Individuals/entities are not given access to the information that the OFAC used in determining that they were involved in terrorist activity. Moreover, because of the Administrative Procedure Act (APA), there is no meaningful review of the OFAC's activities, even though those activities fall well-outside of traditional APA protections. This is particularly disturbing given that the standard for freezing assets is very low. Once an individual/entity has been designated a national security threat, the President reports it to OFAC, who then places them on a list and freezes their assets. What is significant is that there is no review of the Executive Branch's decision that the impacted party is a threat to national security. Given the link between recent terrorist activity in the United States and worldwide with Islamic extremism, this lax evidentiary standard opens the doorway for discriminatory seizures, as evidenced by the seizure of al Barakaat's assets and the focus on several Islamic charities. While the government contends that the OFAC seizures are strictly preventative, there is no way to avoid coming to the same conclusion as the author and labeling these seizures as punitive, since the impacted...
As a stop-gap measure OFAC action seems warranted; however, it seems reasonable to require the government to prove their case against the party within a certain period of time, or to unfreeze the assets. The author addresses remedying the problem with keeping OFAC's standards secret and states a way that they could be kept confidential. However, the reality is that secret standards simply fail to meet due process requirements. If one is unaware of what type of behavior triggers a legal sanction, how can one avoid engaging in that behavior. While the author addresses the civil liberty matter and related post 9-11 abuses of civil liberties, she fails to absolutely condemn the administration for its unconstitutional behavior with these seizures. Her recommendations that Congress provide the OFAC with more clearly-defined standards is meaningless in a scenario where only a small group of Congress people is responsible for oversight. There is a reason that checks- and-balances have traditionally required the involvement of all three branches, and there is no reason to deprive the judicial branch of its ability to meaningfully review these seizures.
This was the first time that the Supreme Court had deemed a law unconstitutional, and in fact this power of the Court had not even really been established until it was used in this case. Its establishment, however, was to have profound effects on the judicial branch's power over the legislative and executive branches, especially in making sure that the restrictions of the Constitution were maintained despite -- and
Judiciary These two questions will be responded to simultaneously as the answer to one will always involve touching on issues concerning the other. When we speak of three (3) departments or branches of government then we must necessarily refer to the "presidential system" of governance. These three co-equal and co-independent departments are the Executive, the legislative and the judiciary. The executive as its name connotes, has the main duty to faithfully execute the
Justices can make public pronouncements on issues that are important to the federal judiciary - not specific cases that come before the court, but general political and social issues. For example, the Chief Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court, John Roberts, recently made a speech that warned about attacks against judicial independence. He was stating what the framers of the Constitution worried about hundreds of years ago when he said:
After all, Ernesto Miranda who was the namesake of the Miranda Rights was a rapist and a guilty one at that. He was retried after his confession was tossed and he was re-convicted as were many of the other people that had their convictions overturned at the same time. However, others were never re-tried and it's safe to say that at least some of them were guilty. Conclusion In the end,
Judicial System Overview of the Civil Justice System and Its Administration Since the creation of the United States Constitution, there has been a clear distinction between the three branches of government. The third branch, the Judiciary, exists for two purposes: to determine justice according to the current laws and policies and to eliminate any legislation that is in violation of the Constitution. As with the other two branches, the Supreme Court has
Judicial review allows lawmakers to reflect changing morals and ideals when enacting legislation, but prevents them from allowing the hot-button topics of the moment to determine the laws of a nation. In fact, to really understand the success of judicial review, one need only look to the election in the Ukraine, where the Ukrainian Supreme Court may be the only body far-enough removed from party politics to ensure that
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