Ostensibly exploring the practice of law before the internet. Heck, before good highways for that matter.
Sunday, July 5, 2015
Sunday Morning Scene: Churches of the West: Salvation Army Church, Salt Lake City Utah
Thursday, July 2, 2015
Why Americans, irrespective of position, ought to cringe over Obergefell
Senātus Populus que Rōmānus
The right to marry is fundamental as a matter of history and tradition, but rights come not from ancient sources alone. They rise, too, from a better informed understanding of how constitutional imperatives define a liberty that remains urgent in our own era.
Under the Constitution, judges have power to say what the law is, not what it should be. The people who ratified the Constitution authorized courts to exercise ‘neither force nor will but merely judgment.Or as the much castigated Justice Scalia stated, in keeping with the anniversary we note here today:
This practice of constitutional revision by an unelected committee of nine, always accompanied (as it is today) by extravagant praise of liberty, robs the People of the most important liberty they asserted in the Declaration of Independence and won in the Revolution of 1776: the freedom to govern themselves.
Today’s decision will also have a fundamental effect on this Court and its ability to uphold the rule of law. If a bare majority of Justices can invent a new right and impose that right on the rest of the country, the only real limit on what future majorities will be able to do is their own sense of what those with political power and cultural influence are willing to tolerate
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Section 2.
The judicial power shall extend to all cases, in law and equity, arising under this Constitution, the laws of the United States, and treaties made, or which shall be made, under their authority;--to all cases affecting ambassadors, other public ministers and consuls;--to all cases of admiralty and maritime jurisdiction;--to controversies to which the United States shall be a party;--to controversies between two or more states;--between a state and citizens of another state;--between citizens of different states;--between citizens of the same state claiming lands under grants of different states, and between a state, or the citizens thereof, and foreign states, citizens or subjects.
In all cases affecting ambassadors, other public ministers and consuls, and those in which a state shall be party, the Supreme Court shall have original jurisdiction. In all the other cases before mentioned, the Supreme Court shall have appellate jurisdiction, both as to law and fact, with such exceptions, and under such regulations as the Congress shall make.Quite clearly, while this Court would be likely to attempt to attack it and say it isn't so, Congress could in fact pass laws and provide that the Supreme Court had no appellate review. If the Court determined that it did, and it would be likely to hold that it did, then what? The only reason that this hasn't happened to date in our country's history, is that Congress has tended to respect the court, and the court's been careful not to provoke Congress. They've done that now.
None of this appears likely right now, but any time the Court makes a decision like this, they start to be in varying degrees. Indeed, this opinion aside, it ought to be apparent that a Federal judiciary made up of life time appointments is more than a little bizarre.The thought that lawyers who formed their views decades ago and who are in the age in which mental deterioration is the norm should have absolute power over the affairs of the nation makes no sense whatsoever.
Either result is really scary.
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Wednesday, July 1, 2015
Sportsman criticizes, challenges contribution
Now, this is interesting.
The opposition to the concept that the Federal government ought to transfer the public lands to the states is really gaining opposition, as well it should. And, I should note, not only in the West, it's gaining attention in the east as well.
Anyhow, recently the Natrona County Commissioners gave $1,000 of tax money (they have no other kind) to the American Lands Council, a Utah based group backing this concept. That squarely places the Commission behind this ill begotten idea, and with public money too. A local sportsmen was reported taking them to task, and apparently effectively, on that.
One thing to note here is that the Wyoming Constitution expressly disavows any claims to Federal land, and its an open question if Wyoming could really accept any legally, should the offer be forthcoming. Forever disavowing, as we purported to do, is forever disavowing. In keeping with that, and in recognition of the growing opposition, the Legislature, which was looking at funding a bill to study taking the land instead changed it into one to study simply managing it. Even that has been sufficiently poorly thought of that at least one of the legislators backing that idea, from my district, didn't note it in his recent mail to his constituents. We will remember it, however, as I'm sure he's probably reluctantly aware.
Several months ago this same body was presented by a resolution, by one of the members who voted to spend the $1,000 in this fashion, seeking to instruct the County Clerk not to issue same gender marriage licenses to applicants after the Federal Court here found Wyoming's statute defining marriage the way its been defined forever unconstitutional. This post doesn't seek to discuss that topic in any fashion, I'm merely noting it (a post discussing the United States Supreme Court's action will appear here tomorrow, about this time). That measure failed as the other commissioners noted that they couldn't instruct the Clerk to act against the Federal law.
So why can the commission spend money to study something that may run contrary to the Wyoming Constitution?
Tuesday, June 30, 2015
Casper, Wyoming 1940 (Silent film)
Casper Wyoming in the 30's
Monday, June 29, 2015
Holscher's Hub: Images of flight
Thanks, but no thanks, and oh, why even bother. Wyoming rolls over on the UBE.
Lex Anteinternet: Wyoming Adopts the Uniform Bar Exam, and why that'...: Wyoming Supreme Court in Cheyenne. Students of legal minutia know that the phrase "to pass the bar", or "to be ca...
The Board of Law Examiners, by the way, dumped the CLE requirement as it was ineffective. That should have been self evident from the get go, as it was quite evident to me, as one of the drafters of a section of it, that the time element of it was so short as to be nonsensical. There was no way that anyone was going to learn much in that sort of CLE, and there was no test as a part of it. It was just something a person had to endure.
In its place, the BLE is going to expand the Pathways to Professionalism, a mandatory professionalism course which will be expanded. Well, quite frankly, programs on professionalism do not enhance professionalism one iota.
In making this decision, according to the article I read, the BLE was conceding that the law of most states is all the same, and a person can just look it up on the Internet. Oh really. Well, that's baloney, and anyone who has had the experience of out of state lawyers practicing in a complicated Wyoming case knows better. Of course, if we persist in this path, it will become very similar to Colorado's law, as that's where the majority of out of state "Wyoming" practitioners live.
Indeed, recently I was in a case which had one such practitioner on the defense side and two out of state lawyers on the plaintiff's side. The lawyer on the defense side had a practice heavily based on out of state work, and he commented that "he couldn't believe" that Wyoming allowed such simple CLE admission and that he'd think that Wyoming lawyers would resent it. So, something that's pretty self evident to out of state lawyers practicing in the state apparently isn't to those who are supposed to be manning the gate here.
Wyoming has a lot of really good lawyers, still. And we have a law school, still. We can craft a Wyoming component and test those who wish to practice here on Wyoming's law. We should.
If we don't, our current pathway will have a logical development. Within a decade nearly all serious litigation will be handled by out of state lawyers, and Wyoming's lawyers will reduce in number and be reduced to minor matters and criminal matters. The judges will start to come from out of state too, and our law will start to resemble Colorado's, whether we want it to or not. The law school of which so many Wyoming lawyers are graduates, will go by the end of the next decade, as the uniqueness of Wyoming's law will decline, and there will be no reason to have an institution that serves no state specific purpose.
Sunday, June 28, 2015
Monday, June 28, 1915. Huerta busted, Recreation vital.
Last edition:
Sunday, June 27, 1915. Deep Cold: Alaska Weather & Climate: All-Time Record High Temperature Anniversary. Huerta and Orozco prevented from entering Mexico.
Churches of the West: First Baptist Church, Salt Lake City Utah
Saturday, June 27, 2015
Lost Rail: The Past
Sunday, June 27, 1915. Deep Cold: Alaska Weather & Climate: All-Time Record High Temperature Anniversary. Huerta and Orozco prevented from entering Mexico.
Deep Cold: Alaska Weather & Climate: All-Time Record High Temperature Anniversary: 100 year anniversaries don't come around very often. This is one of those rare exceptions. You see, 100 years ago, June 27, 1915, the...
From Deep Cold.
I wonder if that record was just broken?
State Department agent Zach Cobb directed federal agents and soldiers to apprehend General Victoriano Huerta and Pascual Orozco just before they could leave the United States and enter Mexico to kindle a German-funded uprising in the country which already was engaged in a civil war.
Last edition:
Saturday, June 26, 1915. Burn. Destroy. Kill.
Old Picture of the Day: Cleburne Texas
Friday, June 26, 2015
Saturday, June 26, 1915. Burn. Destroy. Kill.
Venezuelan soldier of fortune Rafael de Nogales Méndez, serving with the Ottoman Empire, met with Mehmed Reshid, Governor of the Diyarbekir province, and learned the governor had received telegraphs directly from Interior Minister Talaat Pasha with orders to "Burn-Destroy-Kill" all Armenians in the area.
Georgia Governor John M. Slaton and his wife Sarah Frances Grant left the state under escort of the National Guard after a mob angered by his decision to commute Leo Frank's sentence to life imprisonment threatened them at their home in Atlanta.
Last edition;
Thursday, June 24, 1915. Advancing on Mexico City.
Friday Farming: Finland, 1899
Quite the scene, from the then very agrarian country (which was part of the Russian Empire at the time this photo was taken. Photo courtesy of Wikipedia Commons.
Friday Farming. The basic unit.
"Forty acres and a mule". The basic agrarian unit in the American east in the 19th Century, and hence the unit that freed slaves were hoping to obtain, with the basic animal necessary to work the same.
"Three acres and a cow." The basic agrarian unit in the United Kingdom in the 19th Century and early 20th Century, and hence the slogan of land reformers and Distributists.
Wednesday, June 24, 2015
Today In Wyoming's History: After Appomattox. The Civil War's impact on Wyomi...
Today In Wyoming's History: Wyoming in the Civil War: I posted this item on our other blog, Lex Anteinternet, very recently for a variety of reasons: Lex Anteinternet: The Stars and Bars as ...
again is a very significant one we've heretofore overlooked.
Redrawing the battle lines to fit modern sensibilities, and thereby doing violence to history.
Speaking of mounted troops (chivalry) another odd one has been the modern tendency to view all native combatants as committed against the United States in the 18th and 19th Century, or even against all European Americans. Many Indians view things this way themselves, but it doesn't reflect the complicated reality. Many tribes allied themselves with European Americans in various instances, sometime temporarily and sometimes not so. In the West an interesting example of this is the Shoshone, who were allies of the United States and who contributed combatants to campaigns of the 1870s. In recent years I've occasionally seen it claimed that the Shoshone were amongst the tribes that fought at Little Big Horn, in the Sioux camp. It's not impossible that some were there, but by and large the big Shoshone story for the 1876 campaign was the detail contributed to Crook's command against the Sioux. I'll note I'm not criticizing them for this, only noting it.
Thursday, June 24, 1915. Advancing on Mexico City.
Zapatistas are thrown back. Gen. Garza resumed his march on Mexico City.
Last edition:
Wednesday June 23, 1915. Fighting south of Mexico City, and in the Alps.
Mid Week At Work: Whaling
Old Picture of the Day: Processing Whale
Old Picture of the Day: Whale Hunt
Old Picture of the Day: Whaling
Tuesday, June 23, 2015
Today In Wyoming's History: Wyoming in the Civil War
Lex Anteinternet: The Stars and Bars as viewed from outside the Sout...:As everyone is well aware, there's been a controversy over the Confederate battle flag, the Stars and Bars, brought about by the recent
...
The rest can be read on our post on the Today In Wyoming's History blog.
Wednesday June 23, 1915. Fighting south of Mexico City, and in the Alps.
Troops under Zapatista General Rafael Eguía Lis halted those under Pablo Gonzáles Garza at the Gran Canal.
Italy launched its first major campaign of World War One, attacking the Austro Hungarians above the Isonzo River in the Alps.
Two magnitude 6.3 earthquakes struck within an hour of each other in the Imperial Valley, California.
Last edition:
Tuesday, June 22, 1915. Zapatista advances.
The Stars and Bars as viewed from outside the South.
Except it hasn't.
It's only been on that piece of ground, more or less, since 1961. The Stars and Bars started flying from the State House dome in 1961, in what was frankly an attempt at a poke in the eye at desegregation. It was since moved to the lawn in 2000 as it became increasingly controversial, and it now appears that it will be removed, finally, from the grounds entirely. It's long overdue. Indeed, it shouldn't have been there at any time post 1865.
Chances are that it had never been there prior to 1961. Contrary to common belief, the Stars and Bars is not the "Confederate Flag". That distinction belonged to another flag. Rather, the Stars and Bars was the Confederate battle jack. A flag flown by some, but not all, Confederate forces on the battlefield, principally because the first Confederate national flag (the CSA adopted three flags during the course of the war), was easily confused with Old Glory. By the war's end, the Stars and Bars had appeared as part of two Confederate national flags, but it was not, itself, ever the flag of the CSA nor even of the entire armed forces of the CSA.
The Stars and Bars, recalling Scotland's Cross of St. Andrew (with perhaps a shout out to one of the more independent Southern demographics at the time) is striking, and perhaps for that reason, it's the one that sticks in peoples minds and it's the one you see around today.
But why?
I know that the flag is cited as being part of Southern heritage and pride, but let's be frank. It was the flag of an army in full rebellion against the United States and that rebellion cannot be separated from slavery. Those today who would claim that the South was exercising a retained democratic right can only do so if the ignore the fact that a huge, largely native born Southern demographic, blacks, was kept in slavery and there's simply no excusing that. South Carolina is a good example, as the majority of residents of South Carolina in the 1860-1865 time frame were black. It's not like they were given the vote on succession.
For that matter, most Southern yeomen were fairly marginalized politically pre war as well, which helps explain why, during the course of the war, there ended up being more than a little resistance to the war effort. So much so, of course, that Virginia split in half.
Anyhow, the Stars and Bars, where it appears on public or private display, cannot help but offend. For anyone who is not a white Southerner, it's insulting to some degree. For blacks, how could it be taken otherwise? For South Carolinian's, for that matter, who are black, how could it not be. It only showed up on state grounds when South Carolina's legislature balked at desegregation. It was meant to send a message all right, and the choice of the battle jack sent one pretty clearly.
In recent years, the Confederate battle jack has been showing up a lot here. I saw it just this weekend at a camp site some people had set up out in the sticks. Their camp was flying the U.S. flag and the Stars and Bars, a real mixed message. That probably was intended to send sort of an in your face, Southern pride, message, but this isn't the South.
Indeed, the only Southern fighting men in this region of the country in the 1860 to 1865 time frame were "Galvanized Yankees" who had decided they'd take their chances with the Union as Indian fighters in order to get out of POW camps. They were probably pretty reluctant Federal soldiers, but their performance wasn't bad and there seems to have been no troubles in stationing them with men who'd volunteered to fight the CSA from Ohio and Kansas, but who ended up here instead.
I suppose the Stars and Bars, today, is intended by most who fly it to show pride in their region, and not to send a rebellious racist message. If so, some Southern states, South Carolina included, have really pretty state flags that don't feature the Confederate battle jack and which, in some cases, probably predate the CSA. Most Southerners during the war more closely identified with their states than with the CSA anyhow, and a person who is so state pride inclined ought to consider that. And it should also be considered that American blacks have a history in the South which is as long as any other demographic, save for Native Americans. They're story is just as much the South's as anyone else's. It'd do Southern pride more justice to consider that time frame that falls outside of the five years of the Civil War, or perhaps that twenty or so year period if we include the time leading up to the war and Reconstruction, and not focus so much on it.
Southerns of that era, we should note, did not. Figures such as James Longstreet didn't wallow in their former Southern military status but went on to work to rebuild as part of the nation. Longstreet, one of the most famous of Lee's Lieutenants, went on to become a Republican politician. Lee went on to be a college president and refused to march in step with his students. One former Confederate cavalry general went on to Congress and then back into the U.S. Army, as a volunteer, for the Spanish American War. Southerners only one generation removed from the war volunteered in droves to serve in the Spanish American War. Apparently they at least partially got over it. And with that, perhaps too its time for the Stars and Bars to go, or at least not to be flown in other regions of the country where the message definitely won't be seen as pride but rather something else.
Random Snippets: How to tell you are really out of the mainstream and too history minded.
And, having not had enough coffee I read that and thought to myself "well, Peterson could be a Norse name. . . but wait, we don't have vikings anymore. . . ."
It took me a few seconds to wake up and realize that, of course, Adrian Peterson is a football player with the Minnesota Vikings.
Monday, June 22, 2015
Tuesday, June 22, 1915. Zapatista advances.
Career Army officer and ally of Zapata, General Rafael Eguía Lis, a Conventionist supporting the sitting government defeated Carrancistas attempting to reach Los Reyes and San Cristóbal. The Zapatistas, on the other hand, were entrenched in Cerro Gordo, using the Grand Drainage Canal as a defensive line.
German and Austro-Hungarian forces captured Lemberg, restoring Galacia to their control.
A large earthquake occured in the Imperial Valley, California.
Last edition:
Sunday, June 20, 1915. South Omaha.
Monday at the Bar: Courthouses of the West: Johnson County Courthouse, Buffalo Wyoming
Now no longer a courthouse, but it was at the time this photo was taken a couple of years ago. A new courthouse has come into service since that time. More details on Courthouses of the West, where this was originally posted.
Sunday, June 21, 2015
1870 to 1918: Jenny has passed away.
1870 to 1918: Jenny has passed away. Hello to all readers of Jenny’s blog. Tragically Jenny has passed away. She was following her passion, hiking in the Smoky Mountains, and evidently she had an accident. She was located in one of her favorite hiking areas, Porter’s Creek / Lester Prong.Very tragic news.
I really liked the 1870 to 1918 blog, and the author, Jenny, was a bit of a kindred spirit in some ways. This news is sad in the extreme. Our sincere condolences.