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Washington, D.C., Aug. 19, 2022 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- A three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the First Circuit has unanimously ruled in Harper v. Rettig that taxpayer James Harper can take the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) to federal court for gathering private financial information about his use of virtual currency from third-party exchanges without a lawful subpoena.

IRS has, until now, successfully prevented federal courts from asserting jurisdiction over a significant constitutional challenge to the agencys unlawful data-collection practices. The First Circuit ruled that the U.S. District Court for the District of New Hampshire erred in itsMarch 2021decision granting IRSs motion to dismiss Mr. Harpers Fourth and Fifth Amendment challenge based on an alleged lack of jurisdiction. The district court did not have the benefit of the Supreme Courts May 2021 decision inCIC Services, LLC v. IRS, which concluded that the Anti-Injunction Act (AIA) does not prohibit a suit seeking to set aside an information-reporting requirement that is backed by both civil tax penalties and criminal penalties. Mr. Harpers suit, which seeks to set aside IRSs illegal information gathering, is likewise not a suit brought to enjoin a taxs assessment or collection, so it is not subject to the AIAs limits on court jurisdiction.

Judge Kermit Lipez, writing for the majority, rejects IRSs argument that the AIA bars Mr. Harpers suit because it seeks to restrain activities related to the assessment or collection of taxes. He notes that CIC Services provides clarity that information gathering is a phase of tax administration procedure that occurs before assessment [or] collection. Judge Lipez concludes that since IRSs activities against Mr. Harper clearly fall within the category of information gathering the [AIA] is not an applicable exception to the United States waiver of sovereign immunity. Indeed, as the Supreme Court explained in CIC Services, where, as here, there is no tax penalty at issue, then the case is a cinch, and the suit c[an] proceed.

Mr. Harper had contracted with third-party virtual currency exchanges to protect his private information against unlawful government intrusion. Despite his efforts to ensure his records were properly safeguarded, IRS took the data of Mr. Harper and thousands of other cryptocurrency holders from virtual-currency exchanges without reasonable suspicion and without providing a pre-data-collection notice and opportunity to contest IRSs dragnet operation. In ruling that the district court has subject-matter jurisdiction, the First Circuit has ensured that the IRS can be held accountable for this violation of Harpers Fourth and Fifth Amendment constitutional rights.

NCLA released the following statements:

The appeals courts decision upholds a basic tenet of our justice system: every citizen claiming the government is violating his constitutional rights is entitled to his day in court. The IRS sought to deny that right, arguing that allowing people to object to its collecting personal data would unduly hamper tax-collection efforts. The court rightly rejected that argument. Efficient tax collection must never be permitted to trump constitutional rights. Rich Samp, Senior Litigation Counsel, NCLA

The bad news is the federal government recently passed a law that could lead to hiring over 86,000 new IRS agents. The good news is that courtesy of the First Circuits ruling, brave individual taxpayers like Mr. Harper may now sue the Internal Revenue Serviceand its new agentswhen it tramples their constitutional rights. Mark Chenoweth, President and General Counsel, NCLA

For more information visit the case pagehere and watch the case video here.

ABOUT NCLA

NCLA is a nonpartisan, nonprofit civil rights group founded by prominent legal scholarPhilip Hamburger to protect constitutional freedoms from violations by the Administrative State. NCLAs public-interest litigation and other pro bono advocacy strive to tame the unlawful power of state and federal agencies and to foster a new civil liberties movement that will help restore Americans fundamental rights.

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In NCLA Win Against IRS, First Circuit Rules Taxpayers Can Indeed Take the Agency to Court - GlobeNewswire

Cost of wildfires

Re: the Aug. 9 article "Wildfire risk map spurs anger, pushback."

Wildfires are part of climate change. The national cost to fight wildfires has averaged over $2.3 billion/year between 2015-20.Property loss and deaths occur in these fires. The article about the Oregon risk map pushback is a sign of the times. People living in those area do not want to pay the costs for greater risk. Insurance premiums are an unaccounted cost in burning fossil fuels. Lloyds of London paid over $130 million in Oregon for wildfires in 2021. Should people living in areas with low risk pay for increased premiums?

Wildfire costs is one more reason that the Inflation Reduction Act is critical. Drought relief will occur and wildfires will decrease in frequency. We should thank our senators for supporting the passage of the bill so we can begin to reverse global warming.

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Inflation Reduction Act

Some assistance and advice, please. The badly misnamed and cruelly misleading Inflation Reduction Act promises to unleash a horde of 87,000 new IRS auditors on unsuspecting taxpayers. In our own backyard, though, our understaffed Border Patrol personnel are working their tails off just to keep the paperwork flowing as literally millions of undocumented newcomers cross our international border. Is something out of whack here? If not, I hereby offer to share my own auditor with other middle-income citizens. I don't think he or she is going to have much to do in harassing me over my modest annual earnings. Is it 2024 yet?

Fraud in the White House

Former President Donald Trump has just shown why he is unfit for any public office. He does not know the difference between the illegal break-in and burglary by the Watergate thieves and the FBI conducting a search based on credible evidence and a judges approval of the warrant previously approved by the director of the FBI and the attorney general of the United States. Trump appointed that judge and the director of the FBI. How many times have we heard him say that only mobsters and the guilty plead the Fifth amendment? He just pled the Fifth 450 times in New York. It is certainly his right to do so, but he said only crooks plead the Fifth. Lastly, the classified information found in his residence is a crime. As a former Air Force officer responsible for handling, storage and safekeeping of classified information, had those documents been in my house I would have been in jail for a long time.

Bad company for US

In the United States and Arizona in particular, the death penalty is legal and carried out. The arguments in its favor, deterrence and retribution, are shaky at best. And some wonder what they say about our cultural values. Another way of evaluating state-sanctioned execution is to look at the nations who support the punishment and those who oppose it. According to deathpenalty.org, nations who have abolished the death penalty include England, Canada, Mexico, France, Italy, Ukraine, Germany, Denmark, New Zealand, and Israel. According to the Stroum Center for Jewish Studies at the University of Washington, the State of Israel is an unusual case. Although the death penalty remains on the books, it has been employed only once, that for the execution of Adolf Eichmann, and never again. On the other hand according to worldpopulationreview.com, nations who employ the death penalty include Afghanistan, China, Iran, Saudi Arabia, Belarus, North Korea, Pakistan and the United States. Just consider.

City Attorney $30,000 payout

Re: the Aug. 8 article "City agrees on $30K payment."

It is bad enough that the Tucson City Attorney's Office paid out $30,000 to two women that based on solid evidence instigated a confrontation with off-duty Tucson Police Officer Robert Szewleski in a restaurant parking lot in 2021. One of the women was initially charged with disorderly conduct but the City Attorney dropped that charge and gave the woman $15,000. What a scam. This cowardly act by the City Attorney's Office, designed to avoid the time, money and risk of litigation, was simply shameful. This case should have gone to trial, which is the job of the City Attorney. That they "walked away" from fighting to support law enforcement also served to embolden others to seek easy money from the City of Tucson. I think the evidence in this matter cleared the officer by the City Attorney's Office and certainly did not warrant a payoff to the instigators.

Let's act smart on global warming

Re: the Aug. 10 article "We must act now on climate emergency."

Greg Falk sets out facts about the rise in global temperatures which are important. However, he omits two critical aspects both of which override anything we here in the U.S. might do.

First, the population in the world is growing too fast and our planet simply cant absorb so many people. The current population is 7.6 billion and is expected to reach another billion by 2030 and 9.8 billion in 2050. Our planet cannot sustain families of five, six, seven and more children. But no one seems to address this issue when discussing global warming.

Second, experts say that unless China and India reduce their carbon emissions, whatever we do in the U.S. will be ineffectual. We should not foolishly adopt measures which hurt us but which are worthless if India and China are not on board.

So focus on reducing world population growth and bring China and India on board for decreasing their carbon emissions.

Pro-life, sometimes

Since the Supreme Court overturned Roe, the Republican Party and legislators have led the fight against abortion (no exceptions). The outrage is that abortion kills a fetus and Republicans are pro-life. But in the last week since the FBI removed classified documents from Mar-a-Lago, fanatic followers of Donald Trump and fervent Republicans are advocating killing FBI agents. Evidently they dont have the sanctity of a fetus. This is horrific and insane rhetoric and behavior. There was a time when the Republican Party was known as the Law and Order Party. They embraced the FBI and championed them cracking down on protestors. It seems now there is nothing pro-life about the Republican Partys view, despite their anti-abortion propaganda. They are now the party of Trump. The only thing Trump is in favor of is: Trump.

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Letters to the Editor: Aug. 22 - Arizona Daily Star

News Analysis

The manifold legal moves undertaken against former President Donald Trump, including the FBIs Aug. 8 raid on his home in Mar-a-Lago, Florida, the Jan. 6 hearings, and the investigation of his business dealings led by New York Attorney General Letitia James, break from long-established protocol about not prosecuting presidents after they leave office and are likely to benefit Trumps standing among supporters in the long term, legal experts say.

As a legal matter, none of these various investigations will keep Trump off the ballot. I dont see it as possible that Trump will be disqualified. The only thing that can keep Trump out of the White House will be the voters, Josh Blackman, a professor at South Texas College of Law Houston, told The Epoch Times.

As anticipation grows over a possible 2024 run for reelection, a flurry of legal developments have occurred in recent weeks, including the raid at the start of last week; Trumps arrival in New York two days later to take part in a deposition concerning his business dealings; an order by the district attorney of Fulton County, Georgia, ordering former New York City mayor and Trump lawyer Rudolph Giuliani to appear before a grand jury looking into claims that Trump sought to overturn the results of the 2020 election; and a judges orderon Aug. 18 that part of the affidavit providing a basis for the search warrant used in the Mar-a-Lago raid could be unsealed.

During the New York deposition, one of the latest steps in a years-long civil suit led by James that has also included subpoenas directed at Donald Trump, Jr., and Ivanka Trump, the former president pled his Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination.

Given that Jamess campaign against the former president is a civil rather than a criminal investigation, the consequences of the Mar-a-Lago raid and the Jan. 6 hearings are potentially of far more significance for Trump and his expected reelection bid, experts say. A great deal more evidence concerning the Mar-a-Lago raid and Trumps alleged mishandling of classified documents is also still expected to come to light, making assessments of the legal basis for the raid premature at this juncture.

But the Constitution clearly sets forth the requirements for a U.S. presidenta minimum age of 35, and having been born in America and lived in the country for at least 14 yearsand Trump obviously meets these requirements, which no one has the legal authority to change arbitrarily, experts note.

Based on the facts now known, the recent moves against the former president are unlikely to damage his reelection bid and may ironically have the effect of motivating undecided voters who find the efforts to prosecute unseemly and not in keeping with traditional approaches to dealing with ex-presidents, they say.

The Mar-a-Lago raid purportedly sought to retrieve documents that federal authorities had requested for months without success. According to a receipt list unsealed on Aug. 12, federal agents seized11 sets of documents with classified markings or that were confidential or secret.

The raid proceeded on the basis of a longstanding attitude on the part of federal law enforcement that sees the presidency in terms of two separate frameworks, Akram Faizer, a professor of law at the Duncan School of Law at Lincoln Memorial University in Harrogate, Tennessee, told The Epoch Times.

Theres the president, who is a person serving for four to eight years, and then theres the office of the president that continues in perpetuity after the president leaves office. And its not fully resolved, but I believe that the governments understanding is that even after a president leaves office, the documents he has are those of the presidency of the United States, not his own. There are good reasons for that, Faizer commented.

The reasons have to do with the safeguarding of sensitive and classified information whose public accessibility would not serve American interests. Here, the reasons for the governments stance rest on a substantial body of past protocol, Faizer argued. Faizer cited the historical example of the Cuban Missile Crisis, in which then-President John F. Kennedy, Jr., persuaded Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev to withdraw Russian missiles from Cuba partly through quid-pro-quo negotiations that included an offer to pull U.S. Jupiter missiles from Turkey and Italy, Faizer said. But the content of these negotiations did not immediately come to light and is still not widely known. They were made available to scholars more than three decades later.

The Kennedy administration never disclosed it publicly, and I dont think any subsequent administrations publicly disclosed it as a matter of U.S. policy. Their explanation was that the missiles were getting old and had to be replaced. But the reality is that we withdraw them, and thats important for the office of the presidency. We didnt want to be seen as undermining an ally, or to convey publicly to the world that we were willing to take a haircut on Turkeys security or our own security, Faizer said.

Having said that, the law with regard to the status of classified information is still not fully settled, Faizer acknowledged. From this point of view, Trumps claims to have unilaterally declassified certain of the documents cannot be dismissed, he said.

The law is kind of open-ended as to whether a president can declassify information. The administrative agencies under the presidents control have procedures to declassify, but I think that is not governed by statute but by executive order, Faizer said.

In agreement with Faizer about the latitude given to presidents and the authority of executive orders is H. Jefferson Powell, a professor of law at Duke University and a former deputy assistant attorney general in the Office of Legal Counsel at the Department of Justice.

The actual classification system itself stems from presidential powers. And while administrative law does limit the presidents discretion, it does so mostly through process. The president has the power to do it, the president has the power to undo it, Powell told The Epoch Times.

On the other hand, presidents can be bound by administrative rules that govern the exercise of their executive power, and presidents are regularly bound by statutes that tell them they may do or not do something. There are procedures that must be followed, and the president cant simply wave a magic wand to make it go away, Powell added.

But in the absence of procedural limits, the president can simply say, Im the source of the classification and Im removing it in this case, he continued.

If Trump took action to declassify the documents while still in office, there may not be much that the Justice Department can do, Powell suggested. It is hard from a legal standpoint to go after a former president for anything he did while in office, as some have sought to do for Trumps alleged disclosure of confidential information concerning ISIS to a Russian foreign minister and ambassador during a White House meeting in 2017, said Powell.

Russia is a hostile power, and I dont have any problem with the notion that it is an impeachable offense to compromise American national security. But that ship has sailed. Theres no current practical question about whether Trump might have committed an impeachable offense while in office, Powell continued.

Given these realities, Faizer thinks it highly unlikely, based on the facts now known, that the Mar-a-Lago raid will result in a prosecution and interfere with or prevent a 2024 run.

I dont think theres enough to prosecute Trump. For a prosecution, there has to be some intent to criminality, and I dont see that there. If Merrick Garland wants to prosecute somebody, he has to get a unanimous jury, crystal clear. Thats hard to do even when someone does something wrong, Faizer said.

If you and I had those documents squirreled away in our apartments, then we could be prosecuted, but were not the president or former president of the United States, he added.

In addition to the difficulties in achieving unanimity among jurors, the question stands as to whether pursuing a former president on such grounds is good form. In Faizers view, the political consequences are likelier to play into Trumps hand than those of his enemies.

Its a good thing that, in our countrys history, typically former presidents are left alone. Former presidents are often opposed to the political agendas of their successors. For example, Barack Obama was very anti-Trump, and Trump has been very vocally hostile to President Biden, too, Faizer said.

You dont want the United States to be like Brazil or Pakistan, where once youre out of office, they put you in jail. It argues against a peaceful transition of power. How do you unanimously convict a man who got 75 million votes? Thats a pretty tall order, he added.

Powell concurred with Faizer that going after a former president will give the appearance of impropriety and will not sit well with many of the voters who will ultimately decide what happens in 2024 and beyond.

Did the former president say certain things and disclose information that he shouldnt have? Thats a constitutional and legal question, but its a different kind of question. Those are both separate from the prudential decision about how to run the Department of Justice or the administration. There are things that might otherwise be appropriate that you might not do because it creates a sense in many people that power is being abused, Powell said.

You cant do your job properly if you are constantly not assuming good faith on the part of policymakers. I read a lot of journals where people make statements [about the issue here]. All I know is that I hope Merrick Garland gave full weight to the prudential reasons not to execute a search warrant, he added.

The civil litigation underway against Trump in New York, which is driven by allegations that Trump and his business associates practiced accounting fraud and misstated the value of assets for financial gain, in reality, has self-serving motives of its own, Michael Alcazar, a professor in the Department of Law, Political Science, and Criminal Justice at CUNY, told The Epoch Times.

Letitia Jamess civil suit appears to be politically motivated. A successful case against former President Trump would be a big boon for her career and her current bid for reelection, Alcazar said.

It seems evident to everyone but James that pursuing this case would be futile since Trump exercised his Fifth Amendment rights. Experts believe that without Trumps testimony, there is no meat to her civil case, he continued.

In Alcazars view, James sees Trump as a political enemy and the civil suit is a means of keeping a hostile media spotlight on the former president during the run-up to November 2024.

James may well push ahead with the litigation, but Trumps lawyers are likely to disavow that their client had knowledge of how financial institutions undertook valuations for Trumps real estate, Alcazar predicted.

This will protect their client from a lawsuit from the attorney general, he said.

The Epoch Times has reached out to the Justice Department and Jamess office for comment.

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Michael Washburn is a New York-based reporter who covers U.S. and China-related topics. He has a background in legal and financial journalism, and also writes about arts and culture. Additionally, he is the host of the weekly podcast Reading the Globe. His books include The Uprooted and Other Stories, When We're Grownups, and Stranger, Stranger.

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Attempts to Prosecute Trump 'Not Prudential' and Will Backfire, Legal Experts Say - The Epoch Times

Former President Donald Trump pictured at a Republican campaign event on June 25, 2022 in Mendon, Illinois. (Photo by Michael B. Thomas/Getty Images)

Donald Trump and his family were ordered to testify in the New York Attorney Generals investigation into allegations of fraudulent financial conduct by Trump and the Trump Organization. Although Trump and his children will appear for their depositions, dont expect them to say anything. The smart money is that they will assert the Fifth Amendment and refuse to answer any substantive questions.

Taking the Fifth has become a familiar moniker for all types of witnesses gangsters, politicians, even lawyers and judges. Yes, in a civil trial a jury may draw an adverse inference against a party who takes the Fifth. And, combined with the substantive evidence, a verdict canbe reached against that party resulting from the invocation of the privilege. Thus, there is a significant consequence for taking the Fifth in a courtroom setting. And why shouldnt there be?A party should indeed have the benefit of the adverse partys testimony in a civil case, and the party who refuses to testify should pay the price for that refusal, even if the asserting party is resting his silence on the fundamental constitutional right against self-incrimination, which would be fully protected if it were a criminal trial. That makes total sense!

Is there or should there be a difference in a civil trial? Maybe. Typically, when someone takes the Fifth in a proceeding of interest to the public, the man on the street draws an adverse inference against him, i.e., the person who asserts the Fifth is a bad guy. Why else would he take the Fifth? In fact, Donald Trump himself has publicly articulated this commonly-held view. The mob takes the Fifth, hesaid at a campaign rally in September 2017. If youre innocent, why are you taking the Fifth Amendment? Ironically, Trump himself invoked the Fifth Amendment in 1990, during his bitter and public divorce from his late first wife, Ivana Trump. The real estate mogul took the Fifth to avoid answering questions about adultery, invoking the Fifth a total of 97 times in deposition questions that were mostly about other women. And many remember Senator Joe McCarthy pushing the envelope daily during the Army/McCarthy hearings in the early 50s, actually compelling witnesses to publicly take the Fifth in order to incite the public to vilify them.

Now, though, the shoe is on the other foot the Trump family itself is under the gun. Is the ex-president concerned? Probably not. His thinking on issues like this is quite malleable. He will simply say that he and his family have done nothing wrong, and that this is a political witch hunt, like so many other witch hunts against him, and theyll refuse to play ball. Half the public wont believe him, half will. And, as long as he has his half, he wont really care what the rest think.

So, while Trump may be sui generis and thus not a particularly good model for this discussionhis taking the Fifth does squarely raise the issue: Is it fair for the public to conclude that someone is a bad person simply because they take the Fifth Amendment? Is it reasonable or appropriate to make a negative assessment about someone who asserts a core constitutional right that has been a fundamental backstop against government overreaching since the dawn of the Republic? Put differently, does the rights mere assertion imply badness or wrongdoing, however lawful it clearly may be for any individual to take that tack?

According to public opinion polling, invoking the Fifth Amendment is not necessarily an indication that someone is guilty. In a poll conducted after Trumps legal team indicated the possibility of Trump pleading the Fifth in the Russia investigation, 51% of registered voters said that when someone invokes the Fifth Amendment, it does not usually mean they are guilty, while 36% said it usually does. 42% of Democrats said pleading the Fifth usually implies the person is guilty, compared to 31% of Republicans and 33% of independents who said the same.

Heres the irony. Steve Bannon was convicted of contempt of Congress for refusing to even appear when he was subpoenaed by the U.S. House Select Committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol. Had he simply appeared and asserted the Fifth to every question asked or to not produce protected documents, that would have been the end of the matter with no consequence to him other than the view that many would surely have as a result that he had, indeed, criminally participated in the riot. But he wanted to stand tall and not give an impression of weakness by relying on a constitutional right. He even says now, parenthetically,that if he has to go to jail, so be it!

Were not fans of Bannon. But doesnt it say something about how the public views decisions about someone taking the Fifth? In truth, the public has a perfect right to make that decision but is it fair? In a day when so much of our conduct has been criminalized, and with people often taking the Fifth for noble reasons such as protecting their families or themselves from personal embarrassment or their affiliations with ostracized groups is there anything bad about being a communist or belonging to the NAACP in Alabama? any thoughtful criminal lawyer will almost always counsel her client to take five.

By way of example, as a young prosecutor we sought an interview with a witness. His lawyer, a true Brahmin of the bar with total credibility, told us that his client had done nothing wrong and that the interview would accomplish nothing for us. Still, he would decline. He, indeed, said that if I were representing Jesus Christ himself nowadays, I would have him take the Fifth Amendment. Quite a statement!

But isnt there truth to what this lawyer said to us? Most thinking prosecutors today accept that almost every witnesss lawyer is totally justified in insisting on protection for a clients interview by a prosecutor. If so, why should the public draw the seriously negative inference that it typically does when a witness in an investigatory proceeding takes the Fifth? Yes, Bannon had a reason to resist invoking the Fifth he idealized himself in the martyr role as a Trump loyalist intent on fighting back against the House Select Committee. Most witnesses dont have such motivation. They and even more so their lawyers who advise them simply dont want to risk an overzealous prosecutor using an interview or testimony potentially out of context to make a case against them.

The contrast with Miranda during police interrogations is worth noting. Although police are able to get suspects to waive their Miranda rights in most cases, many suspects are advised by their lawyers not to speak to the police. Would anybody criticize the lawyer for giving this advice? Would anybody believe its bad advice, or that the suspects silence means hes guilty?

Most witnesses simply want to protect themselves and their loved ones. Why should they have to pay the price of the publics clamor against them for exercising a constitutional right? Shouldnt the public be better educated about the limited meaning of ones exercise of the constitutional right that should have no adverse consequences outside a courtroom setting? Yes, a hard-to-estimate but extremely significant number of those who take the Fifth probably have done something wrong that requires it. But what about the rest who assert it for reasons having absolutely nothing to do with being guilty?How often in common parlance do people say Ill take the Fifth when they themselves have done nothing wrong, but simply dont want to answer a question that is, for whatever reason, hard to deal with?

Joel Cohen, a former state and federal prosecutor, practices white collar criminal defense law as Senior Counsel at Stroock & Stroock & Lavan. He is the author of Broken Scales: Reflections On Injustice (ABA Publishing, 2017) and an adjunct professor at both Fordham and Cardozo Law Schools.

Bennett Gershman is a Professor of Law at the Elisabeth Haub School of Law at Pace University, a former prosecutor in the Manhattan District Attorneys Office, and a Special Assistant Attorney General in New York States Anti-Corruption Office.

This is an opinion piece. The views expressed in this article are those of just the author.

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If Trump Takes the Fifth, Is He Guilty? - Law & Crime

Charles W. Milliken| The Daily Telegram

Now that Roe has been overturned, once again the right to privacy has come to public attention.These two words open up a whole can of worms that the Supreme Court has wrestled with and come down on all sides of the issue.

Back in 1965, the Supreme Court ruled a Connecticut law banning contraception was constitutionally invalid(Griswold v. Connecticut). Justice Hugo Black wrote in that decision, Privacy is a broad, abstract and ambiguous concept.

The court, in this instance, ruled that privacy involving intimate relationships negated the power of the state to intercede or regulate. From the acorn of that ruling grew the mighty oak of the right of a pregnant woman to terminate her pregnancy. Afterwards came rulings leading up to the right to gay marriage, among other rulings dealing with aspects of sexual morality.

There appears to me to be two large questions in thosewords. What is a right? And what is privacy? Today Ill focus on rights,and next week on privacy.

In the Declaration of Independence, the signers opined that we …are endowed by (our) Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. They stated that rights came from God, not from man. How could there be anything called a right that did not come from God? Otherwise, any right which depends on the sufferance of a government, no matter how constituted, is not a right at all, but a more or less temporary permission to do some thing, or possess some thing, subject to change or withdrawal at any time the governing authorities so wish.

Consider the Bill of Rights. In order to get the Constitution approved, these 10 amendments were passed since the main body of the Constitution didnt deal with rights adequately. Having listed a number of rights, the Ninth Amendment made clear the rights so enumerated were not an exhaustive list. In other words, the writers of these amendments thought there were many rights too numerous to be included, and that everyone, practically, took for granted. The right to privacy, for example,was nowhere listed.

The Fifth Amendment, following on the Declaration, stated that no one could be deprived of life, liberty or property without due process of law; nor shall private property be taken for public use, without just compensation. It is immediately apparent in the text that due process of law and just compensation provide loopholes large enough to drive a truck through.

Consider the right to private property. You may think you own your own home, but you only own it if you comply with myriad government regulations specifying what you can do with that home and, indeed, whether or not you can even live in it. Back in the day, Bonnie and I bought a fixer-upper, but even after having it fixed up, and bought and paid for it, we could not live in it until the local Michigan authorities issued us a Certificate of Occupancy,and they took their sweet time. It was our only home, and we had to pretend not to live in it until the certificate was forthcoming. We are thankful down here in South Carolina such certificates are not necessary.

The courts have held again and again various authorities have the right to intrude on your property rights anytime they feel like it. They can also take it any time they feel like it, provided it is for a public purpose,very elastically defined, and just compensation is whatever the government says it is, not what you think it is. Also, the courts have permitted your property to be taken, without being taken.Say a new environmental regulation destroys half the market value of land you own. Sorry. Thats not a taking.No compensation.

What about the right to life, which IS enumerated? Does the baby in the womb have any such right?

If a constitutionally enumerated right to property can be so thoroughly ignored, what about unenumerated rights? Privacy, unenumerated, Ill consider next.

Charles Milliken is a professor emeritus after 22 years of teaching economics and related subjects at Siena Heights University. He can be reached at milliken.charles@gmail.com.

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Charles Milliken: Defining what exactly is a 'right' - Monroe Evening News