Supreme Court Case of the Week: Gibbons v. Ogden

Case

Thomas Gibbons, Appellant v. Aaron Ogden, Respondent (1824)

Chief Justice

John Marshall

Background

Aaron Ogden had a license to operate a monopolistic steamboat service granted by the State of New York. Thomas Gibbons operated a competing steamboat service on interstate waterways adjacent to the state of New York. Ogden took him to court in the state of New York to prevent him from operating his business, and two levels of New York court agreed with him.

Synopsis

The Supreme Court agreed with Gibbons' lawyers argument that that the Article 1, Section 8 of the Constitution (the Commerce Clause) gave Congress the right to regulate commerce extended to "all aspects of it, overriding state laws to the contrary." (from wikipedia)

Vote & Dissenting Opinions

6-0 (with 1 abstaining)

Further Discussion

This case seems pretty straightforward and simple, really. It is an important case, but at least on first glance, appears to be an easy decision. Here's Article 1, Section 8, Clause 1 & 3 of the Constitution:

Clause 1: The Congress shall have Power To lay and collect Taxes, Duties, Imposts and Excises, to pay the Debts and provide for the common Defence and general Welfare of the United States; but all Duties, Imposts and Excises shall be uniform throughout the United States;

Clause 3: To regulate Commerce with foreign Nations, and among the several States, and with the Indian Tribes

References & Further Reading

http://www.house.gov/house/Constitution/Constitution.html

http://www.oyez.org/cases/1792-1850/1824/1824_0

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gibbons_v._Ogden

Bad Journalism Example

This past Sunday now-VP, Joe Biden, squared off on juxtaposing political talk shows against former-VP, Dick Cheney. Both sides vehemently argued why the Obama administration was/wasn’t handling terrorism correctly.
That is the background.
Here is the topic

Monday morning two journalist from Bloomberg News published an article on the war of words (1). Throughout the article the two journalist report on the fighting and list a half dozen quotes from each person. Then it ends.

Recently, Brent and I have been asking ourselves whether some information needs to be limited to the public. This is a prime example of information I would argue should be limited. What these two journalist did was report that two people got in an argument and that they have authority, so we the public should listen. However, they did not fact check either person or give any information regarding the subject on which the two people were arguing. Is this real journalism? Did it really take both of them to read through the quotes from a 15 minute segment and write them down? Wouldn’t real journalist dug up information one what the two members were saying. For instance, Cheney argued that “Christmas day bomber” should not have been read his Miranda rights Well, journalist, tell me what the Bush administration did under a similar circumstance with the “shoe bomber” back in 2003? Was that suspect read his Miranda rights?

It is my conclusion, then that these two journalist have done nothing but complicate the matter for public. This article could have been replaced telling me that Brad Pitt and Angelina were in an argument, because as far as disseminating information that will help me, a voting citizen, make a decision, this article did nothing.

Source:
1) http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=newsarchive&sid=a6phLM6zkt8k

Science News: Autism & Vaccines, Soda & Cancer

Two big science stories to address:

1) Last week The Lancet (impact factor 28.4; that’s big) retracted a controversial 1998 article linking MMR vaccinations to the onset of autism after almost 80% of the original authors wrote letters to the journal requesting a retraction.

2) Today in Cancer Epidemiology, Biomarkers & Prevention there was a study involving 60,500 Chinese and they discovered a link between drinking as little as two (2) cans of soda a week and 80% increase in pancreatic cancer.

Let’s address both of these.

1) http://www.sciencenews.org/view/generic/id/56008/title/Journal_retracts_flawed_study_linking_MMR_vaccine_and_autism


2) http://cebp.aacrjournals.org/content/current pg#447

Supreme Court Case of the Week

By Steve Nelson...

Hands Up Heads Down!

Or hands up, heads up, and most importantly butts up!

"...a handful of epidemiological research groups around the world, and big names such as Ulf Ekelund of the epidemiology unit of the UK's Medical Research Council and James A. Levine of the US's Mayo Clinic, are trying to shift the debate about obesity. As well as talking about exercise, they want to discuss sitting." (1)

These large studies tell us something intuitively obvious: a job which requires you to constantly be moving (or at least standing) is better for your health presupposing your baseline is permitting, i.e. no arthritis, no orthostatic hypotension, no joint disorders, etc.

How many hours do you stand during the day?

According to the same article where the quotation was found, Donald Rumsfeld is quoted to say he stands for 8-10 hours a day but enemy combatants are only required to stand for 4 hours at a time as a measure of their incarceration in our prisons.

Perhaps the fitness of a nation should be assessed by the "flabbiness" of its citizens asses?

1) Stand up to the insidious dangers of sitting down

By Simon Kuper, in the Financial Times. Accessed at ft.com

Published: January 23 2010 02:00 | Last updated: January 23 2010 02:00

Supreme Court Case of the Week: Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission

Case

Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission (2010)

Chief Justice
John Roberts

Background
Citizens United made a documentary titled "Hillary: The Movie" to be released before the Democratic primaries of 2008. Initially it was ruled that the company couldn't advertise the film before the primaries due to the restrictions set in place by the Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act (BCRA) of 2002, more commonly known as the McCain-Feingold reform bill for its two sponsors. This was to restrict corporations from using their treasury funds to openly campaign for or against candidates in elections.

Synopsis

On the basis of the 1st Amendment, the court overruled two previous rulings (Austin v. Michigan Chamber of Commerce (1990) and partially overruled McConnell v. Federal Election Commission (2003)) and overturned the BCRA. The fact that they overruled other decisions was part of what made the decision a shock to many people. It seems laws on this topic go back nearly 100 years, starting when Theodore Roosevelt was president.

Vote & Dissenting Opinions

5-4

The conclusion of Justice Stevens, representing the dissenters (taken from the wikipedia page listed at the bottom of this post):

"At bottom, the Court's opinion is thus a rejection of the common sense of the American people, who have recognized a need to prevent corporations from undermining self government since the founding, and who have fought against the distinctive corrupting potential of corporate electioneering since the days of Theodore Roosevelt. It is a strange time to repudiate that common sense. While American democracy is imperfect, few outside the majority of this Court would have thought its flaws included a dearth of corporate money in politics."

Further Discussion
Does this give more weight to corporations than to individual citizens (who are limited to ~$2300, if memory serves correctly)? Even if corporations are restricted from donating directly to candidates, it's not as if a candidate will be unaware of who's putting multiple campaign ads out for them, and remember that during their term. However, do corporations not also deserve freedom of speech? If laws are made in regards to how they can act, shouldn't they also have the ability to speak out about it? I know many would argue they'll fill the airwaves with misinformation and lies for their own benefit, but don't normal people do that also? We don't argue to take away freedom of speech from them.

What will be the role of foreign companies in this? President Obama mentioned in his State of the Union address that this may open the door to foreign companies to play a roll in our campaigns. I'm guessing the entire law was overturned, but could it still be applied to foreign companies? It's not as if they're covered in the Constitution.

Support for this seems to be based entirely on party lines (which obviously isn't surprising) with conservatives arguing it's a blow for free speech, and liberals saying it gives corporations too much power. While corporate power in many instances does give me pause, I think according to the letter of the law, this ruling is probably accurate and in the better long-term interests of American citizens. I don't think this can just be viewed as corporations buying TV commercials around election time, as the implications of it could be far more reaching.

References & Further Reading

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hillary:_The_Movie

www.court.gov/arguments/Term2008/08-205.pdf

origin.www.supremecourtus.gov/qp/08-00205qp.pdf

The Problem of Evil: An Argument Against the Existence of God

The Problem of Evil

Consider the following three claims:

a) God is omnipotent (i.e., all powerful), omniscient (i.e., all knowing), and omni-benevolent (i.e., wholly and perfectly good).
b) God exists.
c) There is unnecessary evil in the world.

Most theists who believe in the Judeo-Christian God accept these three statements, but they are logically contradictory (i.e., that can’t all be true) so one of them must be rejected. Statement c) looks pretty difficult to deny—just consider the recent earthquake in Haiti. The rejection of b) would be the atheistic (or perhaps some species of agnostic) response. Theists have tried to respond to this problem in several ways which I’ll discuss below.

The Apologists Response: The most straightforward tack is to claim that God allows evil in the world and we can't possibly know the reasons for which he allows such evil to exist. For instance, some claim that maybe the Holocaust was a necessary evil for some future reasons or future good that we're not aware of. This strategy claims that the three statements are only apparently contradictory but can be rendered consistent. But this doesn't work because God would be, nonetheless, allowing such evil and harm to persist when he doesn't have to. And this doesn't seem to be characteristic of an omni-benevolent God. In order to emphasize this point, it’s worth noting that we all seem to be able to conceive of a world with less evil in it; we all seem to be able to think of a possible world in which things go better than this one. And if this is the case, then it seems God has failed in some way (since he has perfect knowledge, is all powerful, and is wholly good) by allowing evil in this world when he need not.

The Theodicy Response: Some theorists have tried to give some sort of reason for why God would allow evil in the world in order to explain away the apparent contradiction in the above statements. There are many different reasons one could give but a popular response is that God values giving man free will over creating a world with less evil. (Alvin Plantiga—a contemporary philosopher at Notre Dame gives this response.) Therefore, the theodicy continues, it's the existence of free will that has led to such evil in the world. But again, it seems as though God is nonetheless allowing evil to persist in this world when he wouldn't have to. In addition, this doesn’t seem to explain the existence of evil and suffering brought on by natural disasters.

Rejection of a) Response: One might try to reject a) claiming that their idea of God isn't exactly the Christian God. But if this is the case, it doesn’t look like a God who lacks one of the three main features (omnipotence, omniscience, or omni-benevolence) is worthy of our praise. One would need to explain what the difference is between this God and the conception of God in statement a), then further argue that he is a God that is worthy of our praise.

I’m interested in hearing other responses to this argument against the existence (and the possibility!) of God.