JSA Georgetown Summer Session II, 2010

Hey guys once again!

I am now a part of another geek camp! First Congressional Academy, which was the time of my life, to JSA at Georgetown University for the second time of my life! So far I have met so many new people, quite a few friends I feel, and I know that this experience will once again change my life, definitely for the better.

07/18/10
I got on the plane after waking at 4:30 in the morning, arrived at Tampa, waited two hours, transferred, and landed at around 1. Thankfully, I found the graceful Lauren Schenone from the Southeast Territory or SET, and very soon, her friend Tess Yerbit! Kinda sat around for a few hours at the airport, no biggie, but then also met a whole bunch more people as they piled in. Then I found out that most people were for International Relations. WTF!!!

My arrival to Georgetown initially took my breath away. It was as if I had stumbled across a modern castle of knowledge. I felt a connection to the place, and I found after trucking my two luggage up a few hills and helping out an unfortunate Sarah's duffel bag, I found my meal card, dorm key, and a few other things, all the while talking to people that I never knew before! (They thought I was a freak, probably.)

I also met my roommate Max Patterson, who hails from Houston, Texas! He's so great, chill, awesome at Ultimate Frisbee, knowledgeable, and all around amazing bro. I'm looking forward to some awesome times.

Dinner sucked crap though. The Alfredo sauce was made of powder, and tasted like moldy cottage cheese or something gruesome like that. And finally I met Joe Campagna. So sweet, so tall, kinda reminds me of Joe back at home.

07-19-10
Basically I woke up wanting to run, but my sleep instinct got the best of me, so I neglected running. Breakfast was alright, talked more with Joe, and then made better acquaintance with a bro named Paul. Hailing from New Jersey, I love his freaking accent. I can't remember his position in JSA for the life of me, but it's all good. This powerhouse team trekked through the tour, involving the book store, paraphernalia, classroom tour, and when it was all over, we checked out the Gym. HOLY SMOKES. It's LA Fitness on steroids, if that's even possible.

Now after a whole class unto ourselves with Dr. Marty Sheffer, the craziest, most vulgar, amazing senior I've ever met. I'm in Congressional Law, undoubtedly the most elite, small, power-housing school of thought, learning about the purpose of the supremacy courts and lawmaking. The notes are soon to follow.

Afterward, the library. OH MY GOD. It was literally heaven in a building. Five floors of incredible resource, I swear it must've been 20 acres in area, then the five floors. Each floor hosted many things, in the underground first floor, government papers, declassified of the CIA, mini reels of secrets of the 1930s, manuscript of supreme court decisions, and the Attorney General's Guide to Pornography? It's actually quite legit.

Then about 100 paces away, the BIGGEST source of authors I have ever seen. Locke, Montesquieu, Darwin, Freud, Newton, Einstein, Kant, Euclid, Aristotle, Ptolemy, Copernicus, Kepler, Berkeley, Swift, Voltaire, Twain, Dickinson, Marx, Dewey, Plank, Heisenberg, Bohr, just TOO MANY! That's not even a shelf worth of knowledge yet. And there were what, about 500 shelves per section? three sections per floor? five floors? My God.

And then more research, gym, dinner, orientation for tomorrow, and then "sleep now". And did I mention that we're going to the Capital Hill tomorrow to meet our reps, then a White House tour of the Eisenhower complex next door? HOYAH (The GTown motto btws.)!

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JSA Georgetown Summer Session II, 07/19/2010
Congressional Law, Dr. Marty Sheffer

I. Theories of Law
1. Law is a process that gives stability, provides continuity with the past, and allows people to predict the consequences of their actions. Law is an instrument of the status-quo.
2. Law is an instrument of transition, changing the old into the new. Democracies say that laws should progress humanity.

The Constitution is essentially what the judges say it is. [See Positive Law Theory]

II. Ideal of Judging – all who come before the courts are equal under the law, or else the 14th Amendment.
a. To adhere to equality in public law, people must have a standard of justice.
i. Don’t think of the Supreme Court justices as demi-god guardians of the constitution. They are humans. They too have opinions, and thus laws change not always for the sake of progress.

III. Conflicting Views of the Nature of Laws
1. Natural Law Theory – Locke-ian idea, intrinsic laws that govern humans in the “natural state”. Laws are made on principle. Two prime dissenting examples.
a. Nuremburg War Trials – formed for trials against humanity by establishing that these violators are prosecuted regardless of military order and command.
b. Tokyo War Trials - formed for trials against humanity by establishing that these violators are prosecuted by military order and command. Example: In Re Yamashita was convicted of ordering his men to slaughter Filipinos while retreating after a battle, yet there is tangible proof that he had lost all contact and did not know what his men were doing. It was assumed that the commanding officer is responsible because it is collective guilt.
i. Dissenting opinion at the time was if one would apply this in the event of an American doing the violating, the President is ultimately responsible.
2. Positive Law Theory –maintains that law is whatever the supreme authority (as society dictates) can make and enforce.
ii. Traffic laws are thought to be positive laws, yet it CAN’T be enforced. What!?
3. Legal Realism/Social Law Theory – there is a gradual and organic growth of law in specific, individual societies to adjust conflicting interests peacefully. [Moderate theory of the three.]

IV. Judge Relation to Other Judges (Stories)
a. Associate Justice Sovelin hated Jewish Associate Justice Brandeis so much that their picture for the court placed both at either end despite the long-held tradition of placement by nomination, and in their 30 years of simultaneous service, had not said one word to each other.
b. Associate Justice Day O’Connor hated Associate Justice Scalia’s guts and so risked being called a flaming liberal simply by consistently voting in opposite of Justice Scalia.

The three branches are supposed to possess checks, balances, and political power. Until judicial review, the constitution literally hadn’t granted anything besides checks and balances to the Supreme Court. In fact, Marbury v. Madison is not what established judicial review, it was the obscure case United States v. Yale Todd (1794) that had first struck down an executive act unconstitutional. It was discovered as a precedent in a footnote reference in the Marbury v. Madison decision files.

V. How the Supreme Court Makes Law
1. Passively – brings out constitutional changes based on traditions and precedents. (Potentially controversial) Example: Roe v. Wade
2. Negatively – Court says to Congress, “your law is unconstitutional.” Example: Marbury v. Madison
3. Positively – extending the provisions of the constitution into the institutions of government where the instances did not initially apply. Essentially, encroachment of the Supreme Court, limiting the other branches. Example: Miranda Warning

Note: What real power could a court have over a truly motivated institution such as Congress? For example, the ability to institute a national income tax has been proclaimed unconstitutional by the Supreme Court on six occasions, yet it says that taxation is constitutional by Congress in Article I. So, Congress got the 16th Amendment ratified, thereby shutting up the Supreme Court opinion forever. (The check on a Supreme Court ruling is either an overturn by the court itself or a Constitutional amendment.)

Note II: All Supreme Court criticisms have been whether or not judges should be the ones making the laws.

VI. Incorporation
a. Selective Incorporation is to essentially use one of the first ten Amendments, use the 14th Amendment, Section I, Clause 2 (“due process”), and force it into the constitutions of the states.
i. John Marshall confronted this by saying that the Bill of Rights was a Federal government restriction, not a state restriction. If you don’t like your lack of rights in a state, move, hun.
ii. 1st Amendment Incorporation: Right to Speech (1925), Right to Assembly (1937), Right to Religion (1940)
iii. 6th Amendment Incorporation: Right to Fair Trial (1932), Right to an Attorney (1942)
iv. 9th Amendment Incorporation: Right to Privacy (1965)
1. First Marital Privacy through Griswold v. Connecticut. It was read as a penumbra through the 1st Amendment, then through the 14th Amendment, then to the states.
2. Justice Black at the time dissented by saying that the 4th and 5th Amendment clauses of “no unreasonable searches and seizures” plus “no self-incrimination” respectively already secured privacy.

VII. Three Theories of Incorporation
1. Non-Incorporation/Fundamental Fairness – If you are ruthlessly abused and unusually punished for exercising rights by your state, the Supreme Court would then incorporate.
2. Literalists – Fourteenth Amendment was to get rid of Barron v. Baltimore, and that all rights should be fully incorporated at once.
3. Selective Incorporation – not all amendments are identically important.
i. If the 7th Amendment was incorporated, that every civil suit in excess of $20 would be settled by a Jury, Judge Judy would have no job! Bad idea.

VIII. Two Levels of Incorporation
1. Incorporating a right gives you that right, but now this is for the Federal level and State level. Originally it was mutually exclusive, so a State court had to apply state laws, and a Federal circuit had to apply Federal laws.
2. Keeping the rights in sync with the Federal laws.

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Completed notes so far, peace.
Chris Carl

"There is no native criminal class in America besides Congress." - Mark Twain