SCOTUS Dissent: Alito-Thomas

 

In the published dissent regarding the injunction to stop the deportation of prisoners held in Texas, the dissenters Alito and Thomas use the term “putative class of detainees.” This is legal double-speak for we don’t know who they are. Therein lies the rub, they don’t know. By that logic, you can capture and torture people even if you don’t know who they are.

From Page One of Alito Thomas Dissent

They go on to question the injunction as the term “[t]he Government” is not specific enough even though the title mentions Donald J. Trump, President of the United States, Et Al. I guess the reference to the president and others is a bit vague for people to know it is about our government.

The dissenting duo goes on to say they think the court lacks jurisdiction because the “All Writs Act of 1789” didn’t specify the courts had power beyond merely aiding the president in his endeavors. What they fail to mention in this is the fact that the president quite probably didn’t have the power to make his decision in the first place as most of that power resides with Congress under the Alien Enemies Act of 1798 and only in times of declared war.

Furthermore, this act was intended as an emergency measure in the event of an invasion in the time of war. It has never been used outside wartime. For Trump to declare that a gang of thugs from a foreign country, many of whom had been here for years, amounted to a wartime invasion is a stretch of the imagination, even a sociopath’s imagination. Trump is throwing around terms like declaring war as if there wasn’t a process for doing this. Ronald Reagan declared a “War on Drugs,” but nobody assumed this was an invasion by a foreign power that warranted that we alert the Pentagon.

It seems like someone is trying to desperately find justification for a desired action and not anything close to the intention of the law as enacted 236 years ago. It is doubtful that 18th century leaders envisioned a group of foreign thugs being thought of in terms of a wartime invasion by a foreign power.

Actually, the Alien Enemies Act was part of a series of acts enacted when we feared an impending war with France. Of those laws, this is the only one not expired or repealed. It gives the president certain powers during a “declared war” when the U.S. faces an “invasion or predatory incursion” by another country or foreign government.

Trump is claiming some divine authority to brand anyone an “enemy” who may be subject to his wrath. In a sworn statement by an ICE official before a U.S. district court, “the lack of specific information about each specific individual is used to highlight the risk they pose.”

Even the most conservative and faithful SCOTUS supporters of Donald Trump gagged on this one. All except the two who have been paid so handsomely that they will rubber stamp anything he does. Alito and Thomas are owned by billionaires. Alito gets his money and gifts from Paul Singer. When Singer has matters of business before the Supreme Court, Justice Alito has never recused himself. Justice Thomas has never restricted himself to a single benefactor but Harlan Crow, David Sokol, Wayne Huizenga, and Paul “Tony” Novelly have all been very good to him.

I leave you with a Justice Thomas quote:

“The job is not worth doing for what they pay, but it is worth doing for the principle.” I think the quote is proper, but the word principle is misspelled. It should be “principal” where it refers to a sum of money invested.