|
| Wrong venue to consider cohabitation law |
| Tuesday, May 10, 2005 |
| A sheriff's deputy is openly breaking the law and refuses to stop. What's a good sheriff to do? He told her she had to quit breaking the law or quit being a deputy. She quit being a deputy. Former deputy Debora Hobbs has now sued Pender County, N.C. Sheriff Carson Smith, and the American Civil Liberties Union is standing with the deputy.
The law she deliberately violated was the North Carolina law against cohabitation. Smith found out that Hobbs and her boyfriend had been living together for three years. The sheriff says the cohabitation was both a moral issue and a legal question. He said he tries to avoid hiring people who openly live together but does not send out deputies to enforce the law.
There are about 144,000 unmarried couples living together in North Carolina, and they are all violating a statute that has been on the books since 1805.
Six other states have similar laws. They are Virginia, West Virginia, Florida, Michigan, Mississippi and North Dakota. In January this year, the North Dakota House defeated a challenge to its cohabitation law on a 52 to 37 vote, so even though the laws are rarely enforced, they have not yet been relegated to the graveyard for the cultural obsolete.
The ACLU will argue that they should be. "Certainly the government has no business regulating relationships between consenting adults in the privacy of their own homes," said Jennifer Rudinger, state executive director of the ACLU. "This law is 200 years old, and a lot of people are very surprised that we even have it on the books."
As an originalist libertarian, I would vote in the legislature to eliminate the law, but I would rule from the bench that the law is constitutional, and only the legislature can change it. If the legislature were to change such laws also, their should be precedence set that would eliminate a lot of the laws requiring insurance companies to insure co-habitants, since the "government has no business regulating relationships between consenting adults in the privacy of their own homes."
I too do not believe the government has a legitimate interest in regulating most relationships between consenting adults. If I had my way, our elected representative would neither sanction relationships they prefer, nor prohibit those with which they have moral objections. As a legislator, the only activity I would attempt to regulate between consenting adults is that which poses a clear and present danger to innocent third parties.
Judges, however, are not legislators, and the North Carolina matter is now before judges, not legislators. The duty of judges is to determine whether the law violates the constitution, not whether it conflicts with contemporary standards. I challenge anyone to point to a provision in the U.S. Constitution that prevents states from "regulating relationships between consenting adults."
The U.S. Constitution, through the 10th Amendment, gives states very wide latitude and broad powers. As James Madison said in Federalist Paper #45, "The powers delegated by the proposed Constitution to the federal government are few and defined. Those which are to remain in state governments are numerous and indefinite."
Judges too frequently attempt to remedy "outdated" attitudes by the people's representatives. Thus the attempts by liberals to load the courts with what they call "moderate" judges.
Recently, a very immoderate judge, Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia told an audience at Texas A&M that the Constitution is a legal document, and like other legal documents, it does not change. He then asked, "What in the world is a moderate judge? What is a moderate interpretation of the Constitution? Halfway between what it really says and what you'd like it to say?"
The North Carolina law may or may not conform to contemporary North Carolina standards, but that is up to the state legislature to decide. It is not a job for the courts.
Ralph Bristol |
posted by Jack Mercer @ 5/10/2005 12:12:00 PM   |
|
|
|
|
| About Me |
|
Name: Jack Mercer
Home:
About Me:
See my complete profile
"Snipet" (pronounced: snipe - it) is not a word.It is a derivative of two words: "Snipe" and "Snippet".
Miriam Webster defines Snipe as: to aim a carping or snide attack, or: to shoot at exposed individuals (as of an enemy's forces) from a usually concealed point of vantage.
Miriam Webster defines Snippet as: : a small part, piece, or thing; especially : a brief quotable passage.
In short, "Snipets" are brief, snide shots at exposed situations from a concealed vantage point.
WARNING! With due reverence to the Bill of Rights and the First Amendment there is NO comment policy on the News Snipet.
|
| Other things |
| Archives |
|
| Politics |
|
| Template by |
|
|
