Tasha Lyle

• They may use a legal device known as amicus curiae, literally "friend of the court," briefs to try and influence court cases.
• Amines curiae briefs are briefs filed by people or groups who are not parties to a suit.
• The ability of individuals, groups, and corporations to lobby the government is protected by the “right of petition” in the First Amendment of the Constitution. Lobbyists use time spent with legislators and Executive Branch officials to explain the goals of the organizations they represent, and to present those organizations' points of view. Another important function of lobbyists is to serve as a conduit for information flowing the other way, from officials to the people employing the lobbyists; they can serve as legislative tacticians, determining the best way for an organization to fulfill its goals.
• The body of judge-made law is referred to as common law
• Common law countries around the world include: United States; Britain, Australia, Canada, India, and New Zealand.
• The rules and principles which are the basis of court decisions are referred to as Case Law.
• The doctrine of stare decisis means to stand on the decided cases.
• Since 1998, 43 percent of the 198 members of Congress who left government to join the private sector have registered to lobby using the “revolving door of influence.” In 2009, President Obama signed two Executive Orders and three Presidential Memoranda on his first day in office governing how former lobbyists can be employed in the government, and restrictions on lobbying once leaving the government.
• This week we also reflect on the structure and function of our American system of government. We have seen that the American concept of democracy rests on five basic notions. First, each individual has worth. Second, all individuals are equal. Third, the majority of the people rules, but the majority must respect the rights of any minority. Fourth, compromise, or the blending and adjusting of competing interests, is necessary. Fifth, each individual must have the widest possible degree of freedom.
• Simultaneously, the Constitution describes the powers that belong to the state governments.  These "reserved powers" are reserved to the states.  It is also possible to speak of "concurrent powers," which are shared between the federal and state governments.  Finally, it is possible to describe "powers denied" to both federal and state governments, like the power to abridge individual rights by restricting the right to vote.
• Since 1998, almost half of the 198 members of Congress who left government registered to lobby.  In 2009, President Obama signed three Presidential Memoranda and two Executive Orders and on his first day in office which restricted lobbying and governed how former members of Congress can be employed once leaving the government.
  
• We have seen that government is the institution through which a society makes and enforces its public policies—all those things a government decides to do. Every government has three kinds of power: legislative power, or the power to establish law; executive power, or the power to carry out the law; and judicial power, or the power to interpret laws and settle disputes. These powers are often outlined in a constitution— the body of laws that sets out a government’s structure, principles, and processes.
   
    And, finally, we have learned that, as is stated in the Preamble to the U.S. Constitution, the goals of the our government are to form a more perfect union; establish justice; ensure domestic tranquility; provide for the common defense; promote the general welfare; and secure the liberty of its citizens.
  
• The assigned reading is almost 30 pages from the first and last chapter of the ebook Lobbying and Policy Change by Baumgartner, et al, published in 2009.  It is a unique study of lobbying at the federal level resulting in a surprising, yet obvious, conclusion.  They discovered that sixty percent of recent lobbying campaigns failed to change policy despite millions of dollars spent trying.
• As stated previously, the Constitution left it to the Congress to determine the structure of the federal court system. What emerged was a multi-layered system that includes:
• One aspect common to many if not most bureaucracies is their location in what political scientists call an “iron triangle” of power and influence. 
• Today, each of the 50 states has two senators who serve renewable terms of 6 years. 
• Each of the 50 states has a different number of representatives, depending upon their relative population, and this is determined in the national census conducted every 10 years.  There are 435 representatives who serve renewable terms of 2 years, with California having the most, while small states like Vermont or Wyoming have just one.
• Among the prominent special courts are the Court of Claims, the Customs Court, the Court of Customs and Patent Appeals and Territorial Courts.
• Its decisions constitute the highest law of the land.
• thousands of requests for review - writ of certiorari

• When it comes to the cases that the Supreme Court will consider, there are several factors that bear on the decision of whether or not a case will be heard. These factors include:

   
   
  •   Whether a legal question has been decided differently by various lower courts and needs resolution by the highest court.
   
  •   Whether there is a Constitutional issue involved.
   
  •   Whether the issue involves disputes between states or states and the federal government.
   
  •   Whether a lower court’s decision conflicts with an existing Supreme Court ruling.
   
  •   Whether the issue could have significance beyond the parties of dispute.
   
  •   Whether the Solicitor General is pressuring the Supreme Court to take the case.
• According to the rule of four, four of the nine justices need to agree to decide the cases that need to be reviewed.
• Simply put, and as a generalization, conservatives want small government in the economy and big government in the culture. Liberals want small government in the culture and big government in the economy. Libertarians want small government in both spheres; populists want large government in both spheres.
• he Supreme Court opinions, both concurring and dissenting, are published by the federal government in an edition entitled “United States Reports.”
• The Supreme Court depends upon the Executive and Legislative Branches to enforce its decisions, since it is not empowered to enforce them itself.
• Unlike the president and members of Congress, there are no requirements specified for justices. There is, for instance, no requirement for law degree, but all justices have had them.
• only about 150 of 60,000 laws passed by Congress have been found to be unconstitutional.
• From Biotech Empire
    Meat from cloned animals – untested and unlabeled – is coming to supermarkets in the United States. A headline from The New York Times:
• tentatively
• Chief Justice John G. Roberts, Jr. (Conservative)
    Justice Sonia Sotomayor (Liberal)
    Justice Antonin Scalia (Conservative)
    Justice Anthony Kennedy (Centrist/Conservative)
    Justice Elena Kagan (Liberal)
    Justice Clarence Thomas (Conservative)
    Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg (Liberal)
    Justice Stephen Breyer (Liberal)
    Justice Samuel Anthony Alito (Conservative)
• In just 4 ounces, a typical burger patty is packed with the meat and fat of 50 to 100 cattle from multiple states and two to four countries. Eat two hamburgers a week - as the average American does - and in a year’s time the consumer samples a stampede: 5,200 to 10,400 cattle.”
• Karen Charman
• “The biotech industry has chosen a slam dunk strategy to gain public acceptance for its products: Slip unlabeled genetically engineered food into the food supply and hope too many people don’t notice or object. Deal with those who do notice and object with an army of “experts” that stand ready to refute any criticisms or critics of the technology. If a lot of people start to object, by that time it should be too late because much of the food supply will already be genetically engineered.”
• During the early years of Social Security there were as many as 42 workers paying into the system for every retiree. But as the country has aged, that ratio has declined. Today about three workers pay into the system for every retiree in Social Security's "pay-as-you-go" system.
• 12. Kelo v. City of New London (2005)
• Today, the pendulum is swinging back in the other direction, with certain states seeking to impose the death penalty for rape (especially of children).
• Numerous public documents obtained under the Freedom of Information Act show that the Pentagon, for example, keeps tabs on non-violent protesters, including Quakers and student groups, by collecting information and storing it in a military anti-terrorism database.
• Following this decision, the Court has also restricted the religious practice of ingesting certain hallucinogenic drugs (but not others – depending on their status under the Controlled Substances Act).

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• As the Constitution suggests, the United States was not established to be a "pure democracy" in which people rule themselves - some call this "mob rule" – but, rather a representative democracy or a "constitutional republic" characterized, in the United States, by the rule of law, separation of powers, checks and balances, civil liberties and a federalist division of power between national and state governments. 
• He has erected a multitude of New Offices, and sent hither swarms of Officers to harass our people, and eat out their substance.
     
• In this sense, the Constitution reflects elitist rather than populist interests.
• • Legislative (the Congress, described in Article I)
   
  •   Executive (the President, the Vice President, 15 Cabinet departments, and numerous boards, agencies, and commissions, described in Article II)
   
  •   Judicial (the Supreme Court, 96 District Courts, 12 Appeals Courts, and several special courts, described in Article III)
• The president is elected, not by the popular vote, but by the electoral vote of the Electoral College, meaning that each state has a certain number of electors.  Today, there are 535 electoral votes in play, and a candidate has to reach 270 to win the election.  California is the most valuable state because it is the most populous; although John Kerry won California in 2004, he still lost the overall election.
• "When firearms go, all goes.  We need them every hour."
• The Bill was influenced by George Mason's 1776 Virginia Declaration of Rights, the 1689 English Bill of Rights, works of the Age of Enlightenment pertaining to natural rights, and earlier English political documents such as the Magna Carta (1215).
• The United States Bill of Rights consists of the first ten amendments to the United States Constitution. Among the enumerated rights these amendments guarantee are the freedom of speech, the freedom of the press, the freedom of assembly, the free exercise of religion, the freedom to petition, the people's right to keep and bear arms, and the rights to be free of unreasonable search and seizure, cruel and unusual punishment, and compelled self-incrimination.
• There is one civil liberty the Founders thought was important enough to include in the actual main body of the Constitution: habeas corpus.
• The Declaration of Independence and the U.S. Constitution were not written in isolation; they were part of a much larger movement – political, philosophical, and intellectual – called the Enlightenment. 

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