Build a wooden raft from a palm tree or two? :D

Ships are not a good option, and if left as the only one it would disrupt many persons livelihood.

You want to get the conservationists involved in this "lively" debate too.... ???
:eek:

Nah.... they've got Easter Island. And all they need is 40k miles in coach roundtrip from JFK, MIA, LAX to there.

Sigh, what a stupid way to interpret what I said. I was taking the analysis step by step. What you called "stupid" is nevertheless true, and was not intended to prove any more or less that what it proves. There is no explicit right to airplane travel in the US Constitution even though it COULD be there if we really wanted to write it in. That's not too tough to understand, is it?


Thanks for the tutorial. You sound as if you've had a survey course on con. law as an undergrad, but not much more. IF you had, you would know that there IS NO CONSTITUTIONAL RIGHT TO AIRPLANE TRAVEL. If you are a lawyer, you need to dust off your Gunther on Const. Law. All your handwringing about what the "SCOTUS" would find embedded in the constitution is beside the point as no court has ever found such a right, and no court is remotely likely to do so. The latest court to unanimously dismiss such a silly idea out of hand is the Ninth US Circuit Court of Appeals in the Gilmore v. Gonzales case. You might take a look at that case to further your knowledge on the difference between a constitutional right to interstate travel, which exisits, and a constitutional right to travel by airplane, which does not, and how the arguments of silly people who think such a right inheres in the constitution are treated by serious people called judges.

Your suggestion that constitutional rights arise when scholars recognize them is particularly foolish. Where could one have gotten that idea?

It would make an interesting law school hypothetical to ask what result if the US Congress abolished airline travel in the US as too risky? I'm not sure what the result would be, but it would almost definitely not be based on a constitutional right to airline travel.

Finally, what some posters, even ones with enough knowledge to make them embarrassingly dangerous, cannot seem to grasp is that, in the absence of the constitutional right to airplane travel, the federal government may regulate interstate commerce. The means chosen require only a "rational basis." Not a convincing basis, not something that most people would vote for, just some connection between the government power and what they're doing.

Let me think, what could the connection be between asking 20 questions at an airport and the government ability to regulate commerce? I know!! Airplanes moving through the skies have been used as weapons of mass murder and destruction!! Wow, it's a close call, but I would say that the means chosen by the government has a rational relationship to this government interest.

Now, there might be limits to what the government may do in airport/airline security. Those limits are not found in the "right to travel." It would be much better to spend one's time looking at fourth amendment cases (a bit less of a longshot, though a longshot nonetheless) than making up rights and misleading people about what the constitution says and means.

Or possibly the ninth:
the Ninth Amendment shows a belief of the Constitution's authors that fundamental rights exist that are not expressly enumerated in the first eight amendments and an intent that the list of rights included there not be deemed exhaustive.

This point has been brought up by a couple of folks and I've avoided addressing it because it will upset some folks to learn how this amendment is interpreted. In fact, I personally disagree with it, but the US Supreme Court largely refuses to use the Ninth Amendment as a rule of decision/source of constitutional rights.

In other words, despite it's wording and the common sense of it, it is NOT a viable legal argument to say that the Ninth Amendment reserves all nonenumerated rights to the people, and that something like a "right to airplane travel" is one of them, and thus the government may not infringe it. Indeed, when the SCt. recognized a general right to interstate travel many years ago, it did not employ the ninth amendment, but the privileges and immunity clause. The reluctance to use the ninth amendment substantively to protect rights is based on the fear that justices (who else would "interpret" what rights are reserved?) will simply invent rights out of thin air.

What this means is that you don't get to (successfully, at least) argue in court that the ninth amendment protects your right to "travel by airplane" and the government may not infringe it by asking questions. A case based solely on that argument would be laughed out of court. Indeed, the dedicated plaintiff that brought Gilmore v. Gonzales apparently didn't even try that one, and he seems to have tried everything else.

So, I understand why people make this argument, and it makes logical sense, but a ninth amendment claim won't fly, and it hasn't for many decades.

The Internet has also been used for that purpose. Would the government thus be reasonably allowed to engage in the 20 questions game before we're allowed to use it, or otherwise implement a Chinese-style monitoring and censorship system?

Driving and rental vehicles have also been used for interstate terrorism. Do you think the government would be justified in asking 20 questions before one is allowed to rent a vehicle? What about having questioning stations on the borders of each state?

The basic argument is the same in each one of these cases.

And does it make any difference whether there's actually and solid proof that the 20 questions can reasonably be expected to prevent terrorism? Doesn't something have to be effective in its stated goal in order to have a rational relationship to a government interest?

First, let me be clear -- it doesn't matter what I personally "think," I'm just telling you what the law IS.

The answer to all of your questions except the last one is Yes -- I believe the government could constitutionally do all of the things you mention. I.e., all of the things you list would be within the government's power to regulate interstate commerce. Perhaps there might be some type of free speech issue re: the internet, but please note that free speech is actually an enumerated, recognized constitutional right, unlike the "right to airplane travel." So, putting aside the possibility of a first amendment challenge, the government can do those things.

Would the government do them? Politically, each of the things you mention would be political poison, so they are not done. Make no mistake, however, they could be done.

Finally, as anyone who has attended law school could tell you, the answer to the last question is a resounding NO. The government, in meeting the "rational relationship" test in the exercise of its power to regulate interstate commerce need not present detailed studies "and solid proof that the 20 questions can reasonably be expected to prevent terrorism[.]" They simply must articulate a rational argument that the regulations may be connected with the regulation of interstate commerce. This represents great court deference to the decisions of the legislature (from which government administrative agencies obtain their authority). That normally is a good thing.

Now, that's the law, though a bit simplistically stated. Why are folks here so obsessed with establishing a "human right" or a "constitutional right" against these questions? The way our system is supposed to work is that you go out and petition the government, i.e., your legislators, for redress of grievances. All of this "rights talk" is a waste of energy and will not help meet your goals.

Not true. It's worked before. ;)

Of course, those who are believers in near-limitless government authority will continue to hope that "[a]ll of this 'rights talk' is a waste of energy and will not help meet [our] goals" of eliminating the security dog and pony show, including the wasteful "security" questioning at airports which they may defend.

Because if the right is protected it doesn't matter if you're in the minority. That's why racial and other minorities in the US have been so concerned about getting SCOTUS to chime in in support. According to opinion polls, interracial marriage wouldn't have been legalized until the late 1990s if it were a popularity contest. Instead, Loving was decided in 1965. (Probably it would have been later than the late '90s because Loving changed the facts on the ground, which helped sway public opinion, and those who were strongly opposed would probably be the most likely to vote in elections, just as we see in today's marriage debates.)

People who believe that the freedom to travel inside the country is a right are probably in the minority now. If there's another terrorist attack or if the brainwashing works well enough those who believe in that right will be in the extreme minority as any stupid plan to limit freedom simply for the sake of limiting freedom (under a phony argument of "security," of course) will breeze through Congress. Better to get the rights recognized now, than to have them trashed and subverted later.

Because those questions violate our right to privacy. The existence of this right has been clearly established by the Supreme Court.

In another thread I tried to explain that even a simple a question about the purpose of the trip can by itself be invasive, because the truthful answer may be: "It is personal and private. I do not feel like discussing it with a total stranger". The other possibility is that the trip may involve a business matter that employer specifically forbids discussing outside of the office with people who do not have the need to know. This actually happened to me a few years ago in AMS. The wicket gets even stickier if the business matter is classified.

If it is established that there is a right to air travel, then it follows that security questioning forces us to choose between two rights: Right to travel and right to privacy.

My personal view is: It does not make any sense to affirm that there is a right to travel and then state that there is no right to travel by any specific means. Following this logic, the Government could take away the right to travel by car, by trian, by bus, on horseback, or even on foot. Clearly, this is absurd.
Part of the problem is that questioning that gave rise to the thread took place in CDG. This may be a jurisdictional "no man's land".

If such questioning ever took place in the US, the proper venue to challenge that will be in Court.

I think this is a very fair point, and this is the reason that I always read and respect Doppy's posts though I often disagree. It is very fair to say that because the SCt. changes it's views over time, and will not infrequently "find" new rights in the constitution, that agitation along this front may not prove entirely futile as I have suggested before.

Thus, I think Doppy makes a very fair point above, though I think it's a bit unfair to suggest that the security questioning is a "stupid plan to limit freedom simply for the sake of limiting freedom. . . ," but it is not my mission to convert anybody, especially on an internet bulletin board, to my opinion on that.

One correction to the above -- it has been held for many decades that there IS a constitutional right to interstate travel, and I've said that a number of times in this thread.

I do not think that this issue rises to the Loving v. Virginia example, but that's also just my opinion. Nor do I think it would have been the late '90's before society changed in the absence of Loving. Also just my opinion.

Contrary to the fruitloop rantings of one or two posters on this issue, I think the idea of working through the political system and continuing legal pressure is not such a crazy idea. Here is not the place to debate whether this is a proper approach to constitutional law and whether rule by life-tenured judges is better than rule by the people, but that question is squarely raised by this issue.

This does not in any way change my points about what the law ACTUALLY IS NOW, and what it is likely to be in the near to mid term future.

Probably not. The courts have protected freedom of speach very strongly over the years. They haven't protected the right to travel to the same degree.

I hope you realize that what would be justified is a very different question from what would be allowed. I feel strongly that this would not be justified, but whether I have no clue it would be allowed.

Well, there are similarities. Personally, I feel that the restrictions on freedom of travel that have been allowed by the courts are not justified, and that those restrictions are bad policy and an inappropriate infringement of civil liberties. But what is legal is not always the same as what is right and just and good.

The Internet has been used to corrdinate and execute terrorists operations, and has been instrumental in attacks. The same justification of penalizing everyone seems like it would apply here.

I do realize that. Unfortunately, especially when people are operating on emotions, what's allowed often exceeds what's justifiable.

In chronological order:

"Working through the political system and continuing legal pressure is not such a crazy idea", it's the most effective idea. I'm glad to see the chronological evolution above.