Isn't it illegal for Congress to pass a law for just one person?

discuss this please...someone explain how the government can pass a law for one person? talk about a "special interest"!

i am so confused!

This is the precedent for a very slippery RW slope.

investigators claiming to represent wealthy Arabs attempted to bribe members of Congress into initiating legislation that would allow them, as individuals, to enter the United States.

At least in that case, it was perfectly legal. Unless I misunderstood the situation.

and about the house check kiting scandal about 12 years later... and how the timing was right for the next round of comfortably arrogant (and thus believing themselves to be above the law) members of the majority to be embroiled in some kind of scandal.... and Tom DeLay seems just the guy to lead the way. Round three?

At least, they couldn't back in the old America, the one run under the Constitution. Equal Protection Under the Law and stuff like that, doesn't that mean they can't make group/individual specific laws?

Happens hundreds of times a year in the immigration context. Never seen it in another context

"The Bill of Attainder Clause"
Definition: A legislative act that singles out an individual or group for punishment without a trial.

In this case, they are not convicting a single person or group, but this new law applies only to Schiavo, so it is similar.

There are other interpretations of the bill of Attainder which suggest that it is more about separation of powers, which are being violated here as well.

because it doesn't single anyone out for punnishment (yeah, yeah, the question of weather being alive in such a state is punnishment, that's not my point)

I'm no lawyer, but this could be a grey enough area to slide through, especially with the courts being what they are today.

I would probably argue this on states' rights or separation of powers. But like I said, I'm a physicist, not a lawyer.

It's clearly inappropriate out here in the real world, but who knows how the fundie lawers will twist things.

The problem here isn't so much that they passed a law relating to a single specific individual so much as the fact that they passed a law designed to subvert and overturn a judicial decision affecting that same individual. Kind of like passing a law to say that Ted Bundy shouldn't be punished for murder even though he was convicted. But then these right wingnuts hve little respect or understanding of judicial precedent and judicial authority. They prefer to make up their own rules as they go along.

Abstract Appeal is a blog run by an appellate attorney who blogs about the Terri Schiavo case quite a bit..It's pretty good.

Schiavo Thoughts: Terri's Law II, Constitutional Concerns

Also check out the Terri Schiavo information page, there's a link on his main page.

http://www.techlawjournal.com/glossary/legal/attainder.htm

Bill of Attainder

Definition: A legislative act that singles out an individual or group for punishment without a trial.

The Constitution of the United States, Article I, Section 9, paragraph 3 provides that: "No Bill of Attainder or ex post facto Law will be passed."

"The Bill of Attainder Clause was intended not as a narrow, technical (and therefore soon to be outmoded) prohibition, but rather as an implementation of the separation of powers, a general safeguard against legislative exercise of the judicial function or more simply - trial by legislature." U.S. v. Brown, 381 U.S. 437, 440 (1965).

"These clauses of the Constitution are not of the broad, general nature of the Due Process Clause, but refer to rather precise legal terms which had a meaning under English law at the time the Constitution was adopted. A bill of attainder was a legislative act that singled out one or more persons and imposed punishment on them, without benefit of trial. Such actions were regarded as odious by the framers of the Constitution because it was the traditional role of a court, judging an individual case, to impose punishment." William H. Rehnquist, The Supreme Court, page 166.

"Bills of attainder, ex post facto laws, and laws impairing the obligations of contracts, are contrary to the first principles of the social compact, and to every principle of sound legislation. ... The sober people of America are weary of the fluctuating policy which has directed the public councils. They have seen with regret and indignation that sudden changes and legislative interferences, in cases affecting personal rights, become jobs in the hands of enterprising and influential speculators, and snares to the more-industrious and less-informed part of the community." James Madison, Federalist Number 44, 1788.

or declares guilt, but this is a related situation and does address the seperation of powers, congress is voting to overule state courts.

This is in violation of the constitution because congress is trampling over the judiciary and the rights of the state of florida.

What Congress has opened itself up to now is that thousands of citizens can go to court and sue that they are being denied 'equal protection under the law'- I forget which Amendment that is, but will look it up. If TS gets one kind of treatment 'under the law' passed by Congress, then we all are entitled to it.

I hope and pray the lawsuits start today.

in 2000 Bush* vs Gore

Amendment 14
Ratified 1868


Section 1. All persons born or naturalized in the United States...are citizens of the United States and of the States wherein they reside.

No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deny to any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.

Sections 2-3. Apportionment and qualification of elected representatives.

Sections 4. Public debt provisions.

Section 5. The Congress shall have power to enforce, by appropriate legislation, the provisions of this article.

It simply gave jurisdction to a federal court in this case.

...in Bush** vs. Gore.

NGU.