Posted on 06/22/2004 8:30:42 PM PDT by libertynews
For a minute, I thought this was an article about the San Francisco DA's office.
Eastforker, that does seem obvious doesn't it. Ferries are no different than any kind of public transportation as far as risk goes.
How much common sense does it take to figure out that if you can't search vehicles on ferries that might be a good place to hide a bomb. DUH!
No, I mean it. Freepers can agree to disagree.
Here is an interesting read,
http://www.atgpress.com/inform/gov068.htm
Titled:
JURISDICTION & THE FIRST JUDICIARY ACT
The following is taken from the Harvard Law Review, Vol. XXXVII, 1932-1924 with my comments in brackets if any. This is not the complete Review but only portions.
From ... The Harvard Law Review. Here is an excerpt from "Benedict on Admiralty" --
.7-22 SOURCE OF LAW AND JURISDICTION 109
........ maritime legislation generally.(6) The Constitution, however, is a document which must be construed as a whole and it has always been interpreted(7) as investing the paramount legislative power in the Congress whether such power was sought to be derived from one or other of the express powers above mentioned, or as a necessary concomittant of and inherent in the grant of the judicial power.
"Commentators took that view, Congress acted on it, and the Courts including this Court [the Supreme Court] gave effect to it. Practically, therefore, the situation is as if that view were written into the provision."(8) This interpretation was reiterated by the Supreme Court in Romero v. International Terminal Operating Co.(9) in these words:
"Article III, Section 2, cl. 1 (3d provision) of the Constitution and section 9 of the Act of September 24, 1789, have from the beginning been the sources of jurisdiction in litigation based upon federal maritime law. Article III impliedly contained three grants. (1) It empowered Congress to confer admiralty and maritime jurisdiction on the 'Tribunals inferior to the Supreme Court' which were authorized by Art. I, Section 8, cl. 9. (2) It empowered the federal courts in their exercise of the admiralty and maritime jurisdiction which had been conferred on them, to draw on the substantive law 'inherent in the admiralty and maritime jurisdiction,' Crowell v. Benson, 285 U.S. 22, 55, 52 S.Ct. 285, 76 LEd. 598 (1956), and to continue the development of this law within constitutional limits. (3) It empowered Congress to revise and supplement the maritime law within the limits of the Constitution. See Crowell v. Benson, supra, at 55.
"Section 9 of the First Judiciary Act granted the District Courts maritime jurisdiction. This jurisdiction has remained unchanged in substance to the present day."
When the Constitution was adopted, the existing maritime law became the law of the United States subject to the power in Congress to modify or supplement it as experience or changing conditions might require. Congress thus has the paramount and undisputed power to fix, determine, alter and revise the maritime law which shall prevail throughout the country; and federal statutes, if constitutional, are paramount to any judicially fashioned rules of admiralty.
....
--- and ---
9-34 MARITIME CRIMES § 114
the recent Supreme Court decision of United States v. Villamonte-Marquez, (a) in which the majority of the Court concluded that the action of customs officials in boarding and stopping a vessel without any "reasonable suspicion of a law violation" was indeed "reasonable" and consequently not violative of the fourth amendment. The Court articulated several factors upon which it based its decision:
1.19 U.S.C. § 1581(a), which authorizes customs officers to examine the manifest and other documents and papers by hailing and stopping the vessel is a "lineal ancestor" to section 31 of the Act of August 4, 1790, ch. 35, i Stat. 145, in which the First Congress clearly authorized the suspicionless boarding of vessels. This fact naturally led the Court to conclude that such boardings do not run afoul of the fourth amendment;
2. While random stops of automobiles away from borders are not allowable under the protections of the fourth amendment, stops at fixed checkpoints or at roadblocks are allowable. However, where commerce at sea provides clear access to the open waters and is quite different from highway traffic, alternative methods of searching vessels which differ from the "stop" approach are less likely to accomplish the government?s objective of deterring criminal activity;
3. The system of marking automobiles utilized by the states is considerably less complex than the types of documentation and external marking that the federal government requires for vessels at sea. Indeed, the government has a substantial interest in making sure that the vessel documentation requirements are complied with, especially where there is a great need to frustrate and apprehend smugglers.
Therefore, the Court concluded that while the intrusion made in vessel search cases might not realistically be termed "minimal, "it is indeed "limited" when balanced against the "substantial" state interest involved.
As a practical matter, most border searches are conducted pursuant to informer's tips and the instinct of the experienced customs official in discerning nervousness in a suspected traveller. If probable cause or proof of the reliability of an informer were a necessary pre-requisite to customs searches, protection of the national borders would be difficult if not impossible without a more sophisticated surveillance system than is now used. While the search of a person's body is not specifically contemplated by the present statutes authorizing border [also see 19 U.S.C. 482].
--Robert_'I Lack Perspective'_Paulson2
Let's search all people getting on the grayhounds, the trains, the trams, the moving sidewalks at the airports, etc.
It was an enticing thread, until the ACLU was mentioned to be getting involved.
Concern for the issue from that point has been divvied.
But, unless the official threat level rises, state troopers won't be combing through car interiors or trunks when the plan takes effect July 1, State Patrol Chief Lowell Porter said."
Anybody want to bet on this?
I was on the ferry to Victoria, BC via Seattle this week and I sure thought about terrorist attacks to ferries. It is a LONG way between land and too cold to swim IF one survives a blast!
I agree on the swim and have had thoughts of the same thing here back east. Personnel already search for propane, fuel tanks and other flamables that are on the prohibited list.and they run special hazardous trips for gas tankers etc.
It's all up the master of the vessel and the regs he has to follow as to what goes on his ship. If the ACLU doesn't like it let them start their own navy.
It's tough because this whole "bag-search, dog-sniff, metal detector" society is becoming quite comfortable for many sheeple. You wouldn't believe the number of folks who are not offended by having a 16-year-old beanpole search their bags as they enter the movie theater...
Slippery slope, slippery slope is all I can say.
~ Blue Jays ~
And common law predated it too. So what? The constitution governs supreme in all US territory. The constitution recognizes no peer.
But, vehicle fuel tanks are not required to be empty?
It has to do with the Fringes on the Flag
The ACLU is looking into this, and I would urge everyone to contact their state and federal representitives to complain about this Federal intrusion into the operation of our State.
But you forgot: The ACLU strongly encourages everyone to use all 100 crayon colors when writing Jimmy & Patty.
The rest of us learned from this:
The state court system just ruled last week that passengers in cars don't have to give over they ID during a traffic stop without probably cause but now you have to have your car searched on what is a part of the State Highway system.
When will we be dissallowed from carrying our pocket knives on board the ferry?
Our State Supreme Court ruled in the late 60s that the Ferrys were an extension of the hi-way system and thus you couldn't stop the state from spending gas tax money on them.
A lot of people think we spend too much on the ferries and somoe of that money should be spent on building and maintaining more roads.
So those two rulings are incompatible with eachother. How can you be searched when driving down the hi-way for no reason?
I'm not against the seaches for safety reasons but I would like to see some sense made of these two rulings.
All US Laws are bound by the Constitution. No laws predating the Constitution are exempt from it's restrictions. In fact as the Constitution (along with the Declaration) are the founding documnets of our nation that that lay out the entire basis for law, it is an inherent contradiction to claim some specific laws could come before them or superscede them.
There is international maritime law, most of it arrived at in the last 100 years, much of which we are bound to by various treaties. However as there ferry boats travel a few miles between cities in Washington it has nothing to do with this case.
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