2nd Day at Youth Leg

Another fun-filled day of debating in the various chambers and in the Supreme Court. Our Attorney Generals did a great job arguing for the constitutionality issues with various bills they brought before us. In the morning session, the Supreme Court only ruled constitutional on 2 out of 6 bills -- the one written by Joel and the one written by Jacob.

The morning ended with some extra excitement when the patron of one unconstitutional bill chose to throw his pocket constitution at the Supreme Court on his way out of our room.

The afternoon session saw six more bills get ruled on, with only one of those getting a constitutional pass (without much discussion, since it was basically a Senate version of Jacob's bill). Three additional bills, dealing with bringing a lottery to Alabama, caused issues since the Alabama constitution does not allow the lottery in our state. After much discussion, and some help from a legal scholar, it was decided that all three of those bills would have been unconstitutional if and only if the Constitution had already been amended to allow the lottery.

Most of the Supreme Court rulings were unanimous, 5-0, and then later 4-0 after one of the Justices had to depart. Only one bill caused much disagreement between the Justices, one dealing with illegal cell phones in jails brought a divided Court at 3-2.