Author: P.A. Madison

  • Defining Natural-Born Citizen

    ByP.A. Madison
    420 Comments

    “The common law of England is not the common law of these States.” –George Mason What might the phrase “natural-born citizen” of the United States imply under the U.S. Constitution? The phrase has always been obscure due to the lack of any single authoritative source to confer in order to understand the condition of citizenship the phrase recognizes. Learning what the phrase might have meant following the Declaration of Independence, and the adoption of the Fourteenth Amendment, requires detective work. As with…

  • Georgia vs. U.S. Department of Injustice

    ByP.A. Madison
    2 Comments

    Voting rights groups in Georgia were successful in stopping State election officials from using Social Security numbers and driver’s license data to check voters’ immigration status. Advocacy groups had told a federal three-judge panel that using the data to verify whether voters are citizens amounts to a “systematic purging” of voting rolls that must be approved by the Justice Department. Why does the State of Georgia need approval by the Justice Department? The answer, according to the Department of Justice, is because…

  • Original Meaning: Freedom of Speech or of the Press

    ByP.A. Madison
    38 Comments

    Summary: Freedom of Speech or the Press is the freedom from government officials making speech or writings they find too critical of their affairs a seditious crime. Under common law, people had to be careful of any criticism they wrote or said about government policy, laws or official conduct out of fear of being charged with a seditious crime where truth would be of no defense. Before discussing the meaning of the words “freedom of speech, or of the press” as established…

  • Q: Did Marshall and Bingham Share the same Constitutional Philosophy?

    ByP.A. Madison

    A reader would like to know what ideological differences there might had been between two influential individuals of constitutional law: Chief Justice John Marshall and John A. Bingham. While John Bingham spoke cordially of C.J. Marshall, the two sat at opposite poles of each other. Here is a quick illustration of their differences: Mr. Bingham was a self-proclaimed “state rights” man; Marshall on the other hand was a Nationalist to the left of George Washington. Mr. Bingham viewed the Alien and Sedition…

  • D.C. v. Heller: Was Scalia Honest with the Facts?

    ByP.A. Madison
    23 Comments

    “[T]here is no need to deceive ourselves as to what the original Second Amendment said and meant. Of course, properly understood, it is no limitation upon arms control by the states.” –Antoin Scalia, A Matter of Interpretation: Federal Courts and the Law (1997) The recent Supreme Court ruling in District of Columbia v. Heller caught me by surprise by how far the majority, lead by Justice Antoin Scalia, were willing to go to make a case for a broad individual right under…

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    Supreme Fraud: Plyler v. Doe

    ByP.A. Madison
    11 Comments

    I do not think there is any other single Supreme Court case in which I am asked to comment on more than the case of Plyler v. Doe – especially now with more press attention being devoted to school overcrowding and the costs associated with teaching non-bona fide resident children belonging to citizens of other nations. I have not devoted any lengthy commentary on this case for the simple reason the four dissenting justices (O’Conner, Burger, Rehnquist and White) thoroughly highlighted the…

  • Does Indiana’s Photo ID Law Violate the Constitution?

    ByP.A. Madison
    5 Comments

    Following the steps of other third parties, Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.), with Rep. Robert Brady (D-Pa.) and Zoe Lofgren (D-Calif.) have recently filed an amicus curiae brief with the U.S. Supreme Court over Indiana’s photo-identification requirements for federal elections. The brief asserts Indiana State law is inconsistent with, and preempted by, the federal Help America Vote Act of 2002. The Federal statute mandates certain identification requirements only for first-time voters who register to vote by mail. The Federal identification requirements can be satisfied…

  • Death Penalty for Child Rape Unconstitutional?

    ByP.A. Madison
    18 Comments

    Lawyers for Patrick Kennedy, a Louisiana man who received a death sentence for raping a child has petitioned the U.S. Supreme Court to have his case heard before the justices. Kennedy’s legal team wants the court to declare Louisiana’s law allowing the death penalty for child rape unconstitutional. The petition asks the court to consider whether the Eighth Amendment’s Cruel and Unusual Punishment clause permits a state to impose the death penalty for child rape – a punishment usually reserved for those…

  • What ‘Subject to the Jurisdiction Thereof’ Really Means

    ByP.A. Madison
    157 Comments

    Because the purpose of the Fourteenth Amendment’s first section was to end the denial of those fundamental rights that belong to all United States citizens by their citizenship under Article IV, Section II of the U.S. Constitution, it was imperative to first define who was a United States citizen. Otherwise, a state could refuse to recognize newly emancipated slaves as citizens by withholding the right to sue, make contracts, due process, purchase property, etc., in any state they ventured into. Therefore, the…

  • Penalizing the Commerce Clause

    ByP.A. Madison
    2 Comments

    Note: I cannot believe I neglected finishing this post until now (9/13/07). A California woman whose doctor says marijuana is the only medicine keeping her alive can face federal prosecution on drug charges, a federal appeals court ruled. The ruling Wednesday was the latest legal defeat for Angel Raich, a mother of two from Oakland suffering from scoliosis, a brain tumor, chronic nausea and other ailments who sued the federal government pre-emptively to avoid being arrested for using the drug. On her…