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THE LAW IS A ASS for 11/12/2002
DOCKET ENTRY
"The Law is a Ass" Installment #170
Originally written as installment #152 and published in Comics Buyer's Guide issue #784, November 25, 1988 issue
******
THE LAW IS A ASS
Installment #170
by
BOB INGERSOLL
Finally, I found an error. I was so relieved.
Up until then, I thought I was losing my touch.
Solo Avengers #14 contained two stories: the Hawkeye story, which I'm not going to talk about and the She-Hulk story, "Court Costs" which I am going to talk about. Let me start by saying that I loved the story. It was the type of fun, light-hearted story that I wish Marvel would do more often. It was a special surprise coming as it did from Chris Claremont, who, while a good writer, usually tells stories of such bleakness, doom, and despair in The X- Men that I frequently find his stories more depressing than learning the 60 Minutes team's on my doorstep.
The story has Jennifer Walters alternately arguing the case of Handel v. United States before the United States Supreme Court as Jennifer Walters and being interrupted so that she can trash Titania as She-Hulk. (And I thought my caseload was heavy!) When I read Jennifer's thought balloon that she was an out-of-practice lawyer whose speciality was criminal defense not constitutional law, I got out my knives and whet stone while my mouth started watering in Pavlovian response. This story, I figured, would be prime meat for my column.
Jennifer was appealing Theresa Handel's conviction for failing to register under the Mutant Registration Act. Jennifer challenged the constitutionality of the MRA, which requires American citizens to have their genetic code examined for mutancy, (revealed, no doubt, by the presence of a double X-Men chromosome) and, if the test is positive, register their mutancy with the Justice Department. ("Yes, darling, my china pattern is registered with Bloomingdales; my gene pattern with the Feds.")
Ha! Already two glaring errors.
In the first place, a challenge to the constitutionality of a criminal statute attacks the government's right to prosecute at all. If a statute is unconstitutional, it is a legal nullity and the government cannot prosecute for a violation of the statute. Case law permits a defendant an immediate appeal on the ground that the statute under which he or she has been charged is unconstitutional. The defendant doesn't have to be convicted first then appeal the conviction. This rule exists so that if the statute is ruled unconstitutional and nullified, the defendant is not put through the draining hardship of a trial unnecessarily.
Then I realized that Theresa and her attorney might have wanted her to be convicted first, and thereby serve as a martyr to the cause, before she appealed. Such a tactic is not unknown under Thoreau's philosophy of civil disobedience.
Okay, so maybe it wasn't such a glaring error. I still had the fact that the case is already before the United States Supreme Court. It takes months, sometimes years, before a case makes it to the Supreme Court. The Mutant Registration Act has only been in existence for a few weeks, Marvel Time. Surely, a challenge to its constitutionality would not be before the Supreme Court yet.
Unless, of course, the case was on the accelerated docket, or the Supreme Court agreed to hear it without having it go through the Circuit Courts first, or I simply miscounted days on my Marvel Time calendar.
Okay, so maybe neither was a glaring error. I was confident I'd find something.
Jennifer challenged the MRA as an abridgement of the Equal Protection Clause found in the Constitution, Amendment 14, Section 1. Was there, I wondered, an error here?
The Equal Protection Clause is in Section 1 of the Fourteenth Amendment. It demands that no person or class of persons can be denied that same protection of law which is enjoyed by other persons or classes of persons. Registration with the Justice Department is a deprivation of the right of privacy forced upon mutants but not upon non-mutants, so it does deny mutants of equal protection of their right to privacy. The Equal Protection argument was a correct argument to make against the Mutant Registration Act.
No error.
I was getting worried. After all this was only an eleven page story with four pages of obligatory fight scene, and who ever heard of a legal error in the obligatory fight scene? I didn't have unlimited opportunities to find mistakes to write about.
Jennifer claimed the Act abridged a person's rights on the basis of race in violation of the 15th Amendment of the Constitution. I had already figured out that the Act abridged mutants' right of privacy solely on the basis of their race. That is another correct argument against the Act, and it is found in the 15th Amendment.
Again, no error.
I could grow to hate writers who do their research!
I debated pointing out that the MRA doesn't really abridge rights on the basis of race, as mutants are homo superior which is not a different race but a different species. But not even I would pick such a small nit.
I grew concerned. Could there be nothing wrong with the story? I had to find some major error in this story I could rip apart. My reputation was at stake!
I admit it, I panicked. I re-read the story.
I came to the line where Jennifer said the Act was, "a presumptive abrogation of the right of habeas corpus as enumerated in Article 1, Section 9 of the Preamble."
I had them!
The word Preamble comes from "pre" which means before and "amble" which means to wander aimlessly. The Preamble in the Constitution is that aimlessly wandering and overly-capitlized group of words at the beginning of the document that goes, "We, the People of the United States in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America." That's it in its entirety.
Habeas corpus isn't found in Article 1, Section 9 of the Preamble. In fact, there is no Article 1, Section 9 of the Preamble!
So sue me; that small a nit I was willing to pick.
#
Okay, I'll get serious. There was one point in the story I wanted to clarify; Jennifer referred to the right of habeas corpus. Habeas corpus, which is found in Article 1, Section 9 of the Constitution itself not the Preamble, isn't a right. It's a writ. Right?
Actually, habeas corpus isn't a writ or a right; it's a Latin phrase which means, "to hold the body" or "hold the pickle, hold the lettuce" or something like that. Latin was never my strong suit. (I prefer poly-wool, pin striped, three pieces.)
Anyway, a writ of habeas corpus is an extraordinary pleading filed with a court when the government has unjustly imprisoned a person. The writ demands that the government justify by what right it "holds the body" of the prisoner imprisoned or, if it cannot, that it release that prisoner immediately.
Remember this writ, Readers. It's very, very important. It's about the only time you can get the government to justify anything.
******
BOB INGERSOLL, Cleveland, Ohio public defender, CBG legal analyst, and the only man in the free world who has heard the satanic dialog found by playing the Star Wars trilogy backwards has a question. According to the story Jennifer Walters was taught by Professor Kingsfield from The Paper Chase. Well, Professor Kingsfield once did a guest shot on another TV show, The Associates staring Martin Short. Does this mean what I always suspected: Ed Grimley is a mutant?
Bob Ingersoll
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