Does Texas have the authority to legalize weed?
I can’t help it if you have the dumb notion lodged in your mind that federal law means states are helpless to do anything different. I can only point out, as a general matter with no specific application to state razor wire on the border, that it’s an obviously dumb and wrong principle.
Stop that noise. Is that really the way you want the United States to be? Then stop the oh-so-very-fashionable cynicism. This is a presidential election year! Miracles are worth fighting for.
Your parenthetical provides the answer. You shove a few dozen immigrants in the back of a sweltering trailer in the middle of summer, you’re responsible because you assumed that responsibility. If a couple immigrants drown because you don’t give a shit if a few immigrants drown, that’s on them.
Legally speaking, if you want to point and laugh from the boat while some schmuck is drowning, you’re fine. You have no duty to rescue that schmuck. Your duty is not to shove that schmuck into the lake.
(1) This case does not involve federal immigration law impliedly preempting state immigration law.
As far as I can tell, the DOJ’s application to vacate the injunction makes no mention of state immigration laws at all, nor do the attached district and appeals court opinions. As the application says:
This case concerns Texas’s attempts to invoke its state tort law to enjoin federally authorized activities of Border Patrol agents at the border
It’s senseless to claim that application of the Supremacy Clause depends on federal immigration law preempting state immigration law, when state immigration law is not even involved.
(2) Nor is it correct that, as you said earlier, “this dispute does not really involve the Supremacy Clause.”
When DOJ claims that state tort laws may not obstruct federal agents in their authorized activities, they make that claim under the Constitution’s Supremacy Clause. As they did here:
Under the Supremacy Clause, state law cannot be applied to restrain those federal agents from carrying out their federally authorized activities.
…
The Supremacy Clause mandates such preemption where compliance with both state and federal law "is a physical impossibility,” as well as where “the challenged state law stands as an obstacle to the accomplishment and execution of the full purposes and objectives of Congress.”
“Give me your poor, your tired, and we’ll cut them up with razor wire!” Four Supposedly “Christian” Justices.
“What would Jesus do? Drown them!”
Sickos.
State law and enforcement. I was quite specific. You even quoted it! If federal immigration law does not preempt state enforcement, the Supremacy Clause does not apply.
ETA: A strike is obviously a strike. What is a strike? It’s way down in the unwritten Definitions. You won’t find it in the Supremacy Clause itself.
See my posting history, pal.
So we’re down to Sloth and Mama Fratelli?
(Sorta narrows the field.)
Question: when did the fed gov’t become supreme in border affairs, and in adjacent matters? I ask this as someone accustomed to seeing county Surrogate courts sign off on naturalization of citizens in the early-to-mid 19th century (at least, I think they were county judges – were/are there federal Surrogate courts? That would be kind of weird). I am confident that, before the fed gov’t took over and created U.S. passports, in the early 19th century American travelers abroad – well, common sailors, for sure – got what I’ll call “certificates” from municipal or county (this, I think) or state – not fed – judges. The certificate attested to the seaman’s (or other traveler’s?) American citizenship. In the case of seamen, harbor masters (or whoever) at foreign ports were driven crazy (so I have read) by the wide variety of documents presented them by sailors on American ships, which made it almost impossible for them to adjudge each document’s validity. (I’m not even talking pre-War of 1812 impressment – just, say, 1835 trying to carry on routine trade.)
Anyway, I have a feeling that the fed gov’t hasn’t always reigned supreme in the areas we now take for granted it does. Any scholars here on these questions of legal history?
So, if I understand you correctly, when you said…
“If federal immigration law does not impliedly preempt state immigration law and enforcement, the Supremacy Clause has no application.”
…the word “enforcement” didn’t refer to enforcement of state immigration law?
You’re saying you really meant that preemption of state immigration law was one thing, and preemption of enforcement was a different, separate thing?
I ask because if you read “enforcement” by itself – and not limited to enforcement of state immigration laws – then it includes enforcement of, well, whatever. Including state tort law.
Given your previous stance, that surprises me becase:
I just didn’t think you would so easily abandon that claim after all this time and effort.
Which is why I would have sworn you meant it as “enforcement of state immigration law.”
But I guess you got me on this one, by golly… Live and learn…
** BTW, that’s not just my conclusion. DOJ’s brief is peppered with references to the Supremacy Clause as the basis for its application, as I note and quoted in previous posts.
The way some of those conservatives on the Supreme Court are acting, it seems only a matter of time before they decide that they themselves are irrelevant but are here to keep it that way?
This is the Media Whores’ version of the Big Lie, and one they will relentlessly push because they need to manipulate voters: https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-68053918
From the story: iam a single mom with two kids, I gotta vote for those who don’t want to give any assistance to me because grocery stores jacked up prices. They love reporting people saying insane things, but do they ever inform them on how wrong they are?
When you read it you can just see the right wing properganda oozing out of their words.
My question is why doesn’t Mexico do anything to stop these migrants in Mexico?
Thomas doesn’t read and the 3 usual suspects read it and do the opposite.
Shorter @txlawyer:
Moral responsibility and legal responsibility are different standards and different things.
Who gives a shit what the little fuckers do. Would it be any different on any other event they disapprove of? Babies cry when you steal their toy or take their bottle away. People need to quit giving oxygen to these little tantrums.
What a novel idea and a quaint notion! Who woulda thunk it? Surely not Justice Roberts!
Fuck that response.
