“State legislatures should consider whether to retake [the authority to choose electors] in the 2016 election in an effort to stop Trump,” he says. “Many could consider this proposal, but the Texas state legislature is a natural place to start. It could easily pass a law returning power to the legislature. On Election Day, the legislature could decide whether to vote for Trump or Mitt Romney, the prior Republican nominee; former Texas governor Rick Perry, who dropped out of the 2016 race early on; a popular GOP figure such as Condoleezza Rice, whose name has recently been floated as an alternative; or their own junior Sen. Ted Cruz, presently trailing Trump in the Republican Party delegate count.”
Constitution
Constitution, Courts, Encryption, FBI, Law, Liberty, Privacy, State Power, Surveillance, Technology
What’s at Stake
It’s not about 1 person. It’s not about 1 phone. It’s about the government being able to snoop on all people, on all phones, on all devices, on your TV, PC, even your HVAC and car. The government wants a skeleton key to unlock whatever it wants whenever it wants. This is dangerous in the extreme.
Via This Is the Real Reason Apple Is Fighting the FBI @ AgainstCronyCapitalism.org
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America, Constitution, Courts, Encryption, Federal Government, History, Law, Privacy, Surveillance, Technology
All Writs Act
While the All Writs Act is not used every day, the act has been successfully invoked by the government to compel telephone companies to install wiretaps, for phone companies to hand over call records, and to obtain CCTV footage, handwriting exemplars, and DNA samples. It has even been cited to force a defendant to cough up his computer password.
What’s more, it has played a part in copyright piracy cases. In a forthcoming law journal article,Annemarie Bridy, a law professor at the University of Idaho, writes that “some courts granting broad preliminary orders against non-parties in ‘pirate site’ cases have cited the All Writs Act as a source of authority.”
The All Writs Act was originally part of the Judiciary Act of 1789, which established the Supreme Court, the lower courts, and spelled out the basic powers of the judicial branch of government. In 1990, former Justice Sandra Day O’Connor described the Judiciary Act as “probably the most important and most satisfactory Act ever passed by Congress.”
Via How Apple will fight the DOJ in iPhone backdoor crypto case @ Ars Technica.
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“A more complicated question than one might suppose.”
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Constitution, Law, Liberty
Happy Constitution Day
Constitution, Law, Liberty
Each and Every, Thinking about the Constitution
“A few days ago I mentioned Michael Stokes Paulsen’s crash course on how to interpret the Constitution. Paulsen outlined five techniques of constitutional interpretation that courts and commentators employ: (1) arguments from the straightforward, natural, original linguistic meaning of the text; (2) arguments from the structure, logic, and relationships created by the document as a…
Books, Constitution, History, Law
New book
“For those joining the conversation mid-stream, this is the third in a series of posts introducing some themes of “The Constitution: An Introduction,” my new book co-authored with my son, Luke Paulsen. Eugene Volokh has graciously invited me to guest-blog this week to introduce the book.” Via The constitutional case for interposition and nullification @…