Word: stated
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Dates: during 2000-2000
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...abstract doctrines of federalism and states' rights will soon have a concrete impact on the way in which the U.S. combats violence against women. On Jan. 11, the Supreme Court heard arguments on a section of the Violence Against Women Act (VAWA) that lets some victims sue their attackers in federal court. Given the trend in recent decisions involving federal and state powers, the Court is likely to strike down this portion of the law, and there are good reasons for it to do so. Rather than bemoan the court's conservatism or wait for a reversal, the U.S. government...
...Supreme Court has, in the past 10 years, attempted to reverse the centralizing trend of earlier courts and shift power away from the federal government to the states, often claiming that such a scheme better satisfies the "original intent" of the framers. Recently, in its zeal to protect states' "sovereign immunity," the Court's five-member majority has begun to overstep the bounds of original intent, ruling in two cases that the 11th Amendment, which protects states from federal lawsuits "by Citizens of another State," also protects them from suits by their own citizens over violations of federal labor...
...suits for "gender-based animus-motivated violence," a category which includes some rapes; the case heard Jan. 11 was filed by Christy Brzonkala, a former student at Virginia Polytechnic Institute who says she was raped by two football players. Although acts of personal violence are traditionally the domain of state criminal law, the U.S. defended VAWA as a legitimate extension of Congress' power to regulate interstate commerce, providing statistics that gender-based violence costs the economy $3 billion a year in medical expenses and lost productivity...
There is no question that violence against women is a serious problem. But there are better ways of addressing it. Curiously, the attorneys general from 36 states who asked that the law be upheld did so citing systematic biases in their own departments and judiciaries against the victims of gender-related violence. The 14th amendment guarantee of "equal protection under the law" does not mean that Congress may intervene on the grounds of state incompetence. A policy of reliance on the federal government--whose judges and juries may be equally biased--obscures the states' responsibilities to reform their own justice...
...Iowa caucuses, the name of the game is momentum. And Thursday's revelation that Democratic presidential candidate Bill Bradley has experienced multiple reoccurences of an irregular heartbeat is a stick in the spokes of his resurgent campaign in the Hawkeye State. "This is exactly what he didn't want," says TIME political correspondent Eric Pooley, reporting from Iowa. The news emerged just when Bradley was waging an eleventh-hour comeback, in which he unleashed Daniel Patrick Moynihan to shore up the state's elderly vote and regional favorite Bob Kerrey to mobilize the party establishment. "Right when he needs...