More on the Bond Case

I’m still blown away by the supreme court ruling discussing the foundation of the Constitution and the concept of federalism that was stumbled upon by the court when it first set out to determine if a person prosecuted for a crime can challenge the law used against them. The court found no other direction, except to drift into the question of whether the law was valid.

Catch up on my previous post, Best Case I Ever Read, if you haven’t read about the Bond case yet.

Everyone agrees that this woman, Carol Anne Bond is a “criminal”. She used chemicals to burn her best friend’s hand. The question is, is she a “state criminal”, a “federal criminal” or in this case, an “international criminal”? What makes this case both a major “letting the cat out of the bag” and “opening pandoras box”, is that this question has never come before the supreme court and it exposes why “we the people” have been denied our Tenth Amendment constitutional right to challenge the federal legislative power of the government, as a defense, for more than 70 years.

When I read this case, I was both excited and a little pissed off! My friends and critics can’t figure me out because I’m saying it should be one way, but it isn’t; it’s the other. Here, the supreme court is going for both, when they admit that the power to challenge has always been in the supreme court, but not in the lower federal and circuit courts. What?

This case ends up defining the limit upon powers of the Tenth Amendment, standing, cause of action, and “federalism.” The very balance of powers of the Constitution! I love it when they get to the very foundation of individual rights as to government. It’s pure beauty that an individual can stand in the Article III authority while relying on Tenth Amendment grounds to challenge the statute as it applies to them in their particular case.

In the next few newsletters I’ll breakdown this case and discuss each area and how the analysts break it down stating that the “confusion” which the court “wondered” into, “seemed to conflate the merits and the standing issue.” Then they ended up discussing the Tenth Amendment, which takes us back to the original writers and how they viewed the Constitution.

One of them, Thomas Jefferson, said, “The Tenth Amendment is the foundation of the Constitution.” Incredible.