Tag: ex post facto
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Registry politicians and judges love to dismiss the Federalist Papers as dusty old history with no relevance to modern “public safety” policy. “Those warnings don’t apply here,” they imply whenever someone points out that the registry looks suspiciously like the very government overreach the Founders feared most. They were wrong. Alexander Hamilton in Federalist No.…
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The modern sex offender registry rests on one dangerous legal fiction: that the registry is not punishment. That fiction did not appear by accident. It was cemented by the United States Supreme Court in Smith v. Doe, the 2003 case that allowed Alaska’s sex offender registry law to be applied retroactively because the Court classified…
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The sex offender registry was sold to you as a tool aimed only at “those people” — the monsters, the predators, the ones who deserve it. “It doesn’t affect normal Americans,” they said. “It’s just for public safety.” Bullshit. Every single “civil regulatory scheme” ruling that propped up the registry has quietly rewritten the Constitution…