Wednesday, November 21, 2018

US: federal judge declares law banning female genital mutilation unconstitutional

(Detroit)  US district judge Bernard Friedman in Detroit on Tuesday declared unconstitutional a US law banning female genital mutilation, and then dismissed several charges against two doctors and others in the first US criminal case of its kind. Gina Balaya, a spokeswoman for US attorney Matthew Schneider in Detroit, said that prosecutor’s office would review the decision before deciding whether to appeal. The decision removed the main charges against Jumana Nagarwala, a doctor who performed the procedure on nine girls from Michigan, Illinois and Minnesota at another doctor’s clinic in the Detroit suburb of Livonia.


It appears the Islamic body in the US is growing from strength to strength.

Posted by pounce_uk at 11/21/2018 06:00:00 PM | | E-mail this article

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Bill Poser · 331 weeks ago

The court did not make this decision out of sympathy for Islam. The decision was not based on the merits of the law. The law was declared unconstitutional because FGM is not within the jurisdiction of the federal government. In the United States, criminal law in general is the province of the states. The federal government only has criminal jurisdiction in certain cases: (a) crimes that take place on land not within the jurisdiction of a state, such as military bases; (b) crimes against the federal government, such as treason or killing a federal agent; (c) crimes that take place across state lines. Ordinary crimes, even very serious ones, that take place within the jurisdiction of a state and do not involve the federal government in some way, are not within the domain of the federal government. There is no federal law against murder, not because Congress approves of murder but because murder is a state matter.
3 replies · active 330 weeks ago
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Bill Poser · 331 weeks ago

Actually there is a fourth case that I forgot above: (d) the federal government can, in some circumstances, pass laws necessary to implement an international treaty on matters that otherwise would be solely within the jurisdiction of the states.
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Pounce · 330 weeks ago

Bill,
Thank you for your reply. I was under the impression that Bernard Friedman was sitting on the Jumiana Nagarwala,case , which is why all charges agaisnt her and the others caught chopping up little girls bits were dropped and they walked free of court.
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Bill Poser · 330 weeks ago

Bernard Friedman was indeed the judge, but his decision was based on the jurisdictional problem. There's a good discussion of the legal aspects by Ilya Somin here: http://reason.com/volokh/2018/11/21/why-the-feder....

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