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The 4th US Circuit Court of Appeals declined to lift the order on the executive to "facilitate" the return of Abrego Garcia and I recommend reading it
It's written up by judge James Wilkinson III, a Reagan appointee and Bush era short list candidate for the supreme court and he's quite well respected in the legal profession. This guy has been a conservative for longer than many people here have even been alive, and the stance of seasoned judicial figures like him with old style "respectable" political ideologies are an interesting way to see the change in the rest of politics.
Most importantly in that it incidentally addresses many of the questions and concerns people have about this whole situation.
Like does it matter whether or not the executive's allegations against Garcia are correct?
What does the Supreme Court's decision actually say?
An interesting difference between the role of the executive and the rule of the judiciary
Are the claims that this could be used on citizens valid?
On the contradictions between both government's public claims of authority and/or responsibility.
Are there previous major examples of an executive following a court order it did not like?
And if you're wondering "Why do the courts even get a say here to begin with about the executive's actions?", here's a basic primer.
...is that it?
This point on facilitation, for example-
-does not actually provide a definition that serves as an alternative to the administrative agency on what 'facilitate' means. Saying "Facilitate is an active verb" does not say what sort of verb, which is required for a categorical basis to say that no facilitation has occurred.
Without criteria, it would seem the only proof of facilitation the court would accept is the successful return of Garcia.
However, that would seem to contradict this position on executive versus judicial role.
This claim reverses what the previous lack of specificity implies. A position that the government must facilitate the return without specifying the means is an argument of ends, not means. The court in this quotation is again not addressing what actual means are required to constitute facilitation short of achieving an ends- i.e. the return- which is, per this section, the focus of the Executive.
Put another way, the court in question is demanding an ends, without accepting there a means that legitimately constitutes facilitation but is insufficient to achieving this end. This is a direct inversion to the self-declared role of the judiciary of concerning the means, even if it frustrates the executive's ends.
Similarly, your choice of moving quotation has a notable case of bolted horses and barn doors.
The answer is presumably related to the same assurance that relates to the war on terror programs taken by (both of) Trump's predecessors that allowed targeting of actual American citizens, up to and including killing them abroad, without requiring assurances that it would never happen again.
This is notably not factoring in the security state abuses against political opponents that actually did occur during previous administrations, which to my knowledge neither judge or prior administration conceded were improper, let alone offered assurances.
Now, if this judge in question would like to argue that those mean the obligation has already lost its meaning, then well and good. You cannot lose meaning if meaning was already lost. But if the judge maintains that the meaning is currently held despite prior and reoccurring abuses, the judge needs to explain why this case, which does not involve an American citizen, is more concerning than prior cases involving American citizens.
This connects to the authority and/or responsibility issue, which the court similarly doesn't actually seem to address.
This is not a contradiction. The US does not have the authority to demand a sovereign state turn over its citizens to the US, absent some bilateral agreement between states enabling it. The court does not identify a basis of authority to demand sovereignty over this over El Salvador's objections. In turn, El Salvador has no legal responsibility to turn over Garcia, regardless of the US mistake in deporting him. The court does not identify any basis of a legal responsibility to turn over Garcia.
The consequence of this- that Abrego Gardia has no recourse to US law- does not imply that the US government or judiciary has jurisdiction over him. Garcia's legal prospects in El Salvador also have no implication on US legal jurisdiction. If the court wanted to cite US law that Congress passed to provided the president or even the courts jurisdiction, it certainly could... but if it can't, because no law exists, then prior court precedent recognizes the implication. When Congress can provide authorities in an area, but does not want to, that is indicative of Congressional intent.
The confusion of the limits of american national law to non-American citizens in foreign states has been a consistent theme of the critiques of the judges to date, and this is no different. Appeals to Eisenhower and a domestic internal policy issue furthers the apples-to-oranges comparison.
I think this whole thing stems from a common misunderstanding of the court system and how it works. There's this often understood idea of law being entirely about saying the correct magic words in the correct way to get technicalities and while it's certainly true that's a large portion of it, judges have always had the freedom to look into things a bit past that as well in determining if orders are being carried out in good faith. You can be held in contempt (and it happens pretty often) when people are caught "officially" following the rules, but admitting they aren't elsewhere.
The court system is not intended to be blindly idiotic. It's the reason why Eisenhower, despite his disagreement with the rulings actually executed on it, instead of playing games pretending to. You can still do that mind you, they tend to give lots of leeway but the court system would have to be blind to not see how the Trump admin is purposely sabotaging efforts. And again, the court system is not intended to be blind. That's part of why we have multiple judges (for example this ninth circuit ruling had three judges) and so many appeals processes to begin with, because there is room for interpretive and judicial idealogical differences.
When I can buy and carry a gun in New Jersey, or better yet any state in the union, I will listen to demands to respect the ultimate authority of the court system from the left. Not until then. Yes, Eisenhower executed on rulings he didn't like. He turned out to be a chump to do so, because it meant the left got the benefit of favorable court rulings in all circumstances, whereas the right got them only when the enforcement and the lower courts were ALSO controlled by the right.
"until the courts rule the exact way I want, I shouldn't have to respect them" is to be quite frank, anti-American. Not just in disrespecting our legal system as a whole, but in disrespecting one of the fundamental values America and western democracy is built on, the rule of law and proper legal process.
Eisenhower despite his different views on racial segregation still agreed in this fundamental principle of the American system and faithfully executed on the rulings because of that, not because he was a chump.
Many of us have spent a considerable amount of time and effort cataloguing the ways in which Blue Tribe has done exactly this for literally decades. Guns, illegal immigration, and drugs have all demonstrated the pattern of victory through sustained refusal to recognize rule of law. The comment you are replying to is pointing out that multiple Supreme Court victories over more than a decade were categorically ignored when Progressives found it convenient to do so, and so appeals to lesser court decisions in favor of progressives hold no water.
When a Tribe systematically breaks the rules, they don't get to appeal to those rules any more.
"America" is dead, and has been for some time. The current situation is not America dying, but the rotting of the national corpse.
This is probably a very persuasive argument for people who do not have an extremely long catalogue of previous "rule of law" violations to point to, and who do not have a working understanding of the phrase "manipulation of procedural outcomes" or "isolated demand for rigor".
I do not believe that Blue Tribe can credibly offer "rule of law" because I have observed them violate the principle too many times without significant consequence. Guns, drugs, illegal immigration, "no justice, no peace", tenure for communist terrorists, a long history of government corruption... the list of objections is quite long. You are appealing to phrases that lost their meaning for many people a long time ago. And maybe you are the sole remaining principled Progressive, but you are not the Pope of Blue Tribe, and if your bespoke principles do not generalize at the population level, of what use are they?
People have been pointing out for a long time that the principles you appeal to were not sustainable without significant reform. Reforms were rejected, and now those principles are no longer being sustained.
You will not get any more Eisenhowers, because post-Eisenhower events built durable common knowledge among Red Tribe that Eisenhower was, in fact, a chump. None of this is new; we've been debating this for about a decade at this point, and the point of view you're arguing against is supported by quite a bit of solid evidence.
Yeah if you just make up stuff about all the evils the "enemy" is doing where they're just straight up ignoring court orders over and over then I guess it would look like the country is dead.
Hey if Americans agree with you on this specific point, start pushing for politicians to write a new amendment! We have a process established since the founding fathers for this and it's been done 27 times already. Start a movement to electorally challenge politicians that won't cooperate with it. We're in a democracy, use your voice and convince your fellow citizens. If they don't agree, then tough shit.
And if I have a large amount of evidence showing Blue states and federal regimes have in fact made a habit of ignoring court orders and otherwise flouting rule of law, then would you agree that the country does in fact appear to be dead from your perspective as well?
What would be the point of such an approach?
I used to argue that the Constitution was whatever five Justices said it was, but now it is not even that. We won multiple Supreme Court decisions on the Second Amendment over the past few decades. Blue states and their circuit courts ignored the rulings, and then we got to observe how unified defiance from "subordinate" legislatures and courts shapes Supreme Court jurisprudence, as the Justices refuse to take cases or deliver decisions that would spark further defiance. And it's not as though Federal law worked any better. We decided that Tribal interests should be protected by law. We won elections, drafted laws, and passed them by the legitimate process. Then Blue Tribe simply ignored them, and the courts have let them do it.
Blue Tribe could have done this with immigration. Red Tribe offered them a compromise, an amnesty for existing illegals, paired with actual border enforcement. They took the amnesty and then not only failed to deliver any border enforcement, but spent decades actively undermining what enforcement existed and thumbing their noses at the law. They did the same with narcotics laws. They did the same with laws aimed at protecting freedom of religion.
The funniest part, though, is that you don't recognize that we are in fact following your advice. We have not rioted nation-wide. We are not actively fomenting assassins. We are not burning down the homes and offices of people we don't like. We organized and won an election, and now we are playing the game according to the existing rules.
That doesn't make any sense given the rest of your argument is "it's ok to ignore the rules".
It's also an interesting question in general, if one is so willing to abandon a principle simply because they believe others don't follow it, then was it really a principle of theirs to begin with? Perhaps those people are simply against the classic American values to begin with and they are seeking an excuse to abandon it.
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The Supreme Court has ruled. Several times. In favor of my side. I still don't get my gun, because there has been resistance all down the line, including lower Federal courts, state courts, state legislators, and governors. What is most likely to happen is the Supreme Court will note that it has made an order it cannot enforce and modify or reverse that order to maintain the appearance of its own authority. At which point the anti-gun side will have won, not by obeying the system but by defying it. So clearly this is an acceptable tactic on the part of the same people crying about the sanctity of (lower!) court decisions now, and I should reject their appeals to said sanctity.
His counterparts on the left did not agree with that fundamental principle of the American system and did not faithfully execute on rulings that went against them. So Eisenhower was, indeed, a chump, though perhaps he could not have known at the time. It has been 17 years since Heller and 3 since Bruen... when do citizens of anti-gun states get their right to keep and bear arms enforced?
You either misunderstand the specifics of the rulings (like Heller and Bruen do allow for some restrictions or "Shall-issue permitting" for instance) and fail to pass those lawful restrictions, or you have a great court case in your hands and there are plenty of gun groups and lawyers who would be willing to fund and help your case if they believe it's likely to win.
New Jersey while more restrictive than other states still has 20% of homes with a gun in it so I have to wonder why you don't have a gun if you're wanting one so bad.
Do you have a felony? A conviction for domestic violence? What is it that's restricting you but not 20% of homes?
New Jersey's "shall issue" purchase permit requires anyone who wants to buy a gun to submit the names of two adults, who have known the applicant for three years, and will vouch for that person. While the statute itself only requires those adults to be unrelated for carry permits and does not require those adults to be NJ residents, many jurisdictions will reject purchase permit requests not matching these 'rules' (sometimes as explicit policy). This is not a trivial ask for a large portion of people working in New Jersey, given that the state has gone out of its way to smother gun culture and slaughter the hostages; if you don't work in police or military sectors, you may not have any gun-friendly people among your coworkers or neighbors.
If you've ever seen a mental health professional, you're required to provide their contact information. Don't know it, or a shrink you saw twenty years ago happen to be antigun? Gfl. This includes not just involuntary commitment -- the recent A4769 explicitly prohibits purchase permits for anyone who's ever had a "voluntary commitment", and the permit form itself now asks if applicants have ever "attended, treated or observed by any doctor or psychiatrist or at any hospital or mental institution".
In all cases, failure to provide accurate information has been used to reject later applications with correct info, even where a genuine mistake occurred. There's a still-used "To any person where the issuance would not be in the interest of the public health, safety or welfare because the person is found to be lacking the essential character of temperament necessary to be entrusted with a firearm" prong that many jurisdictions have been throwing for pretty much whatever reason they want.
All of these things are readily discoverable through a quick google search. And The_Nybbler has mentioned most of them here, in ways that can be discovered by doing an author:the_nybbler "new jersey" search. Instead, you've thrown allegations of a felony or domestic violence condition, and pointed to a survey run by an explicitly antigun policy outfit, which gets numbers that are wildly out of line with every other analysis and the state's own estimates.
Similarly, New Jersey's response to Breun's explicit text that :
hasn't been quite as bad a tantrum as Hawaii declaring multiple islands a sensitive place, but it's pretty close.
There are a few challenges to these laws pending, but they have threefold problems:
And that's ignoring the 'special cases' bullshit, like Koons taking seventeen months (and counting) from oral args before a decision was released, or Bianchi having a judge sit on a dissent long enough to have a separate case she was also sitting on conflict with it to block the majority of judges from publishing an opinion.
No, I asked you why you are unable to access a gun when 20% of households can and a common answer in the population is being a criminal so it's a pretty likely possible reason for it.
Do you not know two adults who will vouch for you? That seems a red flag on its own.
20% of household have guns, I doubt 20% of households have never seen a doctor ever so it seems like there's a misunderstanding on your side. Either that or it is violating rights and there is really just a large portion of people who have never seen a doctor before.
Somehow they've been able to do it and while I don't know the specific of state law if they're specifically violating court rulings there are processes to punish them for it in court. Either they're "skirting' the rulings by doing something not yet ruled against, you misunderstand the rulings in question, SCOTUS is compromised by gun haters (despite as you say ruling in favor of the 2nd amendment multiple times), or you're in the middle of a legal correction and are just frustrated that procedures can take time.
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Yeah, yeah, there's always some excuse that the victory of my side doesn't count. Nevertheless, I still cannot lawfully get a gun in my home state of New Jersey or any other state, if I had a legal gun I could not carry it, and further restrictions on guns keep getting past and either upheld by the lower courts or simply shielded from scrutiny. Having seen my advocates go through the process the whole way TWICE (Heller and Bruen), winning both times, and the situation on the ground not changing, I do not believe this process actually works, except in a very selective manner.
So you are a violent felon or something? I hope you understand why even most gun advocates, including in Republican states are fine with limiting you having access to firearms.
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Judges do not have the freedom to invent jurisdiction.
Nor do judges have the freedom to define good faith with their preferred results of foreign affairs.
The Trump administration is not admitting they have jurisdiction over Garcia elsewhere.
There are motivated partisans who are claiming that payments to El Salvador amount to administrative control and thus jurisdiction over Garcia, but alas the fungibility of money does not actually demonstrate either jurisdiction or even administrative control.
Did the Eisenhower case entail individuals over which the United States government executive branch no longer had jurisdiction?
If not, the continued attempts to appeal to the Eisenhower case are indicative of bad faith that intends to ignore the non-applicability of dissimilar cases to the legal issue at hand. And that legal issue is the jurisdiction issue.
Why is a natural consequence of a loss of jurisdiction being treated as proof of sabotage?
The nature of deportation is that it removes an individual not only from a country's territory, but it's governance. The court's order to 'facilitate the return' of Garcia is a demand for an result of governance if it does not acknowledge that 'facilitation' can acceptably not delivere a preferred result. However, the nature of sovereignty under international law is that government of a separate government does not have jurisdiction over the affairs of another country absent criteria that would allow a claim of jurisdiction. These criteria generally hinge around citizenship, which does not apply.
What does the number of judges and appeals processes matter if those judges and appeals do not have jurisdiction over a foreign citizen in a foreign country?
Well if you think you're right, you're welcome to volunteer your service as legal counsel to the Trump admin. Maybe you'll be the one to convince the judges on the Supreme Court and Fourth District that they don't understand the process of law.
Can't answer the sovereignty and jurisdiction issues, eh?
I'm sure your position will get stronger if you try to avoid it for another last word.
Many of those things have already been answered by the courts or are in the process of being answered.
Do you not understand how the legal system works? It's not "I think it should work like X" or "I believe it'd be better if it was Y". The courts do not have jurisdiction over El Salvador, the courts are not claiming to have that. They claim to have jurisdiction over the US, which they do. And as for their rulings in the US, there is no answer you or I could give because it's not our calls as individuals, that is the role of the judicial branch. If Americans don't like it we have official mechanisms to change things like writing new laws, impeaching judges or even making a new amendment in the constitution. It might be rarely changed but it is a living document and Americans when they agree have been able to change it 27 different times.
It is possible, go out and convince your fellow voters to push locally and federally for a new amendment that takes power away from the court system.
No, they haven't. Hence your forced resort to repeated appeals to non-equivalent cases that don't apply to the relevant issues of foreign citizens in foreign countries, while dodging the lack of criteria that were already raised. Hence also why, when repeatedly challenged to this, you conduct an appeal to authority whose limitations are the subject of question. And whose argument already failed by past actions of previous administrations.
Unsurprising, but I'm sure the demands of bad faith partisans will improve if you ignore it for another attempt at a last word.
If you fundamentally don't like how the US legal system makes the courts the decider, then that's fine. You can have that view. But it doesn't change how the system works.
Nothing changes because you keep saying "bad faith, bad faith!" to someone explaining that your feelings don't make facts.
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