HDTenEightyP/NetNews huggingface dataset:
From: scott@bbx.basis.com (Scott Amspoker)
Newsgroups: misc.legal
Subject: Re: privacy question
Date: 21 Jan 93 22:08:40 GMT
Organization: BASIS International, Ltd., Albuquerque NM USA

In article <28pH02fO33kR01@JUTS.ccc.amdahl.com> tjc50@juts.ccc.amdahl.com (Terry Carroll) writes:
>In article <1993Jan20.043947.26211@magnus.acs.ohio-state.edu>, 
>mcronin@magnus.acs.ohio-state.edu (Michael T Cronin) writes:
>> But, to the real point.  Does anyone know the law or have any insight into 
>the 
>> privacy of phone numbers with respect to credit card transactions.  At 
>various 
>> stores at which I shop, clerks ask for signature AND phone number?  Do I 
>have 
>> to give this to them?  Can I refuse politely?  What is the legal answer?
>
>I have no idea, but: I just make up a number.

Both Mastercard and Visa forbid merchants from requiring phone numbers
to complete a charge transaction.  The merchant is allowed to ask for
a phone number (not in all 50 states) be he cannot *require* it.  They
may also ask for proof of identification (a phone number is not considered
proof of identification).  However, if your credit card is refused because
you will not give them a phone number, write a letter to your bank's
legal department and inform of the merchant's breach of the bank's
merchant agreement.

Do *not* make up a number.  Fight back and let them know who's in charge.

-- 
Scott Amspoker                       |    
Basis International, Albuquerque, NM |  Too bad ignorance isn't really
                                     |  bliss.  Then it could be outlawed.
scott@bbx.basis.com                  |
Xref: sparky misc.legal:23162 alt.censorship:10088 alt.society.civil-liberty:7496 alt.politics.usa.constitution:1544
From: simon@saguenay.iro.umontreal.ca (Daniel Simon)
Newsgroups: misc.legal,alt.censorship,alt.society.civil-liberty,alt.politics.usa.constitution
Subject: Re: Judicial Interpretation vs. Legislation
Date: 23 Jan 93 05:08:44 GMT
Distribution: usa
Organization: Universite de Montreal, Canada

In article <1993Jan21.204805.3768@midway.uchicago.edu> thf2@midway.uchicago.edu writes:
>In article <1993Jan21.185438.19181@IRO.UMontreal.CA> simon@brome.iro.umontreal.ca (Daniel Simon) writes:
>>One would have hoped that these same judges and legal scholars, after
>>devoting such care and attention to the task of mapping out the
>>complex subdivisions of the free speech/restricted speech spectrum,
>>might also have made at least a token effort to draw a rough line
>>between judicial interpretation and judicial legislation.  
>
>What makes you think they haven't?  

Um, the fact that everyone who has argued the importance of such a 
distinction in this forum has gotten shouted down by the local legal 
aces, all of them chanting in unison that such a distinction is 
impossible to make?

>Read Edward Levi's "An Introduction
>to Legal Reasoning," for example.
>
>Or, better yet, Blackstone, who predates the Constitution.

I realize that it is absurd to claim that no legal thinker has ever
considered the question of how to interpret law, or even that no legal
thinker has ever advocated one or another restrictive conception of
constitutional interpretation (it is really constitutional law that is
at issue here, since rulings that don't invoke the constitution can
generally be overturned by legislation anyway).  My point (which I had
hoped would be clear from context) is that as far as I can tell the
consensus view of judges and legal scholars regarding constitutional
interpretation does not include any explicit notion of restriction on
the *process* by which such interpretation occurs.  As a consequence,
the process of constitutional interpretation appears to have
"evolved", and to be viewed as having done so, much the way the
interpretation itself has evolved--that is, ever in the direction of
greater breadth and scope for judges to decide as they happen to see
fit.  I would be delighted to be proven wrong, of course; if Mr. Frank
or anyone else can cite expressions of mainstream legal opinon
explicitly opposing one or another seriously suggested approach to
constitutional interpretation as being overly "liberal" (that is, as
overstepping the line between "interpretation" and "legisation"), then
I would be at least somewhat comforted.


"Que dites vous?  C'est inutile?  Je le sais!		Daniel R. Simon
 Mais on ne se bat pas dans l'espoir du succe`s!"	simon@iro.umontreal.ca
					-Rostand
From: bobk@dogear.spk.wa.us (Bob Kirkpatrick)
Newsgroups: misc.legal
Subject: Re: fornication
Keywords: Sin taxes
Date: 21 Jan 93 05:16:27 GMT
Organization: Dog Ear'd Systems of Spokane, WA

wrat@unisql.UUCP (wharfie) writes:

> In article <qZqNXB4w165w@dogear.spk.wa.us> bobk@dogear.spk.wa.us (Bob Kirkpat
> >The Preamble has no force of law. It is dicta --a preface and nothing more.
> 
> 	All right, then, how about "freedom of religion" ?  I mean,
> it's not like they're eating peyote buttons or sacraficing roosters or
> anything icky like that...

I'm not sure I understand your meaning in this context. I was simply
pointing out that in order to have force, it has to be an element of
law. The quote you posted didn't have that quality.

---
Bob Kirkpatrick <bobk@dogear.spk.wa.us>
Dog Ear'd Systems of Spokane, WA
From: bobk@dogear.spk.wa.us (Bob Kirkpatrick)
Newsgroups: misc.legal
Subject: Re: fornication
Keywords: Sin taxes
Date: 21 Jan 93 00:30:04 GMT
Organization: Dog Ear'd Systems of Spokane, WA

hansm@cs.kun.nl (Hans Mulder) writes:

> Which one?  Are you referring to:
> [...]
> They're both dicta, but only one of them is in the constitution.

What matters which one? Neither has the force of law. 

Too often, people confuse comments (dicta) or a personal inter-
pretation as a basis of law. So one may as well cite the Articles
of the Federation of Planets as the dicta of any document or case.

---
Bob Kirkpatrick <bobk@dogear.spk.wa.us>
Dog Ear'd Systems of Spokane, WA
Newsgroups: misc.legal,alt.politics.usa.constitution
From: lkk@panix.com (Larry Kolodney)
Subject: Re: Making law (was: Shouting "Movie!" at a Fire Station)
Organization: The Devil's Advocate
Date: Sat, 23 Jan 1993 01:45:43 GMT

In <1993Jan22.020117.20007@ucsu.Colorado.EDU> fcrary@ucsu.Colorado.EDU (Frank Crary) writes:


>I'm afraid I don't see this at all: If there is no existing law,
>then the judge has no authority to deal with the issue. If he
>refuses to deal with it, what has changed? By his refusal, there is
>no case law on the established, and the status quo, a lack of
>law on the subject, remains unchanged.

Okay, how would you apply this prescription to the following scenario?

A & B own neighboring vacant plots of land.  A builds a house on her
plot.  Sometime later, B decides to build a house.  B starts digging
on his land, making very sure never actually to tresspass on A's
property.  Nevertheless, in spite of his best efforts, B's digging
removes the underground support for A's property, and A's house starts
to subside, causing thousands of dollars worth of damage.

Now assume this is a case of first impression in your jurisdiction.
Up until fairly recently, homebuilding technology did not entail
digging deep foundations, and so this problem never occured before.

So A sues B in tort for causing the subsidence of her property.  B
defends by claiming that this is really a claim for tresspasss and he
never tresspassed, and in fact was only doing what he was legally
entitled to do on his own property.

You are a judge, and are asked to decide the case.  How do you rule?
If you refuse to award damages, you have eseentially created a law
which says: "It is permitted to dig on ones land and cause the
subsidence of the land of another, for which the other has no cause of
action."

If you rule in favor of A, you have of course made the opposite rule.

Either way, you have unavoidably made law, despite your best efforts
not to.
-- 
larry kolodney:(lkk@panix.com) 
_(*#&)#*&%)@(*^%_!*&%^!)*&#+!*&$+!?&%+!*&^_)*&#%)*&^%#+&
The past is not dead, it's not even past.   - Wm. Faulkner
From: thf2@ellis.uchicago.edu (Ted Frank)
Newsgroups: misc.legal
Subject: Re: how independent are the federal circuits?
Date: 28 Jan 93 01:38:23 GMT
Reply-To: thf2@midway.uchicago.edu
Distribution: usa
Organization: University of Chicago

In article <1993Jan25.181008.22679@gtx.uucp> al@gtx.com (Alan Filipski) writes:
>
>what is the effect of a circuit court of appeals decision on similar
>cases that subsequently come to federal district courts outside of that
>circuit?  is the appellate court ruling usable as precedent in the same
>way that a decision from inside the circuit would be, or is it somehow
>less binding?

It's "persuasive" (term of art), but not "binding precedent."
-- 
ted frank                     | thf2@ellis.uchicago.edu 
standard disclaimers          | void where prohibited
the university of chicago law school, chicago, illinois 60637
Newsgroups: misc.legal,alt.censorship
From: thf2@ellis.uchicago.edu (Ted Frank)
Subject: Re: Judges "making" law [was: Shouting "Movie!" at a Fire Station (Schenck v US)]
Reply-To: thf2@midway.uchicago.edu
Organization: University of Chicago
Distribution: usa
Date: Thu, 21 Jan 1993 20:45:01 GMT

In article <1jllbnINNm2t@shelley.u.washington.edu> tzs@carson.u.washington.edu (Tim Smith) writes:
>rjc@devo.unify.com (Ronald Cole) writes:                                        
>>So, in other words, legislators pass what looks and smells like "law", 
>>but which isn't "true law" until it comes out of the judicial     
>>crucible.                                                       
>>                                                                  
>>IMHO, calling statutes "law" muddies the waters a bit and results in
>>semantic flame wars.
>>
>>Have I missed the point?
> 
>When Jose Canseco hits a baseball out of the park, do you say he hit a   
>home run, or do you wait until he rounds the bases and the umpire signals
>the run before you classify it as a run?

Poor example.  If he hits it to dead-center and he was batting in the
right spot in the lineup, etc., then we can pretty safely presumptively
assume that there was the proper amount of pine tar on the bat, that
the bat wasn't corked and was within legal weights, and that it's a
home run -- just like no one questions a statute that is clearly
constitutional.

If, on the other hand, Canseco launches it right down the foul line,
we wait for the umpire to rule it fair or faul, and he or she has 
the final word on the subject.

This analogy gets even worse when the sport is football.  
-- 
ted frank                     | thf2@ellis.uchicago.edu 
standard disclaimers          | void where prohibited
the university of chicago law school, chicago, illinois 60637
Newsgroups: misc.legal
From: Will Steeves <goid@zooid.guild.org>
Subject: Re: The Forces of Darkness and Ee-vil
Organisation: GOiDS "R" We, Inc.
X-To: KEVIN DARCY
Organization: The Zoo of Ids
Date: Fri, 22 Jan 1993 03:46:00 GMT
Keywords: Mazda v. Harriman

kevin@rotag.mi.org (Kevin Darcy) writes...
>In article <1992Dec23.181912.10127@midway.uchicago.edu> thf2@midway.uchicago.ed
> writes:
>>In article <19495@smoke.brl.mil> matt@smoke.brl.mil (Matthew Rosenblatt) write
>:
>>>the forces of Darkness (e.g., War, Feminism, Pestilence and Death).
>>
>>I hear Somalia's suffering from an outbreak of the Horsewoman of Feminism.

>No, no, no... According to my _The Official Politically Correct Dictionary
>and Handbook_ (1992, Random House), it's

>        The Four Horse Oppressors of the Apocalypse were Nutritional
>        Deprivation, State of Belligerency, Widespread Transmittable
>        Condition, and Terminal Inconvenience.


For shame, for shame, Kevin...

You forgot ... PATRIARCHY.

Sheesh!  How could you POSSIBLY have forgotten??!?  :-)

---
Will Steeves, goid@zooid.guild.org                      "Neil Hull is GOiD"
ZOOiD BBS, Toronto, Ontario - The Zoo Of Ids            "GOiDS Rule"
(416) 322-7876

"Gravity: It's more than just a fragrance.  It's the LAW!"
   - Will Steeves, President, GOiDS "R" We, Inc.

 * SLMR 2.1a * Friends don't let friends use Windows.
Newsgroups: misc.legal,talk.politics.misc,alt.president.clinton
From: tleylan@pegasus.com (Tom Leylan)
Subject: Re: More of the House Bank "scandal"  (was Pardon stuff...)
Organization: Pegasus,  Honolulu
Date: Fri, 22 Jan 93 03:33:53 GMT

niepornt@phoenix.Princeton.EDU (David Marc Nieporent) writes:

>No, of course banks normally charge a fee.  But this wasn't a bank at 
>all.  I know of no bank that doesn't pay interest.  This was a pooling
>of Congresspeople's funds.
>
>Of course such an agreement was made.  That was the POLICY OF THE BANK.

>If my roommate and I continually take money from each other when we need
>it, and don't keep careful track of that money, who does it hurt besides
>possibly one of us?  So why does it make a bit of difference to you?

Please post anything which might indicate that you know anything about
banking or this specific incident or what Congress is investigating.

With rare exception each one of your posts is DMN guessing about what
is or is not "a bank" what is or is not "legal", what is or is not to
be considered "improper" and "important".

Just tell us when you read the banking regulations for the District of
Columbia or the Articles of Incorporation of the House Bank or even
their bank policy.

Perhaps you can share with us a synopsis of the regulations that members
of Congress legally must abide by ?

Don't consider this a flame just let us all know where the heck you got
all your information about the banking industry.

tom

Newsgroups: misc.legal
From: avogadro@well.sf.ca.us (Michael D. Sullivan)
Subject: Re: Chelsea and the Intif
Organization: Whole Earth 'Lectronic Link
Date: Wed, 27 Jan 1993 07:01:26 GMT

In <1993Jan27.032209.17089@magnus.acs.ohio-state.edu> dpollard@magnus.acs.ohio-state.edu (Dennis B Pollard) writes:
>I tell you, Mark, I don't know about Cleveland schools, but I wouldn't put a 
>kid of mine in D.C. public schools if I could afford another system, and I am 
>the product of a public system, K-law school.

I am the product of private schools, K-law, and this year my daughter started
Kindegarten in a D.C. public school, Lafayette.  Admittedly, this is one of the
best public schools in D.C., and it is one block from home.  On the other hand,
last week we had a furlough day, two holidays, and a sick-out.  That's the way
public schools work.  She will probably go to private school at the junior
high and high school level.  Alice Deal JHS, where our daughter would go, is
one of the best JHSs in the D.C. public school system (and the one the Clintons
considered for Chelsea), but its test scores, grade level equivalents, etc.
do not overly impress me.

So I don't blame Bill for sending Chelsea to private school after many years of
public school.  Even though I'm a liberal democrat, I recognize that public
schools have major deficiencies.  On the other hand, no voucher program could
open up schools like Sidwell Friends  (chelsea's school) to the poor.  Tuition
at the top D.C. private schools is over $8000.  We decided that was too much
to pay for Kindergarten for our daughter when there was a good public school
nearby.  (We probably could have come up with the $$ for private school, but 
it would have been a lot to pay for marginal improvements at the primary 
school level.)

-- 
Michael D. Sullivan <avogadro@well.sf.ca.us> <74160.1134@compuserve.com>
-- 
Michael D. Sullivan <avogadro@well.sf.ca.us> <74160.1134@compuserve.com>
Newsgroups: misc.legal
From: bmiller@lunatix.uucp (Barry Miller)
Subject: Re: Judicial Power = "Create" Law?  Founders Said Yes.
Organization: Lexington Public Access Unix. -KY- (606) 255-9121
Distribution: usa
Date: Fri, 22 Jan 1993 00:44:06 GMT
X-Newsreader: TIN [version 1.1 PL6]

For those who object to courts making law, I can envision an easy
way to eliminate the judiciary -- simply create a society where
all laws are made by the legislature.  This can be done two ways:
a legislature can set itself the task of imagining every possible
factual situation which may ever arise in human doings, and then
state exactly what legal relationships and consequences arise as
a result of each fact situation.  What happens if a left-handed,
red-headed law student hits your car broadside during the night
of a full moon?  Look it up in the statute books.

The second way to give the legislature complete law-making power
is to allow it to pass a law something like this:  "Everything
not mandatory is forbidden."  Then it could tell you what is
mandatory.  You would know exactly what you must do.  (In such
a society there would be no need for the phrase "may do.")

Because neither of these alternatives appears acceptable, we can
expect that the courts will continue to make law in fact specific
situations.  Legislatures will continue to pass statutes which
govern broad areas of human conduct (how we drive, how we do
business, how we make contracts) and courts will continue to
apply those statutes.  When the statutes do not fit particular
fact situations, however, the courts will be left to decide legal
relationships and consequences arising from those particular
facts.  The legislature will have a broad brush; the courts a
fine one.

--Barry
From: dreitman@oregon.uoregon.edu (Daniel R. Reitman, Attorney to Be)
Newsgroups: misc.legal
Subject: Regarding the Modest Proposal
Date: 24 Jan 93 20:05:00 GMT
Article-I.D.: oregon.24JAN199312050332
Distribution: world
Organization: University of Oregon
NNTP-Posting-Host: oregon.uoregon.edu
News-Software: VAX/VMS VNEWS 1.41

After looking at the discussion over the conception tax statute, I'm wondering
whether it would cost more to enforce it than it would be worth.

								Daniel Reitman 
Newsgroups: misc.legal,talk.abortion,talk.politics.misc,talk.religion.misc,alt.fan.rush-limbaugh,alt.rush-limbaugh,alt.fan.rush-limbaugh.tv-show
From: bodoh@cae.wisc.edu (Daniel Bohoh)
Subject: Re: Still Light On History????
Organization: U of Wisconsin-Madison College of Engineering
Date: 21 Jan 93 19:11:45 CST

In article <1993Jan21.192150.27842@hobbes.kzoo.edu> k044477@hobbes.kzoo.edu (Jamie R. McCarthy) writes:
>bodoh@cae.wisc.edu (Daniel Bohoh) writes:
>>
>>You like this consistency argument, don't you?  Well, I've thought
>>about the consistency of the pro-choice side.  I could show, for
>
>OK, I'll bite.  Me and drieux both want you to explain this, now.

Extracted from an editorial I wrote for UW-Madison's _Badger_Herald_,
July 3, 1991:

Many arguments made for pro-choice are utilitarian arguments.  One of
the most emotiional is the picture of a woman being mutilated by a doctor
performing an illegal abortion.  Abortion should remain legal so it remains
safe for all women, say the pro-choice advocates.  However, utilitarian 
arguments fail when considering such fundamental rights as the right to
life and the right to personal liberty.  Turning this argument around,
let's assume that abortion is a fundamental right.  Should the right
to choose abortion be usurped if many pro-life activists are injured
while chained to abortion doors?

The problem with utilitiarian arguments is that a fundamental right
(be it choice or life) can never be usurped simply to benefit
a large section of society.  That concept is at the crux of our
Constitution.  Any time an utilitarian argument is used to take
a right from one group and give it to another, a similar argument can
be found to do the reverse.  The Supreme Court must ask, "If we base our
decision on utility, should any fundamental right be taken away for
utilitarian reasons?"

Dan
Xref: sparky misc.legal:23075 talk.politics.misc:69118
From: cramer@optilink.COM (Clayton Cramer)
Newsgroups: misc.legal,talk.politics.misc
Subject: Re: Clinton's flip-flop on Haitians!
Date: 19 Jan 93 01:10:47 GMT
Organization: Optilink Corporation, Petaluma, CA

In article <93015.113400ZEITLIN@SLACVM.SLAC.STANFORD.EDU>, ZEITLIN@SLACVM.SLAC.STANFORD.EDU (Cary Zeitlin) writes:
> However, it is only fair to ask if the critics would be happy if Clinton had
> kept his campaign promise and reversed the Bush policy? I doubt it, since they
> presumably support the Bush policy. And if hundreds or perhaps thousands of

You presume wrong.  I was horrified by the Bush policy, and irked that
Bush was more interested in making the liberals happy by allowing the
thugs that run Haiti to continue to do so without "U.S. imperialism"
forcing them from power, than in correcting a horrendous abuse of
human rights.

> Meanwhile, Clinton is reported to be working behind the scenes to restore
> the democratically-elected President Aristide to power. He has also promised

So did Bush, and a lot of other leaders.  Not that it does much good
without some soldiers to back it up.

> Cary Zeitlin                            ZEITLIN@SLACVM.SLAC.Stanford.Edu
-- 
Clayton E. Cramer {uunet,pyramid}!optilink!cramer  My opinions, all mine!
"When freedom destroys order, order will destroy freedom." -- Eric Hoffer
Not a goal, just a statement of reality.
From: matt@smoke.brl.mil (Matthew Rosenblatt)
Newsgroups: misc.legal
Subject: Re: A Modest Proposal: Illegitimate-conception Tax
Date: 22 Jan 93 16:46:43 GMT
Organization: U.S. Army Ballistic Research Lab, APG MD.

In article <C186t8.DAy@ddsw1.mcs.com> karl@ddsw1.mcs.com (Karl Denninger) 
writes:

>In article <1jkgjbINNeb0@gap.caltech.edu> peri@cco.caltech.edu 
>(Michal Leah Peri) writes:

>>kevin@rotag.mi.org (Kevin Darcy) writes:

>>>What do you think we have right now, Dennis? With the current laws,
>>>well-off single men are MAGNETS to the women you describe -- spend a
>>>night of pleasure, get impregnated by him, and rake in huge child
>>>support payments for 18+ years. What a deal! What a racket!   
>>>[Kevin Darcy]

>>You make it sound like the man has no choice in the matter.
>>[Michal Leah Peri]

If he wanted to have sex without having to worry about supporting
a child, he should have been born a girl.

>You make it sound like a woman who can't get a legal abortion has no choice
>in the matter.   [Karl Denninger]

If she wanted to have sex without having to worry about pregnancy,
labor and delivery, she should have been born a boy.

					-- Matt Rosenblatt
                                        (matt@amsaa.brl.mil)

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
TRUTH     JUSTICE     FREEDOM     YIDDISHKEIT     IVY     THE AMERICAN WAY
Xref: sparky misc.legal:23148 talk.politics.misc:69353
From: tzs@stein.u.washington.edu (Tim Smith)
Newsgroups: misc.legal,talk.politics.misc
Subject: Re: The Media (was Re: Who's weakening the constitution?)
Date: 23 Jan 1993 03:19:45 GMT
Organization: University of Washington School of Law, Class of '95
Distribution: usa,tx
NNTP-Posting-Host: stein.u.washington.edu

This "the media doesn't tell me what to think" stuff reminds me of
some research that was done on the California lottery ads.  (I'm not
saying any posters have been told what to think by the media -- this
thread just reminded me of this.)

A lot of people were asked why the played the lottery.  They were also asked
if they were influenced by the ads, and if they could remember the ads.

A lot of people said that they never watched the ads and could not even
remember them, but gave reasons that basically regurgitated the slogans
for the ads for the previous few years.

--Tim Smith
Newsgroups: misc.legal.computing