(U.S.A.) Removing senators not from your state Background example: People in California want to remove a senator from Kentucky. Can this be performed? How can it be performed?
The only way that a member of the House of Representatives, or a U.S. Senator can be removed from office (other than by resignation, death, or expiration of a term of office without being re-elected) is by a two-thirds vote of the chamber removing that member. The relevant provision of the United States Constitution is Article I, Section 5, Clause 2 which states: Each House may determine the Rules of its Proceedings, punish its Members for disorderly Behaviour, and, with the Concurrence of two thirds, expel a Member. So, a member of the U.S. House of Representatives may be removed by a two-thirds vote of the U.S. House, and a U.S. Senator may be removed by a two-thirds vote of the U.S. Senate. This has been done five times since 1789 in the U.S. House, most recently in 2002. It has been done fifteen times since 1789 in the U.S. Senate (the most recent 14 times in 1861 and 1862 in connection with the U.S. Civil War). The case of William Blount in 1797 established the precedent that expulsion of a member by a chamber, rather than impeachment, is the proper process to remove a member of Congress. Members of Congress may not be recalled, and are not automatically removed from office upon conviction of a crime. Apart from the expulsion process, there is no way for voters or states to remove U.S. Senators not from their own state, something that doesn't make sense to be possible in the overall context of the structure of the United States government under the U.S. Constitution. Senate Rule XXIII in part provides that ``if the impeachment shall not, upon any of the articles presented, be sustained by the votes of two-thirds of the members present, a judgment of acquittal shall be entered;'' A quorum of the full Senate and not just those sworn in for the trial is required. The Senate rules in the case of an expulsion of a member are analogous.
Nothing will happen. Wait for the 2030 census and January 3rd 2033. Representatives are only recalculated after each census. The last census and recalculation was 2020. So no ordinary recalculation will happen till 2030. It's unclear if there could be an extra census, which then might lead to redistricting - the only rules (in the constitution) I can find are, that a census has to happen every 10 years. Current laws are, that it happens every 10 years. It's up to politics to introduce laws to allow an extra census, but to make it that obvious that it is needed, there needs to be an exodus/death toll of the scale of the black death in Europe (one in 4 dies/moves) or a total depopulation of an area like New York City. Which has 8 million inhabitants, something like 10 districts, and is growing. Back in 1918 H1N1 killed between 2% and 10% of those that got it and in total about 675,000 (of 103.2 million) in the US, mainly in cities that did lag in their reaction to the fall/winter wave in 1918. As three (not fully) random examples: Philadelphia lost 16000 for something around 941 deaths per 100,000 inhabitants (the town had about 1.7 million inhabitants at the time), LA had a death toll of only 494 per 100,000, all of Nebraska lost between 2800 and 7500 people on a population of 1.3 million - for - for between 200 and 580 deaths per 100,000. Yet despite this very disparate impact it barely impacted the 1920 census. Not even the hurricane Katrina, which pretty much wiped out New Orleans, did not result in an extra census and restructuring - so it is very unlikely to happen. On the other hand, there is a formula for assigning representatives. We use the same setup since the 1940 census. Legal basis? 2 USC §2b dictates each state gets at least one: Each State shall be entitled, in the Seventy-eighth and in each Congress thereafter until the taking effect of a reapportionment under a subsequent statute or section 2a of this title, to the number of Representatives shown in the statement transmitted to the Congress on January 8, 1941, based upon the method known as the method of equal proportions, no State to receive less than one Member. 2 USC §2c dictates how many representative districts exist and how many representatives it will have: In each State entitled in the Ninety-first Congress [1969] or in any subsequent Congress thereafter to more than one Representative under an apportionment made pursuant to the provisions of section 2a(a) of this title, there shall be established by law a number of districts equal to the number of Representatives to which such State is so entitled, and Representatives shall be elected only from districts so established, no district to elect more than one Representative (except that a State which is entitled to more than one Representative and which has in all previous elections elected its Representatives at Large may elect its Representatives at Large to the Ninety-first Congress). The Redistricting is State-Law - and there are roughly 5 types how it's done. So, one representative per district. One district per representative. District borders are to be redrawn based on the decennial census as demanded in Art. 1 §2 - where it is called Enumeration: The actual Enumeration shall be made within three Years after the first Meeting of the Congress of the United States, and within every subsequent Term of ten Years, in such Manner as they shall by Law direct. The Number of Representatives shall not exceed one for every thirty Thousand, but each State shall have at Least one Representative; [provisional numbers] When will redistricting take effect? Redistricting lags one term behind, and it will not fire or remove a representative from office, whose district is scheduled to vanish - or elect new people. That's because redistricting on the state level can only happen after the reapportionment of the seats has been handed out by the clerk of the House of representatives. Reapportionment has a deadline of 25th January the year after the census. That's after the house term starts. Since at that moment the districts are still in existence, the term of the current holder first needs to run out before the new districts take effect. So the district ceases to exist the same day they leave office on January 3rd. A good example would be New York: The 45th district was redistricted from the 43rd District and elected first for in 1944, and was redistricted back into the 43rd District after the 1950 census. It was last voted for in 1950, well before the results of the census were handed out and redistricting happened. So the district ceased to be the same day Daniel A. Reed left the office on January 3rd of 1953. The 28th Congressional District was established in 1823 and eliminated on January 3rd 2013 as a result of the 2010 census. The last election for its seat was - obviously - in 2010. As a result, any changes to the district map stemming from the 2020 census will take effect only on January 3rd 2023, and a massive depopulation showing in the 2030 census will have an effect only in the elections for the house that begins its term on January 3rd 2033.
This document is a handy summary of US laws. The primary distinction is between one-party and all-party consent states. In California, all parties must "consent" to recording, but in Georgia, only one party has to consent. "Consent" can be implicit, so if someone announces that they are recording, consent has been effectively given (that's not a hard and fast rule: you have to look at the actual case law and statutory language for that state, but usually this is covered by the "reasonable expectation of privacy" part of the law, where you don't have a reasonable expectation of privacy if someone announces that they are recording the conversation). As it happens, there was a case tried in California involving Georgia-to-California calls, Kearney v. Salomon Smith Barney, Inc., S124739 (Sup. Ct. Cal. July 13, 2006), declaring that California law must be obeyed by a person calling into California. The court declined to decide whether a person could be criminally prosecuted for such a violation of the law, but there is possible civil liability.
Under the present constitution . . . Are there any consequences of the fact that the Constitution of Massachusetts and the Constitution of the United States use two different names for that state? No. Lots of the language in the United States Constitution is no longer in place or in common usage or is invalid due to subsequent amendments, and that language is still effective as originally intended. The U.S. Constitution has never been "amended and restated" and can't be understood properly without annotations to its raw text. Might a federal statute be needed for some states (e.g. Vermont, because of what is noted above) but not for others, because of differences in the federal statutes that admitted the state, or because of the lack of any need for admission by Congress in the case of the original thirteen states? Not really. Every state's name is embedded in myriad federal laws and regulations in addition to the statute that admitted the state to the United States, e.g. laws assigning names to post offices, laws allocating judgeships, laws purchasing property, laws appropriating funds, laws assigning states to various districts for purposes of executive branch departments and the judiciary, tax laws (e.g. the Obamacare tax credit), etc. Would a state statute suffice? Would a state constitutional amendment suffice? Would a federal statute suffice without a state statute or a state referendum? Would a federal constitutional amendment be needed? A federal constitutional amendment would not be needed. The Constitution vests Congress with the authority to admit states and to change their boundaries with the permission of the affected states. This would be within the power over states that could be inferred from those powers. A state and the federal government could each pass a statute to call itself something different for various purposes. For example, the official name of the state of Rhode Island is "State of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations" but various state and federal statutes authorize the use of the short form of the "State of Rhode Island" for most purposes. As a practical matter a state constitutional amendment would probably be desirable on general principles to officially change the name of a state, whether or not it was strictly required, in part, because a state constitution usually sets forth an official name of a state in its body text. It would be possible for a state to change its constitution and statutes and change its name in a move that the federal government did not accept, and if that happened, the federal government and its officials would probably continue to use the old name and the state government and its officials would probably use the new name. I think it is as a practical matter, unlikely that a standoff like this would persist, but I think that this is the most likely outcome. A federal government move to change a state's name without its consent proactively, however, would probably be struck down as violating federalism concerns. Of course, all of this is speculative, because there are really no precedents for disputes over the changing of a state's name. Context would influence the outcome of any such case.
Probably.* Congress has wide latitude to dictate the procedures of "inferior courts" -- the district courts and circuit courts of appeal. Those courts only exist because Congress created them, so Congress can generally set the terms on which they continue to exist. That power is limited in several important ways by the Constitution, including the terms and compensation of the judges, and standing to address cases, and then further limited by separation-of-powers principles. But the Rules of Civil Procedure and the Rules of Criminal Procedure are a good example of how Congress has already -- and largely unobjectionably -- imposed these types of demands on the judiciary. The rules are generally drafted by the judicial branch, but Congress approves them and gives them the force of law. In both sets of rules, you can already see some requirements on how decisions are worded: Criminal Rule 23 requires the court to "state its specific findings of fact" after a bench trial; Criminal Rule 32 requires the court to "set forth the plea, the jury verdict or the court's findings, the adjudication, and the sentence" in judgments of conviction; Civil Rule 52 requires the court to "find the facts specially and state its conclusions of law separately"; Civil Rule 58 requires that "every judgment and amended judgment ... be set out in a separate document"; Civil Rule 59 requires the court to "specify the reasons [for granting or denying a motion for a new trial] in its order"; and Civil Rule 72 requires magistrates to enter "a recommended disposition, including, if appropriate, proposed findings of fact." The rule you're proposing seems to go well beyond these requirements, but I don't see how it would run afoul of constitutional constraints. I could imagine an argument that this somehow encroaches on the courts' inherent authority, but I'm not really convinced that that authority protects against this. For more information, you can read the Congressional Research Service report on "Congressional Authority Over the Federal Courts." *This answer only applies to Article III courts, but even then does not apply to the Supreme Court, which is co-equal and generally has the authority to set its own rules. When it comes to Article I courts, though, Congress would probably have virtually unlimited discretion to impose the kinds of requirements that you're talking about, and even to say that the court has no jurisdiction to consider constitutionality at all. Congress might even get away with imposing these kinds of requirements on state courts through the Spending Clause
Was/is it permissible for judges in the US to talk ex-parte like that? No. Ex parte interactions of that sort are not allowed. See, for instance, Disciplinary Counsel v. Bachman, 2020-Ohio-732 (Dec. 18, 2020) and Maze v. Judicial Conduct Commission, 2019-SC-0691-RR (Dec. 17, 2020). An example of less recent decision but with a reporter citation number is Comm'n on Judicial Performance v. Bozeman, 302 So.3d 1217 (2020). For situations of imminent risk of irreparable harm, procedural law provides for ex parte motions and ex parte petitions, such as this granted petition for Personal Protection Order. See M[ichigan]CR 3.7003(G). But the scenarios you depict fall short of the necessity for which ex parte provisions are intended. do the above scenes in the movies essentially portray judicial misconduct? Yes. A judge's house is inappropriate for communicating, let alone ex parte, his ruling (I am not knowledgeable of the films but my understanding of your description is that that judge made the ruling on the application). As for The Untouchables, any evidence of jurors' &amp; judges' conflict of interest and likely bias has to be filed in court and comply with procedural law so that all parties have an opportunity to litigate the matter.
Short answer: It depends on the state and exactly how you do so. Stating how you voted, by itself, is fine; however, taking a photo of your ballot instead of just saying how you voted is illegal in some states, especially if the photo was taken within a polling place. Laws banning these so-called &quot;ballot selfies&quot; may be unconstitutional, and have been successfully challenged under the first amendment in some cases. There is not a general ban on simply saying who you voted for. This is an extremely common practice, and it is the basis for &quot;exit polling,&quot; where voters leaving a polling place are asked whom they voted for in order to collect voting statistics to predict the winner of the election. This type of polling has been upheld by courts, and it sounds like laws banning it were primarily concerned with voter intimidation rather than vote-buying. As of 2016, 18 states banned sharing any photograph of a ballot, while an additional 6 ban photography in polling places. The rationale for such laws is to prevent vote-buying, because if you can't take a photo of your ballot, you can't prove whom you voted for (whereas without the photo, you could simply vote however you like, then lie). However, at least one such law has been challenged in federal court and invalidated as a violation of the first amendment (in Rideout v. Gardner) &quot;because it is a content-based restriction on speech that cannot survive strict scrutiny.&quot; If such first-amendment challenges continue to be upheld, it is possible that this practice will be legal throughout the United States.
Expunction may be possible for instance if you are acquitted, later proven innocent, pardoned, and various other things that fall short of being convicted and doing the time. The entire law is here (Texas code of criminal procedure 55.01). There is also the option of an order of non-disclosure, overviewed here. A requirement for such an order is that you were placed on and completed deferred adjudication community supervision, which from what I can tell is not what happened. "Background check removal" may range between simply taking your money and doing nothing, to doing what you could do yourself to get free of traces via radaris, intelius, spokeo, and so on to "request removal" from that web site. This will not make your record unavailable, because these websites don't have any special powers to reach into and manipulate state records.