What allows the Connecticut legislature to exonerate previous witch convictions? A number of news services have report on the Connecticut legislature voting to &quot;exonerate&quot; witch convictions from the 17th century. For example, this article from wtnh.com news: With distant family members looking on, Connecticut senators voted Thursday to absolve the 12 women and men convicted of witchcraft — 11 of whom were executed — more than 370 years ago and apologize for the “miscarriage of justice” that occurred over a dark 15-year-period of the state’s colonial history. The Senate voted 33-1 in favor of a resolution that officially proclaimed their innocence. ... Some of the descendants recently learned through genealogy testing that they were related to the accused witches and have since lobbied the state’s General Assembly to officially clear their names. I'm not familiar with the Connecticut constitution, but it seems that most states in the United States tend to follow the general format of the U.S. Consitution. What part of the Connecticut constitution allows the legislature to do this? That would seem to violate separation of powers for the legislature to void a court decision. I can understand a pardon from the governor, since that tends to be an enumerated power. But the legislature? Article XVIII of the Connecticut constitution mentions the separation of powers: The powers of government shall be divided into three distinct departments, and each of them confided to a separate magistracy.... And article FIVE section 1 says that &quot;The powers and jurisdiction of these courts shall be defined by law.&quot; But from my lay person understanding, allowing the legislature to define the &quot;powers and jurisdiction&quot; of the courts wouldn't allow the legislature to grant the power to themselves. It looks like the Connecticut constitution doesn't enumerate legislative powers the way the U.S. Constitution does. And that sort of makes sense since &quot;police powers&quot; are granted to the states, and their legislatures can pretty much do anything that they want, as long as it isn't specifically prohibited by the state or U.S. Constitution. But since Article FIVE says specifically that &quot;powers of government shall be divided...&quot; [emphasis added], it seems to my lay-person reasoning that the legislature couldn't intrude into court decision unless specifically authorized elsewhere in the Connecticut constitution. The news article linked above mentions &quot;Because it’s a resolution, it does not require the governor’s signature.&quot; Does that mean it's all for show? That it doesn't truly exonerate the victims?
The resolution in Connecticut is a statement that has been agreed by the state's legislature, but is not a law. If it were, it would indeed need to be signed by the Governor, by virtue of Article 4, Section 15 of the state Constitution. It exonerates the victims insofar as it expresses the current legislature's disapproval of the witchcraft trials of the past, and apologizes to living relatives. All of the victims are long dead, whether they were executed by the state or not, so even if this were a legally-effective pardon, it would have no other practical consequences. That said, a state legislature could enact pardons for named individuals, or a class of people. It would be unlawful to criminalize a named person (that's a &quot;bill of attainder&quot;) or to punish someone for an act that wasn't a crime at the time (an &quot;ex post facto law&quot;). But the opposite, which reduces or eliminates a punishment, is not covered by the federal or state constitutional bans on such laws. That was explained by Samuel Chase in Calder v Bull, 3 U.S. 386, a Supreme Court decision of 1798 dealing with actions of the Connecticut legislature ordering a retrial in a probate case (with my emphasis): Every law that takes away or impairs rights vested agreeably to existing laws is retrospective, and is generally unjust and may be oppressive, and it is a good general rule that a law should have no retrospect; but there are cases in which laws may justly, and for the benefit of the community and also of individuals, relate to a time antecedent to their commencement, as statutes of oblivion or of pardon. They are certainly retrospective, and literally both concerning and after the facts committed. But I do not consider any law ex post facto within the prohibition that mollifies the rigor of the criminal law, but only those that create or aggravate the crime or increase the punishment or change the rules of evidence for the purpose of conviction. Every law that is to have an operation before the making thereof, as to commence at an antecedent time or to save time from the statute of limitations or to excuse acts which were unlawful, and before committed, and the like, is retrospective. But such laws may be proper or necessary, as the case may be. There is a great and apparent difference between making an unlawful act lawful and the making an innocent action criminal and punishing it as a crime. At the time, Connecticut's system for pardons made it so that an offender would always have to petition the legislature to pass a bill to that specific effect. That model predated the U.S. Constitution, and continued to operate after its ratification. The Governor only had the power to grant temporary reprieves, when the legislature was out of session - in fact, he still does (Article 4, Section 13 of the Constitution of Connecticut). Presently, the state has instituted a permanent system of a Board of Pardons and Paroles, but in principle they could enact some other model. The contemporaneous A System of the Laws of the State of Connecticut by Zephaniah Smith (1795) says in Book 5, Chapter 26: The power of granting pardon to criminals sentenced to death, or to any other punishment, is vested by law in the legislature. This carries forward a practice from the British legislatures, which also often passed acts to pardon or indemnify certain offenders. There was therefore quite a long history for Chase to allude to, even though he was writing not long after the revolution, in terms of this being part of the standard panoply of things a state legislature can generally do.
If a law is struck-down as unconstitutional, but all the precedent used to find it unconstitutional gets reversed; what becomes of the law? In U.S. law, the law has effect again, unless it has been amended or repealed in the meantime. Is it totally dead, needing be passed anew? In the U.S., no. It is not totally dead. It is merely dormant. It stays on the books and legislators may decide not to repeal it as a political statement. It also might be considered for interpretive purposes when construing another part of the same law. For example, the meaning given to a phrase in an unconstitutional part of the law might be applied to a different part of the law that is constitutional. Can the judiciary be asked to reinstated, after which point it can be used again? In the U.S., any court can determine that a law is unconstitutional, but the extent to which that ruling is binding precedent on other courts or other parties than those to the case before it depends upon the court in question and upon the doctrine of collateral estoppel (a.k.a. issue preclusion). For example, the legal fight in the U.S. to hold bans on same sex marriage to be unconstitutional was fought in and resulted in ruling in dozens of courts at the trial court and state appellate court, and federal intermediate appellate court level before a uniform ruling was established by the U.S. Supreme Court. Further, even if the issue arises in another case where there is a controlling precedent, attorney ethics permit an attorney to make a good faith argument for a change in the law to any court, so if there is some good faith argument for doing so, the attorney can push that the issue be reconsidered. Of course, usually the answer from the court will be "no." Or can it just be enforced again without any formal process; so long as nobody sues and gets it killed again by a lower court? Sometimes government officials enforce laws that have been held unconstitutional, either because they aren't aware of the relevant court decisions, or because they think that their facts are distinguishable from those under which the law was held unconstitutional (which sometimes happens on an "as applied" basis rather than on a "facial" basis that applies to all cases), or because they think the judge before them might rule differently despite the precedent. Also, would the answer differ according to country? If so, could you please give me some examples of countries handling this differently. Yes. Many countries with legal systems based upon the legal system of countries of continental Europe like France and Germany and Spain, which are called "civil law" countries have a very different process of handling unconstitutional laws, as does the European Court of Human Rights and the highest court of the European Union. In Germany, for example, questions of the constitutionality of a law may be raised only in the Constitutional Court and not in other courts. This ruling is usually final. And, unlike U.S. courts, the Constitutional Court can rule a law unconstitutional during the legislative process, rather than in connection with an actual case or controversy relating to the law taking effect (in which case the law never gets on the books in the first place). I don't know what happens when the Constitutional Court declares a law unconstitutional. I do know, however, that in the case of the European Court of Human Rights and the highest courts of the E.U. that one of the usual remedies will be an order directed at a member state to amend its statutes to remove the offending law, with sanctions imposed if the member state fails to do so. Obviously, once such a law is repealed in this fashion, it would have to be re-enacted to take effect even if the precedent holding that the law was unconstitutional was undermined.
As others have said, the reason for this is that the US Constitution grants a jury trial as a right in criminal proceedings. The reason for that right to be granted is to be a check against (that is, a limitation of) the power of the government, generally, and judges, specifically. To answer your specific question of why &quot;the judge system is not reformed and stays like this and is more vulnerable to take a wrong decision because they do not know the law, thus the verdict depends on people’s morals?&quot; Firstly, the jury does know the law (or at least, the specific portions of the law that are relevant to the case), by the time they render their judgement. An important part of the judge's responsibility in a criminal case is to craft &quot;jury instructions&quot; that are given to the jury before they are sequestered for deliberations. These instructions should have an explanation of what questions they need to collectively answer, and what evidence they can and cannot consider. Secondly, there are two central dogmatic difference between the points of view that your question seems to promote or be based on, and the one generally held by the US Founding Fathers, who wrote the US Constitution. Your question seems to assume that: judges are sacrosanct, or at least trustworthy; and rule by law is the foremost concern In contrast, the general view of the US Founding Fathers was that: judges have power, and thus need to be checked (in the US system, a judge's power is checked by the prosecutor, the jury, the chief executive, and by courts of appeal); and protection of the citizenry from the power of the government is the first concern. One thing to note, is that this second point means that the judge in a US trial can actually override a criminal jury, but only in the defendant's favor.
See jury-nullification. I'm not a legal historian, so I can't say for sure what the laws on jury acquittals were at that time in that jurisdiction. However, when a jury has final discretion to acquit a defendant of a crime that's it: They can effectively ignore laws if they want to acquit someone. Such acquittals do not set a precedent or have any bearing outside of the trial in which they issue their verdict.
All ex post facto laws are unconstitutional in the United States. But, not all retroactive laws are unconstitutional in the United States. An ex post facto law is basically a law that retroactively makes conduct illegal or punishes it more severely than it was punished at the time if it was already illegal. By way of example, tax legislation is often constitutionally retroactive, and laws that retroactively make the punishments for acts that are crimes at the time more lenient (or retroactively grant amnesty for previously illegal conduct) are legal. I strongly suspect, but do not know for certain, that India's constitutional law makes the same distinction that U.S. constitutional law does in this regard.
No The judicial Power of the United States, shall be vested in one supreme Court, and in such inferior Courts as the Congress may from time to time ordain and establish. Any courts the Congress creates are, by definition, inferior. Of course, Congress can overrule a SCOTUS decision by passing a law to that effect,unless the decision defines a right under the Constitution. So they couldn’t overturn Roe but they could overturn Dobbs. It’s largely the gutlessness of Congress in grappling with controversial issues that has put SCOTUS in the position of lawmaker.
This would establish a new precedent (I assume) You assume correctly. However, a precedent is only binding on lower courts and persuasive on courts at the same level so a trial judge precedent is not very far-reaching. Does this statute takes precedence over (overrules) the previous court precedent? Not exactly. The precedent was good for the old (common) law. Now the law has changed and the old precedent is irrelevant. Courts only interpret the law and legislatures are free to change the law within the limits of their constitutional power. Indeed, a fair number of laws are enacted because the legislature does not agree with how courts are ruling.
In general they are not told. In fact, I am not aware of any jurisdiction where they are told by the judge officially. In fact judges will normally charge a jury that they must accept the law as stated by the judge, and ignore any other source of the law, whether they like it or not. But the Judge has no way to enforce such a charge. According to the Wikipedia article The 1895 decision in Sparf v. United States, written by Justice John Marshall Harlan held that a trial judge has no responsibility to inform the jury of the right to nullify laws. It was a 5–4 decision. This decision, often cited, has led to a common practice by United States judges to penalize anyone who attempts to present legal argument to jurors and to declare a mistrial if such argument has been presented to them. In some states, jurors are likely to be struck from the panel during voir dire if they will not agree to accept as correct the rulings and instructions of the law as provided by the judge. A 1969 Fourth Circuit decision, U.S. v. Moylan, affirmed the power of jury nullification, but also upheld the power of the court to refuse to permit an instruction to the jury to this effect. We recognize, as appellants urge, the undisputed power of the jury to acquit, even if its verdict is contrary to the law as given by the judge, and contrary to the evidence. This is a power that must exist as long as we adhere to the general verdict in criminal cases, for the courts cannot search the minds of the jurors to find the basis upon which they judge. If the jury feels that the law under which the defendant is accused, is unjust, or that exigent circumstances justified the actions of the accused, or for any reason which appeals to their logic or passion, the jury has the power to acquit, and the courts must abide by that decision. Nevertheless, in upholding the refusal to permit the jury to be so instructed, the Court held that: …by clearly stating to the jury that they may disregard the law, telling them that they may decide according to their prejudices or consciences (for there is no check to ensure that the judgment is based upon conscience rather than prejudice), we would indeed be negating the rule of law in favor of the rule of lawlessness. This should not be allowed. It is not so much that jury nullification is a right of the jury, as that there is very little right for the prosecutor or judge to inquire into why the jury acted however it did. If there is a suspicion that the jury was bribed, or influenced by prohibited communications, that can be looked into. But otherwise a jury is like an oracle, its actions have no specified reason or justification, they are whatever they are. The judge (or an appeals court) can set aside a jury verdict on the grounds that no rational jury could find in a particular way -- this is mostly used to overturn convictions based on insufficient evidence. But a jury has almost total freedom to believe of disbelieve any witnesses, so if it disbelieves, it could acquit, regardless of whether it rejects the law under which charges are brought. So there is no way to tell if a particular verdict was based on nullification, or on disbelief of the witnesses, or some other possible ground. In any case, there is no provision -- that I k now of -- to set aside a jury verdict on the grounds that it was an instance of nullification, so inquiring into whether it was would be of little point. This attitude toward jury verdicts goes back to the very early origins of trial by jury, when it was a replacement for Trial by Ordeal. The Ordeal had been considered a way of asking God to decide the issue, and there was no way to ask God to clarify the decision. When it was replaced by jury trial, no way to ask for clarification was considered possible there either -- the jury was said to voice the decision of the community at large: the formal term for jury trial was &quot;to be tried by the country&quot;. See C. Rembar's The Law of the Land and H.C. Lea's The Duel and the oath for more on this history. This article reports on recent cases where juries have refused to convict in Marijuana cases.