Untrue, you do not have to call. My wife's required loan amount gets deducted from our account and then she sends in a check with a note saying apply this to the principal. They always do. I'm not saying Navient isn't a bunch of scumbags, but that's standard loan practice. Unless it's designated for principal,…

I did this exact kind of thing. However, I also went on to the county records, found the last time the property sold and what the selling price was. Then, I looked up the 10 year average real estate increase/decrease for the zip code, used that as the rate of return and used a future value calculation to "predict"…

Um... are you a conspiracy theorist? Tinfoil hats aside, the Constitution does limit the power of government. It is the direct reason why women are able to obtain abortions, it's illegal to own slaves, criminalize or prohibit speech (with limited exceptions), and the list goes on.

Concurrences can become the basis of law, but that is few and far between. Even still, as I've pointed out, concurrences carry exactly zero precedential value. Therefore, until the reasoning in a concurrence is used by a majority opinion, it is merely persuasive. Personally, if I can avoid it, I never use…

I just have to continue to respond to your ridiculous comment lest some one think for one second what you said has even the slightest bit of validity.

Concurrences mean absolutely nothing when it comes binding law. If I cited a concurrence without direct, binding law, I would lose my case every single time.

You're point? The Constitution sets a minimum, states can always provide more protections than the Constitution, they just cannot weaken constitutional protections. Where private entities fulfill traditional government roles, they are subject to constitutional scrutiny. That was my entire statement. You put…

How many federal district court opinions have you drafted? Me, I'm in the hundreds. You clearly have little to absolutely no knowledge of how the law works. Everything you've just stated is mindless drivel with astoundingly little meaning. Congrats on the word salad but try picking up a book once in a while.

That is precisely right. A state or the federal government can make any law it wants. It's only unconstitutional when someone who has standing (in federal court, or if there's a likewise standing requirement in state court) brings suit and a court declares it unconstitutional. For example, even though a law…

Um... it doesn't matter if there's 50 million private prisons. They're subject to constitutional restraints because they're fulfilling a traditionally governmental role.

Usually Title VII of the United States Code or state laws. Title VII is as case where, though employment discrimination wouldn't generally be considered an enumerated power, Congress used the power of the Commerce Clause to enact legislation that can control private behavior. Basically, the Commerce Clause says the…

Well that may be different. Typically state constitutions grant more rights to people and thus can hold private entities liable. A state can make any law it wants (actually, that's 100% true, but laws that offend the US Constitution will eventually be declared unconstitutional). Therefore, you could have a state…

No, a private entity can never violate the Constitution save for the two exceptions I pointed out. That's it. From 1791 until the ratification of the 14th Amendment, only the federal government could possibly violate the Constitution. After the 14th Amendment, state governments and actors were added to the list of…

If you look back to the founding of America, you'll see that the framers were really concerned about government intervention, but not so much private. Jefferson was really skeptical of a centralized government that was able to control the country. Thus, when the Constitution and the Bill of Rights were ratified…

Thank you! Another (I'm assuming) American with at least a fundamental grasp of the laws that govern this country. It makes my brain hurt when people talk about this kind of stuff. How is this not taught in high school?

As an attorney, I think all Americans need to understand this simple fact: The U.S. Constitution DOES NOT prohibit any private entity from engaging in "unconstitutional" acts, with two very narrow exceptions.