17 ms·

Has anything changed since the sacred texts were written or we just going to keep acting as though we can never adjust the laws

by wak90 5mo ago

lotsofpulp 5mo ago
In the context of this thread, that would (ideally) fall under Congress’s purview, not the Supreme Court.
rayiner 5mo ago
Your point cuts in the other direction. The police and the judge who issued the warrant followed current Virginia law. Voters in Virginia could "adjust the laws" to ban the use of geolocation data. They haven't done so. So the plaintiffs in this case are trying to get the dead hand of the founders to smack the police and the judge. They're the ones invoking "sacred texts" written 237 years ago by a bunch of old white guys to ask the Supreme Court to overrule what police in Virginia did pursuant to Virginia law. Your post raises the question: who is the "we" you're referring to--the "we" who is empowered to "adjust the laws?" Who is empowered to decide whether circumstances have, in fact, changed? And if there has been a change--which way do those changes cut? Surely it's the current voters of Virginia who get to make that decision, right?
- ceejayoz 5mo ago
  > The police and the judge who issued the warrant followed current Virginia law. But the Supremacy Clause says the Constitution overrides Virginia law. If we decide the Fourth Amendment applies here, Virginia law loses.
  - rayiner 5mo ago
    > If we decide the Fourth Amendment applies here, Virginia law loses. Yes, but the only way to do that is to say that the dead hand of the founders overrules current Virginia law. The plaintiffs want James Madison from his grave to impose restrictions on the police that voters in Virginia in 2026 have declined to impose.
    - ceejayoz 5mo ago
      That’s how it works. Virginia voters similarly can’t legalize slavery or ban the New York Times. The age of the restriction is irrelevant.
      - rayiner 5mo ago
        > The age of the restriction is irrelevant. Not according to the comment I was responding to: "Has anything changed since the sacred texts were written or we just going to keep acting as though we can never adjust the laws."
        ceejayoz 5mo ago
        There's more than one bit of flow chart here. Things can change in a way that's covered by the Constitution. Say, technology that makes Fourth Amendment violations easier to do; still potentially covered! Things can change in a way that's not covered by the Constitution. Now you need an amendment. The Fourth Amendment is quite broad and can thus handle all sorts of change.
      - shadowgovt 5mo ago
        You are both correct, but rayiner's comment goes to the up-thread rhetorical question: > Has anything changed since the sacred texts were written or we just going to keep acting as though we can never adjust the laws ... the answer is "Oh boy, Chatrie sure does hope nothing has changed, and the Founders would have hated geofencing had they had any way to know what it was! Otherwise, the laws passed in the past 50 years say it's legal and fine."
- wak90 5mo ago
  No, it doesn't. The person I'm responding to is using semantics to claim the 4th amendment didn't mention scope and therefore privacy against search is irrelevant. My point is that acting as though the constitution of the us is some infallible holy text leads society down a path with learned priests interpreting arcane texts (you are here). Instead of acting as a rational society and addressing a need for citizens to have privacy in a changing technological world. Debating who the "we" is is losing the forest for the trees--we're wading into a conversation debating the power of a state or local municipality instead of looking at the actual issue where the federal government isn't protecting is citizens because "technically the slaveowners didn't say cell phone in their document".
nxobject 5mo ago
A majority-conservative Supreme Court's on an originalism kick, so we're very much stuck "when the sacred texts were written".
- triceratops 5mo ago
  Only when it's the way they want to rule.
dylan604 5mo ago
That's something that gets me every time I hear phrases like 'exact reading' of the Constitution. Do we honestly believe the writers of the document would have written exactly the same if they had today's technology? There's no way they could fathom always on two-way realtime radio communication devices, but they could easily have written the Constitution accordingly if they had them. The spirit and intent was clear. We're just willfully ignoring that intent because it would be inconvenient for big brother to do the snooping.
- moduspol 5mo ago
  IMO it is tangibly different. Having yourself, your things, or your house searched in the 1700s is a much bigger inconvenience and invasion of privacy than a cellular provider noting your phone was in the general vicinity of an area. I don't think the spirit or intent of the amendment would apply in cases where there is no tangible impact to the individual being searched. If we don't want the government to be able to do that, we should pass laws to that effect.
  - jacquesm 5mo ago
    It is because your cellphone is a proxy for you.
    - moduspol 5mo ago
      A third party giving an indication as to where my phone might be is not comparable to having my house searched by soldiers. Though again, making no judgment as to whether or not it should be allowed. I just think it should be a law, and not casting modern values on the 1700s era founders' words.
      - jacquesm 5mo ago
        Oh, absolutely. But the general idea here is that just because it can be done without inconveniencing you should not really make a difference: there were no such things as databases and remote monitoring in those days unless you want to equate some written record in the physical possession of the authorities as a 'search of your person', which it clearly would not be. So this tech angle opens up all kinds of cans of worms (scale, speed, scope to name a few) and the founders whose words are holy had absolutely no way to anticipate this. If they had I'm fairly sure they would have had something reasonable to be said about it, those were pretty smart guys and they seem to have had the right intent on safeguarding the country for as far as they could look ahead. I'm also pretty sure they would be 100% horrified by what it has become. So yes, it should be law. The US supreme court however does not make laws (or at least, they shouldn't be), they interpret the constitution. And the US constitution is well overdue for a more tech aware version, it's just that with the lawmakers apparently in the pockets of the tech billionaires I think that the chances of such an overhaul approach zero.
Exoristos 5mo ago
Or we can "keep acting" like there's no duly-constituted amendment process.
shadowgovt 5mo ago
It is a (possibly flawed) feature of the US Constitutional form of government that there is a proper channel for adjusting the enumerated rights in it, and that process is via amendment. I'd like it to be otherwise, but this Court has demonstrated in its overturning of Roe v. Wade that the risk of leaving it up to SCOTUS to synthesize "prenumbrae" and rights to privacy (which would have not been a thing anyone would have written in the 1700s) is that reasonable people can disagree on what those things are, unless you write them down explicitly in the document that requires a lot of effort to change.

Has anything changed since the sacred texts were written or we just going to keep acting as though we can never adjust the laws

by wak90 5mo ago

Has anything changed since the sacred texts were written or we just going to keep acting as though we can never adjust the laws

lotsofpulp 5mo ago

In the context of this thread, that would (ideally) fall under Congress’s purview, not the Supreme Court.

rayiner 5mo ago

Your point cuts in the other direction. The police and the judge who issued the warrant followed current Virginia law. Voters in Virginia could "adjust the laws" to ban the use of geolocation data. They haven't done so. So the plaintiffs in this case are trying to get the dead hand of the founders to smack the police and the judge. They're the ones invoking "sacred texts" written 237 years ago by a bunch of old white guys to ask the Supreme Court to overrule what police in Virginia did pursuant to Virginia law. Your post raises the question: who is the "we" you're referring to--the "we" who is empowered to "adjust the laws?" Who is empowered to decide whether circumstances have, in fact, changed? And if there has been a change--which way do those changes cut? Surely it's the current voters of Virginia who get to make that decision, right?

ceejayoz 5mo ago
> The police and the judge who issued the warrant followed current Virginia law. But the Supremacy Clause says the Constitution overrides Virginia law. If we decide the Fourth Amendment applies here, Virginia law loses.
- rayiner 5mo ago
  > If we decide the Fourth Amendment applies here, Virginia law loses. Yes, but the only way to do that is to say that the dead hand of the founders overrules current Virginia law. The plaintiffs want James Madison from his grave to impose restrictions on the police that voters in Virginia in 2026 have declined to impose.
  - ceejayoz 5mo ago
    That’s how it works. Virginia voters similarly can’t legalize slavery or ban the New York Times. The age of the restriction is irrelevant.
    - rayiner 5mo ago
      > The age of the restriction is irrelevant. Not according to the comment I was responding to: "Has anything changed since the sacred texts were written or we just going to keep acting as though we can never adjust the laws."
      - ceejayoz 5mo ago
        There's more than one bit of flow chart here. Things can change in a way that's covered by the Constitution. Say, technology that makes Fourth Amendment violations easier to do; still potentially covered! Things can change in a way that's not covered by the Constitution. Now you need an amendment. The Fourth Amendment is quite broad and can thus handle all sorts of change.
    - shadowgovt 5mo ago
      You are both correct, but rayiner's comment goes to the up-thread rhetorical question: > Has anything changed since the sacred texts were written or we just going to keep acting as though we can never adjust the laws ... the answer is "Oh boy, Chatrie sure does hope nothing has changed, and the Founders would have hated geofencing had they had any way to know what it was! Otherwise, the laws passed in the past 50 years say it's legal and fine."
wak90 5mo ago
No, it doesn't. The person I'm responding to is using semantics to claim the 4th amendment didn't mention scope and therefore privacy against search is irrelevant. My point is that acting as though the constitution of the us is some infallible holy text leads society down a path with learned priests interpreting arcane texts (you are here). Instead of acting as a rational society and addressing a need for citizens to have privacy in a changing technological world. Debating who the "we" is is losing the forest for the trees--we're wading into a conversation debating the power of a state or local municipality instead of looking at the actual issue where the federal government isn't protecting is citizens because "technically the slaveowners didn't say cell phone in their document".

nxobject 5mo ago

A majority-conservative Supreme Court's on an originalism kick, so we're very much stuck "when the sacred texts were written".

triceratops 5mo ago
Only when it's the way they want to rule.

dylan604 5mo ago

That's something that gets me every time I hear phrases like 'exact reading' of the Constitution. Do we honestly believe the writers of the document would have written exactly the same if they had today's technology? There's no way they could fathom always on two-way realtime radio communication devices, but they could easily have written the Constitution accordingly if they had them. The spirit and intent was clear. We're just willfully ignoring that intent because it would be inconvenient for big brother to do the snooping.

moduspol 5mo ago
IMO it is tangibly different. Having yourself, your things, or your house searched in the 1700s is a much bigger inconvenience and invasion of privacy than a cellular provider noting your phone was in the general vicinity of an area. I don't think the spirit or intent of the amendment would apply in cases where there is no tangible impact to the individual being searched. If we don't want the government to be able to do that, we should pass laws to that effect.
- jacquesm 5mo ago
  It is because your cellphone is a proxy for you.
  - moduspol 5mo ago
    A third party giving an indication as to where my phone might be is not comparable to having my house searched by soldiers. Though again, making no judgment as to whether or not it should be allowed. I just think it should be a law, and not casting modern values on the 1700s era founders' words.
    - jacquesm 5mo ago
      Oh, absolutely. But the general idea here is that just because it can be done without inconveniencing you should not really make a difference: there were no such things as databases and remote monitoring in those days unless you want to equate some written record in the physical possession of the authorities as a 'search of your person', which it clearly would not be. So this tech angle opens up all kinds of cans of worms (scale, speed, scope to name a few) and the founders whose words are holy had absolutely no way to anticipate this. If they had I'm fairly sure they would have had something reasonable to be said about it, those were pretty smart guys and they seem to have had the right intent on safeguarding the country for as far as they could look ahead. I'm also pretty sure they would be 100% horrified by what it has become. So yes, it should be law. The US supreme court however does not make laws (or at least, they shouldn't be), they interpret the constitution. And the US constitution is well overdue for a more tech aware version, it's just that with the lawmakers apparently in the pockets of the tech billionaires I think that the chances of such an overhaul approach zero.

Exoristos 5mo ago

Or we can "keep acting" like there's no duly-constituted amendment process.

shadowgovt 5mo ago

It is a (possibly flawed) feature of the US Constitutional form of government that there is a proper channel for adjusting the enumerated rights in it, and that process is via amendment. I'd like it to be otherwise, but this Court has demonstrated in its overturning of Roe v. Wade that the risk of leaving it up to SCOTUS to synthesize "prenumbrae" and rights to privacy (which would have not been a thing anyone would have written in the 1700s) is that reasonable people can disagree on what those things are, unless you write them down explicitly in the document that requires a lot of effort to change.