Comment by mtgx | Hacker News Reader

Comment by mtgx | Hacker News Reader

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It seems like the law enforcement/spy agencies modus operandi: do it illegally for a few years, and during this time lobby Congress and the president to make it "legal".

Then, in case anyone catches on to what they were up to and sues them, lobby Congress to give them all immunity for their previous illegal activities.

Rinse and repeat. Nobody ever gets punished, and their imagination to what they can achieve with technology is the only limit, because they can set up whatever misleading legal structure around it to justify their actions, after the fact.

It seems pretty clear that they have absolutely no respect for the spirit of the law anymore, and they're always seeking for loopholes and twisted interpretations of the law (that they keep secret) to allow them do what they want.

> After more than a decade, opponents of Bush’s surveillance programs have still not had an opportunity to challenge them in court

And this is why America needs a Constitutional Court (not secret) to add another check on the government's power and stop them from passing unconstitutional laws, that can only be verified for constitutionality 10-20 years later, and ruin some people's lives in the process, while growing a monster for decades.

And this is why America needs a Constitutional Court...

While avoiding broaching the interminable debate on whether or not they're, you know, actually doing their jobs, I thought that was the very definition of SCOTUS.

EDIT: I'm avoiding that debate because ISTM that one's position thereon is most likely a function of their politics, and not of whether or not the sitting justices — let alone the institution, itself — are an adequate implementation of the thing they were intended to be by Article III.

The fact that courts can declare laws to be unconstitutional is a hack out of Supremacy clause, as decided by the SCOTUS itself in one of the early cases. All other rules still apply, such as proving your standing for harm, which you cannot, if the executive keeps everything secret.

A proper constitutional court (as implemented by many other countries) is much more suited to these kinds of cases, which concern the spirit of Constitution, rather than specifics of harm and injuries to one specific entity.

the case the parent refers to is Marbury V. Madison, where SCOTUS assumes the ability to interpret matters of constitutionality.

Yes, and it appears that America is in need of such a court.

The Supreme Court is nothing more (or less) than the final judicial authority in the United States. They can still only rule on specific cases that happen to get appealed far enough to make it to them.

Courts can strike down unconstitutional sections of law, if they're implicated by a case before them. And the Supreme Court has the final say in a lot of those cases, because they're the final court of appeal. But they aren't a "Constitutional Court" in any direct or immediate way.

I meant that in a very specific way. A "Constitutional Court" is what some countries have to verify the bills passed by Parliaments before they actually become laws.

Think of it as a filter, that filters out all the "crap"/unconstitutional bills that Congress, either out of stupidity, or intentionally, wants to pass.

But these laws can still be found unconstitutional by normal Courts, or the Supreme Court later. The point is to have this so you don't wait 10 years until you even have a judge say if it's constitutional or not, and to stop an out of control government that thinks it can pass whatever it wants, 2 days before Christmas or in New Year's Eve, when no one is paying attention.

By the time the Supreme Court rules on some of those, a lot of damage has already been done, those people might not even be in Congress anymore (so they don't care what they pass), or they probably passed many more laws such as that by then, too, so the Supreme Court will never keep up.

It seems like the law enforcement/spy agencies modus operandi: do it illegally for a few years, and during this time lobby Congress and the president to make it "legal".

I guess they are operating under "It's easier to ask forgiveness than it is to get permission"

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