write/rewrite policy.

That’s…actually not all that true, especially in the case of systematic racial discrimination by local government. School integration, including bussing, is a pretty good example where policy was often dictated in fairly explicit detail by the courts.

In the case of school integration, the prior ruling under Brown was not being followed. That failure to follow that ruling then lead to a second judgement giving judges specific powers to force the correct implementation of Brown if the school districts had not done it themselves.

It's very odd to jump directly to writing detailed policy on a first judgment. Usually it's only that a specific policy is not allowed or general issue must be corrected. Usually it takes a failure of valid corrective policy to be implement for the courts to force a specific policy which they have devised.

> It's very odd to jump directly to writing detailed policy on a first judgment

It is not at all unusual for preliminary injunctions, when they are issued at all, to include specific mandated interim actions to prevent or interrupt ongoing harm. That’s, in fact, the whole reason preliminary injunctions exist.

I missed that it was an injunction. I still feel this is unusual for an injunction given the scope.

Right, but... if I understand correctly, the judge ordered things to be done to stop the ongoing harm while the case was being decided. In order to avoid having to do this, LA is going to need to win an appeal about the temporary order before the 180 days runs out. Court slowness is now working against LA.

Disclaimer: IANAL, and all that...

Ah, I missed the part about it being temporary. It seems like quite a large and expansive judgement for a temporary measure. Usually they are small injunctions against a new law or policy, like the recent one against enforcing the bump stock ban.

The US was a common law country, then created the constitution based on that common law and now it is a constitutional republic. The constitution is the pillar now not "common law".

I think he means they accept common law doctrines as part of the law. For example, malicious prosecution is not a statute (in some states) but can still be prosecuted (I forget if they handle it civilly or criminally) under common law doctrine.

Essentially.

The constitution is the floor the stool sits on, and it supports common law both implicitly (cf, e.g., [1]), and explicitly (cf the 7th Amendment).

[1] https://constitutionalism.wordpress.com/2008/09/15/common-la...

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