Amy Alexander on 9 Apr 2001 08:57:17 -0000 |
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Re: <nettime> Alan's query - counter-powers |
On Wed, 4 Apr 2001, Brian Holmes wrote: > Alan, I'm no jurist, but I think your idea of pressing charges against Bush > for failure to keep his campaign promises (among other things) is worth a > try. It's very much the way that politics is really carried on today. > <snip> > Your idea, in the U.S.A. right now, would be a good way to push toward a > more democratic political culture, that is, a more activist one. For > starters, the only way to make it realistically happen would be to get an > ethics question going among the lawyering profession. Because you need a > lot of free labor to make your idea happen! And of course the separation of > the juridical and the executive is exactly what failed in the Supreme Court > decision that brought us Bush, so the issue is real. Pressing charges does sound interesting - though one can assume that the case would likely go "all the way to the Supreme Court" - which, as you point out, is a party to the case. I'm not sure how that would work, if we seriously think about it happening under US law. If there's a case involving 2 states, then it goes to a federal court. But what happens if it's a case where the federal (Supreme) court is a party? Another idea that might be useful, which Alan mentioned in his prior post: instead of pressing criminal charges (i.e. impeachment), sue Bush. Litigation is *really* the American way, isn't it? :-) And maybe name the Supreme Court as a party to the suit. It could be a class-action suit on the part of the people of the US - maybe or maybe not as shareholders - against CEO Bush and the Board of the Supreme Court. (or whatever...) Alan mused about the grounds for the suit - can we sue for reversal of campaign promises? I'm thinking that a more "corporate" grounds might be appropriate here, as well as entertaining. The premise of the suit would be that the US has been financially harmed by Bush's actions - there are numerous options: tarnishment of the US trademark, malpractice resulting in financial loss due to boycotts, personal injury (environmental), or maybe an antitrust suit due to Bush administration's collusion with the oil industry et al (or possibly due to the aforementioned Bush/SupremeCourt executive/judicial "trust.") I'm sure there's more that could be conjured up. I'm tempted to host a contest.... Of course the potential financial results of such a suit may not mean much as opposed to criminal proceedings - er, the settlement money comes from where and goes to where? But, as in most lawsuits, "it's the principle that matters" (of course! :-)) Certainly, I'm not a lawyer either. But, litigation is the American Way - and certainly the Corporate American Way - because it allows for an unbelievable variety of Things You Can't Believe Someone Can Actually Sue For (or Threaten to Sue For.) It could at least make for some entertaining and hopefully useful PR by utilizing the time-tested corporate tactic of litigation, this time as the presumed Court of Last Resort for democracy. BTW, that doesn't solve the "Supreme Court is a party to this case" problem, it's just another idea to kick around. :-) Happy Litigation, -@ # distributed via <nettime>: no commercial use without permission # <nettime> is a moderated mailing list for net criticism, # collaborative text filtering and cultural politics of the nets # more info: majordomo@bbs.thing.net and "info nettime-l" in the msg body # archive: http://www.nettime.org contact: nettime@bbs.thing.net