... which is a mile from my house, walkable in the length of time it takes to listen to one side of the oral argument through my iPhone earbuds. I'd have finished the other side walking home, but the text tone dinged and it was Meade saying "good morning," and a phone call ensued, dissipating my on-taskedness, which I'm trying to get back.
When the Constitution says "The Times, Places and Manner of holding Elections for Senators and Representatives, shall be prescribed in each State by the Legislature thereof," can the people of a state, using the initiative, set up an independent commission to do the redistricting for federal elections? That is, can the people be the "Legislature" or is the legislature only that elected law-making body that we think of as "the legislature"? If a legislature is "'The power that makes laws' (Johnson); a body of persons invested with the power of making the laws of a country or state" (OED), then does that include the people acting through an initiative, which is a law-making process that states only began to adopt around the turn of the 20th century?
What do words mean? Cowper is almost as distracting as a text in the middle of an oral argument, since his poem does not direct our attention to a stable meaning of the word "legislature" but to the way legislatures have the power to destabilize the meaning of words:
A Raven, while with glossy breastADDED: Perhaps what's got you distracted is: Do ravens have chickens? The OED defines "chicken" as "The young of the domestic fowl" and "Extended to the young of any bird. Obs."
Her new-laid eggs she fondly pressed,
And on her wicker-work high mounted
Her chickens prematurely counted
(A fault philosophers might blame,
If quite excepted from the same),
Enjoyed at case the genial day.
“Twas April, as the bumpkins say,
The Legislature called it May;
But suddenly a wind as high
As ever swept a winter sky
Shook the young leaves about her ears,
And filled her with a thousand fears,
Lest the rude blast should snap the bough:,
And spread her golden hopes below;
But just at eve the blowing weather
And all her fears were hushed together.
“And now,” quoth poor unthinking Ralph,
“‘Tis over, and the brood is safe.”
(For ravens, though as birds of omen
They teach both conjurers and old women
To tell us what is to befall,
Can’t prophecy themselves at all.)
The morning came, when neighbour Hodge,
Who long had marked her airy lodge, ·
And destined all the treasure there
A gift to his expecting fair,
Climbed like a squirrel to his dray,
And bore the worthless prize away.
‘Tis Providence alone secures,
In every change, both mine and yours.
Safety consists not in escape
From dangers of a frightful shape;
An earthquake may be bid to spare
The man that’s strangled by a hair.
Fate steals along with silent tread,
Found oftenest in what least we dread;
Frowns in the storm with angry brow,
But in the sunshine strikes the blow.
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21 comments:
A legislature of penguins. That should be the group plural.
I assume Cowper was writing about the adoption of the Gregorian calendar, which took place in Britain in 1752.
But King Obama I says that the United nations is our Legislature now. That should save us a lot of money spent on the other 535 men and women claiming the quaint memory of ruling a separate branch of the Federal Government described in that outdated Constitution thingee. John Roberts and friends will find a way to make that law.
Like the CSA's flag being removal, a UN flag replacing the Stars and Stripes will be a big expense, one time.
The bigger cost will be removal of the White Men's monuments in DC such as the Marine Corps Memorial. They do offend the new undocumented immigrant citizens.
From 1776: "He has refused for a long time, after such dissolutions, to cause others to be elected; whereby the Legislative powers, incapable of Annihilation, have returned to the People at large for their exercise."
...
"And now,” quoth poor unthinking Ralph,
“‘Tis over, and the brood is safe.”
...
ADDED: Perhaps what's got you distracted is: Do ravens have chickens?
No, what's got me distracted is rhyming Ralph with safe.
Now that the people of a state are now a legislature according to the Supreme Court, are those of us in states without initiative being deprived of our constitutional rights? We are unable to exercise a power that the Supreme Court has discovered for us.
Seriously, since Magna Charta, the Legislature was a special group of men that had to approve the King's new tax levies. The King did his best to ignore it until Oliver Cromwell explained that the power to rule now came out of the barrels of the guns of The New Model Army.
The 13 Colonies having read Locke, then figured out the common sense that they had guns too. They kept the militia's powder and shot store at Concord and Lexington. And the British Army sent here commanded to kill them for the Tea Party was a 6 month round trip away from home base.
But martial law by the military is now only a 6 hour digital command from a King in DC. So the second amendment may be our last hope for keeping the Legislature's freedom to say no to Kings.
I haven't looked closely into this, but if the Constitution's provision for the election of senators by the legislatures of the states required the 17th Amendment to allow for direct election by the people, then doesn't that mean that "legislature" as used in the Constitution does not include the people acting through referendum plebiscite, etc.? We usually construe terms used more than once in a statute or contract to mean the same thing each time, don't we? (But then, I thought "exchange established by a state" meant"exchange established by a state", so what do I know.)
And then there's the idea that the Constitution guarantees the people of each state a republican form of government.
That is not "an idea." It says "shall guarantee ...."
Referendums, etc., is a democratic (mob rule) idea.
@ Lucien. From the majority opinion:
"The Chief Justice, in dissent, features, indeed trumpets repeatedly, the pre-Seventeenth Amendment regime in which Senators were “chosen [in each State] by the Legislature thereof.” Art. I, §3; see post, at 1, 8–9, 19. If we are right, he asks, why did popular election proponents resort to the amending process instead of simply interpreting “the Legislature” to mean “the people”? Post, at 1. Smiley, as just indicated, answers that question. Article I, §3, gave state legislatures “a function different from that of lawgiver,” 285 U. S., at 365; it made each of them “an electoral body” charged to perform that function to the exclusion of other participants, ibid."
What has me distracted is Cowper calling the female raven Ralph.
If one is a result- orientated Lefty sitting on SCOTUS words can mean anything you want.
And that's exactly what happened in that AZ case.
Just another example in the demolition of the Rule of Law.
And utterly disgraceful.
Marc Puckett said...What has me distracted is Cowper calling the female raven Ralph.
An image of Ralph the handywoman in Green Acres just flashed by...
I thought of Ralph Kramden, but the Green Acres' Ralph, too, ha, much more fitting-- she was not particularly feminine in her mannerisms, was she, nor attractive, and Lisa (sic?) tried to fix her up with... oh, I don't remember.
"By" as was discovered in King v. Burwell does not always mean what you might think it means.
Ever heard the NPR pronunciation of Ralph Von Williams?
Ralph could be used by Cowper to rhyme with safe because it was pronounced then (as now, by a minority of UK English-speakers) with the long A, as ken in tx points out; Ralph Fiennes, e.g., is another contemporary example. Ralph and raven have, so far as I can tell, quite distinct etymologies but I couldn't but notice the labiodentals there, v and f; perhaps the poet used Ralph because of that similarity? Maybe Cowper used Ralph because there isn't another one syllable proper name in English that rhymes with safe?
Ever heard the NPR pronunciation of Ralph Von Williams?
Well, in NPR's defense, it's Ralph Von Williams' pronunciation of Ralph Von Williams, too.
As was pointed out by others, words don't matter. What matter is what resides in the hearts of men. As far as I knew, only Lamont Cranston knew what lurks in the hearts of men. I have since been appraised that John Roberts is the Shadow.
Von Williams
There's not much point in NPR keeping Vaughan Williams' first name English if they're going to turn around and make his last name Prussian.
...the way legislatures have the power to destabilize the meaning of words...
But they ain't got nothin' on our courts today. See e.g., "marriage."
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