You shouldn’t be dubious - I suspect very few people would want to publicly be on the complaining side of a lawsuit saying the actual, direct victims of the internment shouldn’t be compensated for the harm directly inflicted on them, and then fund that lawsuit all the up to SCOTUS.
But, on the merits, which were never reached on Japanese internment reparations, there’s a also a mitigating distinction - the monies paid to the victims were not extracted from a certain class of people. Slavery reparations do - the reparations would be extracted from a class of people, not the Treasury generally. That matters, and makes it function more like a bill of attainder.
Sorry–still very dubious. A quick google search revealed there are many people and organizations who feel as you do–that reparations are tantamount to a bill of attainder. It strains credulity (for me) to believe no one would challenge it.
In my mind at least, slavery reparations would come from the Treasury, same as the Japanese-internment reparations.
You’re dubious because you choose to be, not because you’ve informed yourself to be - instead of approaching it with an open mind, understanding what a bill of attainder is and how it works, and then deciding, you refuse to learn something new that might challenge your predetermined viewpoint.
Sorry if that sounds harsh, but that rigidity makes it hard to have a meaningful conversation.
It wouldn’t, else black people would be paying for part of their own reparations. There would have to be some tax or fine on “white” wealth and incomes to be reparations to blacks for slavery.
And one other observation on this point - in the real world people forgo lawsuits all the time. And precisely because of that it is never a defense to a lawsuit to stand up and say “well, your honor, no one has ever sued over it before and that means it’s probably without merit, don’t you think?”
By “predetermined viewpoint,” do you mean like explaining the complete and total absence of lawsuits against JA reparations with “I suspect very few people would want to publicly be on the complaining side of a lawsuit saying the actual, direct victims of the internment shouldn’t be compensated”? I ask because I’m very, very dubious of that as well.
With this I enthusiastically agree.
If I’m not mistaken, JA taxpayers paid for part of their own reparations, did they not? Because there was no tax or fine on “non-JA” wealth and incomes levied at the time. This would seem to blow your position all to hell, wouldn’t it?
Nope, there are reasons why a lawsuit would not be filed other than with respect to the merits on a bill of attainder challenge, which I’ve explained. A person challenging Japanese internments would pay lots of money to prosecute such a lawsuit but wouldn’t get any meaningful money recovery of he won, and more importantly, as explained earlier, even if a person believed strongly that it was an impermissible bill of attainder, they’re not going to publicly position themselves as the “victims” being treated unfairly and that living, direct real victims of Japanese internment were the unfair beneficiaries of that victimization. That’s terrible optics I doubt anyone wants to associate themselves with even if they believed the act was unlawful on principle.
Stuff like this happens all the time in the real world. And if someone challenged slavery reparations in court, it would be irrelevant that no one challenged Japanese internment reparations back in the 80s.
Good, then consider spending time reading something that doesn’t confirm your biases. It works wonders for me.
Correct.
That doesn’t make any sense. What position? I’m not saying you can’t pay slavery reparations from general funds in theory, sure you could. But that defeats the point. The point is to extract ill-gotten wealth from white people, and transfer it to blacks. Well, if you just appropriate it generally, you’re not accomplishing the purpose of reparations. You’re also strengthening an argument that it’s a bill of attainder for non-whites (Hispanic, Asian, etc.) who are paying but not receiving a benefit.
Plus, the sheer size of the payment owed is so large, it would have to be funded by a new tax or fine, making it a new extraction of property (as opposed to just grabbing a few billion of existing monies out of the Treasury).
But, no matter how you cut it, reparations legislation - however structured to fund - is designed to extract money from a liable class of people to pay damages for harm done to another. That’s it’s core bill of attainder problem - it’s assigning punishment and liability through legislation in a way that belongs in a judicial process.
Yes, I agree that it would not be surprising if no individual filed a challenge. But I see no reason why a like-minded organization wouldn’t. This is the source of my, uh, dubuiosity (dubiousness?).
An organization may not have standing. But in any event, an organization may not want to be involved in the same bad optics as an individual. The downsides are the same.
It does - it gives a person lots of options other than sticking their fingers in their ears and declaring “LALALA - can’t hear you” in a debate.
You’re confused (again). Paying from general funds doesn’t save reparations from being unconstitutional - it could be a mitigating factor, as I noted, because it helps with the argument that the payments aren’t being assessed to a particular class of people. It doesn’t win the day, but it’s a distinction that helps defend the Japanese internment reparations as permissible.
By contrast, slavery reparations are, in purpose, specifically targeted against a specific class of people, one of the big reasons prohibitions on bills of attainder exist.
And this is made worse by the fact that because (as I said) the enormous sum of money that people are talking about for slavery reparations, a brand new extraction of money would have to be enacted. That’s a direct assessment of liability to compensate someone harmed by the liable party’s wrongdoing.
It’s a real problem for any such bill, your fingers in the ears notwithstanding.
So, in other words, you are dubious of the notion that an organization would file such a lawsuit. OK, nothing wrong with that so far as I can see. (But be warned: Other commenters might take you to task for such a position.)
I see no reason why they would have to be “targeted against a specific class of people.”
As the JA reparations case makes clear, this is an entirely separate (non-)issue.
Look, you said reparations had to be paid via a bill of attainder; I demonstrated conclusively that you were wrong. Despite this, you are unable to simply admit your error and allow the conversation to progress (or peter out). But I’m the one with my fingers in my ears?
Sure, because my dubiosity is based on a rational reason. Your dubiosity was based on thinking there’s no reason on the legal merits why a bill of attainder challenge would succeed when you have no real sense whether that is true or not. Your only basis was the lack of a lawsuit on the Japanese internment back in the 1980s, which doesn’t speak to the merits at all.
Be dubious, I never said otherwise - but you have to be first be informed, and you aren’t.
So Hispanics and Asians and Caucasians whose parents immigrated after the Civil War should pay for slavery reparations?
In any event, as I said earlier, I don’t think it would help much not to identify the certain class.
Completely incorrect. I have a crazy idea, so crazy it might just work - why don’t you actually spend a little time learning how this stuff works and provide a meaningful debate on the merits instead of declaring victory in something you don’t know much about?
That statement doesn’t even make sense - it doesn’t have to “be paid via a bill of attainder” - a bill of attainder is legislation that punishes a class of people in a way that denies due process via judicial process.
The method of payment is simply a Means - what’s important for purposes of constitutionality is the End: what’s it trying to accomplish? Slavery reparations are designed to pay damages to an aggrieved party (blacks) who suffered wrongdoing (the effects of slavery) by extracting payment from the liable class of people (whites). It’s essentially a judicial result that is not supposed to take place by legislation, because individuals have rights and legislatures cannot circumvent the justice system by legislating punishments against people.
That’s a real hurdle to survive constitutionality. Would it survive? Maybe, it’s unclear - I personally think it’s fatal. But the fact that you simply won’t even recognize it is a potential problem shows your ignorance on the subject.
No, my dubiousness stemmed from the argument you presented (if you recall, my original statement in this regard was “I am dubious that no one would have challenged it, if it were challengeable on the grounds you state”–emphasis added).
People who immigrated after WWII paid reparations to the Japanese. Once again, your own argument undermines your position.
I have a better idea. How about you drop the preening condescension that has suffused your comments of late? It’s not a good look, especially considering how often you’re demonstrably incorrect.
Do I have to quote you, again, saying the exact opposite?
OK, for whatever reason, you and I are not meshing well as discussants of late, at least on this thread. So before one of us says something we regret (or in my case, regrets even more, as I’ve already said some things I wish I hadn’t), I’m going to steer clear of you (on this thread at least) for a while. The floor is yours.
And to address this more fully - uh, yeah, it matters. A lot. A new fine or tax is a new deprivation of property that will have its own justification. In the case of slavery reparations, the justification is collecting money to pay damages owed by a liable party.
I didn’t present an argument - I stated a fact, that no one challenged it. You made an argument that on that fact, there was weakness in the merits, because of there were any merits to such a lawsuit, someone would surely have sued.
If you’ve ever been part of a lawsuit, you know that’s not a reason to be dubious of the merits.
It’s not an argument, it’s a question to you - do you think those individuals should pay slavery reparations?
It’s not condescension - I’ve done a nickel’s worth of informing myself on this issue, and you haven’t. It’s obvious and pointing that out isn’t condescension. And yet, you want me to entertain your sophistry and I just won’t do it.
If it comes off as condescending, then my apologies. My intent was to convince you that maybe, just maybe, it’s a good idea to consider a viewpoint other than yours on an issue you haven’t spent very much time with.
But with respect to “preening condescension,” tell me which of us has taking the taking the position that I think I’m right but I might not be, and which of us has repeatedly claimed victory over the other?
Heh.
Ok. I’ve done my level best to keep a discussion going on an interesting topic by providing actual knowledge that I have on it. You’ve drowned it (again) in needless sophistry and a refusal to do anything except argue from a position of unwavering ideology.
For my part I really enjoy you as a poster and think you are not only very intelligent but also very well written. Disagreement doesn’t have to be a bad thing as long as everyone comes to the table with an open mind.
Then I fail to see the point. If there is something to fix, we need to get to the root of the problem and fix it. You cannot write bigotry a check and expect it to go away. If we were to do reparations at that moment in time, where the aggrieved could be identified, I might agree with it more. Honestly, cutting a check is a message that human dignity has a dollar value. It’s something that make liberals and SJW’s feel good from the couch, but it addresses no issues. If we could undo what has been done, I am sure most of us would. I think moving on is the best we can do. Dwelling on it doesn’t do anybody any good. Some people will always hate and others will always resent. But most of us can simply treat each other with the respect and dignity we all deserve as people.
Just curious, why do you think giving black people money will fix anything? What’s the amount that should be given to each?
I believe just the victims. That’s why it’s not a great argument for AA reparations outside of proving proof of concept that reparations have happened.