Thank you for this! One comment is that I am not emailed when there is an edit to an article, so I didn't see your edits to the previous article until now. Now I am wondering what other addendums to articles I have missed.
Hm! This is a good point I'll have to consider. That was certainly the most substantial post-publication update I've made to a piece in the past six months at least (mostly it's been typos or minor factual corrections), but it is still a concern. You subscribe for the specific purpose of seeing everything De Civ publishes, so it's a big feel-bad when De Civ publishes something and it doesn't show you!
From what I've seen, I think that would be a very good choice.
Have you read his very interesting paper on replacing the Smith / Sherbert religious freedom tests with a last-in-time test? I don't think I buy that the First Amendment actually prescribes his test, but his critique of Sherbert changed my view of Sherbert and his proposal has a lot of practical use even if the theoretical underpinnings strike me as shaky.
Good article. What are your thoughts regarding the fact that the democrats have not even been officially sworn in? Since the statute is clear that this is required in order to be seated members of the house, their (unconstitutional) attempt at a back door swearing in does nothing. It also makes the Johnson seat issue moot.
The Catholic Church has sacraments, and those sacraments have to be performed a certain way.
Critics say that this reduces the love of Christ to "saying some magic words." The phrase "hocus pocus" is a Protestant parody of the Catholic words of consecration: "hoc est enim corpus meum." Defenders respond that they stick to certain formulae because those formulae are what Christ ordained. That's neither here nor there. The point is: for Catholic sacraments, you have to perform the ritual correctly, according to the book.
However, there are several ways you can do a sacrament incorrectly, and these differences have important consequences in Catholic thought.
Invalidly: If you fundamentally screw up a sacrament and lose something essential to it, it doesn't count. It is invalid; that is, null and void. For example, there was an unpleasant occasion a few years ago where a priest in St. Paul, watching an old family movie, found out that he had not been baptized in the name of the Trinity, but in the name of something else a liberal Arizona priest had made up. His baptism was invalid. Only the baptized can be ordained, so his ordination was invalid. Only the ordained can hear confessions or consecrate the Eucharist, so basically everything this guy had done as a priest was also invalid, and tons of people who thought they'd received valid absolutions had not. Moreover, hundreds of other people had been baptized by the same priest and had to be contacted and re-baptized. It was an unholy mess. (Catholics presume that Christ will provide grace wherever the Church falls short in fixing its mistakes, but also presume that it is mankind's responsibility to do it right insofar as humanly possible, so no expense was spared in trying to fix all of this.) Invalidity arises, however, only from fundamental defects in the form or matter of the sacrament itself.
Illicitly: The Church also has lots of legislation about who can perform which sacraments when and for whom. For example, people who are in schism are not supposed to perform sacraments. For another example, priests are not supposed to hear confessions outside their own dioceses without permission from the local bishop. These are merely human statutes, though, put in place by the Pope for the well-being of the flock. If you violate this and perform a sacrament illicitly, you may be punished under ecclesial law. A priest acting illicitly might be restricted from performing sacraments at all, expelled from a diocese, or (in extreme cases) defrocked, excommunicated, (in theory but not in the modern world) imprisoned or executed. But as long as he is a priest with valid orders in the apostolic succession who performed the act correctly, the sacrament itself is valid! He can confect the Eucharist; he can forgive sins.
Irregularly: A subset of illicit sacraments. Lots of the Church's legislation regulating the sacraments is not actually enforced or even really enforceable, especially legislation governing details of the liturgy surrounding the sacrament. If you make light edits to the liturgy book, the bishop might yell at you, but there's not much he can actually *do* to you, at least not through the Church criminal justice system. It's shameful and often sinful, but not directly punishable.
I spell all this out to make an analogy.
The oath of office is a kind of secular sacrament. A certain person says certain magic words, and he or she is thenceforth clothed in the legal power of a public office. Like a sacrament, I think it can be performed invalidly, illicitly, or irregularly.
The DFL's underhanded trick of absconding to a secret swearing-in ceremony is, of course, to be condemned. It was bad for our democracy performed in service of a plan to actively obstruct our democracy through quorum-busting. However, it strikes me that their maneuver was *illicit* but not *invalid*. The essential elements of the oath were all there, administered and witnessed by an appropriately "ordained" minister of the law. Moreover, since the statute fails to specify penalties for people taking the oath illicitly, I think the worst we can say is that they acted irregularly. Shamefully, even. But I don't think the GOP is wrong to accept that they are sworn members of the legislature (and they seem to agree that this is the case).
(Curtis Johnson, on the other hand, isn't, since he never took the oath, right? I suppose that could matter if the existence of the 40B vacancy ends up being decisive in the case.)
I should take the time and dig out the case law on this (surely there is plenty!) rather than making this analogy to the Catholic legal system, but can't today so this is my response (for today).
SCOMN rules: We can, and will make a decision. We say that [Side A] is right in this situation.
MN House, Side B: "We recognize that SCOMN has made a decision, but given that it's a stupid-ass decision, we've elected to ignore it." They do so on the grounds that the Courts have no right to wade into intra-branch rules.
I think it will remain hypothetical, though, as both parties have reportedly agreed to abide by the court ruling. I'm mildly surprised by this concession, since the GOP merely *threatening* to disregard an adverse ruling (even with no intention of doing so) would put pressure on the court to accede to its position (which is generally correct anyway). However, legitimacy crisis is best not weaponized, so I am, on balance, pleased the GOP has not tried to apply pressure in this way.
(The DFL's weaponization of legitimacy here does strike me increasingly as shameful.)
I wonder whether it would be in the GOP's interest to 1) Ask the Supreme Court to rule that the Secretary of State cannot constitutionally preside over the House and 2) Ask the Supreme Court to issue an Order compelling the absent DFL members to show up. MN Constitution would clearly seem to side with the GOP on both items, and it seems that the SC would have a difficult time deciding that it does not have the authority to step in on both issues (after deciding that it had to step in on the quorum issue). Thoughts?
Thanks for the coverage/analysis. It can be really hard to follow what’s going on from “normal” journalism (MPR, Strib, FOX, MinnPost, etc.), so I really appreciate your takes. Any recommendations (from James or anybody else) on reliable, factual coverage of what’s going on from non-hobbyist journalists (as much as I love De Civ)?
Also, TSL is lame. I will not be taking questions.
I've been thinking about this, and the answer is no, I can't! I hoover up the information raw from court documents, Twitter, and partisan blog posts, and then I emit stuff like the above. If I were aware of sufficiently good coverage of the sort you have in mind, I probably wouldn't write all this, because half the reason I do is annoyance.
(It may be that there isn't sufficient economic demand to support this kind of niche in-depth exploration, which leaves room for hobbyists and partisans.)
And, hey, some of us just want to see how strong any given Civ is as a history simulator! (Turns out it's pretty darn fragile, but still better than it was in Civ2!)
Thanks for the considered response! I just don't have the patience researching for this kind of stuff for very long, so I really appreciate that you do.
It's not so much that I'm bothered by partisan bias in MPR or FOX or whatever (though that is considerable). It's that they don't seem to cover what's actually *happening* on a procedural level. E.g. I was listening to MPR today and heard that they were going to cover legislative session, but rather than covering this, they interviewed a handful of members on either side on education policy, which, while important, isn't the main thing happening now!
So thanks again for the (relatively) thankless coverage.
Also, to each his own on Civ. I've just never found TSL interesting. The first two Xs are my favorite in 4X games, and TSL mostly does away with 1.5 of them.
I'm going to laugh pretty hard one of these days when De Civ gets cited in a footnote in some supreme court case (either MN or US)...
Thank you for this! One comment is that I am not emailed when there is an edit to an article, so I didn't see your edits to the previous article until now. Now I am wondering what other addendums to articles I have missed.
I second this comment
Hm! This is a good point I'll have to consider. That was certainly the most substantial post-publication update I've made to a piece in the past six months at least (mostly it's been typos or minor factual corrections), but it is still a concern. You subscribe for the specific purpose of seeing everything De Civ publishes, so it's a big feel-bad when De Civ publishes something and it doesn't show you!
I'll give this some thought. Thanks!
Very astute analysis, James! Also, I predict that Nicholas Nelson will be appointed to a federal judgeship in Minnesota if one opens under Trump.
From what I've seen, I think that would be a very good choice.
Have you read his very interesting paper on replacing the Smith / Sherbert religious freedom tests with a last-in-time test? I don't think I buy that the First Amendment actually prescribes his test, but his critique of Sherbert changed my view of Sherbert and his proposal has a lot of practical use even if the theoretical underpinnings strike me as shaky.
Link: https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1113624
I haven’t, but I will have to
Good article. What are your thoughts regarding the fact that the democrats have not even been officially sworn in? Since the statute is clear that this is required in order to be seated members of the house, their (unconstitutional) attempt at a back door swearing in does nothing. It also makes the Johnson seat issue moot.
The Catholic Church has sacraments, and those sacraments have to be performed a certain way.
Critics say that this reduces the love of Christ to "saying some magic words." The phrase "hocus pocus" is a Protestant parody of the Catholic words of consecration: "hoc est enim corpus meum." Defenders respond that they stick to certain formulae because those formulae are what Christ ordained. That's neither here nor there. The point is: for Catholic sacraments, you have to perform the ritual correctly, according to the book.
However, there are several ways you can do a sacrament incorrectly, and these differences have important consequences in Catholic thought.
Invalidly: If you fundamentally screw up a sacrament and lose something essential to it, it doesn't count. It is invalid; that is, null and void. For example, there was an unpleasant occasion a few years ago where a priest in St. Paul, watching an old family movie, found out that he had not been baptized in the name of the Trinity, but in the name of something else a liberal Arizona priest had made up. His baptism was invalid. Only the baptized can be ordained, so his ordination was invalid. Only the ordained can hear confessions or consecrate the Eucharist, so basically everything this guy had done as a priest was also invalid, and tons of people who thought they'd received valid absolutions had not. Moreover, hundreds of other people had been baptized by the same priest and had to be contacted and re-baptized. It was an unholy mess. (Catholics presume that Christ will provide grace wherever the Church falls short in fixing its mistakes, but also presume that it is mankind's responsibility to do it right insofar as humanly possible, so no expense was spared in trying to fix all of this.) Invalidity arises, however, only from fundamental defects in the form or matter of the sacrament itself.
Illicitly: The Church also has lots of legislation about who can perform which sacraments when and for whom. For example, people who are in schism are not supposed to perform sacraments. For another example, priests are not supposed to hear confessions outside their own dioceses without permission from the local bishop. These are merely human statutes, though, put in place by the Pope for the well-being of the flock. If you violate this and perform a sacrament illicitly, you may be punished under ecclesial law. A priest acting illicitly might be restricted from performing sacraments at all, expelled from a diocese, or (in extreme cases) defrocked, excommunicated, (in theory but not in the modern world) imprisoned or executed. But as long as he is a priest with valid orders in the apostolic succession who performed the act correctly, the sacrament itself is valid! He can confect the Eucharist; he can forgive sins.
Irregularly: A subset of illicit sacraments. Lots of the Church's legislation regulating the sacraments is not actually enforced or even really enforceable, especially legislation governing details of the liturgy surrounding the sacrament. If you make light edits to the liturgy book, the bishop might yell at you, but there's not much he can actually *do* to you, at least not through the Church criminal justice system. It's shameful and often sinful, but not directly punishable.
I spell all this out to make an analogy.
The oath of office is a kind of secular sacrament. A certain person says certain magic words, and he or she is thenceforth clothed in the legal power of a public office. Like a sacrament, I think it can be performed invalidly, illicitly, or irregularly.
The DFL's underhanded trick of absconding to a secret swearing-in ceremony is, of course, to be condemned. It was bad for our democracy performed in service of a plan to actively obstruct our democracy through quorum-busting. However, it strikes me that their maneuver was *illicit* but not *invalid*. The essential elements of the oath were all there, administered and witnessed by an appropriately "ordained" minister of the law. Moreover, since the statute fails to specify penalties for people taking the oath illicitly, I think the worst we can say is that they acted irregularly. Shamefully, even. But I don't think the GOP is wrong to accept that they are sworn members of the legislature (and they seem to agree that this is the case).
(Curtis Johnson, on the other hand, isn't, since he never took the oath, right? I suppose that could matter if the existence of the 40B vacancy ends up being decisive in the case.)
I should take the time and dig out the case law on this (surely there is plenty!) rather than making this analogy to the Catholic legal system, but can't today so this is my response (for today).
I am not sure that a retired judge is still an appropriately ordained minister of the law, for this context.
I do grant that a lack of rules on enforcement is a thorn in the side of the argument that this is invalid...
You may be right. I should figure out the actual law of this.
Hypothetical situation:
SCOMN rules: We can, and will make a decision. We say that [Side A] is right in this situation.
MN House, Side B: "We recognize that SCOMN has made a decision, but given that it's a stupid-ass decision, we've elected to ignore it." They do so on the grounds that the Courts have no right to wade into intra-branch rules.
What happens next?
Unclear. The "ballet" would begin, I suppose: https://www.jamesjheaney.com/2020/08/23/and-the-war-came/
I think it will remain hypothetical, though, as both parties have reportedly agreed to abide by the court ruling. I'm mildly surprised by this concession, since the GOP merely *threatening* to disregard an adverse ruling (even with no intention of doing so) would put pressure on the court to accede to its position (which is generally correct anyway). However, legitimacy crisis is best not weaponized, so I am, on balance, pleased the GOP has not tried to apply pressure in this way.
(The DFL's weaponization of legitimacy here does strike me increasingly as shameful.)
I wonder whether it would be in the GOP's interest to 1) Ask the Supreme Court to rule that the Secretary of State cannot constitutionally preside over the House and 2) Ask the Supreme Court to issue an Order compelling the absent DFL members to show up. MN Constitution would clearly seem to side with the GOP on both items, and it seems that the SC would have a difficult time deciding that it does not have the authority to step in on both issues (after deciding that it had to step in on the quorum issue). Thoughts?
Thanks for the coverage/analysis. It can be really hard to follow what’s going on from “normal” journalism (MPR, Strib, FOX, MinnPost, etc.), so I really appreciate your takes. Any recommendations (from James or anybody else) on reliable, factual coverage of what’s going on from non-hobbyist journalists (as much as I love De Civ)?
Also, TSL is lame. I will not be taking questions.
I've been thinking about this, and the answer is no, I can't! I hoover up the information raw from court documents, Twitter, and partisan blog posts, and then I emit stuff like the above. If I were aware of sufficiently good coverage of the sort you have in mind, I probably wouldn't write all this, because half the reason I do is annoyance.
(It may be that there isn't sufficient economic demand to support this kind of niche in-depth exploration, which leaves room for hobbyists and partisans.)
And, hey, some of us just want to see how strong any given Civ is as a history simulator! (Turns out it's pretty darn fragile, but still better than it was in Civ2!)
Thanks for the considered response! I just don't have the patience researching for this kind of stuff for very long, so I really appreciate that you do.
It's not so much that I'm bothered by partisan bias in MPR or FOX or whatever (though that is considerable). It's that they don't seem to cover what's actually *happening* on a procedural level. E.g. I was listening to MPR today and heard that they were going to cover legislative session, but rather than covering this, they interviewed a handful of members on either side on education policy, which, while important, isn't the main thing happening now!
So thanks again for the (relatively) thankless coverage.
Also, to each his own on Civ. I've just never found TSL interesting. The first two Xs are my favorite in 4X games, and TSL mostly does away with 1.5 of them.
Will there be an update now that the Court has weighed in?
I'm still hoping for a written opinion, but that could take weeks, so I'm torn.