Justices of the Supreme Court of Atlasia,I apologize for the delay in filing my brief, but I was occupied with my several other jobs; legal practice in Atlasia does not pay very well, due to the very low demand for it.
The case now under consideration in the Supreme Court concerns the unconstitutional detainment and revoking of license of my client, a doctor providing abortion services. I argue that Sections 1 and 2 of the
Late-Term Abortion Restriction Act, under which my client was charged, is unconstitutional due to it assuming a federal power not expressly detailed in Article I.5 of the Third Constitution.
I. The scope of the Senate's enumerated powersMy argument necessarily invokes a history of Atlasian precedent on the Senate's powers, referenced in cases such as
Fritz v. Ernest, Peter v. Atlasia and
Junkie v. Atlasia. Though these cases were decided under past Constitutions, they are admissible for two reasons. First, the Supreme Court has employed their usage in precedent under the Third Constitution (see
TheRileyKeaton v. Atlasia). Second, in the push to ratify the Third Constitution with haste, Article I.5 of the Third Constitution is exactly the same as that under the Second.
Jurisprudence on the nature of the Senate's powers is first found in
Fritz v. Ernest, but the decision itself is spottily written. Its principles were instead articulated in detail by Chief Justice Sam Spade:
Both citations come from the
Junkie v. Atlasia ruling. To repeat, precedent has established two necessary criteria for the constitutionality of Senate statute:
the granting of affirmative power fitting with the
plain meaning of the Constitution.Junkie v. Atlasia focuses on the elucidation of the first criterion, the granting of affirmative power. Its decision affirms that a clause in the Constitution on the Senate's powers exists independently of all others. Were there overlap and conflict, "Rather, each provision supplements the other respective power."
This criterion by itself, however, cannot be sufficient. A clause can be subject to wild interpretations; to provide an abstract example, clause I.5.30 of the Constitution, on regulations for protections of employment, would not intuitively be sufficient to justify a transition to a fully socialist economy, even if one argues that such a bill does necessarily protect the employed. This is why all precedent has evoked an idea of plain meaning.
While a definition of this principle has not been elaborated upon, we have seen it in practice in cases like
Peter v. Atlasia:Or
South Park Conservative v. Atlasia, in two different ways:
Would that not include people in these establishments, the restaurants, the cinemas, the libraries? Would the prohibiting of smoking, a potentially dangerous activity not only to one's self but others around that person, protect the health of "those in employment"? We can't imagine any other interpretation other than that.[/quote]
Other examples can be drawn from precedent, notably Sam Spade's. The common trend in these rulings, however, is that the plain meaning of enumerated powers is
all that which is explicitly recognized in the text and hence self-evident.This is seen in
Peter, where Sam Spade see the clause's plain meaning as evidently granting the power of punishing fraud, but only that. This is also seen in
SPC, in which Marokai refers to the article's self-evident nature, and Sam Space uses the exact words in the clause to delineate the Senate's powers. Another application is in
Junkie, where Sam Spade's decision hinges on the separation of the word "tax" from others in clause 1.
The argument that follows hinges on this interpretation of plain meaning in the Constitution.