Cities suing lenders over foreclosures; academic reaction symptomatic of our nation’s problem
What got me about the story was this set of paragraphs:
“Hundreds of cities across the United States are in the same position,” says Greg Squires, a professor of sociology at George Washington University who studies urban redevelopment. “I think there will be more lawsuits. If we get an early decision in one of these cases, it will either encourage or discourage” other cities from filing suit.
Alan Mallach, a senior fellow at the National Housing Institute, says the lawsuits are “a bit of a reach under the laws of most states, but … a creative court could reasonably make some law in that direction.”
Emphasis mine. So, this senior fellow at some think tank thinks the proper provenance of the creation of law should be the courts? That it’s “reasonable” for the courts to be making the law as they go, subject to their personal whim and completely unaccountable to We, the People? Clearly, he does, and that’s the real source of our problems, domestically, today. For a bunch of people who allegedly pride ourselves on being members of a democracy, we’ve sure got a lot of allegedly smart people who think the populace is just too stupid to elect representation to pass laws in our stead.
Perhaps Mr. Mallach would like to propose what he thinks the law should read and then do what you’re supposed to do in a democracy: put it to a vote.
I’m a resident of northern Virginia, near Washington, DC. By profession, I’m a network engineer for a very, very large company in the IT field. I work with several federal agencies in my job. Politically, I lean conservative on most issues dealing with matters of law, finance, national security, and personal responsibility. I’m more moderate in the social arena but don’t confuse that with the so-called “liberal” stance. You’ll get the picture.
