December 7, 2009

This week's Con Law puzzler

Comes from Wisconsin Supreme Court Justice Patience Roggensack:
[W]hen a citizen votes in a judicial election, he or she exercises a right guaranteed under the First Amendment of the United States Constitution.
Q: Exercises which First Amendment right? Successful responses may assume either that the year is 1791, 1870, Dec. 12, 2000, or 2009.

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

Don't you get all uppity, correcting a Supreme Court justice.

Follow the logic: Surely she meant "vote" in the sense of "dollar", as we were recently assured that my dollar is just as good and as non-influential as any million dollars contributed by anyone else, and that a dollar is just a way of talking, which is to say as the Romans did, ipso facto, postum nabisco, of course in the First Amendment, and a literal strict interpretation of what's there.

Along with the date, are we allowed to give different correct answers based on various assumptions of our race, gender, age, previous condition of servitude, state of residence, criminal history, educational skills, ability to pay, and the type of election?

Anonymous said...

Be fair.

She probably meant to say the 14th, 15th, 19th and 26th Amendments, but was up against a word-count limitation for her comment, and just boiled everything down to 1st. Or something.

Anonymous said...

On second thought, this issue deserves more than a light ribbing. There might be two questions posed by justice Roggensack's "reponse."

Question One: Do we have a member of our Wisconsin Supreme Court who doesn't have even a foggy understanding of constitutional law?

Question Two: Now that ideological conservatives have a majority on the Court, will balls-to-the-wall right-wing judicial activism be a predictable MO?

illusory tenant said...

That the right to vote in a State election is a right guaranteed by the First Amendment is, I believe it's fair to say, a unique and novel concept.

Anonymous said...

Does this mean that criminals can't speak?