From: "William H. Geiger III" <whgiii@invweb.net>
Date: Mon, 29 Dec 1997 23:43:49 +0800
To: Jim Choate <ravage@ssz.com>
Subject: Re: constitution.amendmentxi.html (fwd)
In-Reply-To: <199712291511.JAA01429@einstein.ssz.com>
Message-ID: <199712291541.KAA19927@users.invweb.net>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain



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In <199712291511.JAA01429@einstein.ssz.com>, on 12/29/97 
   at 09:11 AM, Jim Choate <ravage@ssz.com> said:

>Forwarded message:

>> From: "William H. Geiger III" <whgiii@invweb.net>
>> Date: Mon, 29 Dec 97 08:32:34 -0600
>> Subject: Re: constitution.amendmentxi.html (fwd)

>> >Of note is that this amendment *only* covers cases where a citizen sues a
>> >*single* state, not 49 of them.
>> 
>> >There is no Constitutional rule that covers the process between a
>> >individual and more than a single state. It simply ain't there.
>> 
>> Well considering that the Constitution is a *limiting* document, if the
>> powers are not explicitly given to the Federal Government they don't have
>> them.
>> 
>> Soooo, in the case of a citizen sues multiple states the Federal
>> Government still has no juristiction as they have never explicitly been
>> given that power.

>So what you are saying, though I doubt you realize it, is that a citizen
>*can't* sue 2 or more states as a group. They *must* sue singly and in
>the individual state courts.

>Of course, this isn't explicity described either, so where does this
>authority come from?

- From the laws and Constitutions of the individule states.

>This means there is no way to sue states as a group for their actions in
>regards to relations to the federal government. So the federal government
>can require the states to do all kinds of things and I as a citizen and
>effected by those actions can't sue the states but only the federal
>government.

>Interesting hole. I wonder if it will hold up.

Well you can only sue the state that has caused some form of direct damage
against you. If both Texas and Alaska are doing somthing Unconstitutional
but Texas is the only one who has directly caused damage then you should
only be able to sue Texas. Even if Alaska is doing the exact same thing
unless they have directly caused damage against you there is no basis to
included them as a party in your suit. There will be exceptions to this
and one may very well have to sue each state in it's own courts if you
have greviances with more than one State. I think that in the majority of
cases one will find that a greviance will be limited to a single state (I
think it would be very rare to find a case where all 50 states had
directly caused damage against an individule).

An example of this would be back in the 50's with the forced segregation
laws. If you were living in Georga and wished to bring suit against the
state for violating your rights you would be limited to only suing Georga
even though AL,FL,SC,NC,TX,AR, all had the same laws on the books. Now you
could travel to each of those states and then have greviances against each
one but each greviance would be independent of each other and require
seperate suits against them.

- -- 
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William H. Geiger III  http://users.invweb.net/~whgiii
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