Daily Archives: November 27, 2021

In brief

On 18 November 2021, the European Commission ("Commission") further prolonged the Temporary Framework for COVID-19 State aid ("Temporary Framework") until 30 June 2022. This 6th Amendment has also added investment support measures and solvency support measures to support economic recovery and increase certain aid ceilings.

Background: In March 2020, the European Commission adopted the Temporary Framework to support the economy in the context of the COVID-19 outbreak, which allows EU Member States to have State aid approved quickly by the Commission. It has since been amended six times: First, increasing possibilities for public support to research, test and produce products relevant to fight the COVID-19 outbreak. Second, to enable recapitalization and subordinated debt measures; and third, to further support micro, small and start-up companies and to incentivize private investments. A fourth amendment extended the coverage of the Temporary Framework again and prolonged its application into 2021. The fifth amendment prolonged the application of the Temporary Framework to the end of 2021, increased aid amounts that the Commission would approve and allowed for the conversion of limited amounts of repayable Temporary Framework aid to grants.

Key takeaways

The 6th Amendment prolongs the application of the Temporary Framework until 30 June 2022. In addition, it adds two new categories of support measures for which EU Member States can obtain quick Commission State aid approval:

In more detail

Prolongation

The Temporary Framework, which was set to expire on 31 December 2021, has now been prolonged until 30 June 2022 (except as noted otherwise). It remains subject to further extension if necessary.

Executive Vice President Margrethe Vestager noted that "[t]he limited prolongation gives the opportunity for a progressive and coordinated phase-out of crisis measures, without creating cliff-edge effects, and reflects the projected strong recovery of the European economy overall."

Two new categories of support measures

The 6th Amendment includes two new categories of support measures that EU Member States may adopt to help companies recover:

These investment support measures can be granted by Member States until 31 December 2022.

Provided appropriate justifications are made by the Member State, the Commission may accept alternative selection and remuneration methods, higher aid amounts per company, or extend the application to investments to larger companies.

Aid under these solvency schemes can be granted until 31 December 2023.

Other notable amendments

In addition to the prolongation of the Temporary Framework and the two new categories of State aid measures added, the 6th Amendment:

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European Union: COVID-19 State aid update - State aid Temporary Framework prolonged and additional aid for recovery possible (6th Amendment) -...

IN HIS LATEST book, Presumed Guilty: How the Supreme Court Empowered the Police and Subverted Civil Rights, Berkeley Law Dean Erwin Chemerinsky does not pull his punches. He opens our eyes to a critical reason that we continue to have problems of police violence and racism in law enforcement. Although justices claim to be calling balls and strikes, they have long been rooting for one side the police and have not taken the necessary steps to protect our citizenrys civil rights. While some might see Chemerinskys claim as blasphemous, others will praise the cleansing light he shines on the Supreme Courts role in perpetuating the problems of our criminal justice system. Racism is not new; excessive force by police is not new; flagrant disregard for constitutional rights is not new. What is new, however, is that someone as distinguished and respected as Chemerinsky is willing to lay out in black and white the Supreme Courts complicity in the problems that plague our justice system.

Chemerinsky masterfully presents his arguments by tying together current events with major Supreme Court decisions that laid the foundation for those conflicts. What better case to start with than that of George Floyd? The trauma is still with us watching Floyd die over the course of nine minutes while Derek Chauvin, a white Minneapolis police officer, put a knee on his neck is an event with which every reader will be familiar. How could this happen?

Chemerinsky quickly pivots from the facts of Floyds case to the troubling history of police practices, especially chokeholds, in American. And it does not take long for him to identify the Supreme Courts role in allowing these practices to continue. In 1983, in City of Los Angeles v. Lyons, the Supreme Court faced the issue in our own backyard: the Los Angeles Police Department routinely used chokehold against black suspects. Adolph Lyons, a 24-year-old African American man, was stopped for driving with a burned-out taillight. (Sound familiar?) Officers approached him with drawn revolvers. They forced him to assume the position with his face to his car, his legs spread, and his hands clasped behind him. After they patted him down, Lyons dropped his hands, but the officers slammed his hands on the roof and he complained about pain from a ring of keys he was holding that was digging into the skin of his palm. Perceiving Lyons as mouthing off, the officers then applied a chokehold. Lyons blacked out. When he awoke, he was face down on the ground, choking, gasping for air, spitting up blood, and had urinated and defecated on himself. The officers then issued him a traffic ticket and allowed him to go.

Lyons sued the City of Los Angeles to stop these practices. They were widespread throughout the department and the country. United States District Judge Robert Takasugi ruled for Lyons and ordered then-LAPD Chief Daryl Gates to stop the practice. The evidence supporting the judges order was overwhelming. Lyons was not looking to get rich off the incident. Instead, he and his lawyers wanted the practice to stop. The Supreme Court had the power to help make that happen, but the justices did not use it. Instead, in a 5-4 decision, the Court held that Lyons did not have legal standing to come to court because he could not show that he personally would be subject to the same police action in the future. Using this procedural gambit, the Court shut the courthouse doors to individuals seeking to stop the police from using this violent form of restraint. The Court did not stand up for the little guy; the Court did not stand up against police violence or racism. It created a procedural escape hatch in cases that could have led to significant changes in policing practices.

Since the Warren Court in the 1960s, the Supreme Court has continuously failed to recognize how race has infected policing in the United States. From the use of slave patrols to the current incarceration of blacks at 5.1 times the rate of white people, racial discrimination has been the reality. However, the Supreme Court seems to have tunnel vision when it decides many of the cases that have come before it since the Warren era.

My criminal procedure students know this to be true. They read another book written by Chemerinsky and his co-author that goes through the cases. In the future, they may be assigned this one as well. Because Presumed Guilty is a clear-eyed examination of some of the most notable Supreme Court cases, it puts these holdings in critical context. Terry v. Ohio, which authorized the police practice of stop and frisk, was a near permission slip for police to use their instincts even though those may certainly be influenced by racial biases to stop millions of Americans on the streets. The statistics do not lie. People of color are most likely to be stopped by the millions. In framing its standard for reasonable suspicion, the Court made it so low that it will be a rare case that an officer cannot justify such a stop and frisk. Subjective intent does not matter. The Court gave them the authority to do exactly what has happened using pretexts to stop people of color.

Chemerinsky presents both the historical and practical reasons used to explain why the Supreme Court has not been more engaged in protecting civil rights. The debate over how much federal authorities, including the Supreme Court, should dictate state practices rages to this day. It has been more than 150 years since the Civil War, but the Supreme Court is still reticent to dictate to states how their police departments should operate. In fact, over the years, it has given them cover from actions that are brought under the Constitution and statutes. Qualified immunity is still in the news. It is a concept created by the Court. Under this doctrine, police have immunity from civil liability unless their actions are so egregious that the Supreme Court has previously found they violated defendants rights and the officers did not act in good faith. Even beyond that, judicial officers and prosecutors have absolute immunity, no matter how egregious their actions. In other words, the Supreme Court created a doctrine that makes it clear and there is no doubt that officers know that they have limited if any accountability for their unconstitutional actions.

Presumed Guilty is a comprehensive review of the Supreme Court decisions affecting nearly every person in our criminal justice system. Just when it appears that the Court may seek to safeguard suspects rights, the next generation of justices pulls back on those rights. That is exactly what happened with the protection of the Fifth Amendment privilege against self-incrimination. Yes, the Warren Court in 1966 decided Miranda v. Arizona, which requires officers to advise suspects of their constitutional rights before subjecting them to custodial interrogation. However, since then, there has been a continuing stream of decisions to limit Miranda. Chemerinsky addresses head-on the arguments that advising defendants of their constitutional rights something that is not required when asking suspects for permission to search might impede the ability of police to do their job. As one Salt Lake City study demonstrated, suspects waive their Miranda right in 83.7 percent of interrogations. If anything, we have a problem with suspects providing false confessions, not the hypothetical claim that cases will go unsolved without allowing police to pressure suspects into confessing.

Chemerinsky is hard on the Court, but he should be. I founded the Innocence Project at Loyola Law School. Our clients spend decades behind bars for crimes they have not committed because the Supreme Court has not set more exacting standards for the police. The safeguards against inaccurate eyewitness identifications are woefully inadequate; the pressures on police to cut corners and stop people on a hunch has increased; and the lack of enforcement of basic constitutional rights, like the due process Brady right to exculpatory evidence, persists.

Ultimately, the goal of this book seems to be more than just to hold the Court accountable. After all, that is difficult to do with justices who have life tenure and who may not really care how they are perceived by the public. Although they have resisted being labeled political hacks, the connection between their ideologies and the presidents who appointed them is evident. Chemerinsky is holding the Court accountable, but he is not giving up on change. Instead, he asks reformers to pivot by working for reforms on the state and local levels. We could eliminate the pernicious practice of stopping and frisking individuals of color for very little suspicion, we could require consent for searches, we could have defense counsel involved in identification procedures, and we could automatically provide counsel when someone is interrogated by the police. All of that is possible. It just requires the will.

Rather than abolishing or defunding the police, install democratic controls. Authorize suits against officers who violate the Constitution and collect data about bad policing. Insist on civilian oversight if the Supreme Court is not going to play that role.

Years from now, Americans may ask, Did anyone stand up to the Supreme Court and pull back the curtain? The answer will be Yes. Chemerinsky did just that. Now, it is time for all of us to take a good look.

Laurie L. Levenson is a professor of Law and the David W. Burcham Chair in Ethical Advocacy, Loyola Law School, Los Angeles.

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Time for the Supreme Court to Look in the Mirror - lareviewofbooks

Stan Haynes is the author of a new historical fiction book, And Tyler No More, in which the explosion on the Princeton is part of the plot. Visit his website at http://www.stanhaynes.com.

Currier and Ives lithograph of the USS Princeton explosion, 1844

It is the stuff of political thriller novels and a recent television series (Designated Survivor). What if the government of the United States was decapitated by a single event? In reality, one man tried, and failed. In 1865, John Wilkes Booths conspiracy succeeded in killing President Abraham Lincoln, but two other targets, Vice President Andrew Johnson and Secretary of State William Seward survived. Fiction stories and Booth aside, such a calamity almost happenedon February 28, 1844, on the calm waters of the Potomac River.

President John Tyler, the first vice president to take the reins of power after a presidents death, wanted a better Navy. William Henry Harrison had died in 1841 after only a month in office. Tyler, a former Democrat, feuded over economic policy with the Whig Party, on whose ticket he had been elected, immediately after taking office. The Whigs tossed him out of the party. The Democrats, miffed at his prior desertion from their ranks, held him at arm's length. Unpopular, especially in the North, Tyler was a president without a party.

His plan to win a term of his own in 1844 focused on the annexation of the Republic of Texas into the Union. Texas, Tyler told his cabinet and friends, was the great object of my ambition. But there were two potential foreign problemsMexico and Great Britain. Mexico, still officially at war with its former province, and the British, still assertive of their power, especially on the high seas, were not expected to quietly stand by and let Texas be absorbed by the United States.

Part of Tylers strategy to defend against these potential foreign threats to Texas annexation was a new state-of-the-art warship, a steamship named the USS Princeton. The product of years of lobbying by Captain Robert Stockton, a friend and political supporter of Tyler, the Princeton, launched in September 1843, was a prototype for the modernization of the Navy. In an era when vessels of war were still sailing ships, steamships, with clunky paddlewheels, exposed engines, and limited range due to fuel requirements, were viewed with disdain by Navy Department officials. Incorporating the design and innovations of John Ericsson, a Swedish inventor that he had befriended, Stocktons Princeton was a steamship with a difference. Instead of a paddlewheel, it had a screw propeller system that connected to engines hidden within the hull, where they were protected from enemy fire. Its boilers burned efficient anthracite coal, increasing its range. It was a hybrid, also able to run under sail, with its smokestack collapsible, reducing wind friction and increasing its speed.

Moreover, Stockton determined to make his ship the most powerful warship afloat. He had two twelve-inch bore wrought iron cannons placed on her deck. Named the Peacemaker and the Oregon, each was designed to hurl a cannonball weighing more than two hundred pounds downrange, with accuracy, for almost five miles. His ship, bragged Stockton, was virtually invincible against any foe and her innovations and deadly force may be productive of more important results than anything that has occurred since the invention of gunpowder. After touting the ship in Philadelphia and New York, Stockton brought the Princeton to Washington in February 1844 to show it off to the nations political elite, and to get funding for a fleet of warships like her.

In order for those in power to see his ship up close, Stockton planned three afternoon excursions down the Potomac River, starting at Alexandria. The most important of these was set for February 28, when President Tyler, most of his cabinet, members of Congress, their wives, and other important guests, would be aboard. The ships massive cannons would be fired three times in route for all to see, a mid-nineteenth century version of shock and awe by the American Navy. The National Intelligencer proclaimed that that the cream of Washington society would see firsthand this splendid and unequalled specimen of our naval ingenuity, and to witness something of the performance of her formidable battery.

February 28 dawned a cloudless late winter day in the nations capital. Once the ship was underway, Captain Stockton, a wealthy man, spared no expense in entertaining his guests, serving a meal of the finest delicacies, along with plenty of wine and champagne. Stockton decided that the Peacemaker would be the cannon fired on the cruise. The first two firings went smoothly and all were suitably impressed. The third, to honor George Washington as the ship was on the Potomac near Mount Vernon, was scheduled for just after the guests finished eating. At the table, a beaming Tyler had offered a toast, To the three big gunsthe Peacemaker, the Oregon, and Captain Stockton.

Topside, on the Princetons bow, most of the cabinet, and several senators and congressmen, then gathered behind Stockton for the third firing. Word was received that the president was detained below and to proceed without him. As the Peacemaker was fired, it exploded, hurling chunks of iron, some weighing more than a ton, across the deck. When the smoke cleared, eight were dead and almost thirty wounded. Among the dead were two cabinet members, Secretary of State Abel Upshur and Secretary of the Navy Thomas Gilmer. Had Tyler been present, he would have been standing with them and likely would have met the same fate. As he was headed up the steps for the third firing of the cannon, several people began singing an old song that was one of his favorites from his youth, and he stopped to listen. Flirtation may also have been on his mind. The widowed president had earlier been sipping champagne below deck with a young New York socialite that he had his eye on, Julia Gardiner, who was on board with her father and sister. Her father was among the fatalities in the explosion. Within months, Tyler would make Julia his bride.

In early 1845, in the waning days of his administration, President Tyler, after many political battles over the issue, accomplished his goal and signed a law formally annexing Texas into the Union.

The office of vice president had been vacant since 1841, when Tyler became president upon Harrisons death. There was no procedure for filling a vacancy in that position until the enactment of the Twenty-Fifth Amendment to the Constitution in 1967. Had Tyler been killed in the explosion on the Princeton, the president pro tem of the Senate, Senator Willie Mangum of North Carolina, would have assumed the presidency. Mangum was a Whig, a loyal member of the party that had kicked out Tyler, and was an opponent of the annexation of Texas. But for a song, history would likely have been changed.

Originally posted here:
The Accident that Almost Decapitated the US Government - History News Network (HNN)