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Pastimes : The Libertarian Party -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Doo who wrote (91)	8/9/2021 8:03:41 PM
From: TimF	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 103

>That defines liberty and freedom in our system No it doesn't. It isn't even an attempt to do so. Its irrelevant to that issue. What it defines is what the law supposedly says and how the constitution will be interpreted. An entirely different issue. Certainly one with more direct practical impact, but still a different issue. >and I have no clue what it means to distinguish between a court interpreting, restricting, or permitting freedoms and liberties compared to defining the English language. Liberty is a fairly abstract concept. An important one but still abstract. Its meaning isn't, wasn't and really can't be defined by the court, except to the extent that definitions of words follow usage and if it can convince everyone to have different usage then the word means something else now. But even then the concept it would exists outside the courts and would not be changed by them. Someone's rights can be violated, their freedom limited, their liberty infringed on. The court system, on up to the supreme court (if it ever gets that far most cases don't get close), can decide to ignore it and allow liberty to be restricted, or it can intervene to protect liberty. Less likely, but also possible, it could itself intervene in such a way as to restrict liberty, being the agent of such a restriction with a court order that it initiated. But none of those things are defining anything except what actions are sanctioned (or more rarely imposed) by the courts. Defining the English language would be in this case changing the meaning of words. That isn't the court's job, and that isn't what it tries to do. It doesn't usually even define legal jargon. It could be said to "define" the specifics of how law applies, and that's about it.