Supreme Court Justice Neil Gorsuch — President Donald Trump’s first appointee to the nation’s highest court — provided the decisive fifth vote in a defeat for the chief executive on an immigration case that critics say could jeopardize public safety.
Tuesday’s 5-4 ruling sparing an immigrant from deportation who was convicted in California of burglary came in a case that had been held over for the current term from last year, pending Senate confirmation of a presidential appointment to fill the then-vacant ninth seat on the panel.
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The case concerned James Garcia Dimaya, who came to America in 1992 when he was 13 and pleaded no contest to residential burglary charges in 2007 and 2009. Those convictions on aggravated felonies triggered deportation proceedings.
But Dimaya challenged the statute, arguing that it was too vague because it did not specifically define a crime of violence. Writing for the majority, Justice Elena Kagan declared that California’s burglary statute under which Dimaya was convicted covers such a broad range of conduct that it is impossible to determine whether it constitutes a...Read More HERE
As I read the opinion, it is consistent with what Justice Scalia would have supported. Note that the crimes were burglaries, not robberies. Justice Gorsuch merely agreed that burglaries are not necessarily "violent crimes", and that if Congress intended to include them, they should have been properly specific.
ReplyDeleteRobberies are, by their definition, violent crimes. Burglary definition as such - or not - is subject to the whim of the charging persecutor.
You want a guy who follows the Constitution, you gotta expect a few of these.
ReplyDeletewould be nice if someday the congress would avoid mealy mouthing the laws they pass. too many lawyers in the world. lawyers should not be allowed anywhere near congress so that congress would write laws plainly and understandably for the common citizen to understand them. justice gorsuch did his duty properly. no complaints here. if congress means to say something then it should say it plainly. to have a judge "interpret" a law simply upsets me because it means the congress failed to write the law clearly and succinctly and to the point. judges interpreting a law is legislating from the bench and that is not his/her job IMHO. you have laws for specific reasons to expand on constitutional rights and those laws should allow no grey areas.
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