I'm not sure I agree with this new 5th Circuit case (per Duncan, J.) allowing the seizure of a trailer that was homemade and therefore lacked a VIN. Quick thread. ca5.uscourts.gov/opinions/unpub…
The opinion case starts with the premise that Texas state law permits a trailer to be seized when the VIN has been removed. But here, the VIN hadn't been removed: it was a homemade trailer, which never was assigned a VIN.
That makes no difference, CA5 says, b/c Tex state law still requires that each trailer has a VIN -- the DMV assigns one if it didn't come with it. So the trailer could still be seized because it lacked a VIN.
But I'm a little bit lost here. Step back. It's irrelevant to the 4th Amendment what Texas statutory law authorizes. The seizure required probable cause (PC) of a crime. What's the crime?
When the VIN has been altered or removed, as in the York case, the PC can be based on the Texas statute on tampering with IDs, Penal Code § 31.11. codes.findlaw.com/tx/penal-code/…
But even under that statute, there's an affirmative defense: If you're the owner of the property, or have the owner's consent, you're not liable. It's really a stolen goods statute. codes.findlaw.com/tx/penal-code/…
Here, the seized trailer was the guy's own home-made trailer. In light of that, I don't get the crime he was supposed to have been committing. The DMV will assign a VIN to trailers that didn't get one, but I don't see in the code where using the trailer w/o a VIN is a crime.
But maybe I'm just missing it? Totally possible, as I'm not familiar with the code, but I'm not sure. /end
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Whoever wins the election, it's worth noting that the difference between a clear victory and a coin flip in a Presidential election these days amounts to decisions of just a few percent -- a handful of people in a room of 100. As a nation, we're sharply divided either way.
I'm seeing a lot of people say, "I can't believe so many people support Trump, I wasn't expecting this to be so close." Understandable surprise given the polls, but note that so many people support Trump under any of these outcomes. We're sharply divided as a nation.
That's part of what I was trying to bring out with my "two completely different worlds" series of tweets. There's a real sense in which we have two completely different worlds -- two separate sets of facts, two separate languages.
A question, with three hypotheticals, for those who favor Supreme Court court-packing (or, if you prefer, "court expansion").
The question: How much of your view is about expected results?
The three hypotheticals are below.
(And yes, they're hypos, not real -- I get that.)
In all these hypotheticals, assume the year is 2022. Biden is President, and both the Senate and the House are in Democratic hands. Amy Barrett is on the Court. We have now had one year of the Supreme Court with Justice Barrett.
Here goes:
(1) Imagine that, for some reason, the Court responded to discussion of court-packing with a "switch in time that saves nine." Roberts and Gorsuch flipped left. The Court switched political direction and became a force for progressive social change, w/out changes in personnel.
Justice Gorsuch, joined by Justices Kagan and Sotomayor, sends a message: If the police go onto curtilage, the legality of that is governed by the implied license framework of FL v. Jardines.
The Vermont Supreme Court ruled that the garage was in the curtilage of the home (that is, for 4A purposes, that the area around the garage counted as the home), but that it was okay to go on it because Vermont precedents recognize a right to inspect in semi-private areas.
This is the absolute least important aspect of the Barrett nomination (don't say I didn't warn you), but for gunner law students, a 6-3 Court means an increasing disparity between the competitiveness of SCOTUS clerk hiring on the left and the right.
Thread below.
It's not exactly news that Supreme Court law clerk hiring fits certain ideological patterns. The courtesy practice is for applicants to apply to every Justice, but as a practical matter, Justices tend to hire law clerks that roughly share their views. greenbag.org/v13n1/v13n1_ne…
There are exceptions to this, of course. Scalia famously hired a "counter-clerk," at least many Terms. And some Justices hire from a wider range of views than others. But that's a general trend. repository.law.umich.edu/cgi/viewconten…
How Trump uses the power fo the Presidency to make money for his favorite person in the world -- himself. nytimes.com/interactive/20…
According to the article, Trump would keep an eye out on who was funding his businesses, give them an audience, and show special attention to any government problems they had. (And if you had government problems, you knew what to do.)
In effect, he was treating his Presidential powers like they were his personal assets: You help him at Mar-A-Lago, he helps you though his executive branch authority. (A major scandal in any other administration; in this one, Saturday from 2-2:15pm.)
Here's a thread with a few random thoughts about "court packing," that is, changing the size of the Supreme Court.
Bonus: My views are somewhere in the middle and are likely to annoy most people.
1) Court packing is a really bad idea. It's a major norm violation, & it destabilizes the third branch in a really dangerous way. The counterargument, of course, is that the other side has *already* violated norms; this is a counter to that norm violation. I disagree, because....
it seems to me that the real cause of the claimed "norm breaking" is the gradual devolution, in both parties, to purely partisan Supreme Court votes in the Senate. This wasn't a big problem when Presidential and Senate control were form the same party. Partisan = confirmed.