Andrea Burton, a 30 year old Ohio criminal defense lawyer, was rocketed onto the national social justice scene this summer after she was handcuffed and jailed for refusing to take off a Black Lives Matter pin while in court.
Summary: I briefly describe the anthropological origin and recent statutory embodiments of human rights of individuals. I show that the modern “democratic” state moderates the rights of individuals by both: (1) violating the said rights in order to maintain and enforce the societal dominance hierarchy, and (2) preventing disproportionate violations, to avoid inciting rebellion. The courts are charged with these tasks but must not appear to represent an oppressive state.
Interest groups and lobbyists have been busy peddling their client’s interests since 1816 when Delaware manufacturer Isaac Briggs teamed up with his colleagues in an attempt to convince federal lawmakers to impose tariffs on the import of foreign made manufactures.
On his return from attempting to stop the terrible slaughter of Rwandans there was no official to welcome home Canada’s General Romeo Dallaire.
The first principle of the rule of law in a constitutional democracy is constitutional supremacy: when in conflict with federal or provincial legislation constitutional legislation is paramount and the other legislation is void.
Most determinatively section 109 of the Constitution Act, 1867, enacts that provincial Crown land remains subject to the Indian interest in such land as remains unceded by the Indians to the Crown, by nation-to-nation treaty.
It was momentous on one fundamental level. Here was the President of the United States, Barack Obama, holding the torch for a wretched ally the politicians on the Hill and others have had reservations over for many years. Saudi Arabia, ever the thorn and asset of US interests, facing the grief of families who lost members on September 11, 2001. This, the same ally whose theocratic bent remains the most bruising of obstacles in any claims that the US is open to a global democratic experiment.
Let’s start with some stats. The District of Columbia has the densest concentration of lawyers in the world. If you factor in the fact that 88% of lawyers are white and 60% of the capital’s population are minorities, you end up with some really mind warping numbers.
The population of the District is 672,000 (2015 census) and the number of households is slightly over 250,000. With 52,000 lawyers running around – it means that you can find a lawyer by randomly knocking on five doors. If you happen to be looking for a lawyer in Georgetown, a couple of knocks should do the trick.
A car is stolen. It’s a car that has been in the family for generations: picnics, road trips, weddings, funerals, accidents. There are pictures, memories, indelible life events. There is a huge robbery of the entire house, in the confusion, mayhem, and distraction, the car also disappears.
A natural progression has arisen 40 years after billionaires laid plans for a cultural revolution, in large part by using fake organizations of philanthropy – replete with tax breaks – to fund it. It was a masterful — even outrageous — plan, to make American taxpayers help finance a campaign against us.
Immigration, blood source of the United States, its motor of development, has been rocked by judicial pronouncements of late. The Obama administration had put much stock in reforming the general approach to immigration in 2014, ostensibly employing a wide reading of executive power against the possible deportation. It was always going to be haphazard, merely another periodic panacea in a continuing problem.
