¶ … authority to legislate is derived. Determine whether or not Congress has unreasonably and unlawfully expanded upon an identified source's authority to legislate. Provide a rationale for your response.
Congress is one authority which has the ability to legislate. The executive branch of government (the President) is another authority to legislate. These authorities have the ability to move a bill which has been proposed for legislation forward or backward.
One arena where congress has been accused of unlawfully and unreasonably expanding upon a source's authority to legislate was via immigration amnesty. "The Immigration Reform and Control Act of 1986 (IRCA) was enacted by Congress in response to the large and rapidly growing illegal alien population in the United States. The final bill was the result of a dramatic compromise between those who wanted to reduce illegal immigration into the United States and those who wanted to "wipe the slate clean" for those illegals already living here by granting them legal residence" (numbersusa.com). This piece of legislation contained two huge amnesty programs for illegal aliens could show continuous residence since 1982, or those who had worked agriculturally between 1985 and 1986 for at least 90 days and could show proof of that (numbersusa.com). Thus, while this huge amnesty was granted the IRCA was also able to encapsulate a range of provisions to counteract this, such as fortifying certain immigration laws, increasing border controls and to develop a program to check the immigration status of aliens who want certain welfare benefits. This particular legislation passed by Congress has been found to be unlawful in the sense that is has been connected to terrorism: Mahmud Abouhalima, the head of the 1993 World Trade Center bombing was legalized in America as an agricultural worker as a result of this amnesty (numbersusa.com). Because of this amnesty, Abouhalima was able to travel abroad, receiving terrorist training.
Examine the value of dicta to the judicial decisions. Provide two (2) examples that illustrate the potential effect of dicta on judicial decisions.
Dicta is the plural of dictum and refers to a comment or opinion made in passing stated by the judge in the decision of a case regarding legal matters which do not pertain to the outcome of the case, such as a legal principle, that is introduced by way of illustration, argument or suggestion. It has no binding authority and should not impact legal outcomes. However, the question does remain if dicta can and has affected legal outcomes in the past regardless.
For example, in the case USA Plaintiff-Appellee, v. Dewayne PRESSLEY, Defendant-Appellant, the presiding just had an ex-parte dialogue about whether hung juries were divided along racial divisions. "The judge reiterated the substance of this conversation during a hearing at which defense counsel and attorneys for the government were present. Neither party objected to the conversation at this time. The jury later returned a guilty verdict against Pressley. Pressley now appeals, contending that the judge's ex-parte conversation with one juror might have affected the jury's verdict. Because the record demonstrates that neither Pressley's counsel's presence nor Pressley's presence either before or during the judge's conversation with the juror would have affected the verdict, we affirm."
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