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-UE
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/06/28/politics/28scotus.html
2012-01-12 22:59:03
edited 2012-01-13 18:45:03 in Wonderful posts
I clench my fists and yell "anime" towards an uncaring, absent God, and swear solemnly to press my thumbs into Chocolate America's eyeballs until he is blinded, to directly emasculate sporting figures, to beat the shit out of tumblr users with baseball bats, and to quietly appreciate what Waylon Smithers being gay means to me.
I need to learn to delete my history before letting other people use my laptop.
Comments
There's one word in there that makes this make sense.
"constitutional."
That duty isn't found in the constitution, it's found in their damn job descriptions.
man, fuck that. The Supreme Court's made light of the Constitution on far more specious matters than this.
Oh, shut up. Not everything good is Constitutional. The Constitution governs the rights and duties of the federal government.
As INUH said, it's in their job descriptions.
EDIT: Also, this is from fucking 2005.
Doesn't mean the implications are not disgusting.
I have nothing against Joe Cop that just wants to genuinely protect the citizenry, but the institution that governs individuals good and bad is far beyond fucked up. That's the thing. If you'll forgive the D&D terminology, a cop has to be Lawful Netural by definition. And we all know that Lawful Neutral is a shit-tier alignment that allows someone to be manipulated by the state under the concept of duty.
What's the implication?
Because for me, all this says is "Cops aren't governed by this set of rules, they're governed by another set of rules."
If you mean the implications on the part of the police, well, yeah, they're completely in the wrong here, and in a thoroughly fucked-up way. The supreme court? Entirely in the right. They don't have any more authority to make cops do their jobs than I do.
Perhaps it's genuinely silly of me, but I would've thought that police being held accountable by the upper echelons of the entire insitution of law would make sense.
But the Supreme Court isn't the upper echelon of the entire institution of law. It has absolutely no authority over anything but the constitution.
> US politics and law structure
That would be the holes in my knowledge showing.
Yeah. I'd recommend taking a class or two about it. It's really fascinating stuff.
I keep a copy of the Constitution I got in high school with me most of the time. If I'm arguing a point about constitutional law, all I have to do is whip it out and see if I'm wrong.
The duty of the police to protect people might also be part of civil law, a duty of care which if breached would allow them to be sued for negligence by the injured party. However, not being an American lawyer, I don't know if this is actually the case or not over there. All this ruling means is that it isn't a requirement of the US Constitution.
This may sound harsh, but if the police were liable to be sued every time they didn't stop a woman with a restraining order being attacked, the litigation and expense would be endless. It's probably more effective to resolve the problem through politics. After all, police forces in the US are basically controlled by politicians, who have to be elected.
I'm not sure whether or not the Supreme Court is in the right here. I'm more concerned with why it matters. This may not be a constitutional duty, but I'd still think it's a duty in general.
Presumably, whoever appealed the case was specifically claiming it was, otherwise the constitution wouldn't even have been mentioned.
Hahaha Jesus H. Christ, that is the last time I let my roommate on my laptop without deleting my history beforehand.
So yeah I'm not actually as sensitive to this issue as he seems to be, but I can still comment on it. I suppose that technically no, there's no constitutional duty for the police to protect the innocent. But there certainly should be some sort of state law that says they need to do that, and why they weren't convicted under that law boggles me. That being said, looking at the actual case the woman's argument is slightly less convincing. Had the police waited a day or so before the man killed his children, then yes, they would certainly be to blame, but the father arrived at the police station mere hours later, and may have killed the children even sooner than that, so the ability of the police to have done anything in that situation was slim. It's sad and unfortunate, but I don't think that it was the police station's fault.