The New York Times reported the following:
The Catholic archbishop of Los Angeles called the authorities’ ability to demand documents Nazism. While police demands of documents are common on subways, highways and in public places in some countries, including France, Arizona is the first state to demand that immigrants meet federal requirements to carry identity documents legitimizing their presence on American soil.
Let me make two observations. First where was Pius XII when there were real Nazis, not to mention the Cardinals when the child abuse was destroying the Church. Second, California had a law until the early 1980s which required providing identification to Police whenever they desired to find out who you were. It was a remnant of the laws during WW II restricting the Japanese before they were interred. That was an FDR period law.
Not that I am a major supporter of random stops, in fact I am a Warren and Brandeis fan who believes in the right to be left alone, a right that seems to have all but abandoned.
As Warren and Brandeis said:
"Recent inventions and business methods call attention to the next step which must be taken for the protection of the person, and for securing to the individual what Judge Cooley calls the right "to be let alone." Instantaneous photographs and newspaper enterprise have invaded the sacred precincts of private and domestic life; and numerous mechanical devices threaten to make good the prediction that "what is whispered in the closet shall be proclaimed from the house-tops." For years there has been a feeling that the law must afford some remedy for the unauthorized circulation of portraits of private persons; and the evil of the invasion of privacy by the newspapers, long keenly felt, has been but recently discussed by an able writer. The alleged facts of a somewhat notorious case brought before an inferior tribunal in New York a few months ago, directly involved the consideration of the right of circulating portraits; and the question whether our law will recognize and protect the right to privacy in this and in other respects must soon come before our courts for consideration.
The Catholic archbishop of Los Angeles called the authorities’ ability to demand documents Nazism. While police demands of documents are common on subways, highways and in public places in some countries, including France, Arizona is the first state to demand that immigrants meet federal requirements to carry identity documents legitimizing their presence on American soil.
Let me make two observations. First where was Pius XII when there were real Nazis, not to mention the Cardinals when the child abuse was destroying the Church. Second, California had a law until the early 1980s which required providing identification to Police whenever they desired to find out who you were. It was a remnant of the laws during WW II restricting the Japanese before they were interred. That was an FDR period law.
Not that I am a major supporter of random stops, in fact I am a Warren and Brandeis fan who believes in the right to be left alone, a right that seems to have all but abandoned.
As Warren and Brandeis said:
"Recent inventions and business methods call attention to the next step which must be taken for the protection of the person, and for securing to the individual what Judge Cooley calls the right "to be let alone." Instantaneous photographs and newspaper enterprise have invaded the sacred precincts of private and domestic life; and numerous mechanical devices threaten to make good the prediction that "what is whispered in the closet shall be proclaimed from the house-tops." For years there has been a feeling that the law must afford some remedy for the unauthorized circulation of portraits of private persons; and the evil of the invasion of privacy by the newspapers, long keenly felt, has been but recently discussed by an able writer. The alleged facts of a somewhat notorious case brought before an inferior tribunal in New York a few months ago, directly involved the consideration of the right of circulating portraits; and the question whether our law will recognize and protect the right to privacy in this and in other respects must soon come before our courts for consideration.
There must be a balance in law and rhetoric. The Cardinal clearly has stepped over the bounds. Perhaps one should clean one's own house before throwing stones. It may be my sixteen years of Catholic education and two years in a Franciscan seminary that does it, but when Cardinal bespeak like this they must do so from the high ground. Clearly they are still in the swamps. As for the law, it has gone back and forth on this use, but alas we have never truly have the right to be let alone. Where is Justice Brandeis when we truly need him!
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