[POLL] - Liberals, how much is a "fair share?" - Taxes

[bripat9643]

CEOs are crooks charging whatever they want because they know they can get away with it. Even if they do break the law they're only going to be put on house arrest. No accountability has created chaotic money grubbing high society narcissistic assholes.

In other words, they aren't crooks since they haven't broken any laws. On the other hand, we know the Obama administration is overpopulated with crooks.

 

[bripat9643]

One thing that you can count on. No progress on curbing executive compensation abuse with Republicans in office.

Executive compensation abuse.



Executive compensation is sanctioned and contractually approved by the shareholders.



Someone else's success does not hurt you.

Not their success. Success isn't an issue. The issue is the tax loophole that companies paid to get created so they could cheat the system. US needs to get rid of the tax loopholes, then we can debate how much their success is worth when companies actually have to pay taxes on their payroll.

What tax "loophole" is that?

 

[PMZ]

CEOs are crooks charging whatever they want because they know they can get away with it. Even if they do break the law they're only going to be put on house arrest. No accountability has created chaotic money grubbing high society narcissistic assholes.

In other words, they aren't crooks since they haven't broken any laws. On the other hand, we know the Obama administration is overpopulated with crooks.

Who in the Obama administration has been convicted of a crime?

 

[OODA_Loop]

How about if we get paid according to the value that we add.

Exactly as my post alludes to increasing your value.

Why do you think that executives add several hundred times the value of workers who actually make the product or people who directly serve the customer, who's the sole judge of value?

Board of Directors determines value and executive compensation accordingly.

 

[ShawnChris13]

CEOs are crooks charging whatever they want because they know they can get away with it. Even if they do break the law they're only going to be put on house arrest. No accountability has created chaotic money grubbing high society narcissistic assholes.

In other words, they aren't crooks since they haven't broken any laws. On the other hand, we know the Obama administration is overpopulated with crooks.

I guess I should pay a bunch of money to get the law changed so I could murder people without being a murderer. Then as long as I changed the law I'm a law abiding citizen and can't be considered a criminal. Cause yeah that's how the world works.

A crook is a crook no matter what laws he changed to make being a crook legal.

 

[ShawnChris13]

Executive compensation abuse.







Executive compensation is sanctioned and contractually approved by the shareholders.







Someone else's success does not hurt you.

Not their success. Success isn't an issue. The issue is the tax loophole that companies paid to get created so they could cheat the system. US needs to get rid of the tax loopholes, then we can debate how much their success is worth when companies actually have to pay taxes on their payroll.

What tax "loophole" is that?

Are you suggesting we don't have tax loopholes that are taken advantage of by the rich? Is it really a necessity to prove something like that?

 

[PMZ]

Exactly as my post alludes to increasing your value.

Why do you think that executives add several hundred times the value of workers who actually make the product or people who directly serve the customer, who's the sole judge of value?

Board of Directors determines value and executive compensation accordingly.

And then that grossly overpaid executive reciprocates as a BOD member.

 

[ShawnChris13]

CEOs are crooks charging whatever they want because they know they can get away with it. Even if they do break the law they're only going to be put on house arrest. No accountability has created chaotic money grubbing high society narcissistic assholes.

In other words, they aren't crooks since they haven't broken any laws. On the other hand, we know the Obama administration is overpopulated with crooks.

Who in the Obama administration has been convicted of a crime?

They won't even convict a congressman for drug possession. Why would anybody in the upper echelons of the executive branch be convicted of crimes when the head of the justice department can just cry for executive privilege and sweep it under the rug? They wouldn't. (Just devils advocate, not actually accusing them of being criminals. Except for that crack head guy from FL)

 

[PMZ]

CEOs are crooks charging whatever they want because they know they can get away with it. Even if they do break the law they're only going to be put on house arrest. No accountability has created chaotic money grubbing high society narcissistic assholes.

In other words, they aren't crooks since they haven't broken any laws. On the other hand, we know the Obama administration is overpopulated with crooks.

I guess I should pay a bunch of money to get the law changed so I could murder people without being a murderer. Then as long as I changed the law I'm a law abiding citizen and can't be considered a criminal. Cause yeah that's how the world works.

A crook is a crook no matter what laws he changed to make being a crook legal.

Of course, you are wrong. We live under the rule of law. People who are convicted of breaking our laws are criminals. People not so convicted are not.

 

[ShawnChris13]

In other words, they aren't crooks since they haven't broken any laws. On the other hand, we know the Obama administration is overpopulated with crooks.

I guess I should pay a bunch of money to get the law changed so I could murder people without being a murderer. Then as long as I changed the law I'm a law abiding citizen and can't be considered a criminal. Cause yeah that's how the world works.

A crook is a crook no matter what laws he changed to make being a crook legal.

Of course, you are wrong. We live under the rule of law. People who are convicted of breaking our laws are criminals. People not so convicted are not.

You mean the rule of law that guarantees my privacy but secret courts rule that my privacy can be invaded without my consent? Great rule of law.

 

[PMZ]

I guess I should pay a bunch of money to get the law changed so I could murder people without being a murderer. Then as long as I changed the law I'm a law abiding citizen and can't be considered a criminal. Cause yeah that's how the world works.

A crook is a crook no matter what laws he changed to make being a crook legal.

Of course, you are wrong. We live under the rule of law. People who are convicted of breaking our laws are criminals. People not so convicted are not.

You mean the rule of law that guarantees my privacy but secret courts rule that my privacy can be invaded without my consent? Great rule of law.

From
http://law2.umkc.edu/faculty/projects/ftrials/conlaw/rightofprivacy.html

The U. S. Constitution contains no express right to privacy. The Bill of Rights, however, reflects the concern of James Madison and other framers for protecting specific aspects of privacy, such as the privacy of beliefs (1st Amendment), privacy of the home against demands that it be used to house soldiers (3rd Amendment), privacy of the person and possessions as against unreasonable searches (4th Amendment), and the 5th Amendment's privilege against self-incrimination, which provides protection for the privacy of personal information. In addition, the Ninth Amendment states that the "enumeration of certain rights" in the Bill of Rights "shall not be construed to deny or disparage other rights retained by the people." The meaning of the Ninth Amendment is elusive, but some persons (including Justice Goldberg in his Griswold concurrence) have interpreted the Ninth Amendment as justification for broadly reading the Bill of Rights to protect privacy in ways not specifically provided in the first eight amendments.

The question of whether the Constitution protects privacy in ways not expressly provided in the Bill of Rights is controversial. Many originalists, including most famously Judge Robert Bork in his ill-fated Supreme Court confirmation hearings, have argued that no such general right of privacy exists. The Supreme Court, however, beginning as early as 1923 and continuing through its recent decisions, has broadly read the "liberty" guarantee of the Fourteenth Amendment to guarantee a fairly broad right of privacy that has come to encompass decisions about child rearing, procreation, marriage, and termination of medical treatment. Polls show most Americans support this broader reading of the Constitution.

The Supreme Court, in two decisions in the 1920s, read the Fourteenth Amendment's liberty clause to prohibit states from interfering with the private decisions of educators and parents to shape the education of children. In Meyer v Nebraska (1923), the Supreme Court struck down a state law that prohibited the teaching of German and other foreign languages to children until the ninth grade. The state argued that foreign languages could lead to inculcating in students "ideas and sentiments foreign to the best interests of this country." The Court, however, in a 7 to 2 decision written by Justice McReynolds concluded that the state failed to show a compelling need to infringe upon the rights of parents and teachers to decide what course of education is best for young students. Justice McReynolds wrote:

"While this court has not attempted to define with exactness the liberty thus guaranteed, the term has received much consideration and some of the included things have been definitely stated. Without doubt, it denotes not merely freedom from bodily restraint but also the right of the individual to contract, to engage in any of the common occupations of life, to acquire useful knowledge, to marry, establish a home and bring up children, to worship God according to the dictates of his own conscience, and generally to enjoy those privileges long recognized at common law as essential to the orderly pursuit of happiness by free men."

Two years late, in Pierce v Society of Sisters, the Court applied the principles of Meyer to strike down an Oregon law that compelled all children to attend public schools, a law that would have effectively closed all parochial schools in the state.

The privacy doctrine of the 1920s gained renewed life in the Warren Court of the 1960s when, in Griswold v Connecticut (1965), the Court struck down a state law prohibiting the possession, sale, and distribution of contraceptives to married couples. Different justifications were offered for the conclusion, ranging from Court's opinion by Justice Douglas that saw the "penumbras" and "emanations" of various Bill of Rights guarantees as creating "a zone of privacy," to Justice Goldberg's partial reliance on the Ninth Amendment's reference to "other rights retained by the people," to Justice Harlan's decision arguing that the Fourteenth Amendment's liberty clause forbade the state from engaging in conduct (such as search of marital bedrooms for evidence of illicit contraceptives) that was inconsistent with a government based "on the concept of ordered liberty."

In 1969, the Court unanimously concluded that the right of privacy protected an individual's right to possess and view pornography (including pornography that might be the basis for a criminal prosecution against its manufacturer or distributor) in his own home. Drawing support for the Court's decision from both the First and Fourth Amendments, Justice Marshall wrote in Stanley v Georgia:

"Whatever may be the justifications for other statutes regulating obscenity, we do not think they reach into the privacy of one's own home. If the First Amendment means anything, it means that a State has no business telling a man, sitting alone in his own house, what books he may read or what films he may watch. Our whole constitutional heritage rebels at the thought of giving government the power to control men's minds."

The Burger Court extended the right of privacy to include a woman's right to have an abortion in Roe v Wade (1972), but thereafter resisted several invitations to expand the right. Kelley v Johnson (1976), in which the Court upheld a grooming regulation for police officers, illustrates the trend toward limiting the scope of the "zone of privacy." (The Court left open, however, the question of whether government could apply a grooming law to members of the general public, who it assumed would have some sort of liberty interest in matters of personal appearance.) Some state courts, however, were not so reluctant about pushing the zone of privacy to new frontiers. The Alaska Supreme Court went as far in the direction of protecting privacy rights as any state. In Ravin v State (1975), drawing on cases such as Stanley and Griswold but also basing its decision on the more generous protection of the Alaska Constitution's privacy protections, the Alaska Supreme Court found constitutional protection for the right of a citizen to possess and use small quantities of marijuana in his own home.

The Supreme Court said in the 1977 case of Moore v. East Cleveland that "the Constitution protects the sanctity of the family precisely because the institution of the family is deeply rooted in the Nation's history and tradition." Moore found privacy protection for an extended family's choice of living arrangements, striking down a housing ordinance that prohibited a grandmother from living together with her two grandsons. Writing for the Court, Justice Powell said, "The choice of relatives in this degree of kinship to live together may not lightly be denied by the state."

In more recent decades, the Court recognized in Cruzan v Missouri Department of Health (1990) that individuals have a liberty interest that includes the right to make decisions to terminate life-prolonging medical treatments (although the Court accepted that states can impose certain conditions on the exercise of that right). In 2003, in Lawrence v Texas, the Supreme Court, overruling an earlier decision, found that Texas violated the liberty clause of two gay men when it enforced against them a state law prohibiting homosexual sodomy. Writing for the Court in Lawrence, Justice Kennedy reaffirmed in broad terms the Constitution's protection for privacy:

"These matters, involving the most intimate and personal choices a person may make in a lifetime, choices central to personal dignity and autonomy, are central to the liberty protected by the Fourteenth Amendment. At the heart of liberty is the right to define one’s own concept of existence, of meaning, of the universe, and of the mystery of human life....The petitioners are entitled to respect for their private lives. The State cannot demean their existence or control their destiny by making their private sexual conduct a crime. Their right to liberty under the Due Process Clause gives them the full right to engage in their conduct without intervention of the government. 'It is a promise of the Constitution that there is a realm of personal liberty which the government may not enter.'”

One question that the Court has wrestled with through its privacy decisions is how strong of an interest states must demonstrate to overcome claims by individuals that they have invaded a protected liberty interest. Earlier decisions such as Griswold and Roe suggested that states must show a compelling interest and narrowly tailored means when they have burdened fundamental privacy rights, but later cases such as Cruzan and Lawrence have suggested the burden on states is not so high.

The future of privacy protection remains an open question. Justices Scalia and Thomas, for example, are not inclined to protect privacy beyond those cases raising claims based on specific Bill of Rights guarantees. The public, however, wants a Constitution that fills privacy gaps and prevents an overreaching Congress from telling the American people who they must marry, how many children they can have, or when they must go to bed. The best bet is that the Court will continue to recognize protection for a general right of privacy.

Cases
Meyer v Nebraska (1923)
Griswold v Connecticut (1965)
Stanley v Georgia (1969)
Ravin v State (1975)
Kelley v Johnson (1976)
Moore v East Cleveland (1977)
Cruzan v. Missouri Dep't. of Health (1990)
Lawrence v Texas (2003)

Estelle Griswold, of the Planned Parenthood League, whose lawsuit led to the invalidation of a state law banning contraceptives.

Bill of Rights (and 14th Amendment) Provisions Relating to the Right of Privacy

Amendment I
(Privacy of Beliefs)
Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.

Amendment III
(Privacy of the Home)
No Soldier shall, in time of peace be quartered in any house, without the consent of the Owner, nor in time of war, but in a manner to be prescribed by law.

Amendment IV
(Privacy of the Person and Possessions)
The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.

Amendment IX
(More General Protection for Privacy?)
The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people.
Liberty Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment
No State shall... deprive any person of life, liberty, or property,
without due process of law.

Tyron Garner and John Lawrence (with their attorney), the gay men
who successfully challenged Texas's sodomy law.

Questions

1. Assuming that there exists a general right of privacy, what sort of conduct to you think lies at its very center? What sort of conduct lies at its periphery? What sort of conduct should be considered outside of the protection of a reasonably interpreted right of privacy?
2. Is there a stronger basis in the Constitution for protecting personal privacy rights as opposed to personal economic rights, such as the liberty of contract recognized in Lochner v New York?
3. When the state burdens an important privacy right, what sort of justification should the state have to make to sustain its regulation? What arguments would be likely to convince the U. S. Supreme Court (unlike the Alaska Supreme Court) that the Constitution protects the right to possess obscene materials but not marijuana or other drugs?
4. Some state constitutions provide express protection for privacy. Would you favor including such a provision in your state's constitution? What wording would you suggest for a constitutional amendment protecting privacy?
5. The Constitution has been interpreted to protect the right to marry, as well as the right to live a homosexual lifestyle. Should it also be interpreted to protect the right of homosexuals to marry?
6. Are a person's choices with respect to personal appearance protected by the Constitution? Should the Constitution protect the right of students or police officers to wear their hair in any style they see fit? Why or why not? Would a tax on beards, such as the one adopted by Peter the Great, be constitutional?
7. The choice of a woman to have an abortion was found in Roe v Wade to be the sort of fundamental personal decision deserving privacy protection under the Fourteenth Amendment's liberty clause. In what respects is abortion a private matter, and in what respects might it not be? If you don't believe that the Constitution protects the decision to have an abortion, do you believe that it would prevent the government from forcing a woman to have an abortion and, if it would, what is the constitutional basis for that protection?

 

[ShawnChris13]

Of course, you are wrong. We live under the rule of law. People who are convicted of breaking our laws are criminals. People not so convicted are not.

You mean the rule of law that guarantees my privacy but secret courts rule that my privacy can be invaded without my consent? Great rule of law.

From
http://law2.umkc.edu/faculty/projects/ftrials/conlaw/rightofprivacy.html

The U. S. Constitution contains no express right to privacy. The Bill of Rights, however, reflects the concern of James Madison and other framers for protecting specific aspects of privacy, such as the privacy of beliefs (1st Amendment), privacy of the home against demands that it be used to house soldiers (3rd Amendment), privacy of the person and possessions as against unreasonable searches (4th Amendment), and the 5th Amendment's privilege against self-incrimination, which provides protection for the privacy of personal information. In addition, the Ninth Amendment states that the "enumeration of certain rights" in the Bill of Rights "shall not be construed to deny or disparage other rights retained by the people." The meaning of the Ninth Amendment is elusive, but some persons (including Justice Goldberg in his Griswold concurrence) have interpreted the Ninth Amendment as justification for broadly reading the Bill of Rights to protect privacy in ways not specifically provided in the first eight amendments.

The question of whether the Constitution protects privacy in ways not expressly provided in the Bill of Rights is controversial. Many originalists, including most famously Judge Robert Bork in his ill-fated Supreme Court confirmation hearings, have argued that no such general right of privacy exists. The Supreme Court, however, beginning as early as 1923 and continuing through its recent decisions, has broadly read the "liberty" guarantee of the Fourteenth Amendment to guarantee a fairly broad right of privacy that has come to encompass decisions about child rearing, procreation, marriage, and termination of medical treatment. Polls show most Americans support this broader reading of the Constitution.

The Supreme Court, in two decisions in the 1920s, read the Fourteenth Amendment's liberty clause to prohibit states from interfering with the private decisions of educators and parents to shape the education of children. In Meyer v Nebraska (1923), the Supreme Court struck down a state law that prohibited the teaching of German and other foreign languages to children until the ninth grade. The state argued that foreign languages could lead to inculcating in students "ideas and sentiments foreign to the best interests of this country." The Court, however, in a 7 to 2 decision written by Justice McReynolds concluded that the state failed to show a compelling need to infringe upon the rights of parents and teachers to decide what course of education is best for young students. Justice McReynolds wrote:

"While this court has not attempted to define with exactness the liberty thus guaranteed, the term has received much consideration and some of the included things have been definitely stated. Without doubt, it denotes not merely freedom from bodily restraint but also the right of the individual to contract, to engage in any of the common occupations of life, to acquire useful knowledge, to marry, establish a home and bring up children, to worship God according to the dictates of his own conscience, and generally to enjoy those privileges long recognized at common law as essential to the orderly pursuit of happiness by free men."

Two years late, in Pierce v Society of Sisters, the Court applied the principles of Meyer to strike down an Oregon law that compelled all children to attend public schools, a law that would have effectively closed all parochial schools in the state.

The privacy doctrine of the 1920s gained renewed life in the Warren Court of the 1960s when, in Griswold v Connecticut (1965), the Court struck down a state law prohibiting the possession, sale, and distribution of contraceptives to married couples. Different justifications were offered for the conclusion, ranging from Court's opinion by Justice Douglas that saw the "penumbras" and "emanations" of various Bill of Rights guarantees as creating "a zone of privacy," to Justice Goldberg's partial reliance on the Ninth Amendment's reference to "other rights retained by the people," to Justice Harlan's decision arguing that the Fourteenth Amendment's liberty clause forbade the state from engaging in conduct (such as search of marital bedrooms for evidence of illicit contraceptives) that was inconsistent with a government based "on the concept of ordered liberty."

In 1969, the Court unanimously concluded that the right of privacy protected an individual's right to possess and view pornography (including pornography that might be the basis for a criminal prosecution against its manufacturer or distributor) in his own home. Drawing support for the Court's decision from both the First and Fourth Amendments, Justice Marshall wrote in Stanley v Georgia:

"Whatever may be the justifications for other statutes regulating obscenity, we do not think they reach into the privacy of one's own home. If the First Amendment means anything, it means that a State has no business telling a man, sitting alone in his own house, what books he may read or what films he may watch. Our whole constitutional heritage rebels at the thought of giving government the power to control men's minds."

The Burger Court extended the right of privacy to include a woman's right to have an abortion in Roe v Wade (1972), but thereafter resisted several invitations to expand the right. Kelley v Johnson (1976), in which the Court upheld a grooming regulation for police officers, illustrates the trend toward limiting the scope of the "zone of privacy." (The Court left open, however, the question of whether government could apply a grooming law to members of the general public, who it assumed would have some sort of liberty interest in matters of personal appearance.) Some state courts, however, were not so reluctant about pushing the zone of privacy to new frontiers. The Alaska Supreme Court went as far in the direction of protecting privacy rights as any state. In Ravin v State (1975), drawing on cases such as Stanley and Griswold but also basing its decision on the more generous protection of the Alaska Constitution's privacy protections, the Alaska Supreme Court found constitutional protection for the right of a citizen to possess and use small quantities of marijuana in his own home.

The Supreme Court said in the 1977 case of Moore v. East Cleveland that "the Constitution protects the sanctity of the family precisely because the institution of the family is deeply rooted in the Nation's history and tradition." Moore found privacy protection for an extended family's choice of living arrangements, striking down a housing ordinance that prohibited a grandmother from living together with her two grandsons. Writing for the Court, Justice Powell said, "The choice of relatives in this degree of kinship to live together may not lightly be denied by the state."

In more recent decades, the Court recognized in Cruzan v Missouri Department of Health (1990) that individuals have a liberty interest that includes the right to make decisions to terminate life-prolonging medical treatments (although the Court accepted that states can impose certain conditions on the exercise of that right). In 2003, in Lawrence v Texas, the Supreme Court, overruling an earlier decision, found that Texas violated the liberty clause of two gay men when it enforced against them a state law prohibiting homosexual sodomy. Writing for the Court in Lawrence, Justice Kennedy reaffirmed in broad terms the Constitution's protection for privacy:

"These matters, involving the most intimate and personal choices a person may make in a lifetime, choices central to personal dignity and autonomy, are central to the liberty protected by the Fourteenth Amendment. At the heart of liberty is the right to define one’s own concept of existence, of meaning, of the universe, and of the mystery of human life....The petitioners are entitled to respect for their private lives. The State cannot demean their existence or control their destiny by making their private sexual conduct a crime. Their right to liberty under the Due Process Clause gives them the full right to engage in their conduct without intervention of the government. 'It is a promise of the Constitution that there is a realm of personal liberty which the government may not enter.'”

One question that the Court has wrestled with through its privacy decisions is how strong of an interest states must demonstrate to overcome claims by individuals that they have invaded a protected liberty interest. Earlier decisions such as Griswold and Roe suggested that states must show a compelling interest and narrowly tailored means when they have burdened fundamental privacy rights, but later cases such as Cruzan and Lawrence have suggested the burden on states is not so high.

The future of privacy protection remains an open question. Justices Scalia and Thomas, for example, are not inclined to protect privacy beyond those cases raising claims based on specific Bill of Rights guarantees. The public, however, wants a Constitution that fills privacy gaps and prevents an overreaching Congress from telling the American people who they must marry, how many children they can have, or when they must go to bed. The best bet is that the Court will continue to recognize protection for a general right of privacy.

Cases
Meyer v Nebraska (1923)
Griswold v Connecticut (1965)
Stanley v Georgia (1969)
Ravin v State (1975)
Kelley v Johnson (1976)
Moore v East Cleveland (1977)
Cruzan v. Missouri Dep't. of Health (1990)
Lawrence v Texas (2003)

Estelle Griswold, of the Planned Parenthood League, whose lawsuit led to the invalidation of a state law banning contraceptives.

Bill of Rights (and 14th Amendment) Provisions Relating to the Right of Privacy

Amendment I
(Privacy of Beliefs)
Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.

Amendment III
(Privacy of the Home)
No Soldier shall, in time of peace be quartered in any house, without the consent of the Owner, nor in time of war, but in a manner to be prescribed by law.

Amendment IV
(Privacy of the Person and Possessions)
The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.

Amendment IX
(More General Protection for Privacy?)
The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people.
Liberty Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment
No State shall... deprive any person of life, liberty, or property,
without due process of law.

Tyron Garner and John Lawrence (with their attorney), the gay men
who successfully challenged Texas's sodomy law.

Questions

1. Assuming that there exists a general right of privacy, what sort of conduct to you think lies at its very center? What sort of conduct lies at its periphery? What sort of conduct should be considered outside of the protection of a reasonably interpreted right of privacy?
2. Is there a stronger basis in the Constitution for protecting personal privacy rights as opposed to personal economic rights, such as the liberty of contract recognized in Lochner v New York?
3. When the state burdens an important privacy right, what sort of justification should the state have to make to sustain its regulation? What arguments would be likely to convince the U. S. Supreme Court (unlike the Alaska Supreme Court) that the Constitution protects the right to possess obscene materials but not marijuana or other drugs?
4. Some state constitutions provide express protection for privacy. Would you favor including such a provision in your state's constitution? What wording would you suggest for a constitutional amendment protecting privacy?
5. The Constitution has been interpreted to protect the right to marry, as well as the right to live a homosexual lifestyle. Should it also be interpreted to protect the right of homosexuals to marry?
6. Are a person's choices with respect to personal appearance protected by the Constitution? Should the Constitution protect the right of students or police officers to wear their hair in any style they see fit? Why or why not? Would a tax on beards, such as the one adopted by Peter the Great, be constitutional?
7. The choice of a woman to have an abortion was found in Roe v Wade to be the sort of fundamental personal decision deserving privacy protection under the Fourteenth Amendment's liberty clause. In what respects is abortion a private matter, and in what respects might it not be? If you don't believe that the Constitution protects the decision to have an abortion, do you believe that it would prevent the government from forcing a woman to have an abortion and, if it would, what is the constitutional basis for that protection?

You're saying that being secure in persons, papers, houses, and effects isn't an express right to privacy outlined in the Bill of Rights? Did they just put secure in there with no issuance of warrants without just cause as like a "hey, you can if you feel like it, but it's not like we're saying you CANT just go through everyone's stuff whenever you feel like it"?

As for the rest, yes some cases were argued in such a manner that some judge apparently gets to decide how the English language gets to be interpreted and what the law is saying by not saying it. Yes, please, let me rely on the political maneuvering of guys I hate to tell me what secure means.


As for the questions, my personal opinions you've asked for are as follows:

1. Privacy is privacy is privacy. My private dealings are mine own. My emails (my effects which are to be secure) are not something open for scrutiny. My web traffic the same. Any dealings I have in the public are public. If I'm at the store and they have a security camera, that is their right for the store security. Anything private is private. I'm not sure how else I should explain privacy than that.

2. Privacy rights and economic rights are the difference between private and public. Are there confidential contracts? Yes. As long as contracts do not break laws or force someone to commit a crime then those are valid contracts. The very idea of a contract is that it is generally available up locally and open for scrutiny.

3. Any argument a state should make about its own laws can be summed up by the tenth amendment. Unless all other powers not granted to the federal government shall be reserved to the states and the people meant something other than what plain English states.

4. Wording protecting privacy in an amendment? I thought the fourth amendment was clear, but I guess lawyers have messed that up. I honestly don't know, but anything that makes it clear to stay out of my private life.

5. It should be interpreted for personal liberty. Defining marriage shouldn't be the governments role.

6. Peter the Great shouldn't even enter into a discussion about America. As far as personal appearance, that's personal liberty. As a sailor I am accustomed to the rules of personal appearance that must be maintained. But I did sign a contract and agreed to it. No matter how much I would advocate to reverse these policies restricting freedoms for no logical reason.

7. Abortion is that argument that will end relationships and tear apart families. My opinion is simple. When the chromosomes match my chromosomes then that is when abortion should not be allowed, excepting safety of the mother of course. Bird eggs are more protected than children that match you and I scientifically, making them human. This I disagree with. Children are a responsibility, and they made their choice when they took the risk of getting pregnant by having sex. Yes people get raped and they can have the choice if that's what they desire.

The government should not have the authority to force individuals to make any decision, only protect those that are helpless.

 

[ShawnChris13]

Also PMZ I'm on my phone you're killing me bro!

 

[bripat9643]

Not their success. Success isn't an issue. The issue is the tax loophole that companies paid to get created so they could cheat the system. US needs to get rid of the tax loopholes, then we can debate how much their success is worth when companies actually have to pay taxes on their payroll.

What tax "loophole" is that?

Are you suggesting we don't have tax loopholes that are taken advantage of by the rich? Is it really a necessity to prove something like that?

Now you're moving the goal posts. You said "tax loopholes that companies paid to get created so they could cheat the system." Which tax loopholes are those?

 

[PMZ]

You mean the rule of law that guarantees my privacy but secret courts rule that my privacy can be invaded without my consent? Great rule of law.

From
http://law2.umkc.edu/faculty/projects/ftrials/conlaw/rightofprivacy.html

The U. S. Constitution contains no express right to privacy. The Bill of Rights, however, reflects the concern of James Madison and other framers for protecting specific aspects of privacy, such as the privacy of beliefs (1st Amendment), privacy of the home against demands that it be used to house soldiers (3rd Amendment), privacy of the person and possessions as against unreasonable searches (4th Amendment), and the 5th Amendment's privilege against self-incrimination, which provides protection for the privacy of personal information. In addition, the Ninth Amendment states that the "enumeration of certain rights" in the Bill of Rights "shall not be construed to deny or disparage other rights retained by the people." The meaning of the Ninth Amendment is elusive, but some persons (including Justice Goldberg in his Griswold concurrence) have interpreted the Ninth Amendment as justification for broadly reading the Bill of Rights to protect privacy in ways not specifically provided in the first eight amendments.

The question of whether the Constitution protects privacy in ways not expressly provided in the Bill of Rights is controversial. Many originalists, including most famously Judge Robert Bork in his ill-fated Supreme Court confirmation hearings, have argued that no such general right of privacy exists. The Supreme Court, however, beginning as early as 1923 and continuing through its recent decisions, has broadly read the "liberty" guarantee of the Fourteenth Amendment to guarantee a fairly broad right of privacy that has come to encompass decisions about child rearing, procreation, marriage, and termination of medical treatment. Polls show most Americans support this broader reading of the Constitution.

The Supreme Court, in two decisions in the 1920s, read the Fourteenth Amendment's liberty clause to prohibit states from interfering with the private decisions of educators and parents to shape the education of children. In Meyer v Nebraska (1923), the Supreme Court struck down a state law that prohibited the teaching of German and other foreign languages to children until the ninth grade. The state argued that foreign languages could lead to inculcating in students "ideas and sentiments foreign to the best interests of this country." The Court, however, in a 7 to 2 decision written by Justice McReynolds concluded that the state failed to show a compelling need to infringe upon the rights of parents and teachers to decide what course of education is best for young students. Justice McReynolds wrote:

"While this court has not attempted to define with exactness the liberty thus guaranteed, the term has received much consideration and some of the included things have been definitely stated. Without doubt, it denotes not merely freedom from bodily restraint but also the right of the individual to contract, to engage in any of the common occupations of life, to acquire useful knowledge, to marry, establish a home and bring up children, to worship God according to the dictates of his own conscience, and generally to enjoy those privileges long recognized at common law as essential to the orderly pursuit of happiness by free men."

Two years late, in Pierce v Society of Sisters, the Court applied the principles of Meyer to strike down an Oregon law that compelled all children to attend public schools, a law that would have effectively closed all parochial schools in the state.

The privacy doctrine of the 1920s gained renewed life in the Warren Court of the 1960s when, in Griswold v Connecticut (1965), the Court struck down a state law prohibiting the possession, sale, and distribution of contraceptives to married couples. Different justifications were offered for the conclusion, ranging from Court's opinion by Justice Douglas that saw the "penumbras" and "emanations" of various Bill of Rights guarantees as creating "a zone of privacy," to Justice Goldberg's partial reliance on the Ninth Amendment's reference to "other rights retained by the people," to Justice Harlan's decision arguing that the Fourteenth Amendment's liberty clause forbade the state from engaging in conduct (such as search of marital bedrooms for evidence of illicit contraceptives) that was inconsistent with a government based "on the concept of ordered liberty."

In 1969, the Court unanimously concluded that the right of privacy protected an individual's right to possess and view pornography (including pornography that might be the basis for a criminal prosecution against its manufacturer or distributor) in his own home. Drawing support for the Court's decision from both the First and Fourth Amendments, Justice Marshall wrote in Stanley v Georgia:

"Whatever may be the justifications for other statutes regulating obscenity, we do not think they reach into the privacy of one's own home. If the First Amendment means anything, it means that a State has no business telling a man, sitting alone in his own house, what books he may read or what films he may watch. Our whole constitutional heritage rebels at the thought of giving government the power to control men's minds."

The Burger Court extended the right of privacy to include a woman's right to have an abortion in Roe v Wade (1972), but thereafter resisted several invitations to expand the right. Kelley v Johnson (1976), in which the Court upheld a grooming regulation for police officers, illustrates the trend toward limiting the scope of the "zone of privacy." (The Court left open, however, the question of whether government could apply a grooming law to members of the general public, who it assumed would have some sort of liberty interest in matters of personal appearance.) Some state courts, however, were not so reluctant about pushing the zone of privacy to new frontiers. The Alaska Supreme Court went as far in the direction of protecting privacy rights as any state. In Ravin v State (1975), drawing on cases such as Stanley and Griswold but also basing its decision on the more generous protection of the Alaska Constitution's privacy protections, the Alaska Supreme Court found constitutional protection for the right of a citizen to possess and use small quantities of marijuana in his own home.

The Supreme Court said in the 1977 case of Moore v. East Cleveland that "the Constitution protects the sanctity of the family precisely because the institution of the family is deeply rooted in the Nation's history and tradition." Moore found privacy protection for an extended family's choice of living arrangements, striking down a housing ordinance that prohibited a grandmother from living together with her two grandsons. Writing for the Court, Justice Powell said, "The choice of relatives in this degree of kinship to live together may not lightly be denied by the state."

In more recent decades, the Court recognized in Cruzan v Missouri Department of Health (1990) that individuals have a liberty interest that includes the right to make decisions to terminate life-prolonging medical treatments (although the Court accepted that states can impose certain conditions on the exercise of that right). In 2003, in Lawrence v Texas, the Supreme Court, overruling an earlier decision, found that Texas violated the liberty clause of two gay men when it enforced against them a state law prohibiting homosexual sodomy. Writing for the Court in Lawrence, Justice Kennedy reaffirmed in broad terms the Constitution's protection for privacy:

"These matters, involving the most intimate and personal choices a person may make in a lifetime, choices central to personal dignity and autonomy, are central to the liberty protected by the Fourteenth Amendment. At the heart of liberty is the right to define one’s own concept of existence, of meaning, of the universe, and of the mystery of human life....The petitioners are entitled to respect for their private lives. The State cannot demean their existence or control their destiny by making their private sexual conduct a crime. Their right to liberty under the Due Process Clause gives them the full right to engage in their conduct without intervention of the government. 'It is a promise of the Constitution that there is a realm of personal liberty which the government may not enter.'”

One question that the Court has wrestled with through its privacy decisions is how strong of an interest states must demonstrate to overcome claims by individuals that they have invaded a protected liberty interest. Earlier decisions such as Griswold and Roe suggested that states must show a compelling interest and narrowly tailored means when they have burdened fundamental privacy rights, but later cases such as Cruzan and Lawrence have suggested the burden on states is not so high.

The future of privacy protection remains an open question. Justices Scalia and Thomas, for example, are not inclined to protect privacy beyond those cases raising claims based on specific Bill of Rights guarantees. The public, however, wants a Constitution that fills privacy gaps and prevents an overreaching Congress from telling the American people who they must marry, how many children they can have, or when they must go to bed. The best bet is that the Court will continue to recognize protection for a general right of privacy.

Cases
Meyer v Nebraska (1923)
Griswold v Connecticut (1965)
Stanley v Georgia (1969)
Ravin v State (1975)
Kelley v Johnson (1976)
Moore v East Cleveland (1977)
Cruzan v. Missouri Dep't. of Health (1990)
Lawrence v Texas (2003)

Estelle Griswold, of the Planned Parenthood League, whose lawsuit led to the invalidation of a state law banning contraceptives.

Bill of Rights (and 14th Amendment) Provisions Relating to the Right of Privacy

Amendment I
(Privacy of Beliefs)
Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.

Amendment III
(Privacy of the Home)
No Soldier shall, in time of peace be quartered in any house, without the consent of the Owner, nor in time of war, but in a manner to be prescribed by law.

Amendment IV
(Privacy of the Person and Possessions)
The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.

Amendment IX
(More General Protection for Privacy?)
The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people.
Liberty Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment
No State shall... deprive any person of life, liberty, or property,
without due process of law.

Tyron Garner and John Lawrence (with their attorney), the gay men
who successfully challenged Texas's sodomy law.

Questions

1. Assuming that there exists a general right of privacy, what sort of conduct to you think lies at its very center? What sort of conduct lies at its periphery? What sort of conduct should be considered outside of the protection of a reasonably interpreted right of privacy?
2. Is there a stronger basis in the Constitution for protecting personal privacy rights as opposed to personal economic rights, such as the liberty of contract recognized in Lochner v New York?
3. When the state burdens an important privacy right, what sort of justification should the state have to make to sustain its regulation? What arguments would be likely to convince the U. S. Supreme Court (unlike the Alaska Supreme Court) that the Constitution protects the right to possess obscene materials but not marijuana or other drugs?
4. Some state constitutions provide express protection for privacy. Would you favor including such a provision in your state's constitution? What wording would you suggest for a constitutional amendment protecting privacy?
5. The Constitution has been interpreted to protect the right to marry, as well as the right to live a homosexual lifestyle. Should it also be interpreted to protect the right of homosexuals to marry?
6. Are a person's choices with respect to personal appearance protected by the Constitution? Should the Constitution protect the right of students or police officers to wear their hair in any style they see fit? Why or why not? Would a tax on beards, such as the one adopted by Peter the Great, be constitutional?
7. The choice of a woman to have an abortion was found in Roe v Wade to be the sort of fundamental personal decision deserving privacy protection under the Fourteenth Amendment's liberty clause. In what respects is abortion a private matter, and in what respects might it not be? If you don't believe that the Constitution protects the decision to have an abortion, do you believe that it would prevent the government from forcing a woman to have an abortion and, if it would, what is the constitutional basis for that protection?

You're saying that being secure in persons, papers, houses, and effects isn't an express right to privacy outlined in the Bill of Rights? Did they just put secure in there with no issuance of warrants without just cause as like a "hey, you can if you feel like it, but it's not like we're saying you CANT just go through everyone's stuff whenever you feel like it"?

As for the rest, yes some cases were argued in such a manner that some judge apparently gets to decide how the English language gets to be interpreted and what the law is saying by not saying it. Yes, please, let me rely on the political maneuvering of guys I hate to tell me what secure means.


As for the questions, my personal opinions you've asked for are as follows:

1. Privacy is privacy is privacy. My private dealings are mine own. My emails (my effects which are to be secure) are not something open for scrutiny. My web traffic the same. Any dealings I have in the public are public. If I'm at the store and they have a security camera, that is their right for the store security. Anything private is private. I'm not sure how else I should explain privacy than that.

2. Privacy rights and economic rights are the difference between private and public. Are there confidential contracts? Yes. As long as contracts do not break laws or force someone to commit a crime then those are valid contracts. The very idea of a contract is that it is generally available up locally and open for scrutiny.

3. Any argument a state should make about its own laws can be summed up by the tenth amendment. Unless all other powers not granted to the federal government shall be reserved to the states and the people meant something other than what plain English states.

4. Wording protecting privacy in an amendment? I thought the fourth amendment was clear, but I guess lawyers have messed that up. I honestly don't know, but anything that makes it clear to stay out of my private life.

5. It should be interpreted for personal liberty. Defining marriage shouldn't be the governments role.

6. Peter the Great shouldn't even enter into a discussion about America. As far as personal appearance, that's personal liberty. As a sailor I am accustomed to the rules of personal appearance that must be maintained. But I did sign a contract and agreed to it. No matter how much I would advocate to reverse these policies restricting freedoms for no logical reason.

7. Abortion is that argument that will end relationships and tear apart families. My opinion is simple. When the chromosomes match my chromosomes then that is when abortion should not be allowed, excepting safety of the mother of course. Bird eggs are more protected than children that match you and I scientifically, making them human. This I disagree with. Children are a responsibility, and they made their choice when they took the risk of getting pregnant by having sex. Yes people get raped and they can have the choice if that's what they desire.

The government should not have the authority to force individuals to make any decision, only protect those that are helpless.

Opinions are cool.

But we operate under the rule of law. Including the Federal Courts exclusive responsibility to interpret the Constitution.

 

[PMZ]

Also PMZ I'm on my phone you're killing me bro!

Me too, much of the time. Tapatalk?

 

[itfitzme]

From
The Right of Privacy: Is it Protected by the Constitution?

Very nice.

 

[ShawnChris13]

From
http://law2.umkc.edu/faculty/projects/ftrials/conlaw/rightofprivacy.html

The U. S. Constitution contains no express right to privacy. The Bill of Rights, however, reflects the concern of James Madison and other framers for protecting specific aspects of privacy, such as the privacy of beliefs (1st Amendment), privacy of the home against demands that it be used to house soldiers (3rd Amendment), privacy of the person and possessions as against unreasonable searches (4th Amendment), and the 5th Amendment's privilege against self-incrimination, which provides protection for the privacy of personal information. In addition, the Ninth Amendment states that the "enumeration of certain rights" in the Bill of Rights "shall not be construed to deny or disparage other rights retained by the people." The meaning of the Ninth Amendment is elusive, but some persons (including Justice Goldberg in his Griswold concurrence) have interpreted the Ninth Amendment as justification for broadly reading the Bill of Rights to protect privacy in ways not specifically provided in the first eight amendments.

The question of whether the Constitution protects privacy in ways not expressly provided in the Bill of Rights is controversial. Many originalists, including most famously Judge Robert Bork in his ill-fated Supreme Court confirmation hearings, have argued that no such general right of privacy exists. The Supreme Court, however, beginning as early as 1923 and continuing through its recent decisions, has broadly read the "liberty" guarantee of the Fourteenth Amendment to guarantee a fairly broad right of privacy that has come to encompass decisions about child rearing, procreation, marriage, and termination of medical treatment. Polls show most Americans support this broader reading of the Constitution.

The Supreme Court, in two decisions in the 1920s, read the Fourteenth Amendment's liberty clause to prohibit states from interfering with the private decisions of educators and parents to shape the education of children. In Meyer v Nebraska (1923), the Supreme Court struck down a state law that prohibited the teaching of German and other foreign languages to children until the ninth grade. The state argued that foreign languages could lead to inculcating in students "ideas and sentiments foreign to the best interests of this country." The Court, however, in a 7 to 2 decision written by Justice McReynolds concluded that the state failed to show a compelling need to infringe upon the rights of parents and teachers to decide what course of education is best for young students. Justice McReynolds wrote:

"While this court has not attempted to define with exactness the liberty thus guaranteed, the term has received much consideration and some of the included things have been definitely stated. Without doubt, it denotes not merely freedom from bodily restraint but also the right of the individual to contract, to engage in any of the common occupations of life, to acquire useful knowledge, to marry, establish a home and bring up children, to worship God according to the dictates of his own conscience, and generally to enjoy those privileges long recognized at common law as essential to the orderly pursuit of happiness by free men."

Two years late, in Pierce v Society of Sisters, the Court applied the principles of Meyer to strike down an Oregon law that compelled all children to attend public schools, a law that would have effectively closed all parochial schools in the state.

The privacy doctrine of the 1920s gained renewed life in the Warren Court of the 1960s when, in Griswold v Connecticut (1965), the Court struck down a state law prohibiting the possession, sale, and distribution of contraceptives to married couples. Different justifications were offered for the conclusion, ranging from Court's opinion by Justice Douglas that saw the "penumbras" and "emanations" of various Bill of Rights guarantees as creating "a zone of privacy," to Justice Goldberg's partial reliance on the Ninth Amendment's reference to "other rights retained by the people," to Justice Harlan's decision arguing that the Fourteenth Amendment's liberty clause forbade the state from engaging in conduct (such as search of marital bedrooms for evidence of illicit contraceptives) that was inconsistent with a government based "on the concept of ordered liberty."

In 1969, the Court unanimously concluded that the right of privacy protected an individual's right to possess and view pornography (including pornography that might be the basis for a criminal prosecution against its manufacturer or distributor) in his own home. Drawing support for the Court's decision from both the First and Fourth Amendments, Justice Marshall wrote in Stanley v Georgia:

"Whatever may be the justifications for other statutes regulating obscenity, we do not think they reach into the privacy of one's own home. If the First Amendment means anything, it means that a State has no business telling a man, sitting alone in his own house, what books he may read or what films he may watch. Our whole constitutional heritage rebels at the thought of giving government the power to control men's minds."

The Burger Court extended the right of privacy to include a woman's right to have an abortion in Roe v Wade (1972), but thereafter resisted several invitations to expand the right. Kelley v Johnson (1976), in which the Court upheld a grooming regulation for police officers, illustrates the trend toward limiting the scope of the "zone of privacy." (The Court left open, however, the question of whether government could apply a grooming law to members of the general public, who it assumed would have some sort of liberty interest in matters of personal appearance.) Some state courts, however, were not so reluctant about pushing the zone of privacy to new frontiers. The Alaska Supreme Court went as far in the direction of protecting privacy rights as any state. In Ravin v State (1975), drawing on cases such as Stanley and Griswold but also basing its decision on the more generous protection of the Alaska Constitution's privacy protections, the Alaska Supreme Court found constitutional protection for the right of a citizen to possess and use small quantities of marijuana in his own home.

The Supreme Court said in the 1977 case of Moore v. East Cleveland that "the Constitution protects the sanctity of the family precisely because the institution of the family is deeply rooted in the Nation's history and tradition." Moore found privacy protection for an extended family's choice of living arrangements, striking down a housing ordinance that prohibited a grandmother from living together with her two grandsons. Writing for the Court, Justice Powell said, "The choice of relatives in this degree of kinship to live together may not lightly be denied by the state."

In more recent decades, the Court recognized in Cruzan v Missouri Department of Health (1990) that individuals have a liberty interest that includes the right to make decisions to terminate life-prolonging medical treatments (although the Court accepted that states can impose certain conditions on the exercise of that right). In 2003, in Lawrence v Texas, the Supreme Court, overruling an earlier decision, found that Texas violated the liberty clause of two gay men when it enforced against them a state law prohibiting homosexual sodomy. Writing for the Court in Lawrence, Justice Kennedy reaffirmed in broad terms the Constitution's protection for privacy:

"These matters, involving the most intimate and personal choices a person may make in a lifetime, choices central to personal dignity and autonomy, are central to the liberty protected by the Fourteenth Amendment. At the heart of liberty is the right to define one’s own concept of existence, of meaning, of the universe, and of the mystery of human life....The petitioners are entitled to respect for their private lives. The State cannot demean their existence or control their destiny by making their private sexual conduct a crime. Their right to liberty under the Due Process Clause gives them the full right to engage in their conduct without intervention of the government. 'It is a promise of the Constitution that there is a realm of personal liberty which the government may not enter.'”

One question that the Court has wrestled with through its privacy decisions is how strong of an interest states must demonstrate to overcome claims by individuals that they have invaded a protected liberty interest. Earlier decisions such as Griswold and Roe suggested that states must show a compelling interest and narrowly tailored means when they have burdened fundamental privacy rights, but later cases such as Cruzan and Lawrence have suggested the burden on states is not so high.

The future of privacy protection remains an open question. Justices Scalia and Thomas, for example, are not inclined to protect privacy beyond those cases raising claims based on specific Bill of Rights guarantees. The public, however, wants a Constitution that fills privacy gaps and prevents an overreaching Congress from telling the American people who they must marry, how many children they can have, or when they must go to bed. The best bet is that the Court will continue to recognize protection for a general right of privacy.

Cases
Meyer v Nebraska (1923)
Griswold v Connecticut (1965)
Stanley v Georgia (1969)
Ravin v State (1975)
Kelley v Johnson (1976)
Moore v East Cleveland (1977)
Cruzan v. Missouri Dep't. of Health (1990)
Lawrence v Texas (2003)

Estelle Griswold, of the Planned Parenthood League, whose lawsuit led to the invalidation of a state law banning contraceptives.

Bill of Rights (and 14th Amendment) Provisions Relating to the Right of Privacy

Amendment I
(Privacy of Beliefs)
Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.

Amendment III
(Privacy of the Home)
No Soldier shall, in time of peace be quartered in any house, without the consent of the Owner, nor in time of war, but in a manner to be prescribed by law.

Amendment IV
(Privacy of the Person and Possessions)
The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.

Amendment IX
(More General Protection for Privacy?)
The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people.
Liberty Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment
No State shall... deprive any person of life, liberty, or property,
without due process of law.

Tyron Garner and John Lawrence (with their attorney), the gay men
who successfully challenged Texas's sodomy law.

Questions

1. Assuming that there exists a general right of privacy, what sort of conduct to you think lies at its very center? What sort of conduct lies at its periphery? What sort of conduct should be considered outside of the protection of a reasonably interpreted right of privacy?
2. Is there a stronger basis in the Constitution for protecting personal privacy rights as opposed to personal economic rights, such as the liberty of contract recognized in Lochner v New York?
3. When the state burdens an important privacy right, what sort of justification should the state have to make to sustain its regulation? What arguments would be likely to convince the U. S. Supreme Court (unlike the Alaska Supreme Court) that the Constitution protects the right to possess obscene materials but not marijuana or other drugs?
4. Some state constitutions provide express protection for privacy. Would you favor including such a provision in your state's constitution? What wording would you suggest for a constitutional amendment protecting privacy?
5. The Constitution has been interpreted to protect the right to marry, as well as the right to live a homosexual lifestyle. Should it also be interpreted to protect the right of homosexuals to marry?
6. Are a person's choices with respect to personal appearance protected by the Constitution? Should the Constitution protect the right of students or police officers to wear their hair in any style they see fit? Why or why not? Would a tax on beards, such as the one adopted by Peter the Great, be constitutional?
7. The choice of a woman to have an abortion was found in Roe v Wade to be the sort of fundamental personal decision deserving privacy protection under the Fourteenth Amendment's liberty clause. In what respects is abortion a private matter, and in what respects might it not be? If you don't believe that the Constitution protects the decision to have an abortion, do you believe that it would prevent the government from forcing a woman to have an abortion and, if it would, what is the constitutional basis for that protection?

You're saying that being secure in persons, papers, houses, and effects isn't an express right to privacy outlined in the Bill of Rights? Did they just put secure in there with no issuance of warrants without just cause as like a "hey, you can if you feel like it, but it's not like we're saying you CANT just go through everyone's stuff whenever you feel like it"?

As for the rest, yes some cases were argued in such a manner that some judge apparently gets to decide how the English language gets to be interpreted and what the law is saying by not saying it. Yes, please, let me rely on the political maneuvering of guys I hate to tell me what secure means.


As for the questions, my personal opinions you've asked for are as follows:

1. Privacy is privacy is privacy. My private dealings are mine own. My emails (my effects which are to be secure) are not something open for scrutiny. My web traffic the same. Any dealings I have in the public are public. If I'm at the store and they have a security camera, that is their right for the store security. Anything private is private. I'm not sure how else I should explain privacy than that.

2. Privacy rights and economic rights are the difference between private and public. Are there confidential contracts? Yes. As long as contracts do not break laws or force someone to commit a crime then those are valid contracts. The very idea of a contract is that it is generally available up locally and open for scrutiny.

3. Any argument a state should make about its own laws can be summed up by the tenth amendment. Unless all other powers not granted to the federal government shall be reserved to the states and the people meant something other than what plain English states.

4. Wording protecting privacy in an amendment? I thought the fourth amendment was clear, but I guess lawyers have messed that up. I honestly don't know, but anything that makes it clear to stay out of my private life.

5. It should be interpreted for personal liberty. Defining marriage shouldn't be the governments role.

6. Peter the Great shouldn't even enter into a discussion about America. As far as personal appearance, that's personal liberty. As a sailor I am accustomed to the rules of personal appearance that must be maintained. But I did sign a contract and agreed to it. No matter how much I would advocate to reverse these policies restricting freedoms for no logical reason.

7. Abortion is that argument that will end relationships and tear apart families. My opinion is simple. When the chromosomes match my chromosomes then that is when abortion should not be allowed, excepting safety of the mother of course. Bird eggs are more protected than children that match you and I scientifically, making them human. This I disagree with. Children are a responsibility, and they made their choice when they took the risk of getting pregnant by having sex. Yes people get raped and they can have the choice if that's what they desire.

The government should not have the authority to force individuals to make any decision, only protect those that are helpless.

Opinions are cool.

But we operate under the rule of law. Including the Federal Courts exclusive responsibility to interpret the Constitution.

The rule of law being interpreted by the courts is really just their opinion.

 

[ShawnChris13]

What tax "loophole" is that?

Are you suggesting we don't have tax loopholes that are taken advantage of by the rich? Is it really a necessity to prove something like that?

Now your moving the goal posts. You said "tax loopholes that companies paid to get created so they could cheat the system." Which tax loopholes are those?

Just cause you use a folky saying doesn't mean you actually have a point. NAFTA created an environment for jobs to move overseas. As long as a company has a headquarters located in certain areas while all their production is off in some cheaper area they get tax incentives. Take our jobs away and save even more money!

They moved the goal posts. Right on top of our heads and then kicked us in the nuts for extra points.

 

[PMZ]

Are you suggesting we don't have tax loopholes that are taken advantage of by the rich? Is it really a necessity to prove something like that?

Now your moving the goal posts. You said "tax loopholes that companies paid to get created so they could cheat the system." Which tax loopholes are those?

Just cause you use a folky saying doesn't mean you actually have a point. NAFTA created an environment for jobs to move overseas. As long as a company has a headquarters located in certain areas while all their production is off in some cheaper area they get tax incentives. Take our jobs away and save even more money!

They moved the goal posts. Right on top of our heads and then kicked us in the nuts for extra points.

There probably was a need for a transition from a US centric economy to world centric. We did it however too fast and too out of control.

Now we are paying the piper with stubborn unemployment, and business leaders without incentive to fix it with growth.