A few weeks ago I posted about a State Department employee who filed a lawsuit alleging Hillary Clinton is constitutionally illegible to serve as Secretary of State. Mr Rodearmel seems like an uptight nerd but the guy intrigues me... I wish him well in his current endeavor but I'm not fooling myself. While the reasoning behind David's case may be technically sound (it seems to me that it is), as a recent Wall Street Journal article explains, he lacks "standing" so the case is unlikely to make it to court. Here is a brief excerpt:
The idea of standing flows from the Constitution, which grants federal courts jurisdiction over "cases" or "controversies." The Supreme Court has interpreted this to mean that courts can't give advisory opinions or make policy pronouncements, and only should decide disputes where the plaintiff alleges "concrete" and "particularized" harm, rather than what Justice Antonin Scalia has called "purely psychological displeasure."
I'm no lawyer, but think I can understand the argument. Still, what mechanisms are in place to rectify constitutional violations, something Hillary Clinton's current position very well may be?
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I think WSJ is right, the suit probably goes nowhere - the guy can't allege any harm to himself. It's analogous to taxpayer standing in some ways, where taxpayers try to sue claiming they are "injured" when the federal government spends their tax dollars in a way that is violative of the constitution. For the most part, the courts have rejected this sort of argument, simply for efficiency purposes - it would create way too much litigation.
I personally think this suit is a bunch of BS. This sort of thing has happened several times in the past, and Congress has come up with a creative solution which, while perhaps not 100% true to the text of the constitution, eliminates the evil that the salary provision was meant to prevent. It's called a "Saxbe Fix," and it essentially sets the appointee's salary at what it was before it was raised. Here's a little information: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saxbe_fix
In the end of the day, I think this is just a pointless, political hatchet job, just like so many others the Clintons have faced. I'm not her biggest fan at all either, but I think this is a particularly silly one since it doesn't have anything to do with her on the merits - I don't think anyone can seriously contend that she is corrupt because of the pay increase.
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