Re: SF Politics and Super Tuesday

Peter Bruells <usernet@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> wrote in
news:m2ir10rgph.fsf@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
 

> "Michael S. Schiffer" <mschiffe@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> writes:
> 
>> Peter Bruells <usernet@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> wrote in
>> news:m263x0sxlw.fsf@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
 
>...
>>> 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. 

> Nope. But you don't have to be responsible for anything NOT to
> be a citizen. much less a natural born citizen. Witness the case
> of Manuel Bartsch, for example.

True, but in this case Jonathan and Martha Kent's lies can't affect 
the adult Superman's citizen****p status.  (If they'd told the whole 
story then, things might have been different, but they didn't, and 
the law places a time limit on the question.)
 
Though as I've mentioned, I'm not sure where things would stand for 
the version where Superboy was publicly a hero and known to be 
Kryptonian.  That would present a more complicated legal case.  
Certainly DC's editors believed that it disqualified Superman for 
the Presidency, as mentioned in at least one story, but I'm not 
sure what Superboy's citizen****p status would have been.  It might 
depend on what it takes to legally show he hadn't been born in the 
US.  (If no one brings the issue to court before he's 21, does he 
get a free pass?  I don't know-- maybe an immigration lawyer 
would.)  Made moot, except for his disqualification for the 
Presidency, by the point in his adult career when he was given 
citizen****p in every country in the UN (and, implicitly, free 
transit of borders without bothering with pass****t control).

>> In previous tellings, they just said they found him, took him
>> to a foundlings' home, and then adopted him.  No lies there, 

> I doubt that they re****ted where they found him. Otherwise,
> there would have been an investigation.

I think they may have: "By the side of the road."  I'm not sure how 
much investigation was routinely done in the 30s (or circa 1910, 
when the events would have originally taken place), and if they 
had, they wouldn't have found anything but some signs that 
something had burned in the vicinity.  (Or in some versions, a 
blast crater-- but still, what does that tell anyone?)

I don't think they mentioned the space****p, but then the home 
didn't mention to them that the kid had been hanging from the light 
fixtures and juggling the furniture.  "Don't ask, don't tell" was 
pretty much everyone's modus operandi in that story.

>> 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.) 

> Yes, those versions are valid. As is the one of Byrne, where he
> was literally born on Earth.
           
>           ....
 
>>> 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.
 
> Depends on WHEN he sues. 

How do you mean?  Even during Jim Crow, there was no legal 
disagreement on personhood or citizen****p, merely massive 
inequality.  (And I don't think Superman would qualify under, e.g., 
the Chinese Exclusion Act.  :-) )

(Though the current form of the law seems to have been passed in 
1952.  I'd have to do research to find out how things stood before 
then.)
 
>> 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.

> So do they apply to the enslaved gorillas in DC-US zoos?  After
> all, they a hardly different from the obvisously intelligent
> people of Gorilla City. :-)

:-)  If one of them demonstrated he could understand an oath and 
generally behave as a citizen, I'd guess he'd have a case.  I'd 
also guess that in practice the courts would be least skeptical of 
an English-speaking alien (with a midwestern accent, no less) who 
looks and acts just like a human, and most skeptical of some of the 
more out-there Green Lanterns.  (The superintelligent smallpox 
virus might have more problems, for example.)

Though it might be that intelligent members of what look like 
ordinary animal species would present the biggest challenge.  No 
one cares if four armed green aliens are presumed to have human 
rights, but the beef industry doesn't want to have to litigate the 
status of every cow PETA tries to drag onto the witness stand.
 
>>> 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. 
 
> Well, you are not saying that Superman's above the law? :-)
 
Not at all.  I'm saying that happily, the law can reasonably read 
to cover him.  And can only be pleased at Congress's unwonted 
foresight in ensuring that a being of vast potentiality for good or 
ill be made to feel welcome instead of, well, alienated.  :-)

Mike

-- 
Michael S. Schiffer, LHN, FCS
mschiffe@[EMAIL PROTECTED]