Were these cases about what the law says or what the repercussions are for breaking them? I don't think there is much leeway in terms of the former. Technically

Were these cases about what the law says or what the repercussions are for breaking them? I don't think there is much leeway in terms of the former. Technically a judge can acknowledge that a law is unconstitutional without ordering the law not be enforced, but to my understanding it is still not enforceable even in that case. In any event I think you should read the actual opinion here because you seem to be making out the court as something it really isn't, at least in this case. In terms of the examples you provided here, I was initially surprised because the first example sounds like unusual punishment which is unconstitutional. After looking into the first case, this was not a federal court but more importantly it seems you have the facts incorrect. I can't find the documents from the actual ruling but you can see from the response of the judge to appeal of the ruling that what really happened was the landlord was put on house arrest. It seems that he did not live in Cleveland which caused him to have to live in one of his apartments.[0] And the house arrest itself was is response to a failure to comply with the terms of his probation. My guess is that he registered that apartment as a second home or something like that in order to get some benefit (I'm just guessing here) and so it wasn't just "one of his apartments." I really suggest you actually read some of these court decisions before making such broad statements about the court system. I also think it is interesting that you think the example you gave as you understood it was not extreme but that the Fifth Circuit is. [0] http://realneo.us/system/files/HousingJury20100723135802-1.pdf http://realneo.us/system/files/HousingJury20100723135802-1.p...