Turftech1 said:
...Ad Hominem, AKA twaddle with intent....
Now that I've returned from my weekend on the Monterey Peninsula, it's time for your English lesson. Calling your statement to the effect that:
...There is also a strong school of thought that the need for a warrant is assumed in the 4th amendment....
twaddle is not "ad hominem."
"Ad hominem" means:
...a general category of fallacies in which a claim or argument is rejected on the basis of some irrelevant fact about the author of or the person presenting the claim or argument....
I made no comment about you personally. I contemptuously dismissed your comment.
Statements like "there is a school of thought" or "it's reported that" are particularly shabby rhetorical tricks insofar as they fail to cite or document the authority relied upon and thus don't permit testing of the claim. Such statements are, therefore, fully worthy of derision.
Turftech1 said:
....see Boyd v. United States...
You fail to properly cite
Boyd. Therefore, you've made it difficult for us to (1) find the case; and (2) know whether the
Boyd v. U. S. one finds is the one you mean (there are a number of cases thus styled).
However, since we're apparently agreed that the case you mean is
Boyd v. United States, 116 U.S. 616, 29 L.Ed. 746, 6 S.Ct. 524 (1886), let's look at why it doesn't support your assertion that (post 68):
...a warrant as being an assumed condition of a reasonable search,...
involved an action to seize certain goods allegedly fraudulently imported into the United States. To sustain the fraud allegations, the United States sought and obtained certain records and papers of the importer. The records and papers were obtained pursuant to a statute (116 U. S. 616, at 619 -- 620):
...The fifth section of the act of June 22, 1874, under which this order was made, is in the following words, to-wit:
"In all suits and proceedings other than criminal, arising under any of the revenue laws of the United States, the attorney representing the government, whenever in his belief any business book, invoice, or paper belonging to, or under the control of, the defendant or claimant, will tend to prove any allegation made by the United States, may make a written motion, particularly describing such book, invoice, or paper, and setting forth the allegation which he expects to prove; and thereupon the court in which suit or proceeding is pending may, at its discretion issue a notice to the defendant or claimant to produce such book, invoice, or paper in court,..."
As the Court framed the question to be addressed (at 622):
...The principal question, however, remains to be considered. Is a search and seizure, or, what is equivalent thereto, a compulsory production of a man's private papers, to be used in evidence against him in a proceeding to forfeit his property for alleged fraud against the revenue laws—is such a proceeding for such a purpose an 'unreasonable search and seizure' within the meaning of the fourth amendment of the constitution?....
The Court essentially found that under the circumstances of the
Boyd the seizure of the importer's records and papers under the statute, in lieu of a warrant satisfying Fourth Amendment standards, was unreasonable.
Note that
Boyd, has since been narrowed, even substantially eviscerated (see
Edwin Hale v. William Henkel, 201 U.S. 43 (1906);
Oklahoma Press Pub Co v. Walling News Printing Co v. Same, 327 U.S. 186 (1946);
Katz v. United States, 389 U.S. 347 (1967);
Osborn v. United States, 385 U.S. 323 (1966);
Berger v. New York, 388 U.S. 41 (1967);
Marron v. United States, 275 U.S. 192 (1927)).
Turftech1 said:
...as well as Gouled v United States....
Again, that case (
Gouled v. United States, 255 U.S. 298, 41 S.Ct. 261, 65 L.Ed. 647 (1921)) does not support you.
What the Court dealt with in
Gouled was specifically (255 U. S. 298, at 303):
...the admission in evidence of a paper surreptitiously taken from the office of the defendant by one acting under direction of officers of the Intelligence Department of the Army of the United States...
The Court in
Gouled also disallowed on Fifth Amendment grounds (purportedly based on
Boyd) certain evidence obtained pursuant to a warrant.
But at the end of the day what those cases, as well as other cases in the substantial body of Fourth Amendment jurisprudence, address is whether a search or seizure in a particular case, and under the circumstances presented, is or is not reasonable.
Turftech1 said:
....In 1857 SCOTUS ruled 7-2 that slavery was the law of the land. That ruling, among other things, forbade the federal government from interfering with the practice of slavery in slave states, and added territories where slavery was practiced....
Presumably you're referring to the case of
Dred Scott v. Sandford, 60 U.S. 393 (1857). If so, you mis-characterize the rulings of the Supreme Court. As
summarized by the Library of Congress, in
Dred Scott the Court ruled:
...that slaves were not citizens of the United States and could not sue in Federal courts. In addition, this decision declared that the Missouri Compromise was unconstitutional and that Congress did not have the authority to prohibit slavery in the territories....
Turftech1 said:
... Abraham Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation, freeing the slaves on January 1, 1863, more than 5 years before the 14th amendment would make his act a legal one....
But that's not what the
Emancipation Proclamation did (this link takes on to the text of the document).
Essentially, Lincoln (1) declared that certain States were in rebellion and identified those States; (2) declared that slaves held within those rebellious States were free; and (3) directed the executive departments of the United States government to recognize such persons a free persons.
The Emancipation Proclamation had no force or effect in the States not designated as being in rebellion against the United States. Nor was it ever tested in court, so it's not clear whether the Proclamation had any real effect.
Of course Dred Scott and the Emancipation Proclamation were mooted by the adoption of the Thirteenth and Fourteenth Amendments.
Turftech1 said:
....The Lincoln example is not a solitary one, from Patrick Henry, (who was accused of treason) to Rosa Parks, who violated the law by not giving up her seat, to Dick Heller (who challenged the 33 year old handgun ban in DC and won). To say that these people lived in an imaginary world, because they disagreed with current practice & law is,....
Actually no. Those are good examples of folks who understood the real world and how to deal effectively in the real world. Certain Dick Heller was well guided by a group of very able lawyers and legal scholars.
The Rosa Parks story nicely illustrates how to accomplish social change.
- Rosa Parks had a long history of being actively involved in the organized Civil Rights Movement:
... joining the Montgomery chapter of the NAACP in 1943, serving as the chapter's youth leader as well as secretary to NAACP President E.D. Nixon—a post she held until 1957...
- At the time of her arrest Mrs. Parks was an adviser to the NAACP.
- On 1 December 1955, Rosa Parks was the third African-American since March of that year to be arrested for violating the Montgomery bus segregation law. One was Claudette Colvin, a 15-year-old girl who was arrested some nine months earlier. E. D. Nixon decided that Claudette would be a poor "poster-child" for a protest because she was unmarried and pregnant.
- The night of Mrs. Parks' arrest, Jo Ann Robinson, head of the Women's Political Council, printed and circulated a flyer throughout Montgomery's black community starting the call for a boycott of Montgomery's city buses.
- Martin Luther King, Jr., as president of the Montgomery Improvement Association and pastor of the Dexter Avenue Baptist Church, together with other Black community leaders, then organized the boycott of the Montgomery bus system. That boycott reduced Black ridership (the bulk of the bus system's paying customers) of Montgomery city buses by some 90% until December of 1956 when the Supreme Court ruled that the bus segregation laws of Montgomery, Alabama were unconstitutional (Gayle v. Browder, 352 U.S. 903 (1956)).
- So the Rosa Parks incident is more than a matter of not moving to the back of the bus. Her arrest was part of a well orchestrated, well organized, multilayered program reflecting good planning and political acumen leading to a successful conclusion. If it had not been she would have just been another Black person arrested for violating that ordinance.
- Please note especially that prior to the Rosa Parks incident E. D. Nixon rejected one "arrestee" as standard bearer for the protect because of possible image problems.
You really need to get a better grasp of the facts.
