Re: SF Politics and Super Tuesday

Peter Bruells <usernet@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> wrote in
news:m263x0sxlw.fsf@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
 

> "Michael S. Schiffer" <mschiffe@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> writes:

>> Peter Bruells <usernet@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> wrote in
>> news:m2tzklchvi.fsf@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
 

>>>> The law says "found".  While there are probably laws relating
>>>> to re****ting foundlings, I would be very surprised if there
>>>> were any statutes or cases that treated "found in a
>>>> spacecraft" as a special case.  (Well, maybe in the DCU...)

>>> Finding a child in an alien space craft crashlanded on Earth
>>> seems - at least to me - establish that it wasn't born on
>>> Earth. 
 
>> How do you know the origin of the spacecraft?  In at least one
>> telling, even the Kents weren't even sure-- Jonathan speculated
>> that it might be Russian.

> And how convenient it was to lie to the authorities so that the
> truth wasn't found out.  

The Kents' actions are more than a little dodgy these days.  (What 
if he was a kidnapping victim?  Or an alien Trojan Horse.)  But 
it's probably decades too late to go after them, and it all worked 
out.  Either way, it's not Superman's responsibility.

In previous tellings, they just said they found him, took him to a 
foundlings' home, and then adopted him.  No lies there, and I don't 
know if there's any legal requirement to re****t space****p crashes.  
(And they could have done so, since odds are the only result would 
have been to get them stared at.  Especially in the versions where 
the rocket self-destructed, leaving no trace.)

>> And after all, in the DCU, humans, including children, have
>> been taken off Earth and returned.  At least one origin of
>> Donna (Wonder Girl/Troia/various other identities) Troy has her
>> being born on Earth, taken off to the stars around age two or
>> so for rearing and training, and then returned to Earth (with
>> superpowers) as an adolescent.  The children of Van-Zee and
>> Sylvia were born on Venus but had derived US citizen****p via
>> their mother.  Brainiac's been known to borrow entire cities. 
>> Mere presence in an alien spacecraft doesn't tell us where the
>> child was born, or who his parents were. 
 
> Granted.  I'll change that to "an abandoned alien child in an
> alien space craft".

>> I'd be inclined to assume that a human-looking 
 
> The catch is "looking". He's looking like a human, but isn't
> one, which can be easily proved.

I'm not sure that he's *not* human under American law.  I doubt 
there have ever been any cases that went to blood tests or DNA to 
establish humanness.  Whether laws forbidding discrimination on the 
basis of "race" includes species or not (where the subject clearly 
is capable of understanding rights and duties under the law) has, 
AFAIK, never been tested.  Given our previous experiences of 
discriminating on the basis of biology and appearance, I'd guess 
(and hope) that the courts would be very reluctant to do another 
Dred Scott.

A common law system allows and requires judges to make reasonable 
interpretations and interpolations where the statutes are vague or 
ambiguous.  Given the choice between "Superman is legally a non-
person or an animal" and "Kryptonians are legal persons", I'd 
predict most judges would choose the latter.  And if he's a person, 
then the law applies to him as much as it does the purest H. 
sapiens.

>> baby was from Earth, and I'd guess that the legal system would
>> do likewise.  Especially since Congress probably wasn't aware
>> of the large numbers of human- looking aliens in the DCU when
>> the law was formulated, so it's hard to argue that their intent
>> was to recognize that situation.  But even if it were, it
>> doesn't seem like good public policy to place such foundlings
>> in legal limbo, with no citizen****p anywhere on Earth.

> I'm not saying that they should get no citizen****p. He could get
> naturalized. 

But that takes time and paperwork.  And until they were 
naturalized, they'd have no citizen****p whatsoever.  This seems 
like a lot of trouble to go through to deal with a vani****ngly 
small number of cases, and risks kids falling through the cracks of 
the system while the process goes forward.
 
>> If Congress wanted to create such an exception, it would
>> probably have to make it explicit.  And while it might not
>> strictly run afoul of the ban on ex post facto laws to make it
>> retroactive-- that's generally limited to criminal law--
>> stripping someone of citizen****p status retroactively is
>> vani****ngly rare.  (It usually requires something like
>> concealing Nazi war criminal status at naturalization.)  Even
>> if future foundlings were denied citizen****p going forward,
>> then, Superman's status would probably be safe. 
 
> It's not about stripping him of his citizen****p, but of his
> status as natural born citizen.

At this point, though, his citizen****p depends on the law as it 
stands.  (Since Jonathan and Martha *didn't* naturalize him.)  The 
court can't rewrite the law, it has to interpret what's there, 
which pretty much makes Superman either a natural born citizen or a 
noncitizen.

 Arnold Schwarzenegger will
> probabbly never ever be challanged on his nationality - he's an
> American and very likely he'll die an American - but he'll never
> run for president. 

He was naturalized, though.  Superman wasn't.  He can't be 
retroactively declared to have done so, and if he's forced to start 
the process today that leaves his current status in limbo.
 
Mike