Archive of UserLand's first discussion group, started October 5, 1998.

Re: Dispatches from the Napster and Gnutella front

Author:Paul Snively
Posted:4/21/2000; 2:36:34 PM
Topic:Dispatches from the Napster and Gnutella front
Msg #:16524 (In response to 16513)
Prev/Next:16523 / 16525

Robert Cassidy wrote:

>Attorneys are filling in for the failures of a representative
>government and deliberately enacting change at a national
>level now.

This has been going on for a minimum of 27 years--since a couple of lawyers took poor Norma McRae, who had gotten pregnant and didn't want to be but couldn't legally get an abortion in her state at the time and hauled her all the way to the Supreme Court, rather than the various state legislatures, to convince the court to declare their case the law of the land, knowing fully well that the 2/3 of the state legislatures needed to amend the constitution wouldn't have done so, at least at the time.

This was somewhat mislabeled "judicial activism" (it's debatable whether Roe v. Wade was anywhere near the first time the Supreme Court interpreted the constitution in the light of modern times rather than the putative intentions of the framers). What it really was was a couple of sharp lawyers doing an end-run around the federal legislative process... and in my mind, it's set a nasty precedent for the exercise of legal power in this country ever since, regardless of how you feel about the specific example of Roe v. Wade.

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