Sovereign immunity

[Reformedfindlay]

What is your view on the idea of sovereign immunity?

 

[Cryptic]

What is your view on the idea of sovereign immunity?

I dont like it, but it appears to be a Common Law concept. Common Law concepts are built on a millenia or more of trial and error, common sense, and collective experience. As such, Sovereign Immunity should be retained.

 

[OrphanSlug]

I generally do not like the idea of sovereign immunity. The source idea of comes from the historical context of legal absolutes generally applied to the idea "the king (or the government) can do no wrong."

It usually has the conclusion of systematic aristocracy, where we have two legally defined classifications of citizens. One that is above the law, and one that is not. In our context, in present application, we are basically saying we elect from the people to no longer be responsible for all of their actions but are able to pass legislation we are responsible to.

There is real reason that the idea is not mentioned in our Constitution. But, our government enjoys the protection anyway as applied over time. In terms of practical association to other common law interpretation (including some source for our laws,) inference from the power of the court system as established by the Constitution, and various passed Acts over our history that did not get challenged in a manner as to overturn the applied results.

The good news is there is no solid legal blanket immunity to being in the federal government, the bad news is there has been enough interpretation and passed legislation to ensure that the majority of the time the government can be in the wrong and escape liability for being in the wrong.

We should though draw the real distinction here on the difference between passing legislation that they immune themselves from having to follow vs. outright illegal activity of which they can be very liable for. But, the only reason that distinction exists in the first place is the concept of "the government can do no wrong," applied to us most often as "the government does not always have to live within the laws they create for the rest of us."

 

[Van Basten]

Meant to vote "other."

>_>

 

[jamesrage]

What is your view on the idea of sovereign immunity?

It should be illegal.Those in government should not be above the law.

 

[radcen]

I dont like it, but it appears to be a Common Law concept. Common Law concepts are built on a millenia or more of trial and error, common sense, and collective experience. As such, Sovereign Immunity should be retained.

I have been asking myself lately why we hold on so tightly to common law. We fought a revolution break away from what we saw as injustices of the British legal system, then we go on and, to a great degree, keep doing what they did 'just because'.

 

[Cryptic]

I have been asking myself lately why we hold on so tightly to common law. We fought a revolution break away from what we saw as injustices of the British legal system, then we go on and, to a great degree, keep doing what they did 'just because'.

I have read that the influence Common Law principals in our legal system has sharply declined in recent generations and that we are now almost a completely Roman Law (written law code) system.

The Zimmerman case maybe an example of this in microcosm:

Common law: must make an effort to retreat.
Roman law: written SYG Law says otherwise

Common law: "Come on, everybody knows you can't go looking for a confrontation, then claim "pure" self defense."
Roman law: " Sigh, there is no written law prohibiting following somebody around."

In short, my guess is that had the Zimmerman shooting occurred two generations ago, he would have been connvicted of Manslaughter via Common Law principals.

The jury may not have said "we are going to convict this guy by the technically non existant Common law". Rather, they would have just simply analyzed and applied the written law using a pretty big dose of Common Law principals.