Hacker News Reader

Comment by xiadz | Hacker News Reader

Is there any constitutional court in the US that can revoke unconstitutional laws? In my country (which has a totally different legal system, since court sentences cannot be directly used in future cases) any sentenced person can appeal to the constitutional court, and if the court finds that the sentence was based on an unconstitutional law, the invalid law gets revoked, and the sentenced person becomes a defendant again.

I'm just thinking whether Snowden's lawyers could use this kind of argument. Of course this is not that simple, since he disclosed a national secret, and I guess that national secrets regulations are perfectly constitutional.

View on HN

A defendent in any US court can move for summary dismissal on grounds that the alleged law that he broke is unconstitutional. According to the US Supreme Court, "An unconstitutional act is not a law; ... it is in legal contemplation as inoperative as though it had never been passed." Norton v. Shelby County, 118 U.S. 425 (1886). So the court doesn't really "revoke" laws, but rather declares that they were null and void ab initio (except in rare cases like VRA Section 4 (Shelby County v. Holder), which was held to become unconstitutional over the passage of time).

The US Supreme Court regularly decides on constitutionality, and its rulings are binding on all other courts in the country. But it is not a "constitutional court" in the sense of, e.g., Germany's Constitutional Court, because the US Supreme Court (1) only makes constitutional rulings when needed to resolve "actual cases or controversies", and (2) it also decides other matters not involving disputes over constitutional provisions.

> I guess that national secrets regulations are perfectly constitutional.

Yes, regardless of whether the NSA's spying is unconstitutional (and thereby illegal), it is clear that Snowden's actions were illegal under federal law.

This might be too lengthy of an explanation, but if you're interested, this section from Wikipedia would help explain: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Constitution#Judi...

I'm sure a lawyer could say more.

My understanding is that US law does not have any specific constitutional courts. Indeed, I think one could argue that US law is not necessarily "based on the constitution" but based on English Common Law since even the constitution is interpreted in light of this.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Common_law https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Constitutional_law

The SCOTUS is the Constitutional Court. The problem is, they only hear cases where the Appellant can demonstrate standing. It's really hard to demonstrate standing when the matter at hand is so deeply classified that no proof of standing can be brought to bear.

Laws which may be illegal being so secret they cannot be challenged is incompatible with any form of democracy. They are quite compatible with other forms of government like dictatorships. Maybe that will be the end result.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com