Rule by Adverse Possession (Pt. 1)

For those of you not subjected to reading page after page of dry, dull court cases, there is a concept in the law of property that most people encounter in their first year of law school called "adverse possession." When I first read about this stuff, I was absolutely blown away. It seemed comepletely antithetical to everything I had assumed about ownership and property as it functions in society. You see, adverse possession (at least when grossly oversimplified) works something like this: Let's say this guy Joe owns a piece of land in Alaska, but Joe live in SC. Then this guy Sam, an Alaskan native, wanders onto Joe's Alaskan tract of land and decides he wants to live there. Over a couple of years, Sam builds himself a little hut, a garden, and some other basic improvements, and happily lives on Joe's tract of land for some time. Joe, meanwhile, is stuck in SC and can't get to his Alaskan tract of land. He has no idea Sam is living there. Then one day, Sam's buddy tells him about this thing called "adverse possession." He tells Sam that he can go down to the courthouse and file for quiet title on the land and it will be his. Sure enough, Sam does this and, like magic, the title to the land is in Sam's name. Unbeknownst to Joe, he has lost his Alaskan asset. And all of this, given certain technicalities that must be met, is completely legal (save the time that Sam was trespassing, but that is forgiven after a set period runs and Joe does not eject Sam).

Now, when I first read about this stuff, I was taken aback. How is it that, in America (he said with a thick Texan accent) some vagrant can squat on your land long enough and then it just becomes his? Well, the justification is that Sam is making more efficient use of the land and, because Joe did not care enough about the land to even discover that Sam was there, Sam is more deserving of the title. Whether or not you agree with this concept matters very little. It is settled law in every state in this country (though the requirements vary from state to state).

But I don't want to write this post about adverse possession- at least not the legal variety. Nope, I'm not talking about property law at all. I'm talking about adverse possession at the very top of the American political system. I'm talking about presidential adverse possession. You see, apart from reading about the mundane legal quandaries that people find themselves in, I'm also reading about constitutional law. And recently I have had the distinct pleasure of reading a series of cases dealing with executive power and its interplay with the other branches of government. Most notably, I just read the recent "enemy combatant" cases, which involve American citizens that were picked up either in Afghanistan or while returning from Afghanistan. Of course, these are not ordinary American citizens. These are people who took up arms against our own armed forces and at least appeared to fight for the Taliban. My gut says "hang'em high." Problem is, that my brain just finished processing their court cases, and he's not so sure.

Don't get me wrong, I'm in no way coming out in support of terrorism or defecting to the enemy, or anything like that. No, that would be way too interesting. Nope, I'm talking about procedure and governmental structure. Things that work in the background of cases like these that have way more impact than a lot of people realize. See, neither of these two cases that I read had anything at all to do with establishing whether either of these guys was a bad guy- that was established well before either of these cases got to the Supreme Court. These cases revolved around whether or not these people would be subject to a trial by jury (as is guarrantied to all citizens of the United States in the Constitution) or to a special military tribunal.

Turns out, the Supreme Court isn't sure. Neither am I. See, as much as I scorn the President's policies, and as much fault as I find in a war on anything in the abstract, I can't seem to countenance being very polite to a couple of guys who decided to fight against their own country. At the same time, I'm a big fan of the Constitution, particularly the part about allowing all citizens to have their day in court. Indeed, James Madison argued that, as long as habeas corpus remained robust and undeniable, that we didn't even need the Bill of Rights. All that could be sorted out in court. And I'm a firm believer that when it comes to things like criminal charges, people deserve all of the protections that the legal system currently affords (at least most of) them. But this brings me back to my gut- these guys could die of gonnorhea and rot in hell as far as I care. So, despite my normal, opinionated tone, I'm going to take a back seat here and admit, I don't know the answer. At least not yet.

(P.S. I know that no one who reads this will have any idea why I included that first part about adverse possession...it will become clear when I post the conclusion to this in a couple of days...but first, I want my reader(s) to tell me what you think about all of this.)

Ann Coulter = Windbag

Nuff said

Big Brother's Census

So, I normally do not look forward to checking my mail. It seems that Publisher's Clearing House forgot their promise that I was the winner of a major prize, and somebody named SCE&G seems to think I owe them $300 a month. That's the only real correspondence I receive via the US Mail, so anyone can imagine my disdain for the mailman (even my dog seems to hate the guy). However, being a good, law-abiding citizen, I perform my requisite daily duty of checking the old inbox.

It seems, though, that Uncle Sam has not caught on to my mailbox blues, and, last week, really kicked it up a notch. See, my
residence has been "scientifically selected" (whatever that means) to participate in the American Community Survey. For those of you who may not be familiar with the survey (a demographic that included myself until last week), it is billed as a supplement to thedecennial census, aimed at gathering information to disseminate to various federal, state, and local entities to help them formulate plans and divert aid. The handy-dandy brochure that accompanied the survey explains that the valuable information I provide will go to government bodies that determine things like police and fire station locations, housing aid, and "to show a large corporation that a town has the workforce it needs."

Now, don't get me wrong, I'm all for government handouts, at least when they come to me. However, the questions on the
survey raised some serious concerns on my part. For example, I have to provide intrusive information about all the residents of my house, my relationship to those persons, where they work, if they don't work, why not and for how long, as well as about 10 pages of other questions. Now, I'm not going to get on my soap box, wrap myself in an American flag, and spout off truisms about this being a "free country" or anything, I'm not that naive. However, I was curious as to just how the
census bureau justified asking such intrusive questions and requiring their answers under threat of penalties.

Being the responsible law student that I am, I immediately turned to my favorite online legal research site, and began digging. What I found was: 1) theACS has never been challenged in a court of law; 2) the ACS is not specifically sanctioned under any legislative act; 3) the office of the US Comptroller General has written a memo to a Congressional
oversight committee attempting to justify theACS; 4) that memo finds the authority to compel answers to the ACS not in any specific statute, but inferred from the text of at least 2 separate statutes (see 13 USC §§ 141, 193); 5) that those statutes call for supplementary census information only for the purpose of furthering the singular goal of the census; 6) that the singular goal of the census is the apportionment of US Representatives based on population.

So, to recap, save a legal memo put out in defense of the ACS, I couldn't find anything truly justifying its existence, except perhaps some loose and non-legal argument about the need for up-to-date information on US citizens to better divert government monies to those who are in need. My question (or at least one of them) is why is the Federal government collecting all this data for services that are traditionally provided by state and local governments?