[HN Gopher] Supreme Court limits EPA's power to cut emissions
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Supreme Court limits EPA's power to cut emissions
Author : ComputerGuru
Score : 399 points
Date : 2022-06-30 14:31 UTC (8 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.bbc.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.bbc.com)
| bpodgursky wrote:
| I guess it's time for congress to actually pass laws (first
| abortion, and now greenhouse gasses).
|
| Going to be a lot of anger about the results this court season,
| but I honestly think it's going to be healthier for democracy
| overall if congress stop leaning on the courts and bureaucracy to
| make critical regulations.
| cdot2 wrote:
| The supreme court ruled that abortion is a state issue. Any law
| passed by congress would be struck down by the same ruling.
| bodhi_mind wrote:
| That's not exactly true. Congress can and has passed laws
| that apply to and override state law. Take minimum wage for
| example (fair labor standards act of 1938). In your
| particular example, there are no federal laws so it defaults
| to the states.
| delecti wrote:
| They ruled that there is no constitutional guaranteed right
| to abortion, and in lieu of any federal legislation the
| decision defaults to the states. They did not rule that the
| federal government _cannot_ have a say on abortion.
| camgunz wrote:
| Dunno why you're being downvoted. This is the likeliest
| scenario; passing and ratifying an Amendment codifying _Roe_
| is next to impossible.
| xpe wrote:
| On what basis is this claim plausible?
|
| In my understanding -- and I've read good chunks of the
| leaked Dobbs opinion -- the above claim is not true. The
| Dobbs decision's reasoning is largely based on a lack of
| clear federal legislation saying that abortion is legal.
| enragedcacti wrote:
| you are correct that the dobb's ruling does not restrict
| federal abortion regulation, but it is an open question of
| whether this court would overturn federal abortion
| legislation as not being related strongly enough to
| interstate commerce.
|
| Of course that ruling _should_ cut both ways and eliminate
| the possibility of a federal ban as well, but as we 've
| seen the majority is willing to overturn precedent both as
| old as 50 years and as young as 2 years (see Gorsuch
| dissent on Oklahoma v. Castro-Huerta) so its possible they
| would find the rational to uphold a ban even if they strike
| down a law mandating access.
| bbarnett wrote:
| I upvoted, because I heard the same, and downvoting because
| of reality (no longer the fed's jurisdiction) is not fair.
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| If the US Congress passed an amendment that stated abortion
| is legal nationwide, then the Supreme Court would not be able
| to strike it down as that would be the new federal law.
| aaomidi wrote:
| So you want for women to have their basic rights for us to
| go through a constitutional amendment path? Interesting.
| This feels like fascism through paperwork.
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| I did not write anything about what I want or do not
| want.
| vorpalhex wrote:
| You can say "I don't like X". You don't have to say every
| is "Fascism". It's ok just to be upset and not like
| something.
|
| Fascism by the way would be rule by fiat - eg a King or a
| Dictator can just declare new law: "I declare all
| Hamburgers shall now be served with bacon and anyone who
| fails to do shall be executed".
|
| Writing down laws and having a neutral body interpret
| them is a really important part of fair forms of
| Government (but not unique to Democracy). There is no
| defense to a fiat in a Dictatorship but that is a defense
| in eg Democracy. The publishing, disseminating and
| authority of rules is the basis of a fair form of
| government.
| aaomidi wrote:
| I mean, this is a literal historical lesson.
|
| Fascism mixed with bureaucracy is extremely powerful and
| extremely difficult to fight.
|
| Hopefully this article can shed some light on it for you.
|
| https://www.deccanchronicle.com/opinion/columnists/290919
| /bu...
|
| This is what I view is happening in the US.
|
| Single dictators don't mean fascism. That's an extremely
| simplistic and playground view on fascism. Heck, single
| dictators are much easier to combat than democratic &
| bureaucratic fascism.
| vorpalhex wrote:
| This isn't some kind of new legislative process. This has
| literally been the law of the land since the constitution
| where it's described.
|
| And I'm sorry but I'm going to reject the opinion column
| of a small newspaper as a source.
|
| You're right in that Fascism is not just composed of
| single dictators but you are confusing the Rule of Law
| with beaucracy. Having a high court and requiring laws to
| be explicit is not "Fascism", it is literally the basis
| of the legal system.
| aaomidi wrote:
| are you under the impression that Germany didn't have a
| "rule of law" when nazis were in power then?
|
| A "rule of law" is a tool that can be used for evil. I'm
| not sure why we're being blind to this?
| epakai wrote:
| Where is this neutral body? Half of the court was
| explicitly groomed to take a partisan stance. They even
| have the ability to choose their own cases, plus a shadow
| docket.
| vorpalhex wrote:
| Having a body made up of two opposing sides is generally
| how we build neutral bodies.
|
| The liberal justices are not a beacon of neutrality -
| they lean towards liberal policies and expansionist
| interpretations the same way the conservative justices
| lean towards conservative policies and paring down the
| Fed.
| rajup wrote:
| Is a constitutional amendment different than a federal law
| when it comes to how it's treated by the SCOTUS?
| bandyaboot wrote:
| Yes. A constitutional amendment is constitutional by
| definition. It's the very thing SCOTUS is tasked to
| protect.
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| Amendments and laws are the same thing, so no. The
| Constitution can refer to the original laws, or the
| collection of original laws plus all the new ones.
|
| When Congress passes a law, the law (sometimes referred
| to as the Constitution) gets amended, hence it is also
| referred to as an amendment.
|
| Edit: ignore this comment, my information was incorrect!
| tristor wrote:
| This is incorrect, at least in the US. A Constitutional
| Amendment requires the affirmative consent of 3/4s of the
| states for ratification, it cannot be done unilaterally
| by the US Congress. The Federal laws are considered the
| lesser laws and the Constitution the highest law.
|
| There is a big big difference legally in the US between
| an Amendment and something in the USC
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| Thanks, got to learn something new today.
| bandyaboot wrote:
| You're conflating constitutional amendments with
| amendments to congressional bills. They're very different
| things.
| tristor wrote:
| Yes, but it's subtle. The mandate of SCOTUS is a check
| against the other branches of the government to ensure
| they're following the Constitution. By passing a
| Constitutional Amendment, it essentially makes the
| contents of such inherently constitutional. A Federal law
| could be (and has been) struck down as being
| unconstitutional.
| rajup wrote:
| I see. I'm probably jumping the gun here, but if such a
| federal law were to be passed is there something in the
| Constitution that would disallow it? I suppose it depends
| on the exact wording and so on?
| tristor wrote:
| Generally speaking, a Federal law would only be struck
| down if its intent or wording specifically violates a
| clause in the Constitution or its Amendments. So, it
| really depends on how its worded or what its intent is. I
| think it's pretty clear that Congress has the
| Constitutional authority to pass environmental
| regulations and could extend the EPA's mandates or
| legislatively codify EPA regulations such that they
| become law, because they have to do primarily with things
| which are commerce across state lines and national
| borders (e.g. where energy originates and where its
| expended are across borders).
|
| Essentially the same justification for why Congress could
| create the EPA in the first place allows them to codify
| any regulations as law or to extend the EPA mandate. What
| cannot happen is the EPA unilaterally deciding to
| overreach its mandate, because its taking actions with
| the force of law but without any check/balance. The
| Constitution is quite clear that laws are the purview of
| the Legislative, not the Executive, and the EPA is a
| function of the Executive.
| bandyaboot wrote:
| They could rule the law to be unconstitutional. And they
| would do just that.
| [deleted]
| bpodgursky wrote:
| It is not at all obvious that this is true. I think it's
| highly unlikely given that the federal government has
| almost unrestricted ability to pass laws about personal
| rights (either strictly or in practice, see the federal
| drinking age of 21, smoking, etc).
|
| Even if it was, there's no reason not to test it.
| bandyaboot wrote:
| I agree that it's not obvious that such a law would
| actually be unconstitutional. I just think this court has
| become an unapologetically partisan body.
| rajup wrote:
| > The supreme court ruled that abortion is a state issue. Any
| law passed by congress would be struck down by the same
| ruling.
|
| Is it? Then why am I reading news today about the Democrats
| wanting to suspend the filibuster for a federal abortion law?
| zrail wrote:
| The court ruled in Dobbs that the decision reached in Roe v
| Wade was improper because there is no right to privacy
| "deeply rooted" in the Constitution or traditions of the
| United States, which basically means that if the court
| sticks with this definition they get to roll back any
| decisions that they don't like, disregarding two hundred
| years of precedent.
|
| The fundamental problem is that large important social
| policy decisions have been made as court cases rather than
| legislation for the past 50 years. If Congress actually
| made laws that explicitly granted rights to the people then
| we wouldn't be in this situation, but by passing the buck
| to the court they can claim that problems have been solved
| without actually having to get their hands dirty or face
| their constituents.
| ausbah wrote:
| Roe v Wade was the court case giving a federal right to an
| abortion, that was struck down so it became a state's
| rights issue bc the federal gov't itself never passed a law
| guaranteeing the the right to an abortion. one major piece
| of criticism you'll hear again Democrats is that they have
| taken too much comfort is court precedent then actually
| passing laws when they were in power
| NeonVice wrote:
| Because they are pandering for votes. They know that the
| average citizen doesn't know that the law would be deemed
| unconstitutional based on the most recent ruling.
| bandyaboot wrote:
| If you're talking about the decision overturning Roe, it
| has literally nothing to do with whether a federal
| abortion law would be constitutional.
| whiddershins wrote:
| No. They ruled it isn't a constitutional right. Therefore it
| can definitionally be legislated at the State level.
|
| Whether it can be legislated at the Federal level is a
| completely different question.
| tzs wrote:
| > [...] but I honestly think it's going to be healthier for
| democracy overall if congress stop leaning on the courts and
| bureaucracy to make critical regulations.
|
| I don't think that scales. When some group of people is large
| enough and has enough different things going on it has to
| delegate regulation making. There is just too much for the top
| level of management to be directly regulating everything.
|
| The larger the entity grows and the more it has going on the
| more regulation making needs to be delegated. At some point you
| reach the point where even critical regulation has to be
| delegated.
|
| We passed that point, I think, a long time ago in all the large
| first world economies.
| bpodgursky wrote:
| I agree that we can't ask congress to write the entire
| federal code, but congress could pass a law which literally
| says:
|
| "It is within the power of the EPA to regulate carbon
| emissions"
|
| and leave the rest to the bureaucrats, and that would have
| been enough. I don't think that's an unreasonable ask.
| willis936 wrote:
| The senate is affirmative action for rural areas. Why do we
| accept minority rule?
| mmcconnell1618 wrote:
| The Senate is way out of balance from the power it originally
| had in 1776.
|
| Delaware was the smallest of the 13 states with a population
| of 59K. That's 2.36% of the 2.5M total in 1776. There were 26
| Senators so each one had about 7.7% voting power.
|
| Today, South Dakota has a population of 905K out of 330M or
| 0.274% of the population. There are 100 Senators so each has
| about 2% voting power.
|
| A Senator from South Dakota today represents 1/10 the
| population that a Senator from Delaware did in 1776. If
| influence scaled with the same distribution it did in 1776, a
| South Dakota Senator should only have about 0.77% voting
| power, but today they have 2%. Population distribution is
| more widely varied today which creates much more power for
| lower population states than when in the country was formed.
| vorpalhex wrote:
| Tyranny of the majority. New York City doesn't make rules for
| Eerie, Indiana.
|
| NYC can make rules for NYC.
| throwaway0a5e wrote:
| NYC makes the rules for NY state. And the people of
| Buffalo, Plattsburg, etc, etc, aren't exactly happy with
| that or benefiting from that. They have more industrial
| economies than downstate does and they are kneecapped hard
| by some of downstate's economic policies.
|
| States that are economically and politically dominated by a
| single economic zone are a great examples of why minority
| contingents need strong veto power.
| bpodgursky wrote:
| The democrats have the senate majority. They just have to be
| willing to pass laws that the moderates will vote for. For
| dumb political reasons, they refuse to do this, and this is a
| forcing function to make them act like adults.
|
| They could even get ~2 Republican votes for broad abortion
| rights, and likely more if they passed a targeted bill about
| the health of the mother, incest, etc.
|
| As recently as a decade ago the democrats had a supermajority
| and passed sweeping healthcare reform bills. It's really not
| an insurmountable barrier.
| usrn wrote:
| Because the alternative would be not having the rural areas
| continuing to be part of the nation. If you can't come to an
| agreement with us, that's fine, try to move the regulation
| out of the federal government and see if you'll have better
| luck at the state level with more like-minded people.
| gruez wrote:
| Because it was explicitly created with the goal of preventing
| majoritarian rule. The majority's interests are represented
| in the house.
| deelowe wrote:
| B/c the US is a union.
|
| I live in a rural area. There are plenty of laws that make
| sense for my area that would be ridiculous in high density
| cities and vise verse. Here there is no minimum speed limit
| and I can drive my tractor down the road by attaching an
| orange triangle. I can drill my own well. I can chop and burn
| trees on my property. None if thus would make sense in the
| city.
| camgunz wrote:
| What you're describing is pluralism and federalism, not
| minority rule. Minority rule with your examples would be to
| force cities to burn their trash because that's what makes
| sense in rural areas.
| NeonVice wrote:
| Abortion is not mentioned in the constitution and therefore
| each state has the power to legislate it as they see fit. Any
| federal abortion law would be deemed unconstitutional on that
| basis.
| micromacrofoot wrote:
| The majority of federal law isn't mentioned in the
| constitution. Come on now.
| throwaway0a5e wrote:
| Stop being obtuse. The majority of federal law exists only
| because broad interpretations of the few subjects the feds
| were granted the ability to regulate. If abortion was
| intertwined with interstate commerce or national defense it
| would be regulated. Of course there's BS that's just as
| detached as abortion that gets regulated federally but if
| those subjects were big ideological issues and got the same
| scrutiny they likely would not be.
|
| It's unfortunate that there isn't a stronger right to
| bodily autonomy enshrined in the constitution but that's
| tangential here.
| micromacrofoot wrote:
| I'm being quite sincere.
|
| There's still precedent and federal law that protects
| bodily autonomy in respect to having private medial
| exchanges with doctors.
|
| We still have the FACE act for example, which is federal
| law preventing people from blocking the entrance of
| abortion clinics.
|
| I think we'll find quite soon how much abortion is
| intertwined with interstate commerce.
| bpodgursky wrote:
| Absent a strict law, congress could just make medicare
| funding or infrastructure or whatever dependent on
| abortion access, and every state would fold, just like
| with the drinking age.
| NeonVice wrote:
| "The powers not delegated to the United States by the
| Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the states, are
| reserved to the states respectively, or to the people."
|
| Abortion regulation powers were not delegated within the US
| Constitution and therefore those powers go to the states.
| ausbah wrote:
| it's not like you can infer other rights at all
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Substantive_due_process
| laverya wrote:
| The current interpretation of the Commerce Clause is large
| enough to legislate essentially everything.
| waterproof wrote:
| It is valuable for gov't agencies to be able to act broadly on
| their mandates without needing congress to dictate everything.
| As the dissent puts it, "A key reason Congress makes broad
| delegations like Section 111 is so an agency can respond,
| appropriately and commensurately, to new and big problems."
|
| We can hope that Congress will step up and legislate, but that
| seems pretty unrealistic to me. I fear that this is just the
| latest wave of successes by the party that wants our government
| to be as toothless and inept as possible and already has a
| stranglehold on Congress for the foreseeable future.
| curiousgal wrote:
| > Healthier democracy
|
| How can anyone say that with a straight face in the presence of
| the electoral college (heck even the elected representatives
| don't have a legal obligation to vote for their party's
| candidate) and most importantly gerrymandering. Your assumption
| that the people can vote to enact change is simply not true.
| nooyurrsdey wrote:
| Emphasis mine:
|
| > The case against the EPA was brought by West Virginia on behalf
| of 18 other mostly Republican-led states and some of the nation's
| largest coal companies. > > They were challenging whether the
| agency has the power to regulate planet-warming emissions for
| state-wide power sectors or just individual power plants. > >
| _These 19 states were worried their power sectors would be
| regulated and they would be forced to move away from using coal._
|
| I'm losing hope that anything practical can be achieved because
| of idealistic nuance like this. We're missing the forest for the
| trees. Our goal should be the larger combating of climate change,
| but individual players like this have amazing power to put up
| resistance or obstruction to that goal which is a net loss for
| all of us.
| moistrobot wrote:
| if that's your goal, then we should be investing in nuclear
| energy
|
| and putting more pressure on countries like China and India
| timeon wrote:
| Unfortunately most pro-nuclear talk I see is in form of
| excuse 'my way or highway'. Like the one you did. As bonus
| you are trying to shift focus to other actors (which true,
| are also relevant but still...)
| tzs wrote:
| India?
|
| India's greenhouse gas emissions are 50% of those of the US.
| Per capita they are at 12% of the US.
|
| BTW, per capita is the correct comparison because the
| atmosphere does not care about arbitrary boundaries. To
| illustrate imaging a world with just 2 countries, one
| emitting X per year and one emitting 2X per year. The
| population of first county is P and the population of the
| second country is 2P. In this example we'll assume little
| trade between the two countries.
|
| That world needs to get down to a total of 2X per year. If we
| do thing per country that means each country gets to emit X
| per year. So the first country is fine where they are and the
| second country needs to cut emissions in half.
|
| To the people of the first country they just continue their
| normal lifestyle, which generates X/P emissions per capita.
| The second country has to go from X/P per capita to 1/2 X/P.
| They will need to make big changes that will likely greatly
| reduce their standard of living.
|
| But then separatist parties, upset with such a big blow to
| the standard of living, come to power in the second country,
| and it splits into 9 separate countries, each with population
| 2P/9.
|
| In this new 10 country world, each country's share of the
| global 2X emission budget is 2/10 X. To meet this the first
| country has to cut per capita emissions to 20% of what they
| were before, requiring drastic changes in their economy and
| lifestyles.
|
| The 9 new countries on the other hand only have to each cut
| per capita emissions to 90% of what they were before. Their
| standards of living don't have to change much.
|
| ...and now there are strong incentives in the first country
| to split!
|
| This only ends when you reach a configuration where every
| country has the same per capita allowance.
|
| Trade complicates it, because now emissions in one country
| might be going toward doing things for the other country and
| so should be counted toward the other country's emission
| budget. That can be dealt with by something like a cap and
| trade system so countries can trade some of their emissions
| budget to cover emissions done for them in other countries.
| gsibble wrote:
| Agreed. China and India put out significantly more and
| dirtier pollution than the US and nuclear is the only
| realistic pathway forward for base emissions-free power.
|
| Furthermore, this was the right decision. You can't just have
| the executive branch make up law. If Congress wants this,
| they can pass a law. That's how the US works.
| hackerlight wrote:
| Nuclear and solar and wind and hydro.
|
| But that whole business of singling out India and China is
| BS. If China was split up into 10 smaller countries that
| together emitted the same amount in aggregate, those 10
| smaller countries would fly under the radar. It's only
| because China happens to be a single country that people
| point the finger. Per-capita emissions is the thing to be
| focusing on.
| mwint wrote:
| It's valid to focus on China, because China is where
| lobbying efforts are best spent. A single huge government
| making a small change will "do" more than a small
| government making a small change.
| mrpopo wrote:
| People are only using the metrics that make them/their
| country look best. The USA is topping the chart in
| cumulative GHG emissions, which is objectively the cause of
| climate change (carbon stays in the atmosphere).
| kbuchanan wrote:
| This is a great example of how on an individual level
| commentators want to bend democratic processes to achieve their
| own goals, but, without fail, they get caught in a tangle of
| contradictions. What is the Supreme Court's mandate? To stop
| climate change? To feel out the majority's opinion and make a
| legal path for it?
|
| This is why democracy is so hard: it consistently yields
| outcomes that are disappointing to a large segment of the
| population. There is no "solution" to that problem, and
| shouldn't be. There are pathways to curbing carbon emissions,
| but the reality is that too few people, as a body, want to pay
| that price.
| vintermann wrote:
| Democracy? Where did democracy ever enter into the picture
| here?
|
| The Supreme Court is different from the other branch of
| government heads, in that they decide for themselves what
| their mandate is, and you don't have any recourse ... unless
| you're in charge of one of the other branches, and are
| willing to cause a constitutional crisis by ignoring them or
| replacing them.
| namdnay wrote:
| > What is the Supreme Court's mandate? To stop climate
| change?
|
| Stopping climate change should be everyone's mandate. When
| your house is on fire and a neighbor has a hose pipe, so you
| get into an argument with them because they're not a fireman?
| jimbob45 wrote:
| Do you feel that Korematsu v US and Trump v Hawaii were
| correctly decided then?
| AnimalMuppet wrote:
| No. No. Wrong. The Supreme Court's mandate is to be the
| Supreme Court, not to be the solve-the-current-crisis
| fixer. I want the planet not to fry _and_ to still have a
| constitutional democracy at the end of that process.
|
| The problem is that people want to handle this "on the
| cheap", by executive order, rather than by the actual
| existing mechanism, which is through Congress. Yes,
| Congress created the EPA. They didn't give them the
| authority to regulate CO2, though. That was an overreach
| when the executive order came out, and that reality finally
| caught up legally.
|
| You want to regulate CO2? Then do it the right way - by
| having Congress pass a bill that grants that power to the
| EPA. That's the difference between rule of law and rule of
| the president.
|
| You say those states have too much power? No they don't.
| There's only 18 of them. That's only 36 senators. They
| don't have a majority of the House, either. So go do it the
| way it should have been done from the beginning, instead of
| trying to get away with using a lazy back door.
|
| [Edit: Reading other posts here, the issue may not have
| been CO2 emission, but rather management of the electrical
| grid. I still think that CO2 was a massive over-reach when
| the EPA started regulating that. It was almost certainly
| beyond the scope that Congress conceived of when they
| created the EPA.]
| alex_sf wrote:
| Stopping hackers should be everyone's mandate. When your
| network is under attack and the FBI have stingrays, do you
| get into an argument with them because they don't have
| warrants?
| asah wrote:
| Easy for us to say, it's not our jobs being lost.
|
| If we really cared about getting this done, we'd simply pay
| ~$30B/year (0.14%) to enter a contract to buyout 100% of US
| coal production, and avoid it getting burned.
|
| The problem is that China would simply replace that production,
| netting zero for the environment.
| zionic wrote:
| Well the fix here is for Congress to pass a specific law
| empowering the EPA with explicit authority.
|
| If something like that can't make it through congress then it
| isn't democratic, and the task then becomes one of convincing
| the other side. I've the had the anti-coal conversation with
| plenty of conservatives and they were all open to my point of
| view.
|
| Ultimately this court's decision is a win for democracy, even
| if it is a (temporary) step back for fighting climate change.
| jimkleiber wrote:
| I agree. So therefore I want us to fix the gridlock in the
| legislative branch so they can actually legislate. I think
| the members of Congress have mostly been captured by the
| political parties, almost automatically voting with their
| party line, representing their party more than their actual
| constituencies. If someone represents my state of Michigan, I
| believe they don't just represent the Democrats or
| Republicans who voted for them, but that they're supposed to
| represent all of the people in the state. When they vote
| along party lines, it says to me they prioritize their party
| affiliation over their regional one.
| throwaway0a5e wrote:
| They vote for the money.
|
| The elimination of earmarks has made politicians more
| dependent on the party and good grace of industry for their
| elections so they have to tow the party line harder and
| cater to the lobby more whereas back in the day people
| could vote against their party if they were bringing home
| something else to make it worthwhile.
| jimkleiber wrote:
| I agree. A friend of mine does a lot of research on
| Congress and says that getting rid of closed-door
| committees and committee votes has really increased the
| power of the parties for reasons you mention: it's hard
| to negotiate in good faith when people (e.g. lobbyists
| and party officials) are constantly looking over their
| shoulders. Earmarks and other things can give them ways
| to work things out when in private, compromising here and
| there, and coming up with a bill that will be balanced in
| the end.
|
| I strongly suggest his research[0].
|
| EDIT: Oh, and my friend[1] who does a lot of the research
| is a ex-NASA scientist, which is one of the reasons I
| also got excited about his research, as I studied
| electrical and computer engineering in college and was
| excited to see an engineering mindset applied to
| political dynamics.
|
| [0]: congressionalresearch.org
|
| [1]: https://congressionalresearch.org/JamesDangelo.html
| the_gastropod wrote:
| > If something like that can't make it through congress then
| it isn't democratic
|
| Ah, yes. The institution where 41 Senators, representing a
| mere 22% of the US population can block legislation is the
| zenith of democracy. Especially when considering the
| legislation we're talking about is as a response to a court
| case ruled by 6 judges, 5 of which were appointed by
| presidents who lost the popular vote, approved by senators
| representing fewer citizens than the senators who voted
| against their approval. Real nice system of democracy.
| gsibble wrote:
| Agreed. This isn't about climate change, it's about proper
| procedure as the Constitution sets it up. The EPA went past
| its mandated purposes as set up by law. Congress needs to
| pass a new law to give it this power. If it can't, that's
| their problem. This was a good decision as far too much power
| has been given to the administrative state to basically make
| up laws.
| kadoban wrote:
| The current court is starting with an outcome they like and
| then writing the decision from there. There is no law that
| will survive a sufficiently motivated cherry-picking of
| case facts and legal history.
| enragedcacti wrote:
| > Ultimately this court's decision is a win for democracy
|
| We've now learned that the supreme court will take up a case
| concerning the "Independent legislature theory" which, if
| affirmed, would allow state legislatures to unilaterally
| overrule their constituent's votes in both state and federal
| elections.
|
| I can't wait to see the majority maintain its staunch pro-
| democracy stance that it takes in this case in the terms to
| come.
| dsr_ wrote:
| You've almost got it, but you need to go one step further.
|
| Congress isn't democratic. Congress is overly concentrated.
|
| To begin with, the Senate is absurdly anti-democratic. The
| 710K residents of Washington, DC don't get a vote there at
| all. The 600K residents of Wyoming get the same 2 votes as
| Vermont (620K) and California (39 million). Anything that
| says that Texas and West Virginia are equal to each other in
| some mystical sense of having equal weight in decisions that
| affect the whole country is an ideology not compatible with
| democracy.
|
| Then, the House of Representatives is (a) absurdly
| gerrymandered and (b) absurdly undersized. One rep per
| 750,000 people on average, up from one rep per 210,000 people
| in 1909 and up from one per 34,000 in 1800.
|
| Any Constitutional "originalist" who thinks that the House of
| Representatives is just fine at 435 reps is a hypocrite. At
| one per 34,000, we need about ten thousand reps to meet the
| standards of representation that the founders thought was
| reasonable.
|
| Oddly, that would solve the other major problem with the
| House of Representatives: the 2 year term is fine if the rep
| only has to persuade the majority of 34,000 people or so. A
| small campaign can win. A simple requirement that all
| districts must be compact, convex and allocated according to
| a geographic/population algorithm would cure the
| gerrymandering, too.
| alex_sf wrote:
| > Anything that says that Texas and West Virginia are equal
| to each other in some mystical sense of having equal weight
| in decisions that affect the whole country is an ideology
| not compatible with democracy.
|
| It's completely compatible with democracy, and makes
| perfect sense under federalism. The federal government was
| not meant to have the expansive powers it does; the problem
| is that via things like the commerce clause it's massively
| overstepped the boundaries that were supposed to contain
| it.
| dsr_ wrote:
| If you want to argue "meant to", you must reference that
| to a time when the USA was about 17 states, all of
| roughly equal power, economy and population. 1803, just
| before the Louisiana Purchase. There were 12
| Constitutional amendments.
|
| "supposed to" is in the same light. The system that
| worked pretty well for about 5 million people in the pre-
| industrial age (and assumed that everyone not male,
| white, and a land-owner was distinctly second-class) does
| not work so well 200 years later in a world power of 330
| million people.
| alex_sf wrote:
| > If you want to argue "meant to", you must reference
| that to a time when the USA was about 17 states, all of
| roughly equal power, economy and population. 1803, just
| before the Louisiana Purchase.
|
| This is blatantly false. The 1800 Census has Virginia
| with a population of 676k persons (~340k free), with
| Delaware and Rhode Island having only 64k and 69k
| respectively. Their economies and 'power' (state
| militias?) were also nowhere near equal.
|
| The senate was setup specifically because of that
| disparity, and was designed to prevent larger states from
| imposing their will on smaller states.
|
| Every individual state is _supposed_ to be sovereign.
| They hold equal legal status to each other. That's why
| they are explicitly granted equal suffrage in the Senate.
|
| The fundamental disconnect here is that people from your
| perspective view the federal government as 'the
| government', when it was never intended or designed to be
| that. The federal government was supposed to operate in a
| much smaller capacity than it has for the past hundred
| years, with the vast majority of its current
| responsibilities handled by the states.
|
| > "supposed to" is in the same light. The system that
| worked pretty well for about 5 million people in the pre-
| industrial age (and assumed that everyone not male,
| white, and a land-owner was distinctly second-class) does
| not work so well 200 years later in a world power of 330
| million people.
|
| Says who? There is plenty to criticize about the US
| government at all levels, but, as someone who no doubt
| regards American Exceptionalism as an outrageous trope,
| how else do you explain the success and dominance of the
| US worldwide? It is, without question, the most powerful,
| wealthy, and successful country to have ever existed in
| history.
|
| The US is not exceptional or unique in its history of
| slavery, natural resources, population, or landmass. As
| one of the few things unique to the US, it's entirely
| reasonable to attribute at least part of that success to
| our form of government.
|
| edit: And, by the way: slave-owning states favored
| proportional representation in Congress. They were
| growing at a much faster pace than the northern states.
| dsr_ wrote:
| > This is blatantly false. The 1800 Census has Virginia
| with a population of 676k persons (~340k free), with
| Delaware and Rhode Island having only 64k and 69k
| respectively. Their economies and 'power' (state
| militias?) were also nowhere near equal.
|
| That's a single order of magnitude from top to bottom.
|
| The smallest states are now the population of VA in 1800,
| and the largest are now two orders of magnitude larger
| than that.
|
| > how else do you explain the success and dominance of
| the US worldwide? It is, without question, the most
| powerful, wealthy, and successful country to have ever
| existed in history.
|
| It is:
|
| * Exceptionally large. Russia is twice as large. China,
| Canada and the US are all approximately the same size.
| Next is Brazil and Australia, and then there's another
| factor of 2 drop.
|
| * Exceptionally gifted in natural resources. Between
| ocean ports and navigable waterways, transportation was
| easy to exploit. During the agriculture-first age, huge
| herds of bison roamed free. Oil and gas and coal are
| available. Most metals and minerals are here. The
| climatic zones available for year-round habitation are
| huge, and the deserts are not.
|
| * Exceptionally un-invadable by the powers in the world
| at its birth. The native Americans were devastated by
| disease and weapons. Every other human threat needed to
| lug their troops over an ocean before starting to invade.
| The War of 1812 was an expensive fizzle for the British.
|
| * Compound effects from the above produced a robust
| economy.
|
| * Being across an ocean meant that the US could pick and
| choose when to enter the World Wars. Even after Pearl
| Harbor, FDR could delay entry until industrial processes
| were engaged to a wartime footing.
|
| But the American domination really started at the end of
| WWII, with all the European countries and Russia and
| China and Japan facing major rebuilding efforts, while
| the US was largely unaffected.
|
| None of that requires the Constitution to be exactly the
| way it is. Would it have worked better as a multi-party
| parliament? I think so. Would it be less effective as a
| theocratic fascism? I hope we're not about to find out.
| josephcsible wrote:
| Isn't the way the US was meant to work basically the way
| the EU does work today?
| josephcsible wrote:
| > Any Constitutional "originalist" who thinks that the
| House of Representatives is just fine at 435 reps is a
| hypocrite. At one per 34,000, we need about ten thousand
| reps to meet the standards of representation that the
| founders thought was reasonable.
|
| How is that hypocritical? The Constitution says "The number
| of Representatives shall not exceed one for every thirty
| thousand, but each state shall have at least one
| Representative". The fact that we're not near the upper
| bound doesn't make it unreasonable. If they thought a
| reasonable representation would have required some lower
| bound other than 1 per state, they would have written that.
| Drunk_Engineer wrote:
| Congress already has the option of overriding/veto any EPA
| adopted regulation. It has never used that power to remove
| regulation of CO2. This is not a win for democracy -- quite
| the opposite.
| thepasswordis wrote:
| Then tell the EPA to start lobbying the NRC to allow new
| nuclear plants and start allowing innovation in the space.
|
| The EPA is not a legislative body. If you want to make it
| illegal to run a coal plant because you feel like it's your
| duty to force some pain on the citizenry for what you perceive
| as a higher calling: pass a law.
| toomuchtodo wrote:
| Can't pass a law, too many climate change deniers in
| political positions.
|
| We'll have to find other mechanisms to force coal plants
| offline. Lots of tools available besides the EPA.
| codefreeordie wrote:
| "can't pass a law because I can't get enough voters to want
| it"
|
| Sounds like maybe you don't believe in democracy
| InitialLastName wrote:
| What the US has is (intentionally and explicitly) not a
| democracy. It has a wide array of structures intended to
| undermine the will of the majority.
| codefreeordie wrote:
| This is true. We have a democratic republic rather than a
| plain democracy, because the founders were (rightly)
| concerned that plain democracy produces a tyrannical
| majority, and wanted to create a free society which would
| only impose government authority when there was broad-
| based and widespread agreement.
|
| Indeed, the founders cared so much about this that they
| wrote into the Constitution a guarantee not of a
| _democratic_ form of government for the States, but a
| _republican_ one
|
| U.S. const. Art 4 Sec 4:
|
| > The United States shall guarantee to every State in
| this Union a Republican Form of Government and shall
| protect each of them against Invasion; and on Application
| of the Legislature, or of the Executive (when the
| Legislature cannot be convened) against domestic
| Violence.
|
| In theory, this guarantee could be satisfied by entirely
| nondemocratic governments, so long as they were
| republics. Courts have not really tackled too many of the
| details of this clause over the years, primarily on the
| grounds that the courts largely feel that they are unable
| to offer remedies.
| (https://constitutioncenter.org/interactive-
| constitution/inte...)
| enragedcacti wrote:
| > "can't pass a law because I can't get enough voters to
| want it"
|
| Voters overwhelmingly want regulation on climate change.
| 41 senators representing roughly 22% of voters don't.
|
| > Sounds like maybe you don't believe in democracy
|
| if you're going to make snide remarks you better be
| accurate in your claims.
|
| https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-
| tank/2022/03/09/americans-l...
| toomuchtodo wrote:
| Sometimes I don't. The climate doesn't care about your
| vote or belief system. So, you have to work around
| democracy. Play to win, the stakes are too high not to.
| codefreeordie wrote:
| You probably won't like it when your opponents start
| playing to win democracy be damned
| toomuchtodo wrote:
| They already are. What do you think this is? They spent
| decades to enable this, they've said so publicly. Mitch
| McConnell's book is even called "The Long Game." They are
| knowingly, actively subverting democracy for their own
| ends.
|
| So, here we are.
|
| https://www.foxnews.com/politics/mitch-mcconnell-dark-
| lord-s... (the Fox News article slug even refers to him
| as the dark lord)
| codefreeordie wrote:
| You know, it's funny.
|
| (well, "funny")
|
| Each party's advocates say "the other side has been
| playing to win rules and democracy be damned for decades,
| and if we don't start ignoring the rules and playing
| dirty, they'll kill us all".
|
| Each side claims to love democracy but to be willing to
| destroy it only because doing so is necessary to protect
| them from the Enemy.
|
| I think that maybe most people don't actually care about
| democracy, they just want to win the war.
| toomuchtodo wrote:
| I want a habitable planet for my kids. If you don't
| believe in climate change, there is simply no value in
| engaging. The science is proven by scientists who do
| science things. It's like someone not believing in
| gravity. "But I have my own opinion!" They believe their
| opinions carry the same weight as facts. You're just
| lighting precious time and effort on fire needlessly,
| banging your head against the brick wall expecting the
| brick wall to critically think with factual information.
|
| Take care, good chat.
| kennywinker wrote:
| > If you want to make it illegal to run a coal plant because
| you feel like it's your duty to force some pain on the
| citizenry for what you perceive as a higher calling: pass a
| law.
|
| Nobody wants what you described. Global warming is literally
| killing people by the thousands every year now. Wars are
| coming, mass migrations and climate refugees. This is a
| crisis, it's just not a localized one. And it doesn't have to
| be painful. Building + running windmills, solar, even
| nuclear, those are all good jobs.
|
| You might just as well frame it "if 19 states want to make
| the world suffer so a few corporations can profit and people
| don't have to re-train".
| throwaway0a5e wrote:
| >>If you want to make it illegal to run a coal plant
| because you feel like it's your duty to force some pain on
| the citizenry for what you perceive as a higher calling
|
| >Nobody wants what you described
|
| Do you think everyone hear has the memory of a goldfish or
| are you just lying to us without a care in the world?
|
| We can literally go into any HN thread on the subject of
| coal and see tons of comments to the tune of "this will
| cause people a bunch of pain but outlawing X, Y and Z or
| taxing them to create the same effect is necessary in order
| to get off of fossil fuels therefore it is necessary for
| the greater good". I don't disagree with the premise that
| it's gonna hurt but just turning around and saying
| "nobody's saying that" when it suits you is beyond bad
| faith behavior.
|
| People like you are just as bad for progress as the coal
| lobby is because you undermine the people telling it like
| it is.
| kennywinker wrote:
| Op's message was that people think it's their duty to
| force pain on people for some higher calling.
|
| As I said, nobody wants that. Emphasis on "wants",
| emphasis on "that". The same people calling for climate
| action are the ones calling for a just transitions - UBI,
| green new deals, etc. so if they were to get their way it
| wouldn't actually be painful. That's the "wants" part.
|
| But even if we don't get those things, it actually has to
| happen - it's not some random desire. It's an existential
| threat to human life. So, it has to be done at whatever
| cost. Not because they "believe in some higher calling" -
| because the facts are that this is going to hurt everyone
| if we don't deal with it at great scale asap. And that's
| the "that" part.
| thsijustin wrote:
| KingOfCoders wrote:
| If you want airspace to be regulated, pass a law (cancel the
| FAA). If you want frequencies to be regulated, pass a law
| (cancel the FCC). If you want individual food and drugs to be
| regulated, pass a law (cancel the FDA). If you want cars to
| be regulated, ...
| Sporktacular wrote:
| "duty to force some pain on the citizenry"
|
| You do know that coal power kills more people than any other
| power source right? That makes health care a hidden cost,
| paid by the citizenry, to subsidise an irresponsible energy
| industry.
|
| Think much?
| thepasswordis wrote:
| Why is this so confusing?
|
| Then pass a law.
|
| I hope every coal plant on earth goes away forever. I hate
| coal plants. Get rid of them and PASS A LAW restricting
| their use.
| Sporktacular wrote:
| Have you seen how hard it is to pass a contentious law
| these days? Most people can agree about its merits but
| it's naive to act as if special interests haven't
| manufactured the contention and captured the regulatory
| and legislative processes.
|
| We don't have the luxury of proceduralism any more.
| phaistra wrote:
| > Have you seen how hard it is to pass a contentious law
| these days?
|
| So what? Not the SC's problem.
|
| > Most people can agree about its merits but it's naive
| to act as if special interests haven't manufactured the
| contention and captured the regulatory and legislative
| processes.
|
| So if special interests have captured the regulatory
| body, how is letting them keep (or gain) their unelected
| power any better?
|
| > We don't have the luxury of proceduralism any more.
|
| I can use the same argument about any topic we disagree
| about. Do you not see the problem with this line of
| thinking?
| thepasswordis wrote:
| Think about what you're saying. Democracy is hard so
| let's throw it all away? Do you realize where that leads?
| Sporktacular wrote:
| Don't be hyperbolic. We had democracy before Coney-
| Barrett, Kavanaugh and Gorsuch were appointed.
|
| Hamstringing the EPA over a contrived technicality in the
| wording of its charter is a travesty of justice. It's
| public utility is obvious. It's in the name.
| politician wrote:
| 100%. We need to stop treating the judiciary as if it were
| royalty, and instead operate the government using the
| established rules for change.
|
| That means forcing Congress to accept its role and do its job
| instead of being a place where the members spend most of
| their time fundraising and trying to keep their seats.
| mrpopo wrote:
| > Then tell the EPA to start lobbying the NRC to start
| building new nuclear plants
|
| No, stopping the coal plants is the end goal. Whether it's by
| saving energy or building alternative sources like
| solar/hydro/nuclear is irrelevant to the EPA's goal
| (protecting the environment/mitigating climate change).
|
| Innovation will not save us, the tools have been here for
| decades.
|
| I agree this should be passed as a law.
| jimkleiber wrote:
| I'd argue that one of the main drivers of climate change is
| this precise behavior: trying to alter the environment to be
| favorable towards the thing that I own.
|
| I see it on a micro level of people trying to kill insects that
| get into their gardens or moles that ruin their lawns, and a
| more macro level of my state/country has coal underneath it and
| therefore we shall fight to continue to use coal or even my
| state/country doesn't have a lot of arable land for agriculture
| because of permafrost or access to non-frozen ports for
| shipping so increasing global temperature may actually be good
| for us.
| bumby wrote:
| This is it. Values lead to attitudes when they are directed
| at an object. Beliefs and attitudes are emotionally biased
| and largely inform behavior. Unfortunately, beliefs don't
| have to be correct or even coherent with other beliefs to be
| strongly held.
|
| A person may value a coal mine for a variety of reasons that
| are very emotionally hinged: economic, familial, etc. To
| change behavior values and attitudes have to change. That's
| exceptionally difficult when the competing values, like
| climate, are more abstract than the ones currently held. I
| worry that humans are not psychologically equipped to manage
| problems of this scale.
| jimkleiber wrote:
| Change can suck. It can also be great. I think our tendency
| towards loss aversion makes us focus on how much it can
| suck. Even if my future might be better, it will be
| different, and I can want to not lose the thing to which I
| currently feel attached.
|
| > That's exceptionally difficult when the competing values,
| like climate, are more abstract than the ones currently
| held. I worry that humans are not psychologically equipped
| to manage problems of this scale.
|
| I think we may be equipped, as we've handled problems on
| much larger scales than I think our ancestors would have
| expected, and yet I hear you, wondering what (if anything)
| could change to make us more equipped.
|
| I wonder if reframing our identity could help. Instead of
| me only being a coal miner or Michigander, I'm also more
| connected with my human identity. Maybe more backwoods
| experiences, watching and living TV shows like Alone or
| Naked and Afraid...I dunno. I wonder if we don't actually
| have to try to connect to the planet but just more deeply
| to our local wildlife and to ourselves.
| toomuchtodo wrote:
| > I wonder if reframing our identity could help.
|
| This requires a level of emotional adjustment and self
| awareness lacking in many people.
| jimkleiber wrote:
| I agree. I've spent the last 10 years focused on trying
| to help us get better at being emotionally honest with at
| least ourselves. I had focused mostly on tools for the
| masses, but lately have been refocused on making tools
| for leaders and then let leaders change culture by
| example, as so many of us learn what's ok to feel and
| what feelings are ok to say from our parents and other
| authority figures.
| enragedcacti wrote:
| from the dissent (starting on page 57):
|
| The effect of the Court's order, followed by the Trump
| administration's re- peal of the rule, was that the Clean Power
| Plan never went into effect. The ensuing years, though, proved
| the Plan's moderation. Market forces alone caused the power
| industry to meet the Plan's nationwide emissions target--through
| exactly the kinds of generation shifting the Plan contem- plated.
| See 84 Fed. Reg. 32561-32562 (2019); Brief for United States 47.
| So by the time yet another President took office, the Plan had
| become, as a practical matter, obsolete. For that reason, the
| Biden administration announced that, instead of putting the Plan
| into effect, it would commence a new rulemaking. Yet this Court
| determined to pronounce on the legality of the old rule anyway.
| The Court may be right that doing so does not violate Article III
| mootness rules (which are notoriously strict). See ante, at
| 14-16. But the Court's docket is discretionary, and because no
| one is now subject to the Clean Power Plan's terms, there was no
| reason to reach out to decide this case. The Court today issues
| what is really an advisory opinion on the proper scope of the new
| rule EPA is considering. That new rule will be subject anyway to
| immediate, pre-enforcement judi- cial review. But this Court
| could not wait--even to see what the new rule says--to constrain
| EPA's efforts to ad- dress climate change. The limits the
| majority now puts on EPA's authority fly in the face of the
| statute Congress wrote. The majority says it is simply "not
| plausible" that Congress enabled EPA to regulate power plants'
| emissions through generation shift- ing. Ante, at 31. But that is
| just what Congress did when it broadly authorized EPA in Section
| 111 to select the "best system of emission reduction" for power
| plants. SS7411(a)(1). The "best system" full stop--no ifs, ands,
| or buts of any kind relevant here. The parties do not dispute
| that generation shifting is indeed the "best system"--the most
| effective and efficient way to reduce power plants' car- bon
| dioxide emissions. And no other provision in the Clean Air Act
| suggests that Congress meant to foreclose EPA from selecting that
| system; to the contrary, the Plan's regulatory approach fits
| hand-in-glove with the rest of the statute. The majority's
| decision rests on one claim alone: that gen- eration shifting is
| just too new and too big a deal for Con- gress to have authorized
| it in Section 111's general terms. But that is wrong. A key
| reason Congress makes broad del- egations like Section 111 is so
| an agency can respond, ap- propriately and commensurately, to new
| and big problems. Congress knows what it doesn't and can't know
| when it drafts a statute; and Congress therefore gives an expert
| agency the power to address issues--even significant ones--as and
| when they arise. That is what Congress did in enacting Section
| 111. The majority today overrides that legislative choice. In so
| doing, it deprives EPA of the power needed--and the power granted
| --to curb the emission of greenhouse gases.
|
| tl;dr: the majority chose to rule on a plan that never went into
| effect and will never go into effect, in practice taking on an
| advisory role rather than waiting for an actual concrete plan to
| rule on. Beyond that, Congress intentionally chose the broad
| language of "best system of emissions reductions" but the
| majority asserts that congress should have instead referred to
| generation shifting by name despite the technology not existing
| at the time of drafting
| fzeroracer wrote:
| As mentioned in the dissent, congress explicitly gave them the
| power to regulate green house gasses in this specific scenario.
| But the majority conservative opinion made up their own
| rationale as to why that somehow doesn't apply in order to curb
| the EPAs power.
|
| The modern day supreme court is a joke, unable to be even
| remotely consistent in how it applies its rationale and its
| clear they're merely another puppet for conservative politics.
| esarbe wrote:
| Oh boy. At least we can now put the myth of the "apolitical"
| Supreme Court at rest and start thinking about how to reform it.
|
| The Supreme Court has been overreaching for some time now, maybe
| it's time to limit its powers? Term limits or rotating seats
| might also be options.
| puppetsock wrote:
| https://archive.ph/5qSrB
| AdmiralAsshat wrote:
| So to recap: the SCOTUS has ruled that the agency established and
| authorized by Congress to regulate environmental protection does
| not have the authority to regulate environmental protection.
|
| Did I get that right?
| addandsubtract wrote:
| The same SCOTUS that ruled that the agency established and
| authorized to give birth does not have the authority to
| regulate birth. Yes.
| beezle wrote:
| I don't think so. Apparently, by my understanding, the issue in
| this decisions was not regulation of a particular coal plant's
| emmissions but of pushing utilities to add green capacity to
| offset GHG emmissions.
| db48x wrote:
| Think of it this way. The FDA has the authority to regulate
| food, right? So do they get to decide what type of food a
| restaurant is allowed to serve? No. They don't get to decide
| that every county has to have at least 20% Mexican restaurants
| either. Restaurant owners are allowed to decide for themselves
| what type of food to serve, and power plant owners are allowed
| to decide for themselves what type of fuel to use.
| fzeroracer wrote:
| Yes, and the dissent spells that out clearly. An excerpt from
| the dissent:
|
| > The majority says it is simply "not plausible" that Congress
| enabled EPA to regulate power plants' emissions through
| generation shift- ing. Ante, at 31. But that is just what
| Congress did when it broadly authorized EPA in Section 111 to
| select the "best system of emission reduction" for power
| plants. SS7411(a)(1). The "best system" full stop--no ifs,
| ands, or buts of any kind relevant here.
|
| They were given broad power by congress explicitly. If congress
| had wanted them to reign in that power or not choose the best
| system, then they could pull it back at any time. They did not.
| The court decided that the previous congress was full of idiots
| and could not fathom future technologies for emission reduction
| and therefore is moot.
| shrimpx wrote:
| These literalist justices are of the mind that if it wasn't
| explicitly written, then it's not allowed. Generalist/broad
| swath language is to be ignored. Only specific instruction is
| to be interpreted.
| zeroonetwothree wrote:
| Only when it's convenient for their position. For the 2nd
| amendment they take a very broad reading.
| shrimpx wrote:
| Yes good point.
| redler wrote:
| Yet they decide other landmark cases with a newly invented
| test for "deeply rooted history and tradition", through
| which they can put on their highly subjective amateur
| historian hats to engineer a desired outcome.
| Clubber wrote:
| I'm not fluent in the decision yet, but at first glance:
|
| It seems congress gave them limited power to regulate
| environmental protection via a law that was written. The EPA
| seems to have overstepped its legal boundaries in regulating.
| Instead of saying, "ah fuck it, let the machine run," the court
| is forcing congress to actually give it the additional power
| that it's been using, or to stop.
| colincooke wrote:
| This is too broad of a reading. Unfortunately despite the
| mission statement of organizations they are limited by their
| own laws and rules. In this case this is a narrowing of a
| particular reading of a paritcular rule that was used to limit
| greenhouse gas emissions from power plants. See
| https://reason.com/volokh/2022/06/30/supreme-court-rejects-b...
| for more details
| redler wrote:
| Simplified: "The manner in which a vanishingly small group of
| megadonors and think tank funders make, keep, grow, and
| distribute their money should be nearly impossible to
| regulate."
| Sunspark wrote:
| This is a very far-reaching decision. The decision is really that
| Congress cannot have a federal agency regulating anything unless
| Congress specifically votes on something like the filtration
| efficiency of item x in smokestack diameter y.
|
| It has implications for other things too. For example, the post
| office. How about 50 individual post offices instead of a
| national post office since now logically the price of a stamp
| cannot be adjusted unless Congress votes on it, etc.
| [deleted]
| exabrial wrote:
| I agree with "congress cannot delegate it's powers" to a certain
| extent.
|
| Negative example: The BATF has a splendid history of literally
| doing nothing except putting it's critics behind bars, while
| solving 0 actual crime and preventing any sort of mass
| tradgedies.
|
| Positive example: The FAA has done an incredible job making air-
| travel safer than car travel. I have a feeling that a lot of the
| higher-ups are former engineers and have been able to put
| politics and red/blue crap aside for a common mission.
|
| Mixed example: The FCC has done a great job on spectrum
| allocation. They've done a shitty job when on broadband and
| content regulation, with it quickly becoming politicalized and
| more concern about red/blue.
|
| Good example: The FDA has done a great job in regulating the
| industry for their namesake: food and drugs. We have
| unprecedented levels of safety in both despite not having a
| complete knowledge of how all drugs work (biology is just complex
| with a lot of hidden downstream after-effects).
|
| Poor example: The NRC has pretty much just said "No" to fucking
| everything in nuclear. No progress has been made. We should have
| 3-5 reactors (on average) in every state. Instead we're still
| running 50 year old designs (not _necessarily bad_ but not great
| either) when we could have Generation III+ with passive failure
| modes.
|
| That brings me to the EPA. I think they've done a lot of good:
| energy efficiency ultimately benefits the consumer in nearly
| every case. I have an air conditioner that kicks out a splendid
| 58degree air stream in the summer heat and extraordinarily low
| energy consumption levels. The EPA has successfully sued
| countless corporations and created superfund sights when they
| just dump industrial waste without a plan to handle it.
|
| Unfortunately, as red/blue politics get involved in an agency,
| everyone loses. And the finger pointing begins. As such, the only
| "way out" may be to say delegate it to Congress. I'm not sure
| where we go from here.
| timeon wrote:
| > I'm not sure where we go from here.
|
| Going to hit the wall and let the corporate decide.
| cryptonector wrote:
| > Positive example: The FAA has done an incredible job making
| air-travel safer than car travel. I have a feeling that a lot
| of the higher-ups are former engineers and have been able to
| put politics and red/blue crap aside for a common mission.
|
| _737MAX enters the chat_
| exabrial wrote:
| Definitely a failure. How the "the stabilizer trim depends on
| exactly one input device" was a huge oversight.
| cryptonector wrote:
| It wasn't just a failure, and it wasn't an oversight -- the
| FAA simply rubberstamped anything Boeing gave it, and it
| wouldn't surprise anyone if there is more to the story. It
| was a colossal failure that led to a complete loss of trust
| in the FAA. The FAA went from being an agency whose
| expertise we lent to the rest of the world to... being just
| one more captured domestic regulator. I bet the Europeans
| will lead the investigation of the next big accident
| outside the U.S., as well they should.
| joshstrange wrote:
| > The FDA has done a great job in regulating the industry for
| their namesake: food and drugs.
|
| _The Sackler Family /Purdue Pharma and Oxycontin has entered
| the chat_
|
| It's hard to see what the FDA (didn't) do in that case as
| anything but complete corruption. Allowing a new label for this
| new untested drug and then the head left to go work for Purdue
| shortly after? Revolving door.
| LordDragonfang wrote:
| >Good example: The FDA
|
| I'm not sure whether "good" is better or worse than "positive",
| but the FDA is definitely closer to "mixed" than the FAA. I'm
| generally very pro-FDA for the reasons you listed, and argue
| against the libertarians who want to abolish it. However,
| there's lots of legitimate criticisms about how it's frequently
| too conservative in allowing trials or approval for potentially
| life-saving medication, or approving medications and
| supplements that are considered safe and commonly-used by other
| countries.
|
| Scott Alexander of SSC/ACX has many[1][2][3], many[4][5][6]
| posts pointing out instances in which the FDA's arguable-
| excessive roadblocks have failed US healthcare patients, coming
| from his experience as a professional psychiatrist.
|
| [1] https://slatestarcodex.com/2013/09/28/sleep-now-by-
| prescript...
|
| [2] https://slatestarcodex.com/2014/06/15/fish-now-by-
| prescripti...
|
| [3] https://slatestarcodex.com/2014/08/16/an-iron-curtain-has-
| de...
|
| [4] https://slatestarcodex.com/2019/03/11/ketamine-now-by-
| prescr...
|
| [5] https://slatestarcodex.com/2013/11/26/a-letter-i-will-
| probab...
|
| [6] https://slatestarcodex.com/2016/08/29/reverse-
| voxsplaining-d...
|
| [7] https://astralcodexten.substack.com/p/adumbrations-of-
| aducan...
| bastardoperator wrote:
| I don't ever want to hear the term "activist judges" or
| "legislating from the bench" from a conservative ever again.
|
| And, Barrett couldn't even cite the first amendment...
| iandanforth wrote:
| You appear to be under the impression that conservatives care
| about consistency or are vulnerable to accusations of
| inconsistency.
| zeroonetwothree wrote:
| I would replace "conservatives" with "people" in that
| sentence
| hotpotamus wrote:
| You wont because it's not activism when they do it.
| Covzire wrote:
| In this case, as I understand it, the EPA was declaring they
| had authority to enforce some new rules by interpreting where
| congress wrote "may" as "must". Whether you agree with the
| EPA's motives or not, it should concern everyone that un-
| elected bureaucrats have been increasingly inventing or
| hallucinating the language of their mandates to turn them into
| whatever they wanted, whenever it suits them, and this was a
| much needed rebuke of that behavior.
| matthewdgreen wrote:
| >In this case, as I understand it, the EPA was declaring they
| had authority to enforce some new rules by interpreting where
| congress wrote "may" as "must".
|
| Congress didn't pass a law and disappear. If Congress felt
| that the EPA was misinterpreting the language of the Clean
| Air Act it could have passed a law limiting the agency's
| powers. The fact that _it did not do so_ is the strongest
| rebuttal to the claim that the EPA was operating outside its
| mandate.
|
| This decision is an announcement by the Court that Congress
| can no longer be trusted to govern the agencies it oversees.
| cryptonector wrote:
| But Congress hasn't disappeared now either and can easily
| s/may/must/. What's the problem?
| matthewdgreen wrote:
| Because the Court has taken an issue that Congress did
| not [yet] show any urgent inclination to act on, i.e.,
| alleged overreach by the EPA over many Congressional
| sessions with many different partisan compositions. And
| they have taken away Congress's discretion to decide its
| own agenda and priorities by turning this into an
| emergency _that has to be dealt with right now by this
| Congress_. There is real harm to this: it halts an
| existing regulatory process, and it may take years for
| Congress to repair the damage.
| cryptonector wrote:
| Since the EPA had tried to moot the case by holding back,
| there must be no emergency.
| matthewdgreen wrote:
| The fact that nobody was harmed by this regulation -- and
| there was no urgency -- and yet the Court still took the
| case _is indeed a huge problem_ that underlines my
| concerns with this case. Why did the Court step into this
| case and override both Congress and the executive branch
| when the regulation itself wasn 't harming the
| plaintiffs? The emergency here is that the EPA now has no
| idea what its authority will be on any regulatory actions
| regarding CO2. (And when Congress finally legislates, it
| won't know what its authority is either.)
| cryptonector wrote:
| The court decided there was a harm. Seems reasonable to
| me.
|
| > The emergency here is that the EPA now has no idea what
| its authority will be on any regulatory actions regarding
| CO2.
|
| That's hyperbole.
| jdasdf wrote:
| >Congress didn't pass a law and disappear. If Congress felt
| that the EPA was misinterpreting the language of the Clean
| Air Act it could have passed a law limiting the agency's
| powers.
|
| It is not congresses job to enforce the law by writing new
| laws.
| Clubber wrote:
| Agreed, the executive branch (the bureaucracies) does not
| make laws, congress does. The fact that the bureaucracies are
| governing above and beyond what they are legally allowed to
| do is actually horrifying and very undemocratic.
| Sporktacular wrote:
| Huh? It's the executive's job to execute the laws - which
| is exactly what they were doing, until the court changed it
| mind on how that should be done.
|
| If this was true it would have been the case for all
| previous court panels. That it's not shows that it's the
| court playing politics now.
| smiddereens wrote:
| civilized wrote:
| This is a silly decision. I don't respect the reasoning at all.
|
| If Republicans want to abolish the EPA, all they have to do is
| pass a law. They could do it with a simple majority in each House
| if they abolish the filibuster (which itself requires only a
| simple majority).
|
| There is no meaningful loss of democratic control here. Congress
| can do whatever it wants, with or without the EPA.
|
| This is just the highest court in the land acting as toadies for
| the fossil fuel industry, legislating from the bench on a flimsy
| right wing legal theory.
| radford-neal wrote:
| For a law to be passed in the US, it must be approved by the
| House, the Senate, and the President. For a law to be repealed
| in the US, the repeal must also be approved by the House, the
| Senate, and the President. So there will often be situations
| where it matters what the _current_ law is - whenever these
| three components of the system do not agree, so that the
| current law will not be changed. In such a situation, it is not
| supposed to be the case that the President (in control of the
| executive branch) can unilaterally decide that the current law
| is whatever they want it to be.
| hunglee2 wrote:
| owning the supreme court was the republicans trump card, the
| Presidency is only a pit stop toward the true goal. Got it for a
| life time now don't they? Got to hand it to them, smart long term
| planning
| andrekandre wrote:
| there are a lot of lesson so be had...
|
| just a few...
|
| - long term planning of the gop vs short term tactics of dems
|
| - justices staying on too long until it was too late
|
| - bad (tone-deaf) campaigning for prez lost 3 seats on the sc
|
| - ignoring rural and working-class (used to be the dems bread
| and butter) dissolved their base of support (clinton and the
| "new" dems)
|
| - relying on the sc for too many rulings... next we loose gay
| marriage and probably interracial marriage in many states.....
| gsibble wrote:
| Yeah, RBG really fucked the Dems by not retiring with Obama
| in office.
| rory wrote:
| There's really no reason I can think of that the Dems would
| deem the Freedom of Choice Act "not a priority" other to play
| political games in future presidential races. I'm convinced
| they basically wanted to be able to continue to use the
| threat of a _Roe_ overturn to steer swing voters to their
| side, but never actually believed it would happen.
|
| That said, I highly doubt _Loving_ would ever be overturned.
| It sits on very solid legal ground, and the most conservative
| judge on the court is _in_ an interracial marriage.
| _Obergefell_ is genuinely at risk though.
| Workaccount2 wrote:
| To think there are people to who stayed home in Nov' 16 because
| they were salty that Bernie didn't get the nomination.
| bmitc wrote:
| > In a 6-3 ruling, the court sided with the conservative states
| and fossil-fuel companies, ...
|
| What a surprise. How many Republicans are on the Supreme Court
| again?
|
| > ... agreeing that Congress had not "intended to delegate...
| decision[s] of such economic and political significance".
|
| Apparently the Supreme Court does not believe that the
| Environmental Protection Agency was intended to be given agency
| to protect the environment. It's like a The Onion parody.
|
| > Attorney General Eric Schmitt for Missouri - one of the 19
| states - called it a "big victory... that pushes back on the
| Biden EPA's job-killing regulations".
|
| There the Republicans are again, beating the jobs drum in a
| period of historic lows of unemployment. Small government to them
| means big government where they want and small elsewhere, e.g.,
| Congress and the Supreme Court acting as protector for
| corporations.
| wing-_-nuts wrote:
| Great, so now we're reliant on congress to get something done.
| The same congress that's sat on its hands for the past 30 years
| and has been shown to be completely incapable of addressing the
| issue.
|
| This is a _massive_ blow to the US being able to reach emissions
| targets. Every day we 're one step closer to the 'business as
| usual' path that leaves the world 3-4c hotter. That's a
| catastrophic scenario.
| _Microft wrote:
| > This is a massive blow to the US being able to reach
| emissions targets.
|
| I think this is the actual goal. I don't know if they are aware
| that it does not make a difference climate-wise what they
| believe (or not).
| ejb999 wrote:
| >>This is a massive blow to the US being able to reach
| emissions targets.
|
| Whose targets though? 'Shouldn't we the people' have a say?
| i.e. shouldn't congress actually hold the hearings, digest the
| info and go on the record voting for or against important
| items?
|
| We don't let the IRS set tax rates, we should not let unelected
| bureaucrats decide what the environmental goals are - elect
| people you think represent your priorities, have them go on the
| record supporting or opposing important decisions, and then
| pass a law the establishes frameworks to the agencies in charge
| under which they operate.
| voisin wrote:
| > shouldn't congress actually hold the hearings, digest the
| info and go on the record voting for or against important
| items?
|
| Of course, but this will never happen. So if the only
| positive outcome of an action is a long tail event, then
| maybe the action shouldn't be taken. We have to look at the
| expected value of this, which is that people less versed than
| the experts suddenly making decisions they had previously
| relegated to the experts. Chaos.
| wing-_-nuts wrote:
| Again, congress has had 30 YEARS to do something. They've
| done _nothing_. I 'm long past the point of assuming
| ignorance and incompetence, much of congress is clearly
| acting in bad faith on this issue because they are beholden
| to the fossil fuel companies.
|
| Want 'We the People' to have a say in whether or not the EPA
| should regulate CO2? Put it to a national referendum.
| Congress has shown repeatedly that it's more than happy to
| watch the world burn if it means their superpacs are stuffed
| with lobbyist funds.
| ohCh6zos wrote:
| If we keep electing them then 'nothing' is the democratic
| choice.
| tzs wrote:
| From the articles I've seen so far it seems they can still
| regulate individual power plants.
|
| Does this mean that while they cannot stop new high emissions
| plants from being built, once a plant actually starts producing
| they could regulate it?
|
| That might actually work out better, because building a plant and
| then having it come under regulation would probably be more
| costly to the plant owners than if they had went for a cleaner
| plant from the beginning.
| taylorbuley wrote:
| One of the key issues at play is that when there is no clear
| interpretation of a statue, that a regular can interpret that in
| whichever way they want. This was a legal noodle that a previous
| administration didn't even know would stick. The result is that
| the executive branch just lost of a lot of interpretational
| leeway.
| jschveibinz wrote:
| TL;DR? My best attempt: The federal law did not give authority to
| EPA to control the type of energy (fuel) used. It only had
| authority to set emission guidelines.
| jeffbee wrote:
| That's the gist of it but imagine the logical consequences.
| What the court is saying is that the EPA has no authority to
| stop the burning of anything, it only has the authority to
| apply the best-known commercially viable technology to make the
| emissions of that burning as clean as can be. So, for example,
| if you wanted to incinerate lead ingots - and let's just ignore
| the reasons you'd want to do this for debate purposes - the EPA
| cannot stop you, because there is no commercially viable (i.e.
| profitable) technology that would make the emissions any
| cleaner.
|
| Now you may think this is a crazy example but there's an Alcoa
| facility in Texas that originally burned lignite but long since
| ran out of the good stuff and has just been burning dirt for
| decades. It is one of the largest point sources of air
| pollution in the world, and what the court is saying here is
| the EPA has not been empowered by Congress to stop that. If
| Alcoa wants to burn dirt, then fine.
| jschveibinz wrote:
| The federal government probably sees it like this: one
| person's problem is another person's benefit. Also, the air
| doesn't vote.
| User23 wrote:
| That's not false, but it really misses some important detail:
| namely, that generation shifting cannot be a "system of
| emission re- duction" under Section 111. 985 F. 3d 914, 995.
|
| In other words, telling a coal plant operator to reduce their
| plants emissions by switching some energy production to other
| sources is beyond the EPA's legal authority.
|
| However, given that you evidently prefer a single
| (technocratic?) world government I suppose you might welcome
| the further erosion of the US republic? In that case damn-the-
| consequences-do-what-I-want is an understandable position to
| take, even if it's inimical to the long term health of the
| republic.
| fulafel wrote:
| How much of the republicans apparent desire to drive climate
| change off the cliff can be explained by religion and belief in
| the end of the world? Apparently 40% of americans believe in
| imminent end of times:
| https://www.christianpost.com/news/poll-4-in-10-americans-be...
| KingOfCoders wrote:
| The same reason the US supports Israel to drive the Second
| Coming of Jesus [1]
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second_Coming
| txsoftwaredev wrote:
| As it should. The EPA is not a branch of the government.
| philosopher1234 wrote:
| Every surpreme court article makes me hate this community a bit
| more.
|
| There is far too much obsessing over "their logic is consistent"
| and far too much intentional ignorance of the fact that they
| _chose_ which logic to bring to bear on which issues, and that
| there are many other possible ways to apply consistent logic.
|
| Their logic can be consistent and they can still be partisans,
| looking to implement a specific agenda.
|
| I don't believe people on this site are too stupid to realize
| that, I believe they prefer not to, because they support the
| outcomes these rulings enact.
|
| And given that, we are in a lot of trouble.
| jxramos wrote:
| I don't think the name of the game is at the level of upholding
| consistent logic in and of itself but of defending the
| separation of powers granted to the three branches of
| government. You can think of it as analogous to programming
| architectural defensive tests enforcing the boundaries. This is
| at the level of governance design and protecting that design.
| ironman1478 wrote:
| > I don't believe people on this site are too stupid to realize
| that, I believe they prefer not to, because they support the
| outcomes these rulings enact.
|
| HN is just a forum. Its not much different than Reddit, its
| just more moderated which I greatly appreciate. I think the
| people aren't stupid. Its just that people have grown up being
| told the Supreme Court was some non-partisan objective
| organization, when really is full of partisan hacks and law by
| very nature is political. Its hard to undo years of hearing the
| same thing.
| spencerflem wrote:
| I just find it sad, because even Reddit got this one right.
| This is the most SCOTUS bootlicking ive seen in one thread
| and it's all done by programmers who are supposed to be _my_
| people y 'know? Feels personal
| maxsilver wrote:
| > This is the most SCOTUS bootlicking ive seen in one
| thread and it's all done by programmers who are supposed to
| be my people y'know? Feels personal
|
| If there's one thing I've learned in my life, is that a
| scary-high number of people who are _supposed_ to be on my
| side, who are theoretically _my_ people, are diametrically
| opposed to my entire life, and are merely pretending to
| tolerate my continued existence.
| jaywalk wrote:
| Why would you assume that the fact that someone is a
| programmer indicates to you anything at all about
| literally any other aspect of their life or views?
|
| It seems to me that you just built up your own little
| fantasy world, and are shocked that reality doesn't align
| with it.
| cronix wrote:
| That's odd that you think programmers all think the same
| things or are all politically aligned, or really any group
| of people for that matter.
| spencerflem wrote:
| I feel like on paper, they're people with a similar
| interests, most went to college, etc.
|
| You're definitely right that I shouldn't have assumed but
| it still hurts
| moronicwebsite wrote:
| spencerflem wrote:
| ? this was one of my more earnest comments
| yucky wrote:
| >they're people with a similar interests, most went to
| college, etc.
|
| So...like hedge fund operators?
| spencerflem wrote:
| idk, I expect hedge fund people to be awful
|
| ~ _I 'm_~ a programmer tho so when they're bad it makes
| me sad :(
|
| Like I said I know it's naive to think that
| cronix wrote:
| Kudos for your response, sir.
| ironman1478 wrote:
| Being a programmer only implies one thing. That the person
| is a programmer. It has 0 correlation with other skills or
| thoughts. I used to be disappointed by this too, but people
| are multifaceted and being able to make a computer do
| something useful isn't correlated with being able to
| understand politics, be good at playing an instrument, etc.
| The people who are good at multiple things (or
| knowledgeable about multiple topics) are that way because
| they put in the work, just like they did for programming.
| spencerflem wrote:
| thank you <3
| worker_person wrote:
| There are conservative programmers. We just learn to keep
| our heads down.
|
| I spent a few years researching all viewpoints to figure
| out my position. Didn't realize I would be hated for
| thinking for myself.
| spoils19 wrote:
| Conservatives spend a lot more time and do a lot more
| research, yet are vilified for coming to a conclusion on
| our own. There's no major media informing us, nor are
| there any pundits to who we can turn to.
| [deleted]
| spencerflem wrote:
| Except y'all don't, the dominant opinion in this thread
| is the conservative opinion that the SCOTUS is legitimate
| and correctly decided the EPA ruling.
|
| And honestly, if thinking for yourself leads you to be
| anti-climate action, anti-lgbt rights, anti-labor etc.
| you deserve whatever you get
| mecsred wrote:
| Basically every comment about the legitimacy of the
| ruling is immediately followed by a comment rebuking it.
| If you think it's the dominant opinion you may need to
| reflect on that.
|
| No one brought up LGBT rights and labor politics as far
| as I scrolled down.
|
| Threatening people for sharing their opinion isn't going
| to help your position.
| spencerflem wrote:
| They* said they* were a conservative and those are all
| mainstream conservative opinions, don't know what more to
| tell you.
|
| And I agree there's comments on both sides but you can't
| claim conservatives* are be forced to keep their* heads
| down or whatever, much as I might wish to not see them.
| mecsred wrote:
| Please read who you are replying to. I am not the poster
| of that comment and said none of those things.
| worker_person wrote:
| [deleted]
| OrvalWintermute wrote:
| >And honestly, if thinking for yourself leads you to be
| anti-climate action, anti-lgbt rights, anti-labor etc.
| you deserve whatever you get
|
| There are basically 6 major factions in the US right now,
| along with the associated special interests.
|
| The Establishment Democrats, and the Progressive
| Democrats
|
| vs
|
| The Establishment Republicans, and the Populist
| Republicans
|
| and the Independents, and 3rd party which often determine
| elections.
|
| On above, Establishment Republicans and Establishment
| Democrats have far more in common, with each other, than
| they do with their respective Populist and Progressive
| wings.
|
| Likewise, in many areas the Populist Republicans and
| Progressive Democrats have a great deal in common too.
|
| Please don't oversimplify this.
| [deleted]
| mcbrit wrote:
| It is well known that there are competing, consistent theories
| on how to interpret the Constitution.
|
| If we assume that each Justice subscribes to a consistent
| theory on how to interpret the Constitution, you omit a
| discussion (much less a proof) that at least one Justice's
| theory is 'partisan', that the theory being partisan would be
| bad, or to make a foundational move, that a theory that is
| nonpartisan exists. I think there are interesting discussions
| to be had on all of those topics.
|
| I think your post is too strongly worded, being a triple attack
| on the hn community, the Supreme Court, and the state of
| American politics.
| Sakos wrote:
| I feel like people don't actually realize what the consequences
| of this will really be.
|
| https://today.law.harvard.edu/scotus-preview-west-virginia-v...
|
| > "Supporters of the major questions doctrine would
| characterize this as taking power away from agencies and giving
| it to Congress, because they would say Congress is
| democratically accountable, and therefore should be making the
| major policy decisions," says Goho. "Critics would say, 'No,
| what's happening is you're taking power away from agencies,
| which have some degree of democratic accountability to the
| president, and you are actually granting the power to the
| courts, which are not democratically accountable at all.'"
|
| This is the first step in dismantling regulatory bodies on a
| federal level. I have no idea how people can be supportive of
| the decision. It seems insane to me.
| yucky wrote:
| >This is the first step in dismantling regulatory bodies on a
| federal level.
|
| One can only hope. I suppose this is a good start though.
| danielmarkbruce wrote:
| It might not be a good idea, but google search will turn up
| the logic behind opposition to the power of the regulatory
| agencies.
| spoils19 wrote:
| Regulations in a free market seems a bit silly. Let the
| market make its own decisions and we'll always end up in a
| better state.
| bberrry wrote:
| Please be sarcastic
| [deleted]
| devwastaken wrote:
| Government agencies are comprised of people. The same people
| that work a desk job they hate. They're not elected, and
| don't have to demonstrate worth for the position, yet can
| execute sanctioned harm against individuals That's two major
| flaws that slaps democracy in the face.
|
| People are dissilusioned by organizations out of their reach
| that can harm them, and they do not feel they are
| represented.
|
| Iron Law is the name of the game for long standing
| organizations. That is, preserve the org first, not complete
| the mission. When you look into the deep history of federal
| corruption it's plain as day that it's overwhelmingly a
| political wheelhouse with only a sprinkle of objective.
|
| Federal agencies that were once founded in earnest are long
| taken over by this principle. The founders have left the
| building.
| fmorel wrote:
| The leadership of all agencies is appointed, not hired.
| Bostonian wrote:
| A counterexample to the idea that the Court is just trying to
| implement a right-wing agenda is just ruled 5-4 in BIDEN ET AL.
| v. TEXAS ET AL. that Biden could discontinue Trump's "remain in
| Mexico" immigration policy. Chief Justice John Roberts, writing
| for the majority, was joined by Justices Stephen Breyer, Sonia
| Sotomayor, Elena Kagan, and Brett Kavanaugh.
| https://s.wsj.net/public/resources/documents/Biden-v-Texas-0...
| spencerflem wrote:
| Thank you for saying this, i completly agree.
|
| It honestly makes me ashamed to be a programmer associating
| with this type of person whos completely incapable of
| understanding even the simplest social issue
| Bostonian wrote:
| Intelligent people can disagree on abortion, gay marriage,
| gun control, and other issues. People on both sides of these
| issues can understand them but reach different conclusions
| based on their values.
| [deleted]
| joshstrange wrote:
| I understand the idea of the SC kicking things back to congress
| and that would be well and good if we didn't have minority rule
| in this country coupled with the outsized power that land has
| over people. On top of that we have a disgusting high
| rep->citizen ratio because of a silly law congress passed
| capping it's size. Throw in gerrymandering and election boards
| rejecting results of elections (and things like Jan 6th) and
| it's clear democracy is dying.
| rayiner wrote:
| Democrats need to shake this notion that Republicans
| represent "minority rule" because it both delegitimizes our
| institutions and goads Democrats into overplaying their hand.
| Republicans won almost 1.5 million _more total votes_ in 2016
| for the House, the country 's primary law-making body: https:
| //en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2016_United_States_House_of_Re....
| They are on pace to win the House again in 2022 by millions
| of votes, like they did in 2010:
| https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/polls/generic-ballot.
|
| Features like the Electoral College can lead to different
| incentives in close elections, but even that does not
| systematically favor Republicans. As recently as 2012, the
| Electoral College _favored Democrats_. Obama would have won
| in 2012 even if he had lost the popular vote:
| https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/did-democrats-get-
| lucky... ("President Obama won the Electoral College fairly
| decisively last year despite a margin of just 3.8 percentage
| points in the national popular vote. In fact, Mr. Obama would
| probably have won the Electoral College even if the popular
| vote had slightly favored Mitt Romney.")
| maxerickson wrote:
| And the Senate?
|
| You seem to try to imply that they are not important to
| legislation, which is just silly.
| knubie wrote:
| The Senate represents the individual states, not the
| people. The fact that relatively small states like
| Delaware have as much representation in the Senate as
| large populous states like New York is by design, and was
| a critical for the creation of the Union in the first
| place.
| joshstrange wrote:
| And I'm sure no one is disenfranchised by feeling their
| vote doesn't "count" or matter due to gerrymandering. /s
|
| > As recently as 2012, the Electoral College favored
| Democrats. Obama would have won in 2012 even if he had lost
| the popular vote
|
| Except he didn't lose the popular vote. That "honor" is
| reserved for the last 2 republican presidents (2000 & 2016)
| infamia wrote:
| Democrats have been gerrymandering for decades [0] [1]
| [2]. It's only when Republicans started doing the same
| did it suddenly become an issue of great ethical concern
| to many Democrats. I recall with vivid clarity the now
| disgraced ex-con [3] and former Speaker of the N.C House,
| Jim Black declared that he didn't see anything wrong with
| injecting politics into drawing districts. Don't fall for
| their phony outrage and moralizing.
|
| [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_Carolina%27s_12th
| _congre...
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_Carolina%27s_12th
| _congre...
|
| [2] https://www.nccivitas.org/2016/a-look-back-sheds-
| light-on-re...
|
| [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_B._Black
| s1artibartfast wrote:
| I'm not sure why people bring up the popular vote as if
| it means something. The popular vote was never intended
| to decide presidential elections.
| joshstrange wrote:
| > I'm not sure why people bring up the popular vote as if
| it means something.
|
| Because it clearly shows the president is not picked by
| the people but through an abstraction that steals voting
| power from some and gives it to others.
|
| > The popular vote was never intended to decide
| presidential elections.
|
| And black people counted as 3/5th, women couldn't vote,
| black people couldn't vote, the entire bill of rights,
| and more were "never intended". That's such a silly
| argument.
| s1artibartfast wrote:
| In order to make the case that votes are being "stolen",
| you first need to make the case that popular vote is
| better or more just. This is a contentious point, and I
| think it does a lot of disservice to any real discussion
| to assume it.
|
| If people want to talk in an echo chamber (or to
| themselves) , than by all means, they should make every
| assumption they want.
|
| If you want to talk about the issue, then address the
| root: Should states have power beyond their proportional
| population in congress and presidential elections?
|
| This is a much more interesting discussion.
|
| For congress I say no, but I would support states
| allocating their electoral college to match how their
| state votes, like Maine or Nebraska, opposed to winner
| take all.
| bhupy wrote:
| > Because it clearly shows the president is not picked by
| the people but through an abstraction that steals voting
| power from some and gives it to others.
|
| That "abstraction" is known as "degressive
| proportionality" [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Degressiv
| e_proportionality], which is also used by the EU to
| apportion seats in the European Parliament. The US's
| system aims to make sure that the President is elected by
| a _broad_ base of voters across disparate states, the
| same way the EU elects its Chief Executive (today that 's
| Ursula von der Leyen) in a manner that dilutes the power
| of highly populated Member States. You generally use
| counter-majoritarian institutions like equal
| representation and/or degressive proportionality if what
| you're trying to build is a Federal union, and not a
| unitary state. The United States is not and has never
| been a unitary state. The individual _States_ are unitary
| in nature; it 's impossible to elect the Governor of a
| State without winning the popular vote, in that State.
|
| > And black people counted as 3/5th, women couldn't vote,
| black people couldn't vote, the entire bill of rights,
| and more were "never intended". That's such a silly
| argument.
|
| This is a non-sequitur. The counter-majoritarian
| institutions of the Federal government aren't unique to
| the US (see: Australia's Senate, Switzerland's Council of
| States, Argentina's Senate, Mexico's Senate, the EU), and
| is certainly unrelated to the very real evils of slavery
| or disenfranchisement of Black people. It's just a way to
| organize large heterogeneous polities. The same way that
| it doesn't make sense to invalidate the Constitution's
| right to a free/fair trial just because it also happened
| to include some unrelated bad things, so too is slavery
| entirely irrelevant to the question of whether the US
| ought to be a Federal union. The core question at hand
| is: should the US be a unitary country or should it be a
| Federal country. As long as it's a Federal country (i.e.
| the status quo), you will have counter-majoritarian
| institutions at the Federal level.
|
| Even in Canada, the Prime Minister's party won fewer
| votes than the rival party, but still won more seats in
| Parliament. In 2019(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2019_Ca
| nadian_federal_election) the Liberal party won ~6M votes
| and won 157 seats in Parliament, while the Conservative
| Party won ~6.2M votes but only won 121 seats. The same
| thing happened in 2021 (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/202
| 1_Canadian_federal_election... ~5.5M votes to 160 seats
| vs ~5.7M votes to 119 seats. This means that the
| plurality vote getter did not win the plurality of seats,
| and thereby did not enjoy the possibility to drive the
| formation of a majority coalition. The reason for this is
| that many of the Conservative Party's votes were
| clustered in specific parts of Canada, and there were
| diminishing returns to driving up large majorities in
| those clusters; you have to appeal to multiple disparate
| clusters. This is a feature and not a bug of Canada's
| Federal system, because the goal is to optimize for the
| _breadth_ of voters, not just the _depth_ of voters,
| especially at the Federal level where policy impacts
| everybody, and not just a single state /province.
| rayiner wrote:
| > And I'm sure no one is disenfranchised by feeling their
| vote doesn't "count" or matter due to gerrymandering.
|
| And Republicans in California and New York feel like
| their vote doesn't matter when it comes to the
| Presidential popular vote. So why do you act like that
| matters?
|
| > Except he didn't lose the popular vote.
|
| The point is that you can't complain that the Electoral
| College is systematically stacked against Democrats.
| radley wrote:
| > Republicans won almost 1.5 million more total votes in
| 2016 for the House, the country's primary law-making body
|
| Cherry-picked stats are banal.
|
| Democrats won almost 5 million more votes in the CURRENT
| election, which is more than the entire population of
| Mississippi and West Virginia combined. That's why it's not
| unfair to claim a "minority rule" at play.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2020_United_States_House_of_R
| e...
|
| https://simple.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_U.S._states_by_po
| p...
| rayiner wrote:
| If Republicans match their 2010 performance, which seems
| very possible, they'll win the House in 2022 by 6
| million+ votes. Do they get to declare everything the
| Biden administration did "minority rule" when that
| happens?
| josephcsible wrote:
| How does land have power over people? States with more land
| don't have more representation than states with less land,
| but states with more people do have more representation than
| states with fewer people. As a concrete example, New Jersey
| has the same representation in the Senate and 12x the
| representation in the House as Alaska, despite only having 1%
| of the land of Alaska.
| joshstrange wrote:
| Maybe that was badly phrased but it refers to states having
| more power than they should (or less) due to how the
| electoral college and senators work.
| hellojesus wrote:
| It was designed that way on purpose.
| halostatue wrote:
| Yes. To give the slave states power beyond their value.
| robonerd wrote:
| The value of those states was not in question when they
| threatened succession; they were important enough to
| fight a war over. Nor would many of the states have
| joined the union in the first place if not for this
| system, so America wouldn't have existed in the first
| place if you had your way. The entire country is premised
| on this compromise.
| krapp wrote:
| The centuries-old political climate in which the
| electoral college was born has little if any bearing on
| its utility for the modern United States. I doubt the
| only thing keeping rural states in the union now is
| leverage against abolitionists.
| hellojesus wrote:
| It was designed to prevent tyranny of the majority.
| CamperBob2 wrote:
| This argument comes up often, but I've never understood
| how tyranny of the _minority_ is any better.
| krapp wrote:
| The people who make that argument are usually benefactors
| of that tyranny.
| ALotOfBees wrote:
| It's funny that you mention Alaska, because they are the #1
| overall state when it comes to Senate and Electoral College
| "voter power". As you said, they get the same Senate
| representation despite having a fraction of the population
| of NJ. In addition, each vote cast in Alaska counts far
| more towards the presidential election than a vote in NJ
| does.
| hellojesus wrote:
| That's because the federal level is supposed to only deal
| with federal matters and be nonexistent elsewhere.
|
| Each state has the same weight in the senate because they
| are all equal players in that space.
|
| The house has the bias towards population.
|
| Most regulation is supposed to take place at the state
| level.
| joshstrange wrote:
| > Each state has the same weight in the senate because
| they are all equal players in that space.
|
| Except they represent wildly different populations and
| all have equal say in the senate.
|
| > The house has the bias towards population.
|
| One that has been capped by the DC Admission Act and
| perverted by gerrymandering.
|
| > Most regulation is supposed to take place at the state
| level.
|
| Says who? How in the world does that work for things like
| pollution (which isn't stopped at state lines) or basic
| rights such as the right to love who you love and/or get
| married?
| hellojesus wrote:
| > Says who? How in the world does that work for things
| like pollution (which isn't stopped at state lines) or
| basic rights such as the right to love who you love
| and/or get married?
|
| Says the Constitution... 10th Ammendment: any power not
| explicitly enumerated to congress is left to the states.
|
| Article 1 Section 8 enumerates the powers that the
| federal government has, along with some granted through
| ammendments.
| joshstrange wrote:
| I'm aware that powers not left to congress falls back to
| the states, you specifically mentioned regulation and
| this is in a thread about the EPA.
|
| How is a state supposed to, on it's own, handle
| regulation against pollution from it's neighbors? How do
| they stop the state upstream? How do they they stop the
| state next door?
| jaywalk wrote:
| A state isn't supposed to do any of that on it's own.
| Congress is supposed to _pass laws_ regarding those sorts
| of things, not just create an agency in the Executive
| branch and let it run wild.
| joshstrange wrote:
| > Congress is supposed to pass laws regarding those sorts
| of things
|
| You honestly think it's a good system to have congress be
| the ones legislating on every new way companies come up
| with to pollute?
|
| > let it run wild.
|
| We have very different definitions of "running wild".
|
| All of this assume a functional congress which we
| absolutely don't have. I'm working with the cards dealt,
| you want to imagine some pie-in-the-sky idea of how
| congress should function. I agree it should function
| better but I don't see how letting companies pollute more
| is somehow a "win" and it certainly won't motivate the
| people in congress who don't even believe in climate
| change. All of this thinking seems to completely ignore
| that we need 60 senators to pass any legislation (due to
| the filibuster), a chamber of congress that is in no way
| representative of the people.
| jaywalk wrote:
| > You honestly think it's a good system to have congress
| be the ones legislating on every new way companies come
| up with to pollute?
|
| Absolutely not, and nobody (including SCOTUS in their
| ruling) says that they have to. Congress can still
| delegate authority to agencies, but at a certain point
| the agencies are limited in what they can do unilaterally
| without specific legislation.
|
| > All of this assume a functional congress which we
| absolutely don't have. I'm working with the cards dealt,
| you want to imagine some pie-in-the-sky idea of how
| congress should function.
|
| I agree that Congress is entirely dysfunctional. But I
| think that this sort of unconstitutional power that
| they've been so happy to delegate to the Executive has
| absolutely played a role in getting us the dysfunctional
| Congress we have today.
|
| You can call it "pie-in-the-sky" but letting Congress
| continue to skate by without doing their jobs and letting
| Executive branch agencies unconstitutionally usurp the
| authorities of the other two branches is something I'm
| glad to see put to an end.
|
| We can hold Congress accountable. I can't say the same
| for nameless, faceless bureaucrats.
| joshstrange wrote:
| I have neither the faith nor hope that congress will act
| so from my perspective this is only a bad thing no matter
| how much "It's the right ruling given the
| law/constitution", it along with other recent decisions.
|
| A lot of the "it's the right interpretation" crowd seems
| to be completely uninterested in who gets hurt in the
| meantime and seem to look at it as if it's just cold
| logic executed in a vacuum. These ruling have real
| consequences and no amount of "congress should act" or
| "this was their job"-thinking will fix that. It also
| doesn't address the outsized power that some
| states/parties have, I grow less and less sure we are
| actually able to hold congress accountable.
|
| Though I will say I hope for the future you foresee, I
| just can't see it becoming reality.
| hellojesus wrote:
| They don't, which is why it's s federal matter. But I'm
| stating that each state has an equal say in the decision
| (in the Senate) precisely because it impacts states
| approximatepy equally (hence the federal matter). If it
| didn't, you could plausibly see a densely populated state
| vote to pollute their neighbor's state by tyranny of the
| majority.
| joshstrange wrote:
| > But I'm stating that each state has an equal say in the
| decision (in the Senate) precisely because it impacts
| states approximatepy equally
|
| I do not agree that impacts states equally nor do I buy
| into the premise that states should have an equal say. We
| aren't seeing the tyranny of the majority, we are seeing
| the tyranny of the minority between the filibuster and
| the senate not being representative of the people.
| vonzeppelin wrote:
| This is mainly because Congress will not increase the
| size of the House of Representatives. If we were to give
| Wyoming a single representative and used that as the bar
| for how many citizens a representative should actually
| represent then California would have 82 members in the
| House instead of 53. California would be worth 84 points
| in the Electoral College while Wyoming would still only
| be worth 3.
| remarkEon wrote:
| This is confusing. You claim that we have "minority rule"
| when certain things have to be done through Congress ... but
| by implication you prefer these decisions be made by SCOTUS
| (an unelected "minority" if there ever was one)?
| joshstrange wrote:
| I never said relying on SCOTUS was a good idea but neither
| is tearing down precedent and kicking it back to an
| organization which will not or can not act.
| jaywalk wrote:
| So we should just ignore the Constitution because our
| elected representatives, who we can actually kick out of
| office, don't want to do their jobs?
| tuckerman wrote:
| Not who you are replying to, but my personal take is that
| we are deciding between Congress and career government
| employees making these regulations, not Congress and
| SCOTUS.
| worker_person wrote:
| For EPA. Court took power away from unelected bureaucrats and
| gave it back to elected officials.
|
| For Row. Court took power away from itself and gave it back
| to elected officials.
|
| You can vote for those elected officials. This is democracy
| working as intended.
| joshstrange wrote:
| > You can vote for those elected officials. This is
| democracy working as intended.
|
| Not when elected officials can pick their voters and throw
| out the election results they don't like. Please join the
| rest of us in reality and not the la la land where our
| system is working or even healthy.
| spoils19 wrote:
| Given that largely only happens in liberal states, yet
| liberal states are the ones most against this ruling, it
| makes you question the motives of those concerned.
| philosopher1234 wrote:
| This is exactly the type of comment I'm talking about.
| robonerd wrote:
| > _it 's clear democracy is dying._
|
| If democracy died every time somebody got mad at the outcomes
| and made claims like that, it would have been dead before it
| even started, and subsequently re-died every year since. What
| exactly was so democractic about SCOTUS permitting the
| executive branch to write their own laws anyway? Writing laws
| is meant to be the job of Congress. You can claim Congress is
| insufficiently democratic due to gerrymandering, but less
| democratic than the judicial and executive branches? Give me
| a break. Congress remains the most democratic of the three,
| and this SCOTUS decision gives power back to Congress.
| fullstackchris wrote:
| Regardless, you can't ignore the far reaching affects of
| Trump as president and January 6th. Was it just a "phase"?
| Perhaps. But any scenario I can think of leads to more of
| this boneheaded nonsense. You can't simply say 'bah people
| disagreeing is not the end of democracy' and be done with
| it. The statistics are there; the US is far more polarized
| and contentious than it ever was before.
| robonerd wrote:
| This country has stumbled through boneheaded nonsense
| after boneheaded nonsense ever since it was founded. What
| is going on now is not even remotely the worst it has
| ever been, and I don't think you can rationally plot any
| trajectory from the present to "death of democracy"
| unless you are discounting any datapoint more than a few
| years old.
|
| > _the US is far more polarized and contentious than it
| ever was before._
|
| This is completely divorced from reality. Everything that
| has happened in the past 10 years is a mere candle to the
| bonfire that was the Civil War. You _must_ be discounting
| datapoints you didn 't live through if you really believe
| what you've said here. Shit man, the present state of
| affairs is tame even compared to the 60s and 70s.
| citilife wrote:
| > it's clear democracy is dying.
|
| The united states has never been a democracy. The united
| states was designed with a state being a nation, each nation
| joined a federation (the united states). This is similar to
| the EU (they're following the same model).
|
| Your local governments still have WAY more power over your
| life than the federal government. Think about your daily
| life, when you drive do you worry about speeding in town? If
| you do, that's because your local government. Local taxes,
| approvals for construction, education, health services,
| power, etc is all decided locally.
|
| Local governments are decided within a community, they can
| ignore federal laws. Local officials are decided via a
| democratic way, direct votes. IMO that's actually becoming
| stronger, as the federal government weakens, it returns the
| power to where it belongs people and local government.
| willcipriano wrote:
| Yeah but how do I get people in other communities to live
| how I would prefer them to?
| ejb999 wrote:
| Hopefully you meant that as funny...because it is!
| JamesBarney wrote:
| > Your local governments still have WAY more power over
| your life than the federal government
|
| This was true a 100 years ago, i don't know if it's true
| anymore. My retirement, how much i pay in taxes, can I get
| healthcare, what does that healthcare look like, how much
| pollutants can the power plant produce, how safe is the car
| I drive, and many more questions are determined by the
| federal government.
| johndhi wrote:
| I, for one, wish the EPA (or some body) were empowered to do
| more than it does, but I also (to some degree) respect the
| logic of many conservative judicial opinions. Just sayin.
| rayiner wrote:
| If that's your argument, then surely the proper approach is to
| criticize the Court for those instances where their logic _isn
| 't_ consistent, instead of when the logic is consistent. For
| example, Thomas vigorously dissented in _Gonzales v. Raich_ ,
| where Scalia voted to uphold federal marijuana restrictions as
| a proper exercise of the Commerce power.
|
| There is nothing wrong with judges having an "agenda" as long
| as that agenda rests on legal doctrine and philosophy, and not
| "outcomes."
| philosopher1234 wrote:
| It's interesting that you are bringing the conversation back
| to consistency when I explicitly said my POV is that
| consistency (here) is a red herring.
| rayiner wrote:
| How can consistency possibly be a "red herring" when
| talking about judicial decisions?
| philosopher1234 wrote:
| Suppose I'm a pro lifer for reasons I'm ashamed of. The
| supreme court strikes down roe v wade, and I'm secretly
| pleased, but can't admit it. Wouldn't it be nice to
| defend the decision by arguing about its consistency?
|
| It's a red herring in these discussions because it's not
| the true reason people support it.
| hundt wrote:
| I think the argument is that there are multiple judicial
| philosophies that can be chosen from, and you can
| generally predict what outcomes will result from
| following a philosophy consistently over time, so a
| justice chooses the philosophy that results in the
| outcomes they want. And therefore they could have chosen
| their philosophy for partisan outcome-based reasons, so
| consistently following it is no defense to accusations of
| partisanship.
| jahewson wrote:
| I keep seeing this "if you disagree with me you must believe
| something really bad and I'm going to put those words into your
| mouth" rhetorical device around. Does it have a name? It's
| tedious.
|
| The court's position that the executive cannot unilaterally
| govern by bending the rules is a good thing! The problem is
| that the line they draw is arbitrary - and they just insert
| their agenda at the boundary.
|
| The perfect thus becomes the enemy of the good, because the
| court chose a questionable boundary and because the legislature
| is now responsible for passing the necessary laws - as they
| should. In reality, they won't do that, but that's not the
| court's fault.
|
| Now you can certainly make the argument that the court should
| stick with the precedent of deferring to the executive instead
| of the legislature (laws after all, cannot anticipate
| everything and the court can avoid having to create arbitrary
| boundaries). But that's a conversation that's got nothing to do
| with climate change or any specific outcome.
|
| For comparison, how did you feel about the court deferring to
| the Trump executive? Was their rule bending something we want
| to see more of? If a liberal court broke with precedent in the
| same manner to restrict Trump from doing something crazy, would
| that be good?
| itsoktocry wrote:
| > _Their logic can be consistent and they can still be
| partisans, looking to implement a specific agenda._
|
| While your logic is consistent, unbiased, agenda-free and non-
| partisan.
|
| > _because they support the outcomes these rulings enact._
|
| While the fact that you do not support these outcomes has no
| bearing in your opinions on the matter.
| philosopher1234 wrote:
| I never claimed either of those things. I am biased too. We
| are all biased. We should be discussing openly our opinions
| of these outcomes, not wasting time hiding behind procedural
| arguments.
| extheat wrote:
| If you take an overly simplistic view of things then yes every
| ruling is partisan everywhere. This by itself is not a
| meaningful insight because all forms of government will be
| corrupt. The purpose of SCOTUS isn't to rule based on what the
| desired outcome is, it's to rule based on what the law
| explicitly does say and is permitted to say per the
| Constitution. I believe if we set aside climate change, for
| most reasonable people it's not hard to see that the executive
| branch took action that the legislative branch never gave them,
| (and likely did so because they knew such laws could not pass
| Congress).
| johndhi wrote:
| >The purpose of SCOTUS isn't to rule based on what the
| desired outcome is, it's to rule based on what the law
| explicitly does say
|
| This is actually a modern take that was essentially created
| by Justice Scalia. I like the take ("textualism") in many
| ways but, to be clear, the SCOTUS has no such mandate.
| TameAntelope wrote:
| The legislative branch _did_ give these agencies permission
| to take the actions they have, when those agencies were
| founded. The fact that SCOTUS disagrees doesn 't make them
| right.
|
| Also, outcomes matter. If before a ruling, a group of people
| had rights, and after a ruling those people have fewer
| rights, the cause of the loss of those rights is the ruling.
| specialist wrote:
| > _The purpose of SCOTUS isn't to rule based on what the
| desired outcome is, it's to rule based on what the law
| explicitly does say and is permitted to say per the
| Constitution._
|
| Your positivist legal philosophy is not shared by the Roberts
| Court.
|
| > _it's not hard to see that the executive branch took action
| that the legislative branch never gave them_
|
| The dissenting opinion explicitly argues that Congress did
| explicitly grant the Executive to explicitly regulate GHG
| emissions, both the manner and the amount.
|
| _" The limits the majority now puts on EPA's authority fly
| in the face of the statute Congress wrote. The majority says
| it is simply "not plausible" that Congress enabled EPA to
| regulate power plants' emissions through generation shifting.
| Ante, at 31. But that is just what Congress did when it
| broadly authorized EPA in Section 111 to select the "best
| system of emission reduction" for power plants. The "best
| system" full stop--no ifs, ands, or buts of any kind relevant
| here. The parties do not dispute that generation shifting is
| indeed the "best system" the most effective and efficient way
| to reduce power plants' carbon dioxide emissions. And no
| other provision in the Clean Air Act suggests that Congress
| meant to foreclose EPA from selecting that system; to the
| contrary, the Plan's regulatory approach fits hand-in-glove
| with the rest of the statute. The majority's decision rests
| on one claim alone: that generation shifting is just too new
| and too big a deal for Congress to have authorized it in
| Section 111's general terms. But that is wrong. A key reason
| Congress makes broad delegations like Section 111 is so an
| agency can respond, appropriately and commensurately, to new
| and big problems. Congress knows what it doesn't and can't
| know when it drafts a statute; and Congress therefore gives
| an expert agency the power to address issues--even
| significant ones--as and when they arise. That is what
| Congress did in enacting Section 111. The majority today
| overrides that legislative choice. In so doing, it deprives
| EPA of the power needed--and the power granted--to curb the
| emission of greenhouse gases."_
| trafficante wrote:
| Despite my being very far to the "left" of the Biden Admin
| on environmental preservation, Kagan's quoted dissent
| actually convinced me this was a sound legal ruling - even
| if I'm personally unhappy about the issue at hand.
|
| The "best system of emission reduction" from Sec. 7411 is
| in regards to "standards of practices for new stationary
| sources" - the definition for a "stationary source" is a
| few paragraphs down and the broadest it gets is
| "facility/installation".
|
| Even if you buy the argument that the regulatory authority
| expands to the entire grid because the concept of a multi-
| sourced power grid didn't exist in the 1970s (which doesn't
| pass the smell test tbh), the rest of Sec. 111 makes it
| absolutely clear that "best system" was intended to be in
| reference to technological advances/upgrades that would
| make individual plants/buildings less pollutant.
|
| Forcing a power generation shift from a coal plant to a
| hydro plant 40 miles away is definitely out of scope for
| what's spelled out in the Act and Congress needs to get off
| their asses if they want the EPA to have that sort of
| power. And maybe toss in some funding for nuclear while
| they're addressing this whole "best system" thing.
| radley wrote:
| > The purpose of SCOTUS isn't to rule based on what the
| desired outcome is, it's to rule based on what the law
| explicitly does say and is permitted to say per the
| Constitution.
|
| That's a farcical excuse to achieve the desired outcome. If
| the only "acceptable expert advice" is 200 years old, then
| they're just being obstinate.
| kajecounterhack wrote:
| > If you take an overly simplistic view of things then yes
| every ruling is partisan everywhere
|
| The courts are needed because interpretation of law is NOT
| cut and dry. But if interpretation is involved, it's going to
| be partisan. If it weren't partisan, these rulings by 6-3
| majorities, formed by judges appointed by Republicans,
| wouldn't be so in line with Republican priorities.
|
| It's not an "overly simplistic view."
|
| > The purpose of SCOTUS isn't to rule based on what the
| desired outcome is, it's to rule based on what the law
| explicitly does say and is permitted to say per the
| Constitution
|
| You make this sound like an objective function, which it is
| not. Judges can interpret the constitution differently, they
| can interpret written laws differently, and how the two
| relate can be subject to subjectivity as well.
|
| I also question the premise. All government is beholden to
| the people, so while congress is supposed to pass laws that
| represent the will of the people, SCOTUS is ultimately
| supposed to interpret laws in a way that represents the will
| of the people as well -- THAT is its purpose. Roe's
| overturning is an example of that utterly failing.
| spencerflem wrote:
| I dont think that is obvious at all, given the broad
| oversight over emissions given to the EPA.
|
| Furthermore, I think looking at the recent decisions to
| uphold gerrymandered maps in Alabama and Louisiana should
| without a shadow of a doubt prove how partisan the court is.
|
| And they can't claim to be "literalist" or "originalist" when
| deciding that border patrols duties are more important than
| the 4th ammendment
| WalterBright wrote:
| Both parties engage in gerrymandering whenever they get the
| chance.
| spencerflem wrote:
| Uhh, yeah, but this is the Supreme Court who, if you look
| at the rest of this thread, people are claiming is "non
| partisan"
|
| So if the supreme court is doing it then they're partisan
| QED
|
| Also, please, one side is doing much more voter
| suppression than the other
| philosopher1234 wrote:
| >The purpose of SCOTUS isn't to rule based on what the
| desired outcome is, it's to rule based on what the law
| explicitly does say and is permitted to say per the
| Constitution
|
| I claim they have never done this. That every ruling has had
| an eye towards the outcome, whether stated or unstated, and
| that when they claim to be acting as mechanistic evaluators
| they are attempting to hide their interest in the effect
| they're having.
|
| Besides, its a terrible idea. The real effects of their
| rulings matter much more than the philosophy.
| pfortuny wrote:
| The burden of proof on such a sweeping statement is clearly
| on you...
| philosopher1234 wrote:
| How do you prove whats in anothers heart? Its not
| provable.
|
| But if you dont try and figure it out, you can't
| understand the world.
|
| If you don't think its true, why not?
| rayiner wrote:
| > Besides, its a terrible idea. The real effects of their
| rulings matter much more than the philosophy.
|
| If that's your view, then we should just abolish courts.
| What's the point of having unelected legislators?
| hcurtiss wrote:
| specialist wrote:
| WRT so-called "textualism" and "originalism", I fully
| agree.
| lolinder wrote:
| I support this ruling _not_ because I think that the EPA
| shouldn 't have the authority to cap emissions, but because I
| agree with the Court that Congress never intended to grant the
| EPA that authority. I believe strongly that the executive
| authorities--be that police, FBI, NSA, ICE, or EPA--should
| _not_ have the ability to creatively interpret laws. If we
| allow them to do that, we open the door to innumerable abuses.
|
| So, yes, I support the outcomes of this ruling just as much as
| I support the reasoning. Congress needs to get its act together
| and legislate, not let the Executive branch make up rules to
| fill the void they've left.
| [deleted]
| 30944836 wrote:
| >because I agree with the Court that Congress never intended
| to grant the EPA that authority.
|
| Luckily nothing stops Congress from making laws that clarify
| what they granted the EPA. If they were so fussed with the
| EPA doing what they were doing, why didn't they leap up and
| pass a law that told them to stop?
|
| Why is it the court's job to tell congress what they meant to
| say? Is congress mute?
| jaywalk wrote:
| You're looking at it completely backwards. Congress was
| fine to let the EPA run around and do whatever, because
| that means people can bitch at the EPA instead of Congress.
|
| > Why is it the court's job to tell congress what they
| meant to say?
|
| That's... not what they're doing. The court is telling
| Congress that if you want an agency to have the power to
| make vast, sweeping changes, then you have to be explicit.
| They don't get to create an agency and then just give them
| blanket authority to do anything they want, at any scale.
| lolinder wrote:
| It is the court's job to ensure the law is enforced as
| written. Where ambiguity exists, it is the court's job to
| interpret the law. That's literally the entire purpose of a
| court.
|
| Congress is not mute. Congress speaks by passing laws. Any
| other, less formal means of speaking is the voice of
| members of Congress, not Congress as a whole.
| dan_quixote wrote:
| >police, FBI, NSA, ICE, or EPA--should not have the ability
| to creatively interpret laws
|
| That's simply not possible unless we have literal laws for
| every possible infraction - like a state machine for the
| human condition.
| ChrisLTD wrote:
| Why should the Supreme Court decide if a government agency
| has assumed power not granted to it by Congress? Congress
| still exists, and Congress can always pass a law kneecapping
| the agency in question.
| stingrae wrote:
| The Supreme Court is supposed to be a check on the
| Executive and Legislative Branch? In modern times, the
| Executive Branch assumes much power not explicitly granted
| to it and it is the job of the Legislative and Judicial
| branches to keep it in check.
|
| If congress, doesn't like the ruling, it can reverse it in
| legislation.
| WalterBright wrote:
| Because our system is, by default, not one of assuming the
| government is all powerful and we restrict it here and
| there, but one where we must proactively add a power.
| lolinder wrote:
| Because that's literally in their job description:
|
| > The judicial power shall extend to all cases, in law and
| equity, arising under this Constitution, the laws of the
| United States, and treaties made, or which shall be made,
| under their authority ... --to controversies to which the
| United States shall be a party;
|
| https://www.law.cornell.edu/constitution/articleiii
| landryraccoon wrote:
| I find this argument very unconvincing.
|
| To use an engineering analogy, if the government were a
| software application, this is very much like a senior
| engineer going on a major refactor of a production system,
| causing huge breaking changes for the sake of "principles",
| without consulting product, CS or QA. For the sake of
| argument, lets grant that there's some force to those
| principles. Is that justification for suddenly breaking a
| system that was working and causing a massive amount of
| confusion for downstream users that were blindsided and now
| have to do massive updates of their own?
|
| Okay, now lets suppose that the same senior engineer was
| secretly (or perhaps even openly) beating the drum for some
| _feature_ changes behind the scenes, and nobody liked the
| features he was proposing. Now after the refactor, it turns
| out that for "technical reasons" the features now work the
| way HE wanted them to. When asked, he claims it wasn't a
| political decision, it was driven _purely_ by engineering
| concerns, "cleaning up tech debt" and so forth, he claims.
| Might it seem to you that the refactor was just a smokescreen
| for just getting the feature changes he wanted into
| production?
|
| If this engineer was at your company, would you keep them on,
| or fire them as soon as possible?
|
| Now according to your argument, you view SCOTUS as the
| engineering team, and Congress as the product team. You're
| saying that ten years after you release a feature, the
| technical lead can say "Hey, you remember that spec for those
| features we released to production 10 years ago? I think we
| did it wrong, we need to refactor it so it works right. Also
| that was the old engineering lead, and I never liked them
| anyway. It'll be a major breaking change, but that shouldn't
| be an obstacle to doing it right this time. Should we ask
| Product or the Executive team first? Of course not, we know
| what we're doing."
| bumby wrote:
| _Is that justification for suddenly breaking a system that
| was working_
|
| The fact that West Virginia v. EPA was brought up in the
| first place indicates that the system was not working, at
| least for some stakeholders.
|
| Even if the system was working for _most stakeholders_ does
| not mean it was Constitutional. The Court 's job is to
| determine legality, but they need to wait until a case is
| brought before them, whether it's immediately or 10 years
| later. It's due process.
| 656565656565 wrote:
| you find a political argument unconvincing so apply a
| software engineering analogy
| landryraccoon wrote:
| I applied it by way of analogy.
|
| If you want a political analogy, politically, there is no
| "right or wrong". SCOTUS is not motivated by adherence to
| precedent, they clearly have an ideological agenda.
|
| They are not, for example, legalizing marijuana, on the
| grounds that the FDA should not have the authority to
| schedule drugs. They chose to go after environmental
| regulations because they ideologically prefer capitalist
| interests over environmental ones. It is brazenly
| political, as was their overturning of Roe vs Wade.
| kokanator wrote:
| >They are not, for example, legalizing marijuana, on the
| grounds that the FDA should not have the authority to
| schedule drugs
|
| But the FDA DOES have the congressional mandate by law to
| schedule drugs even details regarding what those
| schedules are.
|
| The difference here is the EPA does not have the mandated
| far the reaching authority they are enacting which would
| fundamentally change the entire economy.
| OrvalWintermute wrote:
| Maybe you played hooky in Civics 101, or maybe not, but
| your understanding and analogy both require substantial
| correction.
|
| Fixing this:
|
| If the government were a software application, this is very
| much like a project led by three senior engineers for a
| system using a widely agreed upon Design that was flexible,
| but included boundaries. This consisted of Four major
| elements: (1) Codified Business Decisions, (2) Execution
| Environment, that mainly ran the project management, and
| the security (3) The Business Representatives, who created
| new Business Decisions, and a (4) User Community who
| ultimately controlled all of above, and paid all of the
| bills. The first three major elements regularly jockeyed
| for control over the software app. Over time, they deviated
| from the initial Design in ways that favored themselves and
| made the environment less favorable for the User Community.
| Business Decisions started to critique, and invent new
| business decisions out of thin air. Execution Environment
| tried to take over everything in spite of the agreed-upon
| Design, and existing Business Decisions. Even the Business
| Representatives went off the rails to favor the consultants
| that were treating them to fancy dinners instead of the
| business units they were sent to represent, and they
| started to define the future roadmap to include proprietary
| functionality, written by the consultants. But, the
| consultants also tried to subvert Codified Business
| Decisions and Execution Environment.
|
| Over time, the User Community took actions to correct some
| of the most egregious errors by the Codified Business
| Decisions senior engineer that violated the original, as-
| modified Design. He did not receive an engineering change
| proposal that was funded and vetted by the Business
| Representatives, nope, he was just a cowboy. Through
| influence, they were able to impact the hiring of the
| newest crop of Senior Engineers, and revisit past errors.
| The new senior engineer in Codified Business Decisions
| revisited some of the decisions the User community claimed
| was encroaching. Codified Business Decisions finally stated
| that would undo what they determined was a bridge too far
| in a business decision that the Business Representatives
| had never supported broadly, and had never received
| agreement. They prioritized it as a fix in the sprint, and
| then pushed it. The fix came out, and the consultant class
| declared war. They'd been enriching themselves at the
| expense of the User Community for a long time. In a related
| topic, another member of the consultant class was caught by
| Execution Environment rentacops trying to assassinate a
| junior member of the Business Decisions Engineering Staff,
| for a similar decision with which the consultants
| disagreed. Other consultants declared they would kill off
| all the junior members of the Business Decisions group.
| willcipriano wrote:
| > this is very much like a senior engineer going on a major
| refactor of a production system, causing huge breaking
| changes for the sake of "principles"
|
| That's what the people with the creative interpretations on
| the constitution did. This is restoring to a previous
| commit before that happened.
| landryraccoon wrote:
| Would you restore to a decades old previous commit on a
| system that had been running just fine in production that
| entire time?
|
| SCOTUS isn't even really the engineering team imho,
| they're _devops_. If they 're there just to enforce the
| rules, the rules are set just as much by precedent as by
| the letter of the law, since precedent is what is already
| working. They should just keep the system running and
| have a strong bias for favoring the status quo.
|
| This court isn't "conservative" in the traditional sense;
| I would call them hyper-reactionary.
| car_analogy wrote:
| > Would you restore to a decades old previous commit on a
| system that had been running just fine in production that
| entire time?
|
| So you believe the Supreme Court should not have ruled
| anti-racemixing laws unconstitutional, because they had
| been considered valid for 99 years since the passing of
| the 14th Amendment (which the Court used to justify its
| decision), whose authors were alive during much of that
| time, and hadn't mentioned that they've been made
| unconstitutional by its passing?
|
| Or is it that if the court moves in one direction, that's
| okay and progress and living constitution. But if it
| moves back, that's hyper-reactionary and they should just
| maintain the status quo? In other words, you want a
| ratchet that only moves in the direction you like, even
| if it means ignoring the law in favor of the status quo
| (but only in cases where you like the status quo)?
| SamPatt wrote:
| "running just fine in production" is your assessment.
|
| The court's job isn't to decide if the system runs well
| or not. It's to uphold the legal structure which was
| established long ago, because of the initial belief thaf
| in the long run a system without checks and balances will
| fall apart.
|
| Federal branch agencies need clear limits to their power.
| There are many historical examples of why this matters.
| Congress failed to create clear limits for the EPA, and
| the court is telling them they need to do their job.
| That's the court's job.
|
| I like seeing one branch of government do its job and
| keep another branch accountable. Nothing prevents
| Congress from granting them those powers explicitly -
| except for political will, which is exactly the point
| (agencies shouldn't be doing things for which there is no
| political will).
| vkou wrote:
| > Federal branch agencies need clear limits to their
| power.
|
| Yes, and if Congress wanted to set these limits, they
| would do so.
|
| Which, in the case of the EPA, _they did_.
|
| The court looked at the limits, and decided they didn't
| like them.
| bumby wrote:
| _Nothing prevents Congress from granting them those
| powers explicitly_
|
| I think you're correct, but just to play devil's
| advocate...is it possible that as society get more
| complex, it prevents them from doing so? It's jarring to
| hear Congress talk about passing bills before they read
| them, but in the context of everything the would have to
| know in an increasingly complex society, it may be a sad
| fact that don't have the ability to both pragmatically
| and judiciously create laws.
|
| Thinking in terms of software; it's easy to come up with
| hard rules for writing "Hello World" programs. But expand
| it to a space shuttle with hundreds of thousands of lines
| of codes, the number of interfaces grows so fast that
| creating centralized hard rules becomes nearly
| impossible.
| lolinder wrote:
| We're not a software shop, we're a country that has deep,
| systemic problems with executive overreach and abuse.
| Analogizing to a company producing banal software
| trivializes the extent of the problems we're facing and
| abstracts away a _lot_ of real concerns into fungible
| "features".
| [deleted]
| scarmig wrote:
| > I agree with the Court that Congress never intended to
| grant the EPA that authority
|
| Congress did grant the EPA that authority; the ruling is an
| objection to the principle that Congress can make broad
| grants of authority.
|
| Delegation of authority is key to every effective
| organization. Imagine corporations were governed like this,
| and any time a new service or feature was rolled out, the
| Board of Directors would have to explicitly sign off on it.
| Work would grind to a halt.
|
| Which is exactly the point of this ruling, to make the
| federal government even more ineffectual than it already is
| as part of an ideological crusade.
| dahfizz wrote:
| > Congress did grant the EPA that authority; the ruling is
| an objection to the principle that Congress can make broad
| grants of authority.
|
| That's entirely incorrect, please read the article.
| scarmig wrote:
| To be explicit, Congress granted the EPA the authority to
| set "a standard for emissions of air pollutants which
| reflects the degree of emission limitation achievable
| through the application of the best system of emission
| reduction."
|
| The majority believes that's too broad a grant and that
| usage of that authority needs a second authorization from
| Congress.
| lolinder wrote:
| From the end of the ruling (emphasis added) [0]:
|
| > Capping carbon dioxide emissions at a level that will
| force a nationwide transition away from the use of coal to
| generate electricity may be a sensible "solution to the
| crisis of the day." But it is not plausible that Congress
| gave the EPA the authority to adopt on its own such a
| regulatory scheme in Section 111(d). A decision of such
| magnitude and consequence rests with Congress itself, _or
| an agency acting pursuant to a clear delegation from that
| representative body._
|
| It seems pretty clear that Congress _does_ have the
| authority to delegate, but that the Court ruled that
| Congress didn 't intend to do so. This ruling places the
| ball firmly in Congress's court, it doesn't rule that
| Congress cannot act.
|
| [0] https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/21pdf/20-1530_n75
| 8.pdf
| jtbayly wrote:
| Congress can only delegate authority that it actually has
| itself. Read the 10th amendment of the constitution and
| it's clear that Congress doesn't have nearly as much
| authority as most of us apparently assume they do.
| scarmig wrote:
| "Clear delegation" is the key phrase, there. The Court
| rejects the idea that Congress can create broad grants of
| authority and instead propounds the idea that it has to
| explicitly authorize every potential scenario.
| lolinder wrote:
| They talk elsewhere about "clear delegation", and it
| doesn't have to do with the scope of the delegation, it
| has to do with its precision:
|
| > Thus, in certain extraordinary cases, both separation
| of powers principles and a practical understanding of
| legislative intent make us "reluctant to read into
| ambiguous statutory text" the delegation claimed to be
| lurking there. To convince us otherwise, something more
| than a merely plausible textual basis for the agency
| action is necessary. The agency instead must point to
| "clear congressional authorization" for the power it
| claims.
|
| I can find nowhere where they say that Congress cannot
| delegate broad powers, only that it's not obvious that
| Congress did or that they intended to. Do you have a
| citation to the contrary, or are you making assumptions
| based on the news coverage?
| scarmig wrote:
| Requiring Congress to precisely enumerating every
| possible use of authority indefinitely into the future is
| by definition limiting the scope of authority that
| Congress can delegate.
|
| Imagine Congress passes an act next year banning
| abortion, and creates a new agency to enforce that act.
| The next year, a new method is invented that can induce
| abortions. Can that agency regulate it? By the logic of
| the Court, it can't, because Congress never explicitly
| authorized regulation of that particular form of abortion
| (because it didn't exist yet).
| kokanator wrote:
| You should read the whole law. It does limit their
| ability and has checks in balances of which they have
| over stepped. It is that simple.[0]
|
| The court has stated if they want to extend their
| authority to the level they are enacting then congress
| must pass laws to expressly denote that intention.
|
| States have rights in the original law. They are
| exercising this right and the court has agreed with them.
|
| I think the last sentence in the original article sum's
| up why people are truly upset. Remember the court didn't
| say the EPA can't do these things in the future just that
| Congress would have to give it the authority.
|
| From the original article:
|
| "It's now clear this court will turn a sceptical eye to
| agency attempts to cite vague or broad laws to enact any
| sort of major regulatory changes. That's a significant
| development, given how difficult it has been for Congress
| to pass substantive new legislation in recent years. The
| time when presidents could find unilateral "work-arounds"
| in existing law may be coming to an end."
|
| [0] https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/USCODE-2013-title
| 42/html...
| vanattab wrote:
| >The time when presidents could find unilateral "work-
| arounds" in existing law may be coming to an end."
|
| It's about damn time if you ask me. As a country we need
| to hold our elected representatives accountable. We send
| legislators to congress to legislate not to simply be
| talking heads who pass the buck.
| scarmig wrote:
| Congress did explicitly grant that authority to the EPA:
| particularly it gave the EPA the authority to set "a
| standard for emissions of air pollutants which reflects
| the degree of emission limitation achievable through the
| application of the best system of emission reduction."
|
| Where, exactly, are you claiming that the EPA ran afoul
| of the law?
| kokanator wrote:
| "The term "standard of performance" means a standard for
| emissions of air pollutants which reflects the degree of
| emission limitation achievable through the application of
| the best system of emission reduction which (taking into
| account the cost of achieving such reduction and any
| nonair quality health and environmental impact"
|
| Note the portion that states "taking into account the
| cost of achieving such reduction". This is in the very
| first paragraph. The argument is that they have not
| adequately done this.
| scarmig wrote:
| The ruling doesn't claim the EPA didn't take into the
| cost of achieving the reduction in pollutants; it claims
| that Congress didn't appropriately delegate to the EPA
| the authority to implement systems to reduce the
| pollutants.
| lolinder wrote:
| You're still assuming that the Court says Congress needs
| to enumerate powers. I don't see that. I see the Court
| saying that Congress didn't _explicitly_ grant broad
| powers. Do you have a citation that shows that the court
| is saying that Congress cannot grant broad powers?
| scarmig wrote:
| You can read the particular text granting the authority
| here:
|
| https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/USCODE-2013-title42/h
| tml...
|
| If you think that isn't a broad, explicit grant of
| authority to regulate air pollution from stationary
| sources, I don't know what to tell you.
|
| The majority on the decision are basically saying, "well,
| my gut says they didn't mean that much authority, so
| we're going to shut down this program."
| rayiner wrote:
| The specific delegation is the power to set "standards of
| performance," which is explicitly defined: "term
| 'standard of performance' means a standard for emissions
| of air pollutants _which reflects the degree of emission
| limitation achievable through the application of the best
| system of emission reduction_.... "
|
| The term "system of emissions reduction" means control
| technology like scrubbers. What the law says is that the
| EPA can do is look at the state of the art for things
| like particulate matter scrubbers, and set an emissions
| standard based on the reduction that can be achieved
| using those technologies.
|
| But it's infeasible using current technology to scrub out
| CO2 from power plant emissions.
| scarmig wrote:
| > The term "system of emissions reduction" means control
| technology like scrubbers.
|
| So the Majority asserts. The law, however, specifies
| nothing of the sort and intentionally uses broad
| phrasing.
|
| The plain meaning of "system of emissions reduction" is
| "a set of measures that work together to reduce
| emissions" (as the EPA itself points out). And this is
| consistent with usage elsewhere in the Clean Air Act: in
| it, Congress refers to a cap-and-trade setup as an
| "emission allocation and transfer _system_. " Systems
| clearly can be things that aren't just control
| technology.
|
| The Majority is inventing an arbitrary and unsupported
| narrow definition of system for ideological reasons.
| rayiner wrote:
| Sorry, that's wrong. The word "system" is obviously
| broad, but the term "system of emissions reduction" is
| used within the statute to refer to emissions control
| technology.
|
| Apart from being clear from the individual statutory
| provisions, that's the premise of the statute as a whole.
| The whole idea was that the EPA could limit emissions to
| the point that existing point sources could go out and
| buy equipment to meet the emissions criteria. The statute
| thus talks about BACT versus RACT and LEAR and whatnot.
| (I took a bunch of classes in environmental law in law
| school.)
|
| If you read "system" to be a nonce word that can refer to
| any possible measure, then the statute makes no sense.
| The EPA could just pick an arbitrary emissions limit, and
| demand industry-level restructuring to hit that limit.
| That's exactly what Congress was trying to avoid by
| imposing that requirement.
| scarmig wrote:
| (cribbing an argument from the dissent)
|
| The statute as a whole clearly delineates between when it
| means to limit authority to technological systems of
| control. Elsewhere in different provisions, Congress
| declined to give the EPA broad authority as it does in
| 111, using phrasing like
|
| "reflect the greatest degree of emission reduction
| achievable through the application of technology."
|
| "best available retrofit technology"
|
| "best available control technology"
|
| "maximum achievable control technology"
|
| Congress clearly was conscious of the difference between
| technological systems and more general ones, and it
| declined to limit the EPA's authority here to
| technological systems.
| hindsightbias wrote:
| "something more than a merely plausible textual basis for
| the agency action is necessary"
|
| I love it when textualists go anti-textualist.
|
| If people are going to espouse an absolutist ideology,
| they should at least be consistent.
| lolinder wrote:
| "Beyond merely plausible" is what they're looking for,
| not "beyond textual".
| pierrebai wrote:
| Just read the dissenting opinions. That you chose not to,
| clearly, is a choice you made to avoid confronting
| differing viewpoints.
|
| Also, consistently and repeatedly asking others to
| research for you is an easy debating tactic used
| frequently to bury inconvenient facts behind a barrage of
| requests.
| tmaly wrote:
| Consider this. What would happen to the powers of future
| Congresses if SCOTUS had ruled the other way? Would any
| agency granted broad authority be able to override the
| wishes of a future Congress? What would happen to our
| form of representative government under this case?
| cryptonector wrote:
| When the consequences of an executive agency's rulings
| are a) not clearly within their delegated powers, and b)
| sufficiently far-reaching that Congress should have
| authorized them more explicitly, then it makes sense to
| say that Congress must be more specific.
| scarmig wrote:
| From Kagan's dissent:
|
| > Section 111(d) thus ensures that EPA regulates existing
| power plants' emissions of all pollutants. When the
| pollutant at issue falls within the NAAQS or HAP
| programs, EPA need do no more. But when the pollutant
| falls outside those programs, Section 111(d) requires EPA
| to set an emissions level for currently operating power
| plants (and other stationary sources). That means no
| pollutant from such a source can go unregulated: As the
| Senate Report explained, Section 111(d) guarantees that
| "there should be no gaps in control activities pertaining
| to stationary source emissions that pose any significant
| danger to public health or welfare." S. Rep. No. 91-1196,
| p. 20 (1970). Reflecting that language, the majority
| calls Section 111(d) a "gap-filler." Ante, at 5. It might
| also be thought of as a backstop or catch-all provision,
| protecting against pollutants that the NAAQS and HAP
| programs let go by. But the section is not, as the
| majority further claims, an "ancillary provision" or a
| statutory "backwater." Ante, at 20, 26. That
| characterization is a non-sequitur. That something is a
| backstop does not make it a backwater. Even if they are
| needed only infrequently, see ante, at 6, 20, backstops
| can perform a critical function--and this one surely
| does. Again, Section 111(d) tells EPA that when a
| pollutant--like carbon dioxide--is not regulated through
| other programs, EPA must undertake a further regulatory
| effort to control that substance's emission from existing
| stationary sources. In that way, Section 111(d) operates
| to ensure that the Act achieves comprehensive pollution
| control.
|
| That's pretty damn explicit.
| rayiner wrote:
| No, the key phrase is "magnitude and consequences." The
| whole point of the "major questions doctrine" is that
| routine scenarios can be delegated, but authority to
| address a sweeping nationwide issue cannot be justified
| on the basis of a delegation to address a limited set of
| scenarios.
|
| To use an analogy, nobody is saying that the DOJ needs
| authority to create drug diversion programs. But this is
| like the DOJ pointing to the drug laws to justify a
| sweeping effort to combat the obesity epidemic.
| scarmig wrote:
| The analogy here would be Congress granting the DOJ the
| authority to create drug diversion programs, a new drug
| hitting the scene that requires a response not explicitly
| called out in the initial legislation (e.g. distribution
| of naxolone), and the Supreme Court then declaring that
| response illegal because giving out naxolone just seems
| like too big a deal to be decided without involving
| Congress.
| rayiner wrote:
| No it isn't. The Clean Air Act is all about requiring
| polluters to use control technology, and requiring new
| sources to use better and more expensive control
| technology than existing sources. That's the program
| Congress designed.
|
| Restructuring the energy industry to address climate is a
| different solution to a different problem, related only
| by the commonality of emissions into air. It's like using
| drug laws to regulate processed foods because both
| involve harm caused by ingesting things.
| car_analogy wrote:
| You are conflating "unclear" with "broad".
| scarmig wrote:
| Congress gives the EPA the authority to set "a standard
| for emissions of air pollutants which reflects the degree
| of emission limitation achievable through the application
| of the best system of emission reduction."
|
| That's pretty clearly a broad delegation of regulatory
| authority.
| citilife wrote:
| > Congress did grant the EPA that authority
|
| This is objectively false, the supreme court just ruled
| that. Like it or not, they are the sole authority on said
| issues / decisions.
| radley wrote:
| Huh? The Congress that created the EPA granted that
| authority, which is why the EPA has had the court's full
| support for decades. It took an extremely partisan SCOTUS
| to invent an excuse to say the opposite.
| citilife wrote:
| Call them partisan all you'd like, SCOTUS has the
| authority to make the determination of whether or not the
| EPA had such authority.
|
| Meaning, you can claim they are bias, but the EPA still
| doesn't have said authority.
|
| Nothing you, I or any pundit says will change that. At
| least until congress grants it said authority. Which as
| SCOTUS pointed out, congress tried to do, but congress
| didn't pass the legislation. Now.. why would congress try
| to pass legislation if the EPA already had said
| authority?
| guipsp wrote:
| To prevent this exact situation from happening.
| scarmig wrote:
| Or until the Court is packed, or until someone shoots up
| members of the Court, or whatever.
|
| You're arguing for simply the ability to execute the will
| to power being the determinant of whether something is
| right or not. Which is entirely your prerogative, but you
| should be aware of what you're signing up for.
| citilife wrote:
| > You're arguing for simply the ability to execute the
| will to power being the determinant of whether something
| is right or not.
|
| What is the function of the supreme court? (seriously,
| what do you think it's job is?)
|
| It said congress didn't authorize this, ask them. I don't
| see how that's at all controversial.
| ceejayoz wrote:
| > It said congress didn't authorize this, ask them.
|
| They did. The House and Senate passed different language,
| and it never got reconciled.
|
| "The first related to an oversight during the
| reconciliation of the Clean Air Act amendment in 1990
| that resulted in the House and Senate versions of SS
| 7411(d) to never be reconciled, and both versions were
| codified into the signed law. The House version had
| stated that because other parts of the Clean Air Act had
| covered regulation of carbon dioxide, the EPA could not
| use SS 7411(d) to cover carbon dioxide emissions from
| existing plants, while the Senate version allowed for SS
| 7411(d) to overlap carbon dioxide emissions coverage." -
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/West_Virginia_v._EPA
|
| Due to a fuckup, SCOTUS got to pick the side they
| preferred.
| scarmig wrote:
| If six justices on the Supreme Court call a tail a leg,
| how many legs does a dog have?
|
| Four. A tail is a tail, regardless of what you call it.
|
| Congress intended to grant the EPA broad authority to
| regulate pollution, but the SCOTUS said that that's
| invalid.
| citilife wrote:
| Yes, the dog would still have four.
|
| The Supreme Courts job is to determine if something was
| legal, they were granted the authority by the people. If
| we want to change that, congress (the people's
| representation) can amend the constitution.
|
| Congress can also clarify by granted the authority (as
| the justices explained). At any point in the last 7 years
| (while this court case has been ongoing), congress could
| have enacted the laws, they discussed them. The
| regulations didn't pass. The supreme court pointed that
| out.
|
| Why would congress put forth these rules if they had
| already granted the EPA the authorization? -- because the
| EPA never had such authority.
| scarmig wrote:
| > The Supreme Courts job is to determine if something was
| legal, they were granted the authority by the people
|
| :laughcryemoji
|
| > Congress can also clarify by granted the authority (as
| the justices explained). At any point in the last 7 years
| (while this court case has been ongoing), congress could
| have enacted the laws, they discussed them.
|
| There's no need to explicitly grant authority for
| authority already granted. If Congress wanted to change
| the scope of the EPA's authority, Congress could just as
| well have passed a law stripping the EPA of that
| authority. It didn't.
| TheCoelacanth wrote:
| > The Supreme Courts job is to determine if something was
| legal, they were granted the authority by the people
|
| No, they invented that authority for themselves in
| Marbury v. Madison[1]. Judicial review, the idea that
| SCOTUS can decide whether the actions of the executive or
| legislative branch are legal, is contained nowhere in the
| constitution.
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marbury_v._Madison
| zosima wrote:
| Well, the constitution grants the judiciary branch the
| final say on all cases of legality. So I don't think it's
| very controversial that they also have the final say on
| the legality of the legislative and executive branch's
| doings.
|
| Also of course, this is exactly the separation of powers,
| which is completely fundamental in all western societies.
| TheCoelacanth wrote:
| Obviously it's not controversial now because that's how
| things have been done for more than 200 years, but the
| Constitution is far from explicit that they have that
| power.
| bumby wrote:
| How do you read Article 3 Section 1 of the Constitution?
|
| My reading is that it gives authority to federal courts
| to determine if a law has or has not been violated. What
| would the other intent be of creating a judicial branch?
| (Not said with snark, just curious).
|
| "You give (a) Authority to a system of federal courts to
| judge whether or not a law has been violated..."[1]
|
| [1] Findlay, B.A. and Findlay, E.B., 1919. Your Rugged
| Constitution: How Americas House of Freedom is Planned
| and Built. -.
| TheCoelacanth wrote:
| That's certainly how SCOTUS interpreted it, and a 200
| year tradition of interpreting it that has made it so
| that most people will now interpret it that way, but "The
| judicial Power of the United States, shall be vested in
| one supreme Court" hardly makes it clear that they get to
| decide the powers of the other two branches.
| bumby wrote:
| Devils advocate, if not the Supreme Court, then whom?
|
| Congress makes a law. The Executive branch executes the
| law. The Supreme Court interprets whether that law was
| broken during its execution.
|
| If you take out that third leg, is the assumption that
| Congress must revoke the law to provide a check/balance?
| What if the intent was good, but the execution was bad?
| pram wrote:
| This is parliamentary supremacy. The third leg would be
| people replacing the legislature.
| tmaly wrote:
| Maybe they thought States would remain strong and step up
| to the plate?
|
| There is the 9th and 10th amendment that do not seem to
| get much coverage in court rulings.
| pdonis wrote:
| _> Congress intended to grant the EPA broad authority to
| regulate pollution_
|
| CO2 is not pollution. People and animals breathe it out.
| Plants breathe it in. Any such thing is obviously not
| pollution. The EPA calling it "pollution" does not make
| it pollution, any more than calling a dog's tail a leg
| makes it a leg.
|
| If Congress wants to grant the EPA authority to regulate
| things that are obviously _not_ pollution, in order to
| promote some other policy objective, it needs to say so
| explicitly. Which is exactly what the Court 's opinion
| says.
| scarmig wrote:
| None of the parties or judges dispute that CO2 is a
| pollutant.
|
| Even if you personally dispute it, Congress explicitly
| granted the EPA the authority to determine what's an air
| pollutant and what's not:
|
| > For the purpose of establishing national primary and
| secondary ambient air quality standards, the
| Administrator shall within 30 days after December 31,
| 1970, publish, and shall from time to time thereafter
| revise, a list which includes each air pollutant--
| emissions of which, in his judgment, cause or contribute
| to air pollution which may reasonably be anticipated to
| endanger public health or welfare;
| pdonis wrote:
| _> None of the parties or judges dispute that CO2 is a
| pollutant._
|
| The fact that all of the parties and judges are calling a
| tail a leg, still doesn't make it a leg.
| scarmig wrote:
| You should feel free to decide that a leg is actually a
| liver; that just makes you silly. As far as the matter at
| hand goes, though, it's the EPA that has the authority to
| make that designation (at least until the SCOTUS decides
| that only it has that authority).
| pdonis wrote:
| _> it 's the EPA that has the authority to make that
| designation (at least until the SCOTUS decides that only
| it has that authority)._
|
| And the SCOTUS has the authority to rule on whether the
| EPA's rulemaking is within its statutory authority or
| not. Which is what it did today. So why are you
| objecting? Both governmental entities are exercising
| their authority. The fact that one such exercise, the
| EPA's, is one you like, and the other such exercise, the
| Court's is one you don't like, is irrelevant, according
| to your own logic, just as it's irrelevant, according to
| your own logic, that the EPA's rule under review here
| defies logic, common sense, and the plain meaning of
| words.
| scarmig wrote:
| Bit of a sleight of hand there: you were arguing first
| that this court case was about whether CO2 was a
| pollutant or not, and I simply pointed out that there was
| nobody arguing it wasn't and all agreed that the EPA had
| the authority to designate it as such, as opposed to your
| "pollution is whatever pdonis feels in his gut is
| pollution" standard.
|
| So, sure, I'm criticizing the Court's decision, because
| it's an incoherent and ideologically motivated decision.
| Doing so helps remove the mystique of the SCOTUS justices
| as some kind of apolitical actors in the sytem.
| pdonis wrote:
| _> Bit of a sleight of hand there_
|
| No, you are the one who shifted your ground, not me. You
| started out arguing that calling a tail a leg doesn't
| make it one--but you only applied that argument
| (incorrectly, in my opinion, but that's beside the
| present point) to the SCOTUS decision you didn't like,
| not to the EPA rulemaking you liked. Then, when I called
| you on it, you retreated to the argument that the EPA is
| just exercising its authority--which applies just as much
| to SCOTUS. So make up your mind: are you going to base
| your position on actual logic, common sense, and the
| plain meaning of words, or on government entities
| exercising their authority no matter what?
|
| _> I 'm criticizing the Court's decision, because it's
| an incoherent and ideologically motivated decision._
|
| I disagree that it is, since it's just pointing out that
| Congress didn't intend to delegate to the EPA the
| sweeping authority to restructure the entire energy
| sector of the economy, even if we accept that CO2 is a
| "pollutant" for the sake of argument. The statute does
| not give the EPA authority to regulate pollutants however
| it wants. It only gives it the authority to do so in
| certain ways.
|
| That said, however, I'm criticising the EPA's rulemaking
| on the same grounds that you are criticizing the SCOTUS
| decision: that it's incoherent and ideologically
| motivated. Any such criticism presupposes that just
| because a government entity has the formal authority to
| do something, doesn't make it right. So it is no answer
| to my criticism to say that the EPA was just exercising
| its authority.
| robonerd wrote:
| > _CO2 is not pollution. People and animals breathe it
| out._
|
| Suppose I piss in your drink. Have I polluted it, or will
| you drink it?
|
| _' It's not pollution if it comes out of animals'_
| doesn't make much sense.
| pdonis wrote:
| _> 'It's not pollution if it comes out of animals'
| doesn't make much sense._
|
| That's not the argument I was making. The argument I was
| making is that the presence of CO2 in the atmosphere is
| part of a natural process that all living organisms,
| including us humans, engage in. The presence of your piss
| in my drink is not.
| scarmig wrote:
| Animals exhale many volatile organic compounds when they
| exhale, including methanol and acetone. Does that mean
| those compounds are by definition not pollution?
| pdonis wrote:
| Are those compounds present because they come from the
| animal's metabolism, or just because they happened to be
| there in the environment and the animal inhaled or
| ingested them?
| scarmig wrote:
| Metabolism.
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ketogenesis
| pdonis wrote:
| My understanding is that ketones produced by this process
| normally get excreted in the urine, not by being exhaled.
|
| That said, since these are products of the animal's
| metabolism, I would not consider them pollution if
| they're just being exhaled into the surrounding air
| outdoors. If you bring your animal into my climate
| controlled clean room and have it exhale the compounds
| there, that would be different--but I doubt the EPA would
| be the first line of defense in regulating behavior of
| that sort.
| rayiner wrote:
| That is incorrect. Congress cannot broadly delegate
| authority to make rules with the force of law on the
| executive branch. Even liberals begrudgingly accept
| separation of powers.
|
| Regulatory agencies exist based on the theory that Congress
| can leave it to agencies to "fill in the details" of a law
| as part of the executive discretion about how to enforce
| the law. In the Clean Air Act, Congress gave the EPA
| authority to pick toxic pollutants to regulate, and to
| specify the use of particular emissions control
| technologies like scrubbers.
|
| What this case was about was whether this grant of
| authority could be fairly read to encompass telling entire
| industries what power generation mix they must use.
|
| This is not like requiring the CEO to sign off on a minor
| bug fix. The reasoning of the Court is that industry-wide
| changes in power generation mix have sweeping effects on
| the country, and require specific authorization. Even huge
| companies routinely require executive approval for major
| new initiatives that will incur major costs to the company.
| scarmig wrote:
| From the text of the Clean Air Act itself:
|
| > (1) The term "standard of performance" means a standard
| for emissions of air pollutants which reflects the degree
| of emission limitation achievable through the application
| of the best system of emission reduction which (taking
| into account the cost of achieving such reduction and any
| nonair quality health and environmental impact and energy
| requirements) the Administrator determines has been
| adequately demonstrated.
|
| Congress intentionally broadly authorized the EPA to
| determine and implement the best system for reducing
| pollutants such as carbon emissions, and used language
| pursuant to that. Just because it offends certain
| Justices' sensibilities and ideological predilections
| doesn't mean that they can choose to ignore clearly
| stated parts of lawfully enacted statutes.
| cogman10 wrote:
| > That is incorrect. Congress cannot broadly delegate
| authority to make rules with the force of law on the
| executive branch. Even liberals begrudgingly accept
| separation of powers.
|
| DEA, ATF, FDA, OSHA, CFPB, CDC, EPA, and FCC would all
| tend to disagree with this assessment.
|
| There IS a separation of powers and checks and balances.
| Congress even passed the "congressional review act" in
| 1996 which allows them by a majority vote to undo an
| agencies decision if they feel they've stepped too far.
|
| > The reasoning of the Court is that industry-wide
| changes in power generation mix have sweeping effects on
| the country, and require specific authorization.
|
| Again, the EPA is checked by both the executive branch
| AND congress through the CRA. Both of which are checked
| by the people.
|
| Rather than apply straight forward and obvious rules that
| have been around for at least 30 years (Chevron
| deference), the supreme court has decided to take a
| politically activist route and instead decide cases based
| on their own political leanings.
|
| You can predict, like clockwork, how the justices will
| vote on any case with any sort of political implication
| based on who appointed them. Isn't that distressing?
| Doesn't that signal that maybe there's a major problem
| here?
|
| They are picking the conclusion they want to reach and
| writing the opinions that support those outcomes. They
| are legislating from the bench.
| scarmig wrote:
| > You can predict, like clockwork, how the justices will
| vote on any case with any sort of political implication
| based on who appointed them. Isn't that distressing?
| Doesn't that signal that maybe there's a major problem
| here?
|
| To be fair, you can do this with judges on both sides of
| the partisan divide.
|
| It's good and appropriate to recognize that the Court is
| a fundamentally political institution and not some mere
| interpreter of law, and being distressed over that
| implies that the Court could be some idealized,
| nonpolitical institution. That's not a useful way to
| model the Court and never has been.
| cogman10 wrote:
| > To be fair, you can do this with judges on both sides
| of the partisan divide.
|
| At the supreme court level? Yes, because it takes 4 votes
| to chose which case gets cert and we have 6 activist
| justices that want to completely rewrite jurisprudence
| for political gain. How are the liberal justices supposed
| to vote when the questions often being asked are now
| "Hey, should we overrule this long standing precedent for
| political motivations?"
|
| However, standard jurisprudence isn't nearly this bad in
| the federal court level. The outcomes there can be far
| more difficult to predict based on who appointed them.
|
| > It's good and appropriate to recognize that the Court
| is a fundamentally political institution and not some
| mere interpreter of law, and being distressed over that
| implies that the Court could be some idealized,
| nonpolitical institution. That's not a useful way to
| model the Court and never has been.
|
| While I don't disagree, unfortunately the constitution
| was setup with the notion that the SC would be above
| political divide (hence, being unelected and having
| lifetime appointments.)
|
| I certainly wouldn't mind some sort of constitutional
| amendment trying to address that. Though, I just don't
| see it as likely.
| rayiner wrote:
| > DEA, ATF, FDA, OSHA, CFPB, CDC, EPA, and FCC would all
| tend to disagree with this assessment.
|
| They wouldn't, at least not to a court's face. You
| mention "Chevron deference" below, but the whole idea
| behind Chevron deference is that agencies are exercising
| executive discretion in enforcing the law, not making new
| ones.
|
| > There IS a separation of powers and checks and
| balances. Congress even passed the "congressional review
| act" in 1996 which allows them by a majority vote to undo
| an agencies decision if they feel they've stepped too
| far.
|
| The Constitution gives the power to make laws to
| Congress. Full stop.
|
| > Rather than apply straight forward and obvious rules
| that have been around for at least 30 years (Chevron
| deference), the supreme court has decided to take a
| politically activist route and instead decide cases based
| on their own political leanings.
|
| Judges in the mid-20th century engaged in massive
| political activism to rewrite the Constitution from whole
| cloth. Undoing that tomfoolery is not itself "political
| activism."
|
| > You can predict, like clockwork, how the justices will
| vote on any case with any sort of political implication
| based on who appointed them. Isn't that distressing?
|
| It distresses me that you can predict how liberal
| justices will vote on any significant case. It brings me
| great relief that conservative justices are full of
| surprises. Just in the last few years, ACB was supposed
| to overturn Obamacare (she voted to uphold it), Gorsuch
| and Kavanaugh were supposed to find that the Civil Rights
| Act doesn't protect sexual orientation, etc.
| tptacek wrote:
| There's a thread circulating on twitter about the 24
| worst decisions from this SCOTUS term, and, because I
| don't like Twitter threads, I took the time to skim all
| the decisions. So this stuff is fresh in my head.
|
| You're being unfair to the liberal justices here ---
| there are surprising votes from liberals on QI cases
| (Rivas-Villegas, Talehquah), habeas (Brown v Davenport),
| state secrets (Zubaydah), social spending (Vaella-
| Madero), and immigration (Aleman Gonzalez). You cannot
| simply predict a liberal justice's opinion from their
| ideological inclinations. Not even Breyer, who is the
| most boring liberal justice (he wrote the opinion on
| Zubaydah).
|
| Meanwhile: Gorsuch is often surprising --- not just on
| the Native American sovereignty cases, but also on habeas
| (Shoop) and immigration (Patel, an excellent Gorsuch
| dissent).
|
| The other conservative justices? Not so much! In
| particular: you can reliably predict Alito and Thomas,
| the two most blinkered justices on the court regardless
| of ideology.
|
| By the way, and apropos nothing here, everyone should
| read Egbert v Boule, not just because it's absolutely the
| most ludicrous (and funny) case you'll ever read about
| that reaches SCOTUS, but because it's a far-reaching and
| bad decision.
| tmaly wrote:
| What about Roberts?
| csdvrx wrote:
| > I believe strongly that the executive authorities--be that
| police, FBI, NSA, ICE, or EPA--should not have the ability to
| creatively interpret laws. If we allow them to do that, we
| open the door to innumerable abuses.
|
| Totally: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/jun/23/us-
| justificati...
|
| "Lawyers for the Obama administration, arguing for their
| ability to kill an American citizen without trial in Yemen,
| contended that the protection of US citizenship was
| effectively removed by a key congressional act that blessed a
| global war against al-Qaida. Known as the Authorization to
| Use Military Force (AUMF), the broad and controversial 2001
| law played a major role in the legal decision to kill Anwar
| al-Awlaki, the former al-Qaida propagandist and US citizen,
| in 2011, according to a redacted memorandum made public on
| Monday."
|
| I don't want the executive or the administration to use
| creative interpretations to allow themselves to legally
| become judge, jury and executioner through executive order
| (pun intended) that may be very hard to claw back.
|
| The constitution and the supreme court are here for a good
| reason: to prevent such abuses.
| OrvalWintermute wrote:
| Although I think that terrorists in general should be
| denied Geneva Conventions and protections, I do think there
| should have been a judicial process to determine, and make
| the case for said terrorist (Anwar al-Awlaki) being an
| enemy of the state, and an authorized target. Then, through
| an adversarial process, he would have had his day in court,
| along with all of the rights of appeal that come with a
| judicial decision.
|
| I cringe sometime when I think about the potential burden
| of evidence not being brought forth to make a case that
| someone is a terrorist, and then getting droned.
|
| > I don't want the executive or the administration to use
| creative interpretations to allow themselves to legally
| become judge, jury and executioner through executive order
| (pun intended) that may be very hard to claw back. The
| constitution and the supreme court are here for a good
| reason: to prevent such abuses.
|
| Well said.
|
| One man's freedom fighter, or terrorist, could one day
| become, one's political adversary.
| cyanydeez wrote:
| The "creative" you speak of is a bullshit stance because
| congress isn't a computer, never will be, and all you're
| doing is not liking the outcome which is what the parent is
| explaining: rationalizing your bias after the fact.
|
| Others would say they are implementing the details of broad
| brushed Congressional laws.
| th3byrdm4n wrote:
| I barely post but here here.
|
| Leveraging the executive branch as the government creates a
| bipolar governance, every 4-8 years we have a totally
| different country and outcomes.
|
| We need a functioning legislator.
|
| How we go from here to there is unclear, but necessary
| [deleted]
| Imnimo wrote:
| It strikes me as extremely naive to believe that this same
| precedent will be applied to agencies like the FBI and NSA.
| The supreme court is not an automaton bound by the laws of
| logic to act consistently.
| muaytimbo wrote:
| Totally agree with this, the US has turned into an
| administrative state, which is far from the vision enacted by
| the founding fathers in which Congress and/or states
| regulate. Today congress has chosen to forsake their main
| role as legislators by creating unelected unaccountable
| bureaucrats with, essentially, unchecked law making
| abilities.
|
| That said, I would like congress to take up the matter of
| clean air and water directly, instead of this cowering behind
| other agencies after abdicating of their duties.
| patentatt wrote:
| Except this is a complete straw man in the current
| political reality. Climate change legislation will never
| get a single Republican vote, and we all know it. And they
| will never be held accountable for that because the people
| that vote for them are either uninformed or misinformed
| about climate change, by the same forces that influence
| congress!
| ejb999 wrote:
| >>That said, I would like congress to take up the matter of
| clean air and water directly, instead of this cowering
| behind other agencies after abdicating of their duties.
|
| Exactly - put them on the record voting for or against
| whatever they want - and the voters can vote to replace or
| keep those people based on how they actually voted - right
| now they all like to give speeches, raise money and not
| much else - congress, do your job, even if it costs you
| your job.
| [deleted]
| datavirtue wrote:
| Then they would have to tackle financial regulation reform,
| and that isn't in the interests of anyone in Washington or
| Wall Street---and likely not within their wheelhouse of
| competence. The fed and various people throughout the
| financial industry and private citizens have been begging
| for specific regulations for decades now.
| Bhilai wrote:
| I agree and its frustrating to see this crowd continually push
| the point that congress needs to grant explicit powers to the
| EPA when they already know that every single Republican
| politician is against moving the needle on climate change. This
| case was filed by 19 Republican lead states which constitute
| 44% of emissions in the US and is a multiyear effort by
| conservative climate change deniers[1] Any significant law will
| simply not pass the senate because the only thing senate
| Republicans are apparently good at is blocking progress. So
| this double play on the part of right leaning commentators is
| really in bad faith.
|
| [1] https://www.nytimes.com/2022/06/19/climate/supreme-court-
| cli...
| hellojesus wrote:
| Couldn't Congress roll out a clarification of this rule
| quickly? They own the big three right now, so it would be
| pretty easy if they kept any fluff out of the legislation.
| patentatt wrote:
| I would like to introduce you to Senator Joe Manchin. No
| substantive climate change legislation is going to pass the
| Senate. Stop pretending like it's possible.
| scarmig wrote:
| This has to be seen as part of a broader program against the
| administrative state, although here it takes the contours of
| the climate debate.
|
| For the coming years you'll be seeing the same approach used
| in this decision to rip apart everything from labor
| regulations to HUD programs.
| notacoward wrote:
| What the court is engaged in is an extreme case of motivated
| reasoning, sinking almost to the level of what the legal
| profession calls parallel construction. In fact there were many
| logically consistent arguments for this decision, and many
| logically consistent arguments for the dissent. They're all
| right there, both sides, in the text. It's why dissents are
| written and preserved. Often a point raised in a dissent for
| one case becomes more important than the ruling itself. Anyone
| who gets too carried away with the logical consistency of the
| majority opinion is _ignoring the record_. Which brings us to
| the terms I introduced earlier.
|
| When contradictory evidence or arguments are present, it's
| _easy_ to pick those that support your predetermined position
| and ignore those that don 't. It's nothing to be proud of, and
| in fact it's usually considered shameful. In formal debate it's
| a sure route to an ignominious loss. Parallel construction is
| the equivalent in the legal world, and equally condemned. It's
| when the prosecution comes into possession of evidence
| _illegally_ , and then makes up an alternative provenance or
| reasoning because admitting the truth would get their case
| summarily thrown out.
|
| This is what the conservative wing of the supreme court has
| been doing. They're picking and choosing, highlighting pretty
| dubious arguments and ignoring those which _its own principles_
| (e.g. judicial restraint, _stare decisis_ ) would give more
| weight. It's even more despicable for them than it is for
| prosecutors. Anyone who praises the "consistency" of this
| decision is at best falling for the trick, or just as often
| repeating it themselves because the decision supports a view
| they held long before they ever heard of this case. This
| discussion is _full_ of such motivated reasoning, as most here
| are, and I 'm pretty sure that's the cause of parent's
| contempt. If this is truly supposed to be _hacker_ news full of
| curious people and not just another political rag disguised as
| a tech-news site, you all need to do better.
| Buttons840 wrote:
| As an example, my understanding is that the federal government
| can regulate my ability to grow a plant and consume it in my
| own home based upon their argument that I'm participating in
| interstate commerce. The feds argued that growing a plan is
| participating in interstate commerce[1]. This law will stand
| while the court clutches their pearls about the environmental
| protection agency seeking to protect the environment.
|
| [1]: I'm trying to find the source. Something to do with the
| commerce clause I think. There was a court case where the
| government clearly argued that even local actions inside the
| state count as interstate commerce. Edit:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wickard_v._Filburn?wprov=sfla1
| jaywalk wrote:
| The court can't just overturn laws. Cases have to be brought
| to them first. So your argument of "why is X bad law allowed
| to stand when they just overturned Y?" doesn't hold water.
| hellojesus wrote:
| Wickard v Filburn has got to be one of the worst precedents
| ever. I sincerely hope the SC reverses it next.
|
| By the same logic, I can never collect my own rain water as
| it would impact interstate commerce.
|
| Similarly, I could never have a free school play for parents,
| because I would be taking money away from local theaters, and
| that would eventually resonate to interstate commerce.
|
| The Constitution's interstate commerce clause has been
| purposely misinterpreted to mean regulation of commerce
| within a state if you can abstract nth order effects to
| another state. In actuality, all it is supposed to to is
| allow the regulation of commerce across state lines, meaning
| regulation on the transport of materials from one state to
| another.
| car_analogy wrote:
| > The feds argued that growing a plan is participating in
| interstate commerce. This law will stand
|
| That's not guaranteed. Has it been challenged?
| whitesilhouette wrote:
| This one?
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wickard_v._Filburn?wprov=sfla1
| Buttons840 wrote:
| Yes. Thank you.
| [deleted]
| bmitc wrote:
| Societal concerns cannot be deterministically determined via
| deductive logic. So, people who hide behind "this sounds
| logical to me", whether intentionally or not, just happen to
| agree with the specific logic used in that instance. When
| presented with other so-called logic, suddenly it's illogical.
| csdvrx wrote:
| > just happen to agree with the specific logic used in that
| instance
|
| That's a very biased take.
|
| I think someone else said it better: what both the
| "progressive" and the "neocons" want is "a CCP-style
| political system as long as they're the ones in control"
| where "concepts like separation of powers and rule of law are
| merely obstacles to smash through on their road to utopia"
|
| It's very rare than unconstitutional power grants are clawed
| back, so personally I see what's happening right now as a
| good precedent: it says the executive and the administration
| can't just wish into existence new laws or power grants: they
| have to operate within their existing bounds.
|
| Deductive logic is totally applicable here. Otherwise, it
| gives you a situation where a president believes he can
| legally become judge, jury and executioner through executive
| order (pun intended) and order the army to execute US
| citizens by birthright through drone strikes.
|
| Just because they are enemy combatants or some other
| convenient legal fiction doesn't make it a-ok.
| car_analogy wrote:
| > The court hasn't completely prevented the EPA from making
| these regulations in the future - but says that Congress would
| have to clearly say it authorises this power.
|
| As someone that supports _far_ harsher emissions regulations
| than were in effect even before this ruling, is it too much to
| ask that laws should be clear? As others have pointed out,
| there 's no limit to the danger posed by letting the executive
| branch creatively interpret legislation.
| patentatt wrote:
| As a lawyer, I agree with you whole heartedly. Just because a
| legal decision recites a sound legal argument doesn't mean that
| that's the _only_ sound legal argument they _could_ have made.
| In the same way that a competent lawyer can make the best
| arguments for either side of a case, a judge could write
| multiple opinions for the same case that have different
| outcomes. And all could be just as legitimate from a logic and
| legal standpoint. But the judge chooses what opinion to write
| and what outcome they want. All of this makes the study of law
| kind of silly, because you study a bunch of case law and
| pretend that there 's consistency or logic that ties them
| together, but really it's largely driven by the individual
| personalities more than some platonic ideal of what the law
| should be. It's a liberal art, not a science.
| the_only_law wrote:
| > Every surpreme court article makes me hate this community a
| bit more.
|
| I mean, HN is kinda a go to place for pendantry, it's not
| terribly surprising. People started a huge fight over whether
| the word "they" can refer to a single individual the other
| week.
| lemmiwinks wrote:
| > People started a huge fight over whether the word "they"
| can refer to a single individual the other week.
|
| Link please?
| philosopher1234 wrote:
| I think you give HN too much credit.
|
| Not every topic evokes pedantry. HN has specific interests,
| and brings out nitpicking to advance specific causes.
| vdnkh wrote:
| Over the past few years I've noticed that HN has swung very far
| to the right. Any politically-adjacent topic tends to feature
| more than a few upvoted right-wing grievance posts. I still
| like HN for the articles but it's honestly insufferable to read
| the comments.
|
| On this particular topic, it's infuriating to see the average
| HN bozo think of the constitution as a set of unit tests for
| justices to run through.
| ErikVandeWater wrote:
| One can read a ruling and see how many hoops the justices
| jumped through to get to a particular decision.
|
| Let me lead by saying I'm a pro choice person, and hope federal
| legislation is passed protecting abortion in all 50 states:
|
| Roe V. Wade is a good example. The justices didn't find any
| mention of "abortion", any description of abortion, or any
| medical procedure whatsoever in the constitution, or any
| mention of "trimesters". Yet they found by using a combination
| of _no less than 5 amendments_ , that it in fact was protected,
| and then _the supreme court decided_ exactly how long into a
| pregnancy abortion could be banned. They probably had
| consistent logic in what they said technically, but it strained
| credulity too much to believe they actually thought the
| constitution, in the text as it was written, protected a right
| to abortion.
|
| Would you agree the sword cuts both ways with regards to the
| statement:
|
| > I don't believe people on this site are too stupid to realize
| that, I believe they prefer not to, because they support the
| outcomes these rulings enact.
| philosopher1234 wrote:
| Yes I agree, I think its a universal human quality.
|
| And I think we should start talking about abortion directly,
| not through 50 layers of legaleze.
|
| The only way a pro-lifer on HN can express their opinion is
| indirectly, through technical criticism.
|
| But why can't they express their pro life opinion directly?
| Because people will disagree with them? The only thing people
| do on HN is disagree.
|
| This is the issue that needs exploring, not the intricacies
| of judicial logic.
| CptJupiterNorth wrote:
| This community isn't what I thought it was, either. I'm new
| to commenting, and my account has negative karma because I
| said something true that the 2A people didn't like.
| philosopher1234 wrote:
| Welcome. People aren't likely to lay their cards on the
| table, but this is a political place like anywhere else.
| giantg2 wrote:
| "I don't believe people on this site are too stupid to realize
| that, I believe they prefer not to, because they support the
| outcomes these rulings enact.
|
| And given that, we are in a lot of trouble."
|
| If what you're saying is true, then the same could be said if
| the rulings went the other way. Basically the whole system is
| an oligarchy and the winning side will claim legitimacy and
| logic, while the losing side complains about a lack thereof.
|
| So what is the solution?
|
| Edit: why disagree without discussion or providing the
| solution?
| etherael wrote:
| Stop tyring to do everything through naked force and pursue
| market solutions that people adopt because it's economically
| advantageous for them to do so?
|
| Stop sending SWAT teams at people already trying to do this?
| (https://youtu.be/i4Hnv_ZJSQY?t=250)
|
| Everybody who looks hard enough knows that neither of these
| things will happen and we know why. That people ignore it or
| pretend otherwise is the real problem at the root of this
| whole situation.
| giantg2 wrote:
| Are you talking about capitalist or free market minarchy?
| etherael wrote:
| I am not talking about any particular political framework
| at all.
|
| I am trying to point out that if you start from that
| premise you prejudice the kinds of diagnoses and
| solutions to any potential problem you come up with.
| Which is of course the exact reason that the parties who
| stand to gain so much wealth and power from the exercise
| are so desperate that this should be the default, and why
| to the extent there is a problem that might be solved,
| quick, easy and relatively cheap direct voluntary action
| solutions need to be hit with SWAT raids lest the power
| and wealth that might be attained from nebulous, slow,
| difficult and extremely expensive solutions which are by
| contrast pushed by force upon the entire planet.
| Seattle3503 wrote:
| HN is by and large reactionary.
| jahewson wrote:
| No it's not.
|
| /s
| Dracophoenix wrote:
| What's reactionary about applying checks and balances?
| spencerflem wrote:
| I don't know why you're being downvoted, this is correct.
| Just offering my support and the knowledge that not _all_
| programmers are assholes with more money than sense and a
| smug superiority that comes from assuming the whole world is
| an algorithm. Just most of them.
| Sakos wrote:
| I generally try to avoid HN discussions about politics,
| geopolitics or anything related to human society, because
| there are some ass-backwards, heartless, libertarian people
| here who don't care about how outcomes affect people as
| long as it happens to fit with their ideology. Seeing the
| responses here makes me feel justified.
|
| The only reason why I come back is because the technical
| discussions are incredibly good.
| WalterBright wrote:
| The thing about libertarianism is it has done more good
| for more people than any other ideology.
|
| Note that libertarianism leaves people free to care for
| others as much as they want to.
| spencerflem wrote:
| i was having a nice time griping until you showed up.
| Given how libertarians seem completely unconcerned with
| raising wages or protecting the environment it seems that
| amount is 0
| WalterBright wrote:
| I am a libertarian, and if you're familiar with my
| postings, I have made many environment protecting
| proposals that would be much more effective than the
| current ones. Also for improving other facets of our
| lives, like wages.
|
| I know there are many libertarians who give the
| philosophy a bad name.
|
| If you have something specific you'd like to ask about
| it, I'll try to give a good answer.
| tombert wrote:
| > The thing about libertarianism is it has done more good
| for more people than any other ideology.
|
| Presumably you mean political ideology, but I don't
| really know if I know what "libertarianism" actually
| means. I would need some citation that the Ayn-Rand-esque
| objectivist flavor of libertarianism has actually done
| _any_ good for anyone. Maybe that 's not what you mean,
| but that's sort of the issue with the term.
|
| I might be more likely to agree if you changed the term
| "libertarianism" to "liberalism". Not the current
| "liberal" that basically means "democrat" in the US, but
| the more classical sense.
| WalterBright wrote:
| Libertarianism as in free markets and the inalienable
| rights to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. It
| includes the rights enumerated in the Bill of Rights.
|
| Note that this precludes any right to harm others,
| defraud them, enslave them, etc. It precludes enshrining
| religion into the law.
|
| It includes all are equal under the law, women have an
| equal right to vote, gays can marry, people can smoke
| marijuana, etc.
|
| As with all philosophies, it doesn't give guidance to all
| situations, and should be leavened with pragmatism.
| rmahan wrote:
| [citation needed]
| WalterBright wrote:
| The United States. The first free market country, and the
| first to raise the standard of living of scores of
| millions of people out of poverty into the middle and
| even wealthy classes.
|
| The American people are also the most generous in the
| world, by donations to charity.
|
| I know that the popular view is the US is some sort of
| hellhole, but yet millions of people are trying to
| immigrate here, walking thousands of miles just to try.
| ironman1478 wrote:
| The people walking to America are doing it because they
| are coming from extremely violent countries where they
| are in immediate danger. My family came from Romania, a
| place where they jailed or beat my family members on a
| regular basis during communism, then had horrible brain
| drain and 0 opportunities post communism. People aren't
| emigrating from countries like Germany the way they are
| from El Salvador. Being better than a place where your
| life is in immediate danger or where there is ZERO
| economic opportunity is not much of an accomplishment.
| Please use correct comparisons when you are making
| statements like this.
|
| "The American people are also the most generous in the
| world, by donations to charity." Why can't we just setup
| government programs to fill the in the gaps that
| charities provide?
| WalterBright wrote:
| The oceans are a major barrier to people walking here
| from other countries. Consider as well all the countries
| they walk through to get here. They come from Cuba, too,
| the socialist paradise.
|
| There are a lot of people from Romania in the Seattle
| area, I am friends with some. I am not unacquainted with
| their stories of how bad things were there. All I can say
| is welcome to the US!
|
| P.S. All my ancestors hail from various European
| countries that emigrated to the US, including Germany.
| ironman1478 wrote:
| Yes, they come from Cuba because the US is the closest
| countries with opportunities, just like many people flee
| to Italy from the north of Africa or from the middle
| east. Also cuba is a bad example because of the
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cuban_Adjustment_Act and
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wet_feet,_dry_feet_policy.
| They are incentivezed to leave the totalitarian regime of
| Cuba (which is not socialist to be clear) to the US. The
| goal of bringing up Romania and El Salvador was to show
| how the bad conditions at the time forced people to
| leave. People don't leave countries that are doing well.
|
| Also, your friends are probably from a select group of
| people who came in highly educated. People who come in
| with 0 education (like my parents) are not treated well
| in America. Many of the Romanian families that I grew up
| with in South Florida have gone back, as America honestly
| isn't that great compared to what has developed in
| Romania over time (its pretty nice now!).
| spencerflem wrote:
| C'man, the socialist paradise is Nordic countries, not
| Cuba.
| ohCh6zos wrote:
| Being reactionary is a good thing as it preserves the status
| quo.
| datavirtue wrote:
| "A decision of such magnitude and consequence rests with
| Congress itself..."
|
| Simple. End of story. If the Supreme Court has one job it's
| punting shit to Congress--the appropriate branch.
| citilife wrote:
| There's a lot on this site that makes me question "what
| happened"?
|
| Growing up on the internet (IRC, Forums, eventually HN, etc)
| there was always a "hacker" or "libertarian" spirit. Less
| government ("the man"), less regulation, more freedom, more
| ability to create and inspire.
|
| Now, I see many people (often the same people) seemingly become
| hyper partisian when the Supreme Court saying "congress never
| authorized this, they'd need to to make this legal". All the
| recent court rulings have been very consistent that "the will
| of the people (congress) never approved this".
|
| IMO you're correct, the Supreme court is partisan. However,
| this feels far less partisan than normal and the reasoning
| seems to be sound (congress never implemented this law / passed
| an amendment / etc). In the courts opinions will often explain
| how to make it a law / legal.
|
| The shock I've experienced with the HN community is how it's
| been far less thoughtful as late (3-4 years) and discussions
| are suppressed / devolve quickly. The idea of the libertarian
| ethos of the "hacker" community, to me, appears dead. Now, I
| see a far less thoughtful, more partisan, more angry community.
| Even in your comment, you mention you "hate" the community (I'm
| assuming you mean just parts of it). It dismays me.
| iostream24 wrote:
| It's very frustrating to see how some HN readers are allowed to
| vote others comments up and down while the rest of us have no
| rights at all. It feels like when a playground bully puts their
| long arm on your forehead to prevent you being able to reach
| them, while they are free to punch you and abuse you at will.
| Unfair
|
| I already heard the excuse about a probationary period but I've
| been stuck in this state for awhile now and it's not OK
| rayiner wrote:
| Headlines about Supreme Court cases are almost uniformly
| misleading, because they suggest the Court is making decisions on
| policy issues rather than legal issues.
|
| The very first words of the opinion, on p. 2, make clear that the
| legal issue before the Court is very different:
| https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/21pdf/20-1530_n758.pdf
|
| The Clean Air Act does not purport to give the EPA blanket
| regulatory authority over anything involving emissions into the
| air. It has detailed provisions focused on reducing the amount of
| toxic pollutants, in particular through the use of control
| (scrubbing) technologies. This case concerns whether the EPA can
| use its power to impose control technologies on power plants, to
| force the industry to use a particular mix of power generation
| sources (solar, gas, etc.). The Court decided that the statute
| did not confer on the EPA the power to do that. The relevant
| discussion begins on page 16.
|
| This decision gives legs to something that has been called the
| "major questions doctrine." The gist of that doctrine is that an
| agency can't stretch some pre-existing grant of Congressional
| authority to create sweeping regulations addressing a major new
| problem. As applied here, that means that the EPA can't rely on
| authority delegated by Congress to, for example, tell coal plants
| what kind of scrubbers they have to use, to tackle climate
| change. pp. 17-19.
| Retric wrote:
| You don't get say civil asset forfeiture from simply reading
| the constitution and ruling based on it.
|
| Cases make it to the Supreme Court because the outcome is
| ambiguous, so the court can't actually make decisions based on
| an objective standard. It's simply not how they operate in this
| or any other court.
|
| Instead the outcome is decided and various legal justifications
| are provided by both the justices who agree and those who
| disagree. You can agree or disagree with the outcome of any
| case, but there's a reason the appointment of Supreme Court
| justices is considered so politically important, it's a
| political job.
| rat87 wrote:
| That is because that's what they do. The supreme court is a
| political organ making very conservative political decisions.
| Much of the time the sort of headlines you seem to prefer would
| be navel gazing that's not important to most people and would
| be misleading distract from the real world result that it's
| gutting much of the EPAs powers? Why because conservatives
| don't like the EPA. I applaud the headline for getting at the
| truth of the matter
| burkaman wrote:
| Read the dissent and see if you don't find it equally
| convincing. Supreme Court justices are very smart and very good
| at their jobs and it's not surprising that pretty much
| everything they write sounds reasonable and well-argued.
|
| Key quote from the dissent:
|
| > Section 111 of the Clean Air Act directs EPA to regulate
| stationary sources of any substance that "causes, or
| contributes significantly to, air pollution" and that "may
| reasonably be anticipated to endanger public health or
| welfare."
|
| So, does CO2 qualify, or is it a "major new problem"? Sounds
| like a policy issue to me.
|
| By the way, it definitely isn't a major new problem, the Nixon
| administration viewed CO2 and climate change as settled science
| in the 60s before he signed the Clean Air Act:
| https://www.nixonlibrary.gov/sites/default/files/virtuallibr...
| RcouF1uZ4gsC wrote:
| So you would be fine with the EPA regulating marijuana?
| burkaman wrote:
| If they had convincing scientific evidence that marijuana
| both contributes significantly to air pollution and
| endangers public health, yes I would be.
|
| Edit: Actually I think the particular Clean Air Act section
| in question only covers buildings or other "stationary
| sources", so I don't think marijuana would qualify unless a
| building was emitting marijuana smoke.
| robonerd wrote:
| That sounds like technocracy, not democracy.
| burkaman wrote:
| Why? This authority was intentionally granted by a
| democratic legislature. If it's too broad, the act can be
| amended. The "technocrats" are only in control of what we
| have voted to let them control. The text is pretty
| straightforward:
|
| > The Administrator shall, within 90 days after December
| 31, 1970, publish (and from time to time thereafter shall
| revise) a list of categories of stationary sources. He
| shall include a category of sources in such list if in
| his judgment it causes, or contributes significantly to,
| air pollution which may reasonably be anticipated to
| endanger public health or welfare.
|
| That is explicitly delegating these decisions to the
| judgement of the EPA Administrator. This is extremely
| normal, every government agency works like this.
| robonerd wrote:
| > _This authority was intentionally granted by a
| democratic legislature._
|
| That is the matter of contention, isn't it?
| burkaman wrote:
| Not really. The court's conclusion is that Congress
| didn't anticipate such significant consequences when they
| granted this authority, so the EPA has to wait for
| Congress to confirm they're ok with it. They're saying
| that yes the EPA has this power on paper, but "a decision
| of such magnitude and consequence rests with Congress
| itself", so surely they didn't actually mean to do that.
| Maybe they made a mistake, we have to ask again to be
| sure.
|
| Maybe they did make a mistake, but if so they can fix it.
| I think what the court majority is saying here is
| patronizing and wrong. There's a perfectly normal process
| for Congress to amend a law if it accidentally gave up
| too much power.
| robonerd wrote:
| On one hand you have democratically elected
| representatives (less democratic than a direct democracy,
| but still reasonably democratic) delegating power to the
| executive branch (who's lead is elected by the electoral
| college, which is substantially less democratic than
| direct democracy.) Stack the two of these together and
| the end result is less democratic than either considered
| in isolation. But you want to go a step further and
| empower unelected technocracts in the executive branch to
| ban harmless herbs if they _claim_ they have _"
| convincing scientific evidence"_ that marijuana is
| harmful. And I guess that isn't even enough for you;
| presumably you also object to the judicial checking the
| power of those technocrats.
|
| I prefer that matters like this be handled in an
| _actually_ democratic way. Cannabis was legalized in my
| state because I and others in my state voted to make it
| so. That 's democracy. Technocracts making unimpeachable
| "scientific" decisions isn't democracy, it's a faint
| shadow of democracy. Referendums are democracy, and are
| the democratic way to resolve these sort of social
| disputes.
| burkaman wrote:
| Why is passing a marijuana legalization bill democratic,
| but passing the Clean Air Act is not? I guess I am still
| not understanding the core of your argument.
|
| When your state legalized marijuana, it delegated a ton
| of decisions to unelected officials - individual business
| licensing, labeling details, dispensary sanitation
| standards, valid medical applications, etc. There is
| probably a whole commission of unelected people who go
| through a formal rulemaking process which involves
| collecting feedback from people like you, just like the
| EPA.
|
| It's ok if you don't like this model, but you can't claim
| it's not what Congress intended and not a normal state of
| affairs at the moment. It's just how the country works,
| we don't have Congress vote on every single pollutant,
| medical device, potential drug, import/export
| restriction, endangered species, etc.
| JeremyNT wrote:
| > Headlines about Supreme Court cases are almost uniformly
| misleading, because they suggest the Court is making decisions
| on policy issues rather than legal issues.
|
| This is the naive version of how SCOTUS works that they teach
| us in elementary school.
|
| History has shown that the Supreme Court is a political body
| with its own political agenda. The doctrine and precedent cited
| is used as a justification for whatever policy they actually
| want to enact.
|
| Yes, there are some guidelines and guardrails, but this is a
| case of the tail wagging the dog. They choose their
| interpretation of law based on the actual impact they want to
| have on society.
| philwelch wrote:
| The majority of justices on the current Supreme Court have
| been doing a good job of sticking to the law rather than
| attempting to enact policy. What you're describing is a good
| criticism of the mid-20th century Supreme Court, but the
| current Court has done a good job of rolling back those
| excesses.
| rat87 wrote:
| Have you seen the Dobbs decision?
|
| It's about what policies the judges personally prefer
| SllX wrote:
| The one that returns the decision to make policy on a
| controversial subject matter back to the people and their
| elected representatives, per the opinion of the Court?
| s1artibartfast wrote:
| I personally like the Roe standard, but it was made out
| whole cloth constitutionally.
| iostream24 wrote:
| I strongly disagree. I see this current court having
| extremely low legitimacy engaged in naked power grabs: In
| one session they've removed the ability to sue over Miranda
| rights, stricken down a fifty year precedent and told a
| state that they can't enact their own concealed carry act.
| I don't doubt that you will claim that these actions are
| the logical course of originalism in its purest form, but I
| find it judicial activism of an obtuse society-wrecking
| despicable sort.
|
| They shall go down in our childrens history as villains.
| hellojesus wrote:
| You realize that they struck down "may issue" state laws
| because they violated the federal constitution, right?
| That is textbook rollback of excess.
| flanking_pajama wrote:
| Well it's always seemed pretty cut and dry that the whole
| "abortion" controversy is largely a religious crusade and
| that anyone pretending to favor the constitution would
| call it mixing church and state.
|
| But, conservative justices clearly had a bone to pick
| there, despite obvious conflict with the words of the
| constitution. For some reason.
|
| There's a long and storied history of things being in
| conflict with the constitution and justices simply not
| caring. Slavery and Dred Scott come to mind, and although
| I'm sure there's plenty examples peppered in from other
| parts of the grand political spectrum, it's never been a
| well kept secret that the conservative M.O. is noticeably
| bolder and shameless in almost all regards, its major
| strength actually being in its willingness to use every
| tool at its disposal with minimal concern for blowback or
| legitimacy.
|
| The recent state law strike down coming across as highly
| ironic (but probably not to conservatives since it
| achieves the actual goal not of ethics or consistency,
| but of simple victory) because so much of what
| conservatives got away with for decades directly defying
| the constitutional rights was based heavily on the
| concept of state's rights. Like informal
| slavery/servitude after the war, or keeping your
| elections nice and extremely predictable until that awful
| civil rights movement.
|
| "Textbook" has nothing to do with this, or any of the
| wild departure of rulings being made in recent times.
| It's all very, VERY simple strategy: use what you have;
| dismantle what you can; build defenses where you can;
| you're in this for the Party.
| hellojesus wrote:
| It's interesting you say these things because it's
| exactly how the right views the left, and it's exactly
| what they say about them! Just an observation, and an
| interesting one.
|
| > Well it's always seemed pretty cut and dry that the
| whole "abortion" controversy is largely a religious
| crusade and that anyone pretending to favor the
| constitution would call it mixing church and state.
|
| This is not at all true. Yes, there are lots of
| Christians that don't support abortion. Yet, there are
| many Jews that do and specifically cite their religion.
|
| While religion may influence worldview, the fundamental
| abortion question comes down to the fact that the
| Constitution does not define when a person becomes a
| Person. I think the recent legal ruling was proper
| because of the specific omission of abortion in the
| enumeration of federal powers.
|
| This EPA decision, however, I think is wrong, because the
| major question doctrine cannot be consistently applied
| and is constitutionally baseless so far as I can tell.
|
| Edit: forgot to write:
|
| > There's a long and storied history of things being in
| conflict with the constitution and justices simply not
| caring.
|
| I imagine everyone thinks this about some things. I agree
| with your assessments of bad precedents above, but
| conservatives aren't the only ones that do this. FDR
| threatened to pack the court to get his way with the New
| Deal and the Wager Act, which included things I believe
| are unconstitutional such as Social Security, Minimum
| Wage, Medicare, etc.
| nostromo wrote:
| Naked power grabs?
|
| Most of the decisions reduce the power of the executive
| and the court itself and give power to the congress and
| states.
|
| I might agree with you if they made abortion illegal
| nationally. But they didn't - they said it's up to the
| voters and their representatives.
| plandis wrote:
| > The majority of justices on the current Supreme Court
| have been doing a good job of sticking to the law rather
| than attempting to enact policy.
|
| _in your opinion_, you mean?
| scarface74 wrote:
| If you ignore that whole "gerrymandering is okay".
|
| Thomas wants to revisit a lot of rulings like the one that
| gave gay people to right to get married. But I bet he won't
| revisit "Loving vs Virginia".
| coffeemug wrote:
| Scalia described how to handle these cases very clearly.
| If the court overreached but there is broad consensus on
| the issue, it's water under the bridge. If the issue is
| still controversial, it's fair game. Nobody thinks we
| should revisit interracial marriage, and so under this
| interpretation it won't be revisited.
| scarface74 wrote:
| Are you sure about that?
|
| https://www.al.com/entertainment/2014/10/how_do_christian
| s_f...
|
| Anecdotally, I am Black and live in in a predominantly
| White county that was a famous "sun down town"
| (https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=WErjPmFulQ0) in the 80s.
|
| The people in that video still exist in the county. They
| just have been overrun by professionals moving in as
| builders took advantage of abundant land and built houses
| over the last ten years.
|
| It's just not as acceptable to espouse those views in
| modern society. I'm sure some of the family members of
| the White girls my (step)son dates (the county is still
| only 3.8% Black) would not approve of their relative
| dating my son. Don't get me wrong, by "relatives", I mean
| grandparents, older relatives, etc. I've never sensed any
| hostility from parents. But that could be because they
| think we "are one of the good ones"
| joshuamorton wrote:
| Which is of course odd since it flies directly in the
| face of Scalia's "originalism", and lays bare that the
| constitution is a living document. It also means that _by
| the very act of objecting to the ruling_ , I am creating
| precedent to repeal, since I am "creating controversy".
| EricDeb wrote:
| So flip the entire thing and say Congress and the
| presidency were hyper-progressive. Do you not think this
| court would use the constitution to strike down their laws
| (say universal healthcare or something)? They are only
| rolling back these excesses because it fits their ideology.
| InTheArena wrote:
| They have been hyper-progressive, and hyper-regressive.
| As RBG noted - the USSC got out "in front of" the law
| with Roe V. Wade - which resulted in it invalidating
| every state law (pro or anti-abortion) and caused a era
| of dramatically increased polarization.
|
| They also wrote Dredd Scott, Ferguson, Citizens United,
| and Korematsu.
|
| At what point do you constrain the power of the supreme
| court to make law as opposed to interpret it?
|
| The Supreme Court has done far more damage then help,
| historically.
| bearjaws wrote:
| Saying that Roe v Wade resulted in an era of increased
| polarization is completely sidelining the facts that
|
| A) women we're suffering from the lack of the right at
| the time.
|
| B) that churches and GOP actually drove the polarization,
| they chose to use it as a device to divide.
|
| It would be like saying abolition of slavery was too soon
| because it caused the civil war... Who cares the law
| shouldn't have to wait for cave men to move forward.
| InTheArena wrote:
| Funny enough - all of the actions that the Supreme Court
| took to entrench and strengthen slavery arguably were one
| of the things that caused the Civil War.
|
| a) no. States were in the process of legalizing it - with
| restrictions far more in line with the rest of the
| democratic world.
|
| b) no. In fact, most churches (the SBC for example)
| polarized _after_ roe v. wade. In fact, most evangelicals
| were left-leaning prior to this ruling. (Some partisan
| hacks will insist that it was desegregation that led to
| this, but Brown versus Board was 1954, and the SBC was
| still solidly liberal in 1972). Roe v. Wade lit
| everything on fire. (See RBG's comments on Roe V. Wade),
| precisely because it was a un-elected court making a
| change that no law could challenge.
|
| It's telling that simply saying "this is not a matter for
| the supreme court but the people's representatives" is so
| incredibly controversial.
|
| My hope on all of this is that this ends the imperial
| court - and abortion stops being the mother of all wedge
| issues, and allows some elements that moved to the right
| because of the undemocratic change to move back to the
| left now that the democratic norms are re-established.
| joshuamorton wrote:
| > It's telling that simply saying "this is not a matter
| for the supreme court but the people's representatives"
| is so incredibly controversial.
|
| There are of course two followup questions here:
|
| 1. Would the current supreme court allow a federal
| abortion law that codifies roe? The SC opinion explicitly
| notes that their ruling returns this to the states, but
| federal representatives are representatives too.
|
| 2. Does it really make sense for rights to be up to the
| whims of the legislature? If it takes 60 votes to pass a
| national abortion legalization, and 50 senate votes to
| repeal it, will we end up with lasting legislation, or
| just a de-facto ban because abortion is repealed every
| 2-4 years?
| pstuart wrote:
| I'm all in on "B" as the mechanism of division. The
| polarization is _intentional_ and _manufactured_.
|
| Divided we fall.
| gedy wrote:
| While I understand your point, the issue is most
| progressive issues aren't easily traced back to clear
| laws or the Constitution. These very frequently depend on
| loose interpretations or extrapolations such as "general
| welfare", etc.
|
| It would be better if these were clearly codified in laws
| vs being on shaky ground forever. E.g Roe v Wade
| rayiner wrote:
| > Do you not think this court would use the constitution
| to strike down their laws (say universal healthcare or
| something)?
|
| They upheld Obamacare again just last year.
|
| > They are only rolling back these excesses because it
| fits their ideology.
|
| This is just liberal projection. Liberal justices almost
| always vote as a unified bloc on major cases based on the
| results. It's always the conservative justices that go
| wobbly: Thomas voting against federal marijuana
| prohibition, Roberts repeatedly voting to uphold
| Obamacare, Roberts opposing overtrning _Roe_ , Kennedy
| finding that the Constitution protects same-sex marriage,
| Gorsuch and Kavanaugh finding that the Civil Rights Act
| protects sexual orientation, etc.
| Bhilai wrote:
| I would not be surprised if the current right leaning
| super majority guts Obama care too (if a case comes
| along.) Thomas has already indicated he supports rolling
| back gay marriage etc.
| nostromo wrote:
| Wikipedia has a good graph that illustrates your point -
| most justices become more liberal over time and very
| rarely become more conservative.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ideological_leanings_of_Uni
| ted...
| Spooky23 wrote:
| Sure, whatever. These guys are great at espousing some high
| minded principle that happens to fit into whatever the desired
| outcome happens to be.
|
| These reactionaries represent the dead hand of a generation of
| people who control or seek to control to guide society to meet
| their own generational/dynastic wealth and power goals.
|
| I'm sure you'll feel differently as the assaults on the 14th
| amendment continue and things like the right to privacy are
| whittled down to a nub.
| robonerd wrote:
| If recent SCOTUS decisions are a dead generation reaching out
| of the grave to get their way in the end against the united
| consensus of the living, then the living should have no
| trouble sorting Congress out and getting the right laws and
| amendments passed the proper way.
|
| Of course, the truth is that living generations are not
| nearly so united against this as you seem to be suggesting.
| There certainly isn't enough consensus to pass any
| amendments. It's not _really_ the dead hand of a bygone
| generation doing this, it 's people who are still very much
| alive and relevant who disagree with you.
| Spooky23 wrote:
| The more reactionary elements are very concerned and talk
| openly about things like replacement theory as a call to
| action.
|
| It's a prime motivation for some of the more extreme
| positions and differentiates the 2020 right winger from a
| 1980 conservative.
| iostream24 wrote:
| The whole concept of a corporate fourth estate informing a
| populace how to vote contrary to their own interests is
| surely a major problem our founders weren't considering
| very heavily, given the media of the time.
|
| I can't imagine the World War generations silently watching
| Tucker give aid and comfort to Putin either...
| robonerd wrote:
| I can see how corporate influence might play a role in
| this EPA decision, but most of the ire being thrown at
| SCOTUS recently is about abortion and I don't see any
| clear corporate pro-life consensus. On the contrary, I
| expect most corporations want to keep abortion legal to
| protect their workforce.
|
| > _I can't imagine the World War generations silently
| watching Tucker give aid and comfort to Putin either..._
|
| Yes, the world war generations had trouble with the
| principle of free speech; for instance, arresting people
| for protesting the draft during the first world war:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schenck_v._United_States
| And do I need to remind you of the mass internment of
| Japanese Americans, convicted of no crimes, during the
| second world war?
|
| I like to think we've made some progress since then.
| Workaccount2 wrote:
| So the EPA is kneecapped since they have to go through the most
| ineffective and hyper partisan congress since the founding of
| the country.
| SllX wrote:
| Well there was once a Congress that passed the Missouri
| Compromise which institutionalized hyper-partisanship and
| another that was so ineffective its successor Congress
| literally fell apart when several States seceded from the
| Union and those States then went to War with the Union.
|
| So, cut the hyperbole. Partisanship has always been a
| political reality. The EPA is capped to the powers that
| Congress gave it, and does not have the autonomy to expand
| that power at will because they're subordinate to the
| President and the President cannot unilaterally and legally
| _make laws_ on his own, nor can any of the agencies which
| answer to him.
| egg1 wrote:
| I fear what a lot of what outspoken "progressive" types
| (and yes, before anyone asks, also the MAGA crowd) want is
| a CCP-style political system as long as _they 're_ the ones
| in control. Concepts like separation of powers and rule of
| law are merely obstacles to smash through on their road to
| utopia.
| SllX wrote:
| Correct. Which is why both of those groups you listed
| along with many others need to continue to lose elections
| and fail to attain power because the endgame for them is
| eliminating the possibility that they ever lose an
| election again. Like the CCP has.
| politician wrote:
| And yet, fixing that problem -- the problem of the
| ineffectiveness and hyper-partisanship of Congress -- would
| have so many positive effects for all of our lives regardless
| of our ideological perspectives that it should be our number
| one priority as the electorate.
| [deleted]
| kmeisthax wrote:
| The ineffectiveness and hyperpartisanship of Congress is
| directly attributable to the ideological perspectives of
| the electorate.
|
| Also, Congress is not as ineffective and hyperpartisan as
| you think. It's _only_ on issues that have public attention
| that they act this way. When nobody is looking they move
| quickly and decisively.
| themaninthedark wrote:
| So true, see the Patriot Act, DMCA and all the anti-
| network Neutrality bills.
| JauntTrooper wrote:
| Eliminating partisan gerrymandering would go a long way.
|
| Less than 10% of congressional districts this year will be
| competitive (defined as the most recent presidential
| election margin was within 10 percentage points). Only 41
| seats!
|
| I haven't really seen a realistic plan to do it though.
| zajio1am wrote:
| OTOH, results of elections to congress (house of
| representatives) looks balanced - total seats gained by
| each party matches popular vote with deviation < 1%.
| Which is much better than i expected considering single-
| seat system leads to advantages for dominant players even
| without gerrymandering.
|
| Even in my home country, which is european country with
| proportional system and no gerrymandering, such deviation
| is higher (< 2%) due to rounding effects.
|
| Gerrymandering is main issue in (some) state elections
| (e.g. Wisconsin 2018 is egregious example), not federal
| elections.
| JauntTrooper wrote:
| The totals are a little misleading because there is
| partisan gerrymandering on both sides, so they somewhat
| balance each other out. Courts have also been highly
| involved in rejecting the most brazenly disproportionate
| maps, but that may soon change next year due to the newly
| constituted Supreme Court.
|
| The bigger problem is that it incentivizes partisanship
| and extremist views in uncompetitive districts because
| the representative is effectively decided in the party's
| primary election, not the general election which has
| higher turnout and a more representative electorate.
|
| Also the fact that 90%+ of congressional seats are safe
| except for the occasional primary opponent discourages
| accountability. Our districts are so distorted, they make
| no geographic sense. And it means a large percentage of
| our population is permanently disenfranchised, which
| dampens voter participation. It really is one of the
| biggest structural problems of our democracy right now.
| tick_tock_tick wrote:
| Yes the EPA, created by congress and given a mandate by
| congress, must go to congress if it wasn't new powers or
| authorities....
| giantg2 wrote:
| Do you have a source for that claim? I find it hard to
| believe that partisan conduct didn't exist on the hot topics
| of the day throughout history.
|
| For example, it took years to create a constitution, then
| more years for a bill of rights. There was a lot of
| federalist vs anti-federalist debate. Then things like
| slavery, segregation, etc. I mean, we fought a civil war. How
| much more partisan can it get than that?
| thehappypm wrote:
| We used to admit states to the Union in pairs so that there
| was an equal number of free and slave states. THAT is
| partisanship.
| blowski wrote:
| Perhaps there is a hyper-partisan congress because it's a
| reaction to what some have viewed as a hyper-partisan Supreme
| Court.
|
| On a positive reading, the Court is now saying states have
| the right to choose these issues for themselves. There are
| means in the constitution for overruling a minority of
| states, that is by passing a constitutional amendment. By
| allowing and even encouraging the Court to make these
| decisions, Congress has built up a democratic deficit which
| has exploded in its face.
|
| On a negative reading, sadly, the Court is just as partisan
| now but in the other direction. Thus the deficit won't go
| away.
| [deleted]
| dfxm12 wrote:
| That's the strategy of the Federalist Society, make rulings
| via the undemocratic SCOTUS under the guise of giving
| states/congress power, but then also making sure that state
| elections are undemocratic via gerrymandering, voting laws,
| etc.
|
| It doesn't help that taking action on matters of national
| importance is inherently difficult in a Federalist
| government.
| mistrial9 wrote:
| from Wikipedia '... The Federalist Society provides its
| 70,000 members with "intellectual sparring and professional
| grooming.'
|
| without taking sides on this attorney gang, it seems to be
| like a bunch of professional boxers and others here are mad
| because they cannot fight. I do not want to fight lawyers,
| but calling them a conspiracy, when they specifically
| engage and practice debate professionally, is sort of
| pathetic honestly.
| [deleted]
| robonerd wrote:
| > _but calling them a conspiracy, when they specifically
| engage and practice debate professionally, is sort of
| pathetic honestly._
|
| Debating professionally precludes conspiracy? What if a
| high-school debate club decides to rob a bank?
| sterlind wrote:
| I grew up going to FedSoc. officially, it's just a debate
| society - the panels are streamed on CSPAN, it's all
| public. unofficially, it's a Mecca of networking for
| conservative lawyers. the upper echelons are nearly
| exclusively Catholics, and the founder provided Trump
| with shortlists of Justices he could pick from. and all
| that networking made it happen. it's no coincidence all
| the recent nominees are Catholic.
| mistrial9 wrote:
| as an aside it is actually sort of humorous to describe
| the center of bunches of Catholic Attorneys as Mecca
| themaninthedark wrote:
| The EPA is under the executive branch, they should not "have
| to go through congress" for anything. That is entirely out of
| their scope of operation.
|
| They are supposed to be enforcing and upholding the laws that
| congress enacts.
| radley wrote:
| > The gist of that doctrine is that an agency can't stretch
| some pre-existing grant of Congressional authority to create
| sweeping regulations addressing a major new problem.
|
| But it's not a major new problem. The Congress that established
| the EPA granted the "stretching" along with it, otherwise it
| would take an act of Congress to determine the color of the
| Post-its.
|
| The new rulings are farcical zealotry. Apparently, the only
| people capable of making decisions died 100 years ago and
| anything we've learned after the Civil War doesn't matter.
| [deleted]
| evanpw wrote:
| > Headlines about Supreme Court cases are almost uniformly
| misleading, because they suggest the Court is making decisions
| on policy issues rather than legal issues.
|
| I agree with this completely, but it doesn't help when justices
| begin their opinion / concurrence / dissent with a long policy
| discussion before talking about the legal questions. That's
| been the case in several of the recent decisions.
| carabiner wrote:
| Why does HN, or SWEs in general, have a libertarian / small
| govt bias?
| jhgb wrote:
| Engineering woo effect, perhaps?
| https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Engineers_and_woo
| thehappypm wrote:
| Because everyone here is a phony.
|
| Everyone publicly wants socialism, and privately wants to
| protect their own assets.
| waffleiron wrote:
| > This case concerns whether the EPA can use its power to
| impose control technologies on power plants, to force the
| industry to use a particular mix of power generation sources
| (solar, gas, etc.).
|
| Dissenting opinion quotes the following, which to me (and at
| least one supreme court judge) does not seem to limit this
| power:
|
| > "the degree of emission limitation achievable through the
| application of the best system of emission reduction which
| (taking into account the cost of achieving such reduction and
| any nonair quality health and environmental impact and energy
| requirements) the [EPA] Administrator determines has been
| adequately demonstrated." SS7411(a)(1).
| mrguyorama wrote:
| Ah yes, this is all perfectly above board. It just so happens
| that after a huge amount of horse shit by the republican party
| to appoint certain specific justices, there are immediately
| perfect test cases to put everything exactly the way they want
| it.
|
| No. This was planned, planned very in advance, planned in the
| open. The republican party has openly wanted to do this for
| decades, put a plan in motion and executed very well. It is
| obvious that these justices are completely beholden to the
| republican party, and should be seen as such. We can play all
| the dumb semantics games we want, but none of that changes that
| the Supreme court is part of the US government, that their
| decisions have broad consequences, and that those consequences
| are obvious.
|
| If you do "the right thing" and it leads to millions of people
| oppressed when "the wrong thing, or nothing at all" would have
| led to zero suffering, did you really do the right thing?
| matthewdgreen wrote:
| This case could have been decided either way. The result
| clearly depends on the makeup of the Court and the justices'
| personal inclinations. As evidence: _a very similar question
| was decided by the Court_ in 2009, with a completely different
| result [1].
|
| [1]
| https://ballotpedia.org/Massachusetts_v._Environmental_Prote...
| lolinder wrote:
| This doesn't make OP's point less true: the headlines
| surrounding this decision are misleading. This is not
| judicial overreach, it's an application of a different theory
| of judicial review than we've become accustomed to, and it's
| not necessarily a bad one.
|
| If we don't like it when the police creatively interpret laws
| to target minorities, can we allow the EPA the authority to
| creatively interpret laws to target fossil fuel companies? Is
| it possible to give the executive authorities the power to be
| creative, but only in the service of a good cause? This
| Supreme Court believes it's not, and that seems like a
| reasonable position to take.
| matthewdgreen wrote:
| A court that is unconstrained by precedent can arrive at
| any policy outcome it wants: simply tailor a "novel" legal
| theory that gives you the desired result, then ignore past
| decisions that use different theories. Past Courts have
| worked _extremely hard_ to avoid this: they viewed it as
| fatal to the legitimacy of the Court. They were right.
| refurb wrote:
| But that's exactly what the Roe v Wade decision was -
| decide what policy you want, then have the court come up
| with an argument as to why that right exists.
|
| It's not supposed to work that way. The legislature makes
| laws, the court interprets under the framework of the
| Constitution.
|
| Precedent is important, but it's not supposed to create
| law out of thin air. It's supposed to be based on a firm
| set of decisions that flow from the Constitution and law.
| nawgz wrote:
| Can you cite some materials to back up your claims?
|
| Besides the latest Roe V Wade decision deviating from two
| previous decisions which were decided by larger
| majorities, it also cites ideas based in "originalism" or
| constitutional fundamentalism which don't even make
| sense. They argued there is "no general right to privacy"
| outlined in the constitution, which clashes greatly with
| any reasonable reading of the 4th amendment.
|
| So please, do explain how the 4th amendment doesn't grant
| any right to general privacy, and how this current highly
| political court is somehow actually being more legally
| objective than the previous two which created and upheld
| decisively the ruling which is also generally agreed to
| align with reasonable moral stances
| carabiner wrote:
| Here's the thing: some of us start from the point of view
| that _the Constitution might be bad_. I know it 's
| sacrilegious. But from there, all sorts of rulings seem
| like improvements on a baroque 18th century piece of
| paper. If you DO uphold the Constitution as being "the
| greatest legal document ever made" (faith-based view)
| then yeah all these conservative SCOTUS put-downs seem
| logical to restoring the US source code. It's just a
| piece of paper though being stretched to apply to
| situations unimaginable to their originators and badly
| need of updates.
| arghnoname wrote:
| The constitution may be bad. We've had a number of
| amendments, most of which improved in in very critical
| ways.
|
| The point is that we should live under legislation that
| is agreed upon via democratic means. Congress has pretty
| broad powers to create laws. Where those powers are
| circumscribed, such as with gun control, we have
| prescribed mechanisms for amending the constitution and
| making it less bad.
|
| I'm highly critical of the court legislating from the
| bench, whichever direction it does it from. I'm
| _extremely_ frustrated and dismayed that our legislative
| branch punts so many contentious issues to the courts. If
| the court is now less willing to play that game, maybe
| we'll go back to deciding things in the legislature,
| where we can have a debate that is values-based, and not
| just based on the reading of a baroque 18th century
| document.
|
| For what it's worth, I favor broad government action to
| address climate change and excessive CO2 emissions, but
| it's going to be better for everyone if there's some
| horse-trading here and we get some broad buy-in instead
| of having it be imposed by unelected government
| appointees that are not operating under a broad mandate.
|
| If we can't get broad buy-in, I guess that means we can't
| deal with climate change democratically. Maybe then one
| wants to advocate for non-democratic measures, but then
| we should just be honest about that.
| tablespoon wrote:
| > If we don't like it when the police creatively interpret
| laws to target minorities, can we allow the EPA the
| authority to creatively interpret laws to target fossil
| fuel companies?
|
| We can under the legal theory "What I want goes; what I
| don't want, no."
| mschuster91 wrote:
| > This is not judicial overreach, it's an application of a
| different theory of judicial review than we've become
| accustomed to, and it's not necessarily a bad one.
|
| Originalism is as bad in jurisprudence as orthodoxy is in
| religions. It is extremely dangerous to act like there
| haven't been hundreds of years of civilizatory development
| in all areas since the scriptures were written.
| Originalism/orthodoxy/fundamentalism, especially one that
| doesn't take contemporary issues of the text's origin into
| mind, _always_ is bad.
|
| Add on top that the judicial picks of the 45th were
| carefully selected for their attitudes and the GQP ignored
| a boatload of red flags for _every single one_ candidate,
| and now it 's not just "application of a different theory",
| it's a full-blown takeover.
| tablespoon wrote:
| > Originalism is as bad in jurisprudence as orthodoxy is
| in religions. It is extremely dangerous to act like there
| haven't been hundreds of years of civilizatory
| development in all areas since the scriptures were
| written. Originalism/orthodoxy/fundamentalism, especially
| one that doesn't take contemporary issues of the text's
| origin into mind, always is bad.
|
| No it isn't. Your analogy doesn't really work because
| religious scriptures _can 't_ usually be amended (within
| the context of a single religion), while there are well-
| defined mechanisms for amending and updating law (e.g.
| what legislatures do all day). Basically: update the text
| itself with the needed changes, not the interpretation.
|
| There are serious problems with using interpretation to
| update law: it makes the text ambiguous, because who
| knows how some loosely-constrained judge(s) will decide
| to "update" it in the future, and it's anti-democratic
| because it bypasses the democratic political bodies who's
| actual job it is to actually make the updates.
|
| The problem with US constitutional law right now is that
| a lot of people want certain things to be
| "constitutional" when there's no actual consensus for
| doing so (a consensus isn't 50% + 1, it's "pretty much
| everyone agrees").
| iostream24 wrote:
| Actual originalism is impossible, even if you isolated
| yourself from social cults seeking to cultivate corrupt
| judges like the federalist society.
|
| All humans have inherent biases and lenses and
| perspectives. Do jury duty sometime. Actual factual
| recollections vary in details and even factual accuracy
| tablespoon wrote:
| > Actual originalism is impossible...
|
| In an absolutely pure form? Sure, but that's true of most
| good things (e.g. justice). That doesn't mean the concept
| is bad or that shouldn't be pursued to the greatest
| degree possible, especially when the alternative is to
| have someone interpret the law like Humpty Dumpty when it
| suits them
| (https://www.fecundity.com/pmagnus/humpty.html).
| ahtihn wrote:
| > Originalism is as bad in jurisprudence as orthodoxy is
| in religions.
|
| There's nothing stopping you from rewriting the laws.
| Religions don't work that way.
|
| Although, the US constitution is almost a religious text
| the way it's treated as almost sacred. Why does anyone
| still care what the founders intended? They're not
| prophets...
| burkaman wrote:
| Where did you see a headline about judicial overreach? The
| headline here and in the article is objectively correct.
| LargeWu wrote:
| "A different theory of legal review" which here means
| coming to a predetermined policy decision, and then
| inventing legal justification for it, no matter how flimsy.
| lolinder wrote:
| I've had plenty of educated, well-informed individuals
| make _exactly_ the same legal arguments to me for
| decades. Whether or not I agree with the reasoning, it 's
| not hard for me to believe that the Supreme Court
| justices believed the principles they're following _long_
| before they arrived at this decision.
|
| You can disagree with the legal justification, but that
| you disagree is not evidence that it was invented to
| achieve a specific goal.
| philosopher1234 wrote:
| Because its not provable. But it is still true.
|
| Sticking our heads in the sand because theres still
| percentage points of doubt leads to disaster.
| xyzzyz wrote:
| The headlines aren't entirely wrong. If you look at the
| conservative majority opinions, you'll find that indeed, it's
| about the relevant legal issues, ie. what the law actually
| says. On the other hand, if you read liberal dissents, they're
| mostly about what they think appropriate policy should be.
|
| In this particular case, the majority opinion starts off by
| quoting the relevant statute and analyzing its meaning, whereas
| the dissent starts off by saying (quoting) that "climate change
| is the most pressing environmental challenge of our time", and
| continues with a long litany of how bad it is.
|
| Really, I find the entire thing to be rather crazy: if the
| Congress wants EPA to regulate emissions the way they tried to
| do, all it needs to do is to pass a law explicitly instructing
| it to do so. Of course, it won't, because there is no political
| will in Congress to pass this. At the same time, the EPA's
| argument in this case was that the Congress has _already
| delegated this to EPA_. Considering that the Congress won't
| pass a law confirming that yes, it did in fact delegate
| authority to execute these particular regulations (which,
| again, would render the entire SCOTUS decision irrelevant), I
| find the EPA's argument of rather dubious quality.
| JamesBarney wrote:
| The roe v Wade decision seemed to follow a similar pattern
| with the conservative opinion being about how there isn't
| really a basis for a constitutional right to an abortion up
| to viability (seems true) and the liberal dissenting opinion
| was about how the decision was going to be bad for women
| (also true) and how this opens up the floodgates to reversing
| a lot of other important supreme court decisions ( not sure
| how true that is)
| scarface74 wrote:
| Is there a constitutional right to marry someone of another
| race? (Loving vs Virginia). Is there a constitutional right
| for gay people to get married (Obergefell vs Hodges)? Is
| there a constitutional right to buy contraceptive?
|
| Guess which two of those Thomas wants to revisit and the
| one he probably doesn't?
| TylerE wrote:
| I'm waiting for the first lawsuit against the DEA. What in
| the constitution gives the right for the Fedwral Government
| to regulate what we voluntarily put in our bodies or grow
| in our back yards?
| baggy_trough wrote:
| Nothing whatsoever. That's why most of what the federal
| government does is unlawful.
| EricDeb wrote:
| And this is where their hypocrisy will show because they
| will absolutely find a way to allow the DEA to remain
| tick_tock_tick wrote:
| Consumption isn't illegal just possession.
| gernb wrote:
| Seriously curious. If I consume somthing, don't I now
| posses it (it's in my body) or didn't I have to posses it
| for at least a moment (in order to consume it)
|
| I'm just curious in what ways this distinction would play
| out. I can see if "consuming" was illegal and
| "possession" was not logically works but it's harder to
| see how "consuming" is legal and "possession" is not
| doesn't effectively make "consuming" also illegal.
| bashinator wrote:
| Why stop at "grow"? I don't see why the federal
| government should have any say over in what chemicals I
| might want to purchase or manufacture.
| TylerE wrote:
| There is a bit of a your fist/my face issue. I don't want
| my neighbor operating a meth lab in his shed or building
| an atomic pile.
| bashinator wrote:
| Devil's advocate: (I won't take on the atomic pile
| question since we're talking about consumables)
|
| Operating a meth lab is dangerous _because_ it's illegal.
| If it were regulated and licensed, it would be no more
| dangerous than say operating an 18-wheel rig.
| tablespoon wrote:
| > I'm waiting for the first lawsuit against the DEA. What
| in the constitution gives the right for the Fedwral
| Government to regulate what we voluntarily put in our
| bodies or grow in our back yards?
|
| My bet? "Interstate commerce."
| benmmurphy wrote:
| it feels kind of inconsistent. prior to roe being
| overturned the governments were able to regulate abortion
| to some extent. i assume some abortion medical procedures
| required a licensed doctor and i assume abortion medicine
| was regulated by the FDA. but at the same time the
| government was limited in how it could restrict abortion
| and this was justified by some privacy right which
| somehow didn't apply to the FDA regulation of abortion or
| medical licensing related to abortion. also, this same
| privacy right couldn't be invoked to allow you to take
| other medicines you might want. if you look at the
| arguments made in Roe v Wade I'm pretty sure you could
| claim you are taking recreational drugs as part of your
| marital sex routine and therefore this right to privacy
| should be extended to these drugs. i think if you
| honestly extended the general principal of roe v wade
| then a let of laws would be unconstitutional.
| cronix wrote:
| And if you're not engaged in any sort of commerce? Just
| hanging out on your own land consuming what you grew for
| yourself, like carrots?
| plainolrandy wrote:
| Believe it or not, also interstate commerce.
|
| Seriously.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wickard_v._Filburn
| giantg2 wrote:
| Yep. They can prevent growing your own wheat (in large
| quantity) because it impacts interstate wheat markets.
| You can literally bend this to apply to anything on that
| logic.
| TylerE wrote:
| Doesn't work if it's produced, distributed, and consumed
| entirely in a single state.
| ceejayoz wrote:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gonzales_v._Raich says
| otherwise.
|
| https://www.oyez.org/cases/2004/03-1454
|
| > The majority argued that Congress could ban local
| marijuana use because it was part of such a "class of
| activities": the national marijuana market. Local use
| affected supply and demand in the national marijuana
| market, making the regulation of intrastate use
| "essential" to regulating the drug's national market.
| quickthrowman wrote:
| Incorrect:
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wickard_v._Filburn
| tablespoon wrote:
| > Doesn't work if it's produced, distributed, and
| consumed entirely in a single state.
|
| No, according to the Supreme Court, it's interstate
| commerce if a butterfly bats its wings and the resulting
| hurricane causes someone to buy a raincoat in another
| state.
|
| IIRC, the actual case involved someone growing wheat
| their own land that they didn't even plan to sell. But
| since wheat was sold in interstate commerce, the court
| said any activity involving involving wheat could be
| regulated as interstate commerce.
| giantg2 wrote:
| I've had a similar thought process. We had an implicit
| right to privacy for abortion, but not for practically
| anything else (a couple other things, but some of them
| were also bizarre. Like how can you have privacy over who
| you marry if you're required to get a license before hand
| and they can still ban some classes/conditions but not
| others). If it is a right, it should apply universally.
| If not, then we need to start creating those rights in
| the constitution (where it requires larger agreement and
| isn't as easy to overturn). But maybe I'm crazy.
| cronix wrote:
| > We had an implicit right to privacy for abortion,
|
| RBG didn't see it that way.
|
| "Roe isn't really about the woman's choice, is it?"
| Ginsburg said. "It's about the doctor's freedom to
| practice...it wasn't woman-centered, it was physician-
| centered."
|
| "My criticism of Roe is that it seemed to have stopped
| the momentum on the side of change," Ginsburg said. She
| would've preferred that abortion rights be secured more
| gradually, in a process that included state legislatures
| and the courts, she added. Ginsburg also was troubled
| that the focus on Roe was on a right to privacy, rather
| than women's rights."
|
| https://www.law.uchicago.edu/news/justice-ruth-bader-
| ginsbur...
| specialist wrote:
| More specifically, the dissenting opinion argues that the
| right to abortion logically follows from all the prior
| rights granted to women, eg own property, voting, divorce.
| JamesBarney wrote:
| It's my understanding it's argued the right to an
| abortion is given from the 14th amendment.
|
| I didn't really see anything from the dissenting opinion
| about how the right to an abortion is given by women's
| right to voting, property or divorce (?).
| specialist wrote:
| How could they have been more explicit? From the dissent
| (emphasis mine):
|
| JUSTICE BREYER, JUSTICE SOTOMAYOR, and JUSTICE KAGAN,
| dissenting.
|
| For half a century, Roe v. Wade, and Planned Parenthood
| of Southeastern Pa. v. Casey, have protected the liberty
| and equality of women. Roe held, and Casey reaffirmed,
| that the Constitution safeguards a woman's right to
| decide for herself whether to bear a child. Roe held, and
| Casey reaffirmed, that in the first stages of pregnancy,
| the government could not make that choice for women. The
| government could not control a woman's body or the course
| of a woman's life: It could not determine what the
| woman's future would be. _Respecting a woman as an
| autonomous being, and granting her full equality, meant
| giving her substantial choice over this most personal and
| most consequential of all life decisions._
|
| ...
|
| Whatever the exact scope of the coming laws, one result
| of today's decision is certain: _the curtailment of
| women's rights, and of their status as free and equal
| citizens._ Yesterday, the Constitution guaranteed that a
| woman confronted with an unplanned pregnancy could
| (within reasonable limits) make her own decision about
| whether to bear a child, with all the life-transforming
| consequences that act involves. And in thus safeguarding
| each woman's reproductive freedom, _the Constitution also
| protected "[t]he ability of women to participate equally
| in [this Nation's] economic and social life."._ But no
| longer. As of today, this Court holds, a State can always
| force a woman to give birth, prohibiting even the
| earliest abortions. A State can thus transform what, when
| freely undertaken, is a wonder into what, when forced,
| may be a nightmare. Some women, especially women of
| means, will find ways around the State's assertion of
| power. Others--those without money or childcare or the
| ability to take time off from work--will not be so
| fortunate. Maybe they will try an un- safe method of
| abortion, and come to physical harm, or even die. Maybe
| they will undergo pregnancy and have a child, but at
| significant personal or familial cost. At the least, they
| will incur the cost of losing control of their lives. The
| Constitution will, today's majority holds, provide no
| shield, despite its guarantees of liberty and equality
| for all.
|
| ...
|
| _The right Roe and Casey recognized does not stand
| alone. To the contrary, the Court has linked it for
| decades to other settled freedoms involving bodily
| integrity, familial relationships, and procreation._ Most
| obviously, the right to terminate a pregnancy arose
| straight out of the right to purchase and use
| contraception. In turn, those rights led, more recently,
| to rights of same-sex intimacy and marriage. _They are
| all part of the same constitutional fabric, protecting
| autonomous decisionmaking over the most personal of life
| decisions._
| comex wrote:
| The argument is that the right to abortion follows from
| the 14th Amendment's guarantee that "liberty" is not
| deprived without due process. This is linked to other
| rights that were derived from the same clause, including
| contraception, cross-racial marriage, and same-sex
| intimacy and marriage. Some of the text you quoted also
| seems to hint at (but does not explicitly discuss) the
| other clauses of the 14th Amendment, the one about
| "privileges and immunities of citizens" and the one about
| "equal protection of the laws". Other parts you quoted
| are simply arguments for _why_ abortion is part of
| "liberty".
|
| Regarding your previous examples:
|
| - Right to own property: In _Kirchberg v. Feenstra_ , a
| law giving sole control of marital property to the
| husband was found unconstitutional under the Equal
| Protection Clause. So it's related to _Roe v. Wade_ 's
| Due Process argument, but not quite the same.
|
| - Right to vote: This was explicitly granted by the 19th
| Amendment. Before that, the Supreme Court had ruled in
| _Minor v. Happersett_ that the 14th Amendment 's
| Privileges and Immunities Clause did _not_ give women the
| right to vote, though one might imagine that the _Roe_
| court (or the _Dobbs_ dissenters) would have disagreed
| (or would have found that right in a different part of
| the 14th Amendment).
|
| - Right to divorce: I can't find any major Supreme Court
| cases trying to establish such a right. All fifty states
| allow for no-fault divorce, but that's grounded in state
| law and is only true as of 2010.
| paintman252 wrote:
| That's not how law works
| remarkEon wrote:
| Indeed, the reaction to this from lawmakers is really
| perplexing. They're claiming that the Court is "rogue" or
| something, but if you actually read what they wrote they are
| returning power from the executive to congress (or making it
| clear that Congress always had this power, not the
| executive). The reaction makes me think there are many
| lawmakers who are rather uninterested in making laws, and
| instead actually do want to see unelected Judges and
| executive bureaucrats implement their preferred policy
| options instead of doing the (hard) work of writing and
| passing those policies themselves.
| WalterBright wrote:
| If lawmakers leave the legislation to the Court, they can't
| be blamed for the outcome, and they remain free to
| grandstand for the cameras.
| brandonr49 wrote:
| I suspect there are a great many existing laws that congress
| would not pass today.
| ceejayoz wrote:
| > If you look at the conservative majority opinions, you'll
| find that indeed, it's about the relevant legal issues, ie.
| what the law actually says.
|
| Qualified immunity and asset forfeiture would like a word.
| drewrv wrote:
| This term alone the "conservative majority opinions" have
| been downright contradictory on "relevant legal issues".
| Women now have a right to defend their life with a gun but
| cannot defend their life with healthcare.
|
| It's clear that they are simply using "originalism" to
| cherry pick what falls in line with their personal
| opinions.
| xyzzyz wrote:
| > Women now have a right to defend their life with a gun
| but cannot defend their life with healthcare.
|
| You are just illustrating my exact point. Right to keep
| and bear arms is explicitly secured in the Constitution
| that it "shall not be infringed", whereas nothing of this
| sort is clearly and explicitly said about abortion
| rights. Here, again, conservatives focus on what the law
| actually says, and liberals focus on their preferred
| policy, and if their preferred policy is not to be
| clearly and explicitly found in the law, it is instead
| found in the "emanations of the penumbra".
| joshuamorton wrote:
| > Right to keep and bear arms is explicitly secured in
| the Constitution that it "shall not be infringed",
|
| Only in the context of a well-regulated militia, at least
| until Scalia amended the Constitution in Heller.
| ceejayoz wrote:
| > Right to keep and bear arms is explicitly secured in
| the Constitution
|
| An _individual_ right to keep and bear arms was _newly
| discovered_ in 2008, in a 5-4 decision. It took 220 years
| for a single vote majority to find evidence of it.
|
| > it is instead found in the "emanations of the penumbra"
|
| That's a funny way of describing the Ninth Amendment.
| InTheArena wrote:
| This is a (deliberate) misreading.
|
| The Supreme Court stated that you could not apply handgun
| laws in a way that privileged one group over another.
| Historically, if you were black, no gun. White and knew
| the governor? Weapon up.
|
| The supreme court's policies have been pretty
| straightforward if you read the constitution. The
| legislature has the responsibility to write the law. Not
| the supreme court (which is un-elected), not bureaucrats
| (who are un-elected) - without explicit law to make it
| possible.
|
| The fact that everyone is screaming that an unelected
| bunch of mostly white folks are returning power to
| congress and telling them - no, be democratic - reveals a
| awful lot about the current state of the United States.
| ceejayoz wrote:
| > The Supreme Court stated that you could not apply
| handgun laws in a way that privileged one group over
| another.
|
| Claiming this in the same post you accuse someone else of
| "deliberate misreading" is a bit funny.
|
| New York State Rifle & Pistol Association Inc. v. Bruen
| goes _substantially_ further than that.
| johndhi wrote:
| Congress wouldn't ratify 99% of court decisions even when the
| text of their bill is very clear l. The argument you make in
| the last sentence of your post is very weak.
| DFHippie wrote:
| > if the Congress wants EPA to regulate emissions the way
| they tried to do, all it needs to do is to pass a law
| explicitly instructing it to do so. Of course, it won't,
| because there is no political will in Congress to pass this.
|
| This doesn't accurately represent the present situation on
| this or really any topic. It makes is sound like members of
| Congress simply don't care. Unless the filibuster is removed
| or reformed, a party wishing to legislate on any
| controversial issue needs a super majority in the Senate to
| pass the legislation just in that chamber of Congress. They
| also need control of the House and the presidency. There is
| plenty of political will in the Democratic caucus to pass
| this legislation, but due to gerrymandering in the House and
| the inherently unrepresentative nature of the Senate they
| cannot get enough votes to pass legislation, however much
| they may wish to, on the rare occasions the stars align and
| they have control over both the executive and legislative
| branches. The Republicans need control over only one of these
| three choke points to stop legislation. And now that they
| have a generation of control over the Supreme Court, and the
| Court has demonstrated that they regard legal argument as
| post facto justification for political decisions, the
| Democrats are well and truly screwed. There may be some
| Republicans who secretly would like to do something about any
| one of the major catastrophes facing the nation and the
| world, and some may claim this in public, but because their
| co-partisans are making total political war on non-
| conservatives at the moment they can't actually do anything
| or they face the mob.
|
| Basically, "political will" isn't the issue. It's our
| crappily designed "democracy" mixed with total political war,
| strident propaganda, and millennialists who are happy to let
| the world go to hell because they think they're going to
| heaven.
| efitz wrote:
| In my mind all this means that things are working as
| intended. The Constitution was set up to limit what the
| federal government can do, and the Congress (particularly
| the senate) was set up to make it hard to do things that
| did not have significant support over and above a simple
| majority.
|
| FDR set up a bureaucratic state to try to get around this,
| but it's not what the constitution envisioned.
|
| I for one am happy that unelected bureaucrats (who the
| voters have no way to get rid of) now have less power, and
| that politicians who can be held accountable now have to
| act explicitly to make big changes. Again, working as
| designed.
| DFHippie wrote:
| > I for one am happy that unelected bureaucrats (who the
| voters have no way to get rid of) now have less power,
| and that politicians who can be held accountable now have
| to act explicitly to make big changes. Again, working as
| designed.
|
| Politicians are held accountable for _not_ doing things
| as well. In our current system whoever is in power is
| held accountable, even if they didn 't do anything
| because they were blocked by our byzantine form of
| government. But the politicians who should be held
| accountable are the ones who blocked it. Do you view this
| as a good system?
|
| Consider a scenario:
|
| President Bob and the Do Something party are in power.
| They really, really, really want to do something.
| Everyone is yelling at them to do something! Something
| must be done! But the Do Nothing party uses some
| procedural mechanism, or their control of the cloak room,
| or the secret password written on the back of the
| Constitution, to keep anything from happening. The public
| doesn't understand the system, because few people do; all
| they see is that NOTHING IS GETTING DONE. The Do Nothing
| party is quite pleased to stick all the blame on the Do
| Something party. They don't enlighten the voters. Even
| while they block any action they go on TV and solemnly
| intone about the fecklessness of the Do Something party.
| They said they would do something! Look what they do when
| in power! So feckless! So the voters punish the Do
| Something party at the polls.
|
| This is more or less how our system of government works.
|
| Sometimes something needs to be done. But we can't do
| anything!*
|
| * Footnote: this isn't strictly true. The Do Something
| party will cooperate with the Do Nothing party on those
| rare occasions when the Do Nothingers actually want to do
| something. The Do Nothing party will not reciprocate.
| iostream24 wrote:
| Nice rant, however you are ignoring the dissenting
| opinion above, and your comfortable tone indicates
| satisfaction with the status quo, which generally never
| needed more support, and brands you as one who would side
| with power everytime. I wouldn't trust you in my
| organization.
| idontpost wrote:
| gernb wrote:
| Are you just repeating that the OP said?
|
| > On the other hand, if you read liberal dissents, they're
| mostly about what they think appropriate policy should be.
|
| The Supreme Court is not supposed to set policy. It's only
| supposed to rule on if the policy set by others (Congress) is
| constitutional or not.
|
| If the EPA could do anthing to stop emmisions, banning power
| plants from existing at all would satisfy "do anything to
| stop emmisions", so would "depopulating the planet" (no
| people, no need for power plants). Those seems like they make
| it pretty clear they need specific limits. They were given
| specific limits. The court confirmed that.
|
| Congress needs to increase what they're allowed to regulate
| and how if they want more power. It's frustrating that that's
| so hard to come by but it's hard to imagine how else it could
| be
| syrrim wrote:
| If congress disagreed with this interpretation, they could
| pass a law explicitly ruling it out. The power of the supreme
| court in this regard relies on the fact that congress has
| great difficulty passing any law at all, and thus whatever
| interpretation given by the supreme court is likely to
| persist.
|
| >If you look at the conservative majority opinions, you'll
| find that indeed, it's about the relevant legal issues, ie.
| what the law actually says.
|
| The dissertation focuses on that. The actual reasoning might
| be based on something else. The court is strongly interested
| in projecting an image of being neutral, and of only going
| off of the wording of laws, rather than involving their own
| biases. Thus, the majority opinion should be read as an
| attempt to assign such a motive to their decision, whereas
| the dissenting opinions attempt to assign the opposite
| motive. That is, they attempt to suggest that the majority
| ruled this way because they are insufficiently worried about
| climate change.
| tablespoon wrote:
| > If congress disagreed with this interpretation, they
| could pass a law explicitly ruling it out.
|
| But that would be backwards and wrong (like a default-allow
| firewall rule).
| rat87 wrote:
| No that would be correct. Congress delegated the power of
| they don't want to do that anymore they should take it
| away
| tablespoon wrote:
| > No that would be correct. Congress delegated the power
| of they don't want to do that anymore they should take it
| away
|
| No, they didn't. Congress delegating to the EPA (for
| instance) the power to regulate CFCs to save the ozone
| layer, does not also delegate the power to the EPA to
| regulate CO2 to solve global warming.
| ceejayoz wrote:
| The Clean Air Act didn't say "regulate CFCs", though. It
| told the EPA to regulate _pollutants_.
|
| https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/USCODE-2013-title42/h
| tml...
|
| > The Administrator shall periodically review the list
| established by this subsection and publish the results
| thereof and, where appropriate, revise such list by rule,
| adding pollutants which present, or may present, through
| inhalation or other routes of exposure, a threat of
| adverse human health effects (including, but not limited
| to, substances which are known to be, or may reasonably
| be anticipated to be, carcinogenic, mutagenic,
| teratogenic, neurotoxic, which cause reproductive
| dysfunction, or which are acutely or chronically toxic)
| or adverse environmental effects whether through ambient
| concentrations, bioaccumulation, deposition, or
| otherwise, but not including releases subject to
| regulation under subsection (r) of this section as a
| result of emissions to the air.
| xyzzyz wrote:
| In fact, it would be even worse than you say, because it
| would not be applied in a principled and consistent way.
| In actual practice, it would be default-allow if
| convenient, and default-forbid if not.
| aaron_m04 wrote:
| > [...] if the Congress wants EPA to regulate emissions the
| way they tried to do, all it needs to do is to pass a law
| explicitly instructing it to do so. Of course, it won't,
| because there is no political will in Congress to pass this.
|
| At this stage in the climate crisis, we really need to be
| focused on direct results of political actions. The majority
| of the US population wants regulations to fight climate
| change, and the consensus among climate scientists is that if
| we don't aggressively cut carbon emissions immediately,
| things will get really out of hand. Therefore, if the Supreme
| Court is reducing the EPA's ability to help this, it is both
| anti-democratic and massively harmful to the public good. It
| really doesn't matter that the EPA is executive overreach
| according to some document written 230 years ago.
| xyzzyz wrote:
| No, I strongly disagree. If elected representatives cannot
| agree on what is proper policy and pass it as law, I for
| one do not want some nameless bureaucrats be the ones
| calling the shots. Unelected bureaucrats creating policy as
| they wish, unconstrained by what the law actually says, is
| what actually is undemocratic.
|
| Look, even as there might be general agreement among the
| people to fight climate change, there might be little to no
| agreement among the people as to how to actually proceed
| doing that. Because of this, you cannot say that blocking
| EPA here is undemocratic, because " majority of the US
| population wants regulations to fight climate change": it
| is very much untrue that majority of people want the exact
| policy that EPA tries to introduce, and have it be executed
| by EPA. It's like saying that majority of US population
| want regulations to improve their commute times, so SCOTUS
| cannot block DoT from eminent-domaining land through cities
| and building 10 lane highways on it. Some people want that,
| sure, but others want more trains or zoning regulations to
| improve walkability, and there is no majority agreement
| here on the details of the policy. You certainly don't want
| unelected bureaucrats with no accountability to voters be
| deciding major issues like that.
| sterlind wrote:
| even Scalia thought Thomas was a kook for inventing the "major
| questions doctrine." where in the Constitution can you find
| this? separation of powers, apparently, if you're looking
| through a seer stone in a hat at some golden tablets.
|
| the majority invented the doctrine to neuter Federal agencies.
| [deleted]
| ComputerGuru wrote:
| PDF of the ruling:
| https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/21pdf/20-1530_n758.pdf
|
| As usual, it's more nuanced than the headline.
| jimmygrapes wrote:
| I truly wish more people were legally literate, and considering
| how much intellectual overlap there is between software
| engineering and legal writing I would have expected better from
| the HN crowd, but so far all I see is a lot of talking point
| parroting about partisanship from those who clearly haven't
| even tried to read the rulings.
| egg1 wrote:
| Seriously, if just a fraction of "intellectuals" in other
| fields took some time to read the past 50-odd years worth of
| Supreme Court rulings, there wouldn't be all this pointless
| bickering over basic facts. If anything, the Warren/Burger
| courts were egregious in making up constitutional rights out
| of thin air based on their moral beliefs, and not the letter
| of the law. It's a shame that it takes a far-right Supreme
| Court for people to finally understand that it's Congress's
| job to pass new laws, not the judiciary branch.
| iostream24 wrote:
| You clearly have a political bias.
| scottLobster wrote:
| Given the quality of the conversation on Reddit (top-voted
| memes calling Justice Barrett a handmaiden and so forth), HN
| is still a cut above :)
| InTheArena wrote:
| Reddit is beyond toxic at the moment.
| iostream24 wrote:
| This place is more unfriendly, to be honest, as we get
| more knives in the back than frontal assaults, which are
| fairly easy to fend off or disconnect from. I can at
| least up and down vote comments on Reddit. Here I just
| get greyed out and can't hit back
| MaxLeiter wrote:
| I think its quite fair for people to be upset about
| multiple justices _lying_ about Roe being settled law.
| Spivak wrote:
| Nobody in the comments is saying that the Supreme Court is
| wrong in the sense that the logic doesn't follow. Of course
| it's nuanced and up to interpretation, that's why most
| decisions are split -- and usually split on "conservative (do
| what I say) and liberal (do what I mean).
|
| The reason people are mad is because the court is relitigating
| long settled cases which breaks the main principle of the court
| which is don't break userspace without damn good reason. We
| know they think the decisions were made incorrectly but the bar
| of "this is crucially important we fix" I don't think it is
| being met. Instead it's at best tone deaf to the real life
| effects of their decisions and more likely motivated to achieve
| specific partisan legislative outcomes.
| rory wrote:
| > _The reason people are mad is because the court is
| relitigating long settled cases_
|
| How many of those same people were mad about Obergefell,
| which did just that?
| zionic wrote:
| >The reason people are mad is because the court is
| relitigating long settled cases which breaks the main
| principle of the court
|
| A bad decision is a bad decision no matter how long it's been
| in effect. If anything, following "precedent" is what got us
| into this mess in the first place. We could have ripped the
| bandaid off decades ago on abortion and fixed it then. Now
| it's going to be much more messy.
| tablespoon wrote:
| > A bad decision is a bad decision no matter how long it's
| been in effect. If anything, following "precedent" is what
| got us into this mess in the first place. We could have
| ripped the bandaid off decades ago on abortion and fixed it
| then. Now it's going to be much more messy.
|
| IMHO, what actually got us in this mess was the Supreme
| Court putting itself into a situation where it's regularly
| making momentous political decisions, rather that resolving
| finer points of law, resolving little corner cases, etc. It
| might be expedient to use its power to set social and
| economic policy, but that doesn't mean it's right.
| InTheArena wrote:
| It seems like they are trying to step back with this (and
| force the regulators to have law as well).
|
| Given the horrifically vitriolic hate-filled partisan
| crap-fest we are in - it is much too late for that.
| iostream24 wrote:
| This is one of the most reasonable comments I've read today,
| and yet it's grayed out. That's not acceptable. HN is being
| taken over by bullies and I'm tired of not even have my basic
| comment voting rights.
| bcrosby95 wrote:
| Most decisions are actually not split. It's just that the
| controversial ones get all the press. No one is gonna get
| fired up about 9-0 or 8-1 decisions.
| panda-giddiness wrote:
| This is incorrect - most cases _are_ split. The most common
| outcome is 9-0 (about a third of cases), but the second
| most common split is 5-4.
|
| This shouldn't be surprising - controversial cases are more
| likely to end up before the Supreme Court than mundane
| ones.
|
| [1] http://supremecourtdatabase.org/analysisFrequencies.php
| ?sid=...
| midislack wrote:
| No, they ElimiNATED administrative rule making and private
| courts. This is far bigger than then EPA.
| DantesKite wrote:
| I feel like a lot of people here would do well to try and
| understand the role of the Supreme Court, instead of treating it
| like a second version of Congress.
| kevin_b_er wrote:
| But that's just what it is now, isn't it? A political entity
| driven by political goals. With an outsized power to
| reinterpret laws and rules to suit a certain group's political
| goals.
|
| It may have started with a certain role, but it is now a
| political entity. I treat it as such.
| kweingar wrote:
| On constitutional issues, the Supreme Court is absolutely a
| second version of Congress, except they're unelected and mostly
| choose their successors.
|
| It is a side-channel for lawyers and activists on all sides of
| the political spectrum to achieve what they couldn't achieve in
| the legislature.
|
| Judicial review was a mistake.
| yieldcrv wrote:
| That's too complicated for most people. Although it does pain
| me to see people using their energy so ineffectively.
|
| Protester: "6 unelected officials can't decide what I can do!"
|
| Supreme Court: "That's literally what we just said!"
|
| If Congress punts issues around indefinitely for its own
| political wheeling and dealing, it still cannot outsource a
| decision on those issues to other branches of the federal
| government. Whether thats to the executive branch or the
| judicial branch. Not hard! Except more of your _elected_
| representatives!
|
| If consensus is _impossible_ then that 's the reality we live
| in, the means won't be able to justify the ends, you have to
| work within the consensus mechanism prescribed _on every
| topic_.
| colinmhayes wrote:
| Congress giving the EPA which is staffed by domain experts
| the ability to decide how much pollution is acceptable is a
| good thing actually. Why should congressmen be expected to
| figure that out?
| lolinder wrote:
| And the court didn't rule that Congress can't do that, the
| court ruled that Congress _didn 't_ do that. Congress can
| absolutely go write a law giving the EPA that authority,
| and they _should_. But if that 's not what the law says,
| then that's not what the EPA can do.
|
| We can't be opposed to police creatively interpreting laws
| to target minorities and be okay with the EPA creatively
| interpreting laws to target fossil fuel companies. Just
| because the latter is in the service of a good cause
| doesn't make it legal. The ends do _not_ justify the means
| --down that way lies peril.
| InTheArena wrote:
| The police have decided that the best way to fight crime is
| to track my phone and every text message at every time.
| After all, they are the experts!
| seoaeu wrote:
| > Protester: "6 unelected officials can't decide what I can
| do!"
|
| > Supreme Court: "That's literally what we just said!"
|
| Bullshit. The court was perfectly happy telling millions of
| people they had no right to an abortion. They're just a bunch
| of partisan hacks
| jimmaswell wrote:
| I'm fully pro-abortion but I have to admit Roe's legal
| argument was a big stretch at best. Even RBG admitted so. I
| wish they'd have left it alone but moreso I wish congress
| made any attempt in 50 years to codify it into law.
| dang wrote:
| Please don't cross into flamewar like this. It's not what
| this site is for, and it destroys what it is for.
|
| Even in a divisive thread like this one, your comment here
| stands out as breaking the site guidelines. Would you mind
| reviewing them and sticking to the rules when posting here?
| We'd be grateful.
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
| the_doctah wrote:
| >The court was perfectly happy telling millions of people
| they had no right to an abortion.
|
| This is not what happened at all. They ruled against the
| federal government's ability to regulate it.
| fzeroracer wrote:
| No, wrong. Incorrect. Roe v Wade was explicitly a ruling
| saying that abortion should be broadly allowed, and that
| no government (neither state nor federal) can regulate it
| (with caveats). Overturning Roe v Wade has given that
| power back to the state government and to the federal
| government.
|
| None of this had anything to do with the federal
| government regulating it. It was the court saying it was
| a right not to be infringed upon.
| seoaeu wrote:
| Specifically, the Supreme Court took power from women and
| gave it "back" to the government
| the_doctah wrote:
| >It was the court saying it was a right not to be
| infringed upon.
|
| Roe v Wade was ruled on the basis of the 14th amendment
| due process clause regarding the right to privacy. Anyone
| who thought this ruling was an iron-clad blanket right to
| abortion was fooling themselves.
|
| Abortion is not specifically enumerated in the
| constitution. Just like everything else not in the
| constitution, it's up to States to make their own laws
| regarding it.
| colinmhayes wrote:
| Dobbs effectively have full control to the states. Unless
| the federal government can make a commerce clause
| argument any law they make prohibiting/legalizing
| abortion will be overturned due to the 10th amendment.
| mc32 wrote:
| That is the job of the Congress. They are derelict in their
| duties. Even RGB said the decision was based on shaky
| arguments.
| yieldcrv wrote:
| that is a very popular perspective, which reinforces
| exactly what I said about it being too complicated for
| people.
|
| Congress outsourced the decision to the judicial branch,
| the judicial branch said its for the _elected_
| representatives, aka Congress, to decide. Barring any
| supremacy from Congress, state laws and the consensus
| mechanisms of those states are the only laws available.
|
| Congress outsourced emissions decision to the executive
| branch, the judicial branch said its for the _elected_
| representatives, aka Congress, to decide. Barring any
| supremacy from Congress, state laws and the consensus
| mechanisms of those states are the only laws available.
| seoaeu wrote:
| Again I call bullshit. There's no way in a million years
| these same clowns would apply the same logic to gun
| control. This is all just motivated reasoning because the
| court wants to advance a conservative agenda
| vwcx wrote:
| Good point. It's interesting to think about this
| outsourcing as a relief valve Congress uses. Feels like a
| function of the monetary stakes for any decision are too
| high. Even freshmen congressional reps are too soaked in
| the financial implications of their own function that
| they punt their appointed power to the judicial branch.
| dang wrote:
| We detached this comment from
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31933692.
| peter422 wrote:
| But then it's all very self-contradictory. How are people
| supposed to have faith in the court when it makes a decision,
| reaffirms it many times over nearly 50 years, then just
| changes its mind on a dime?
|
| The judicial branch has a responsibility to itself for self-
| consistent reasoning, which it has completely abandoned this
| term.
|
| The court is not supposed to change dramatically with every
| election, that's what the legislative branch does. And yet,
| the court did.
|
| It's legal of course, the court can do what it wants. But it
| can (and has) lost approval and legitimacy, which at the end
| of the day were it's most valuable currency.
| scottLobster wrote:
| It doesn't change dramatically with EVERY election, it just
| changed dramatically with the last one due to a lot of
| judges retiring/dying off at once. Just a generational
| phenomenon.
|
| SCOTUS leaned liberal (in the sense that liberal justices
| tend to believe in larger-scope interpretations of
| Constitution) for a long time, now for the first time in a
| while they're leaning conservative (the Constitution says
| what it says and if we want it to say something different
| Congress should pass an amendment).
|
| Honestly I find myself falling into the more Conservative
| camp from a judicial perspective. I'm all for gay marriage
| and a woman's right to choose, but I feel like we used
| SCOTUS to do an end-run around Congress to get both at a
| federal level, and from my layperson's reading the
| constitutional justifications for both feel stretched to
| me. In the same sense that you can use creative
| interpretations of the Bible to justify basically anything,
| you can do similar things with the Constitution. That isn't
| how the system is supposed to work
| peter422 wrote:
| It doesn't matter what camp you fall into, or if you
| think the courts decisions in the past were "wrong"
| (though obviously there is no absolute right or wrong
| interpreting how a 250 year old document interfaces with
| modern society).
|
| The court as an institution has a responsibility to
| maintain some sort of consistency if it wants any
| legitimacy.
|
| How can people make decisions about where and how to live
| if their fundamental rights are changing year to year
| (and most recently being taken away)?
|
| You are also not aligned with the current public opinion.
| The court is at its lowest approval rating ever, and that
| is before overturning Roe. If the court cannot maintain
| it's appearance of legitimacy then it essentially fails
| as an institution. The court could have chosen to move
| more slowly, with more restraint, but it didn't.
| josephcsible wrote:
| What part of this argument wouldn't apply to Plessy v.
| Ferguson being overturned by Brown v. Board of Education?
| scottLobster wrote:
| The whole idea of the court is to be above public
| opinion. This is not the first time in history that the
| court has made sweeping overturns of previous precedent
| that large swaths of voters disagreed with. It's also not
| the first time the legitimacy of those rulings has been
| challenged. Remember Eisenhower sending the 101st
| Airborne and federalizing the Arkansas National Guard to
| enforce integration? Or Kennedy doing similar for
| Alabama? Those actions were enforcement of a
| controversial SCOTUS ruling against the local public
| opinion.
|
| And you can say "yeah but racists were the bad guys", but
| that's not how any of this works, regardless of what
| narratives we decide to apply to history after the fact.
| Did the court's lack of perceived legitimacy in
| Birmingham or Little Rock (among many other places that
| required less extreme enforcement) cause it to fail as an
| institution?
|
| The court only fails as an institution when it's
| decisions are no longer enforced. Last I checked we
| haven't reached that point yet. And even if we do, worth
| remembering SCOTUS survived the last civil war intact.
| peter422 wrote:
| So your argument is because the court regained hard
| earned approval in the past it is guaranteed to do so
| again?
|
| Or the court can function perpetually against the public
| will?
| frumper wrote:
| His argument is that Congress should legislate these
| issues either through proper laws or constitutional
| amendments. Turns out 9 judges might disagree with the
| previous set of 9 judges. That disagreement swings both
| ways and in the absence of proper legislative action will
| become the law of the land.
| yieldcrv wrote:
| It is rare for the Supreme Court to act as a second
| Congress. When it has, those are the cases that most likely
| get overruled. Additionally, old cases with poor and
| antiquated assumptions get overturned (not relevant here,
| just showing a consistency in what is and can be expected
| to be reviewed.)
|
| Opposing sides of that court have said the exact same thing
| about Roe v Wade. _Ruth Bader Ginsberg_ even said "this is
| pretty weak, going to need Congress here", no different
| than Justice Alito on the opposite side.
|
| I think your perspective is very common, I think it is
| disingenuous for different people that should know better
| to promote that perspective. There is so much the _elected_
| representatives and the people can do. This crisis of
| confidence perspective relies on nobody actually reading
| these cases.
| PuppyTailWags wrote:
| Ruth Bader Ginsberg is most certainly not an extreme
| comparable to Alito, lol.
|
| The Supreme Court has acted as a second Congress for a
| wide variety of things. This is how miranda rights
| happened. This is how contraception was legalized. This
| is how homosexuality was legalized. This is how race
| integration was legalized. ETC.
| zeroonetwothree wrote:
| RBG argued that RvW was decided poorly but that doesn't
| mean there isn't a constitutional right to abortion.
| There are other sources that could be used for the right
| than SDP.
| CWuestefeld wrote:
| Recent history shows us many examples of SCOTUS saying "the
| Constitution doesn't let you do this", and people being up in
| arms crying "but the thing you just struck down is necessary".
|
| Folks: it's not within the Court's authority to decide what is
| a good idea and what is a bad idea. Their sole job is to
| interpret laws through the lens of the Constitution. The
| justices may well agree with your wishes of what Congress
| _could_ do, but they see that the current laws of our nation
| won 't allow Congress to do it, or at least not in that way.
|
| But even if you believe that a given law is good - that women
| should have an inalienable right to an abortion, or that there
| should be tight controls on who can carry a weapon, or whatever
| - you've got to recognize that sometimes the Constitution does
| not give the government the power to make that happen. In such
| events, you can't claim that the Court is corrupt because the
| justices won't recognize the important of what you value.
|
| Rather, you have to recognize that it's become your moral duty
| to alter the laws of the land to allow for what you seek. The
| Constitution's Article V is there precisely for this reason.
| Granted, it's a really high bar to clear, but there is a built-
| in mechanism for fixing any such bugs that we find in the
| Constitution.
| vdnkh wrote:
| You're ignoring the fact that there are several philosophies
| behind constitutional interpretation, and that the dominant
| philosophy which you list here ("sole job is to interpret
| laws through the lens of the Constitution"), also called
| Originalism, is a recent creation by Scalia.
| zionic wrote:
| This is a wonderful post and I hope it gets more visibility.
| Really nailed it here.
| jayd16 wrote:
| How can you think it's not blatant politics when they lied
| about their opinions in congressional hearings only to
| overturn Roe once they had power. How can you think that is
| in good faith?
|
| To argue, "oh whoops you didn't _do the work_ to obtain your
| _RIGHTS_ " is also simply a distraction. The US is founded on
| the concept of unenumerated rights. Do _not_ be fooled. We
| had those rights and now we don 't thanks to this new court.
| CWuestefeld wrote:
| Look at it the other way around: if the nominees are being
| questioned about what their opinions are on specific
| issues, the Congress has _already_ turned it into a
| political match. The Congress ought to be trying to probe
| for their qualifications as a justice, and I don 't think
| that one's opinion on self defense or abortion figure
| directly into that.
|
| Further, I don't buy that you truly believed the argument
| behind _Roe_ anyway. I don 't know you personally, but it's
| a good bet that you don't support the philosophy that it
| described. What _Roe_ said[1] was that a person can make
| whatever[2] treatment they individual decide (in
| consultation with their doctor) is most appropriate for
| their circumstances.
|
| But I'm betting that you don't actually agree with this, as
| evidenced that you likely haven't pursued other violations
| of it with such vehemence. So I ask you:
|
| 1. Have you taken to the streets protesting when people,
| after consulting with their doctor, have been forbidden the
| right to use marijuana medicinally?
|
| 2. Do you oppose the authority of the FDA to determine what
| medications Americans should be allowed to use, such that
| we should be able to use a pharmaceutical even if the FDA
| says it's too dangerous, or not effective enough?
|
| 3. Have you even argued against the authority of the
| government to force individuals to take covid-19
| vaccinations?
|
| If you answer "no" to any of the above, then I assert that
| your claims to believe in the argument behind _Roe_ is
| false.
|
| [1] Believe it or not, I actually support the philosophy of
| bodily autonomy. But that doesn't change the fact that the
| actual argument behind _Roe_ was a notably lousy one. This
| is precisely the point I was trying to make in my original
| comment: one 's opinions about the goodness of something
| are independent of their judgment about the legality of
| legislation under the Constitution.
|
| [2] Actually, _Roe_ 's text limits itself to just
| abortions, but it seems clear that such a principle ought
| to apply to all medical treatments in principle - that's
| why many of today's protests are framed more broadly as
| "bodily autonomy".
| jayd16 wrote:
| Being forced to carry to term is a different
| circumstance. As you say yourself, the text limits the
| ruling to abortion which even today's court has ruled as
| a unique circumstance. Women should have this right and
| not the states. I truly believe that, but my opinions are
| also a distraction...
|
| The justices lied to congress and were always going to
| overturn Roe. There's no higher judicial ground here.
| ceejayoz wrote:
| > But even if you believe that a given law is good - that
| women should have an inalienable right to an abortion, or
| that there should be tight controls on who can carry a
| weapon, or whatever - you've got to recognize that sometimes
| the Constitution does not give the government the power to
| make that happen.
|
| It does, though, via the Ninth Amendment, which explicitly
| notes that the Constitution is not an exhaustive listing of
| the rights of American citizens.
| zeroonetwothree wrote:
| As well as the "privileges and immunities" clause.
|
| The whole point of these was to avoid unenumerated rights
| being completely unprotected. The current court seems to
| think only the 1st and 2nd amendment exist.
| CWuestefeld wrote:
| There's an argument to be made there, but it's most
| certainly NOT "explicit". The 9th does say that there are
| other rights, that's pretty much its whole point. But it
| absolutely does not "explicitly" mention abortion or
| anything else.
|
| You also ignored my example of 2A, or the current
| controversy (for which I haven't yet read the argument, but
| I assume that the 10th Amendment plays into it in exactly
| the same way you're arguing for the 9th).
| ceejayoz wrote:
| It is _explicit_ in the Constitution that people have
| rights not listed in it. Those unenumerated rights are,
| by their nature, not listed, but I find it hard to credit
| the idea that Americans don 't have a right to privacy.
|
| > You also ignored my example of 2A
|
| Sure, because everyone does. The number of people arguing
| bans on personal ownership of nuclear arms are
| unconstitutional is... small. Even
| originalist/textualists seem to agree it's by no means
| absolute.
| CWuestefeld wrote:
| > > You also ignored my example of 2A
|
| > Sure, because everyone does.
|
| I don't think this is a winning argument. The fact that
| one argument - and one thought important enough to
| enumerate _actually_ explicitly - is frequently ignored
| doesn 't support the idea that another unenumerated one
| exists, and quite possibly the opposite.
|
| More specifically, most _Roe_ supporters have been
| ignoring the "bodily autonomy" philosophy all along, and
| more recently even going directly against it. It would
| seem that it's no more absolute than you believe 2A to
| be.
|
| As I wrote elsewhere in this thread:
|
| 1. Have you taken to the streets protesting when people,
| even after consulting with their doctor, have been
| forbidden the right to use marijuana medicinally?
|
| 2. Do you oppose the authority of the FDA to determine
| what medications Americans should be allowed to use, such
| that we should be able to use a pharmaceutical even if
| the FDA says it's too dangerous, or not effective enough?
|
| 3. Have you even argued against the authority of the
| government to force individuals to take covid-19
| vaccinations?
|
| If you answer "no" to any of the above, then I assert
| that your claims to believe in the "bodily autonomy"
| argument behind _Roe_ is false.
| ceejayoz wrote:
| Roe doesn't claim bodily autonomy, nor have I in this
| comments thread. Where are you getting that idea?
| CWuestefeld wrote:
| _Roe_ talks about this in terms of "privacy", saying
| that a woman in consultation with her doctor has the
| right to determine what's the best course of treatment;
| the government doesn't have the authority to take
| abortion off the table.
|
| So, how does the government get the authority to take
| marijuana off the table? How do they get the authority to
| take any other treatment off the table? And how do they
| have the authority to say that vaccination is the only
| acceptable course when covid-19 is rampant?
|
| This all seems to be the same argument, so why don't I
| hear very many Roe supporters arguing for the freedoms I
| referenced above, or at least providing answers to my
| questions? What's the principled line of philosophy that
| supports a freedom to abortion without also recognizing a
| right to medicinal marijuana or passing up a covid-19
| show (when either is done under doctor supervision)?
| ceejayoz wrote:
| > Roe talks about this in terms of "privacy", saying that
| a woman in consultation with her doctor has the right to
| determine what's the best course of treatment; the
| government doesn't have the authority to take abortion
| off the table.
|
| Roe also makes it quite clear it's not absolute:
|
| "A State may properly assert important interests in
| safeguarding health, maintaining medical standards, and
| in protecting potential life. At some point in pregnancy,
| these respective interests become sufficiently compelling
| to sustain regulation of the factors that govern the
| abortion decision. ... We, therefore, conclude that the
| right of personal privacy includes the abortion decision,
| but that this right is not unqualified and must be
| considered against important state interests in
| regulation."
|
| > So, how does the government get the authority to take
| marijuana off the table?
|
| For the same reason as Roe highlights above; that the
| right to privacy is not absolute. I think you'll find the
| leftist position on marijuana is fairly similar to the
| leftist position on abortion, though.
|
| > And how do they have the authority to say that
| vaccination is the only acceptable course when covid-19
| is rampant?
|
| They don't, and they haven't.
| CWuestefeld wrote:
| _I think you 'll find the leftist position on marijuana
| is fairly similar to the leftist position on abortion,
| though._
|
| I think that's true directionally, but not
| quantitatively. I haven't seen riots about marijuana, or
| claims that SCOTUS is corrupt.
|
| And although I can't say this about any particular
| individual, I think that statistically, the left position
| regarding covid-19 vaccinations seems to be contrary to
| the "bodily autonomy" philosophy. Admittedly, there may
| be differences in scale of risk that lead to this
| difference. But the rhetoric we're hearing today seems to
| frame abortion rights as an absolute with no room for
| such finesse. And I think it is on them to explain how to
| draw that line.
| ceejayoz wrote:
| > I haven't seen riots about marijuana...
|
| So? "You can only say it's a right if you riot about it"
| is a weird position to take.
|
| > And although I can't say this about any particular
| individual, I think that statistically, the left position
| regarding covid-19 vaccinations seems to be contrary to
| the "bodily autonomy" philosophy.
|
| I don't know what you think the leftist position is on
| this, but no state nor the Federal government has even
| hinted at the idea of a universal vaccination requirement
| for COVID-19.
|
| Virtually all states require quite a few vaccinations -
| measles, mumps, rubella, etc. - in public schools. Once
| again, Roe doesn't rely on "bodily autonomy", and any
| such right is very clearly not absolute (as Roe itself
| makes clear about privacy). My autonomy to swing a knife
| around ends when it hits your face.
|
| Thought experiment: Do we have a right to poop? Can
| Congress forbid me from pooping? How would SCOTUS rule on
| a law banning bowel movements?
| CWuestefeld wrote:
| > "You can only say it's a right if you riot about it" is
| a weird position to take.
|
| A month ago, governmental violations of bodily autonomy
| were ignored, or grumbled about at most. If you want me
| to believe that this change is qualitatively different,
| you need to explain that, or else I'm going to put both
| violations in the same bucket.
|
| > no state nor the Federal government has even hinted at
| the idea of a universal vaccination requirement for
| COVID-19
|
| First, regardless of what they've actually tried to do,
| there has been a lot of talk about how they should. Such
| talk comes pretty much exclusively from the same group of
| people who think that overturning _Roe_ is an apocalypse.
|
| Second, they most certainly have tried to force
| vaccination as much as they could get away with. That
| wasn't by a law saying "get vaccinated or go to jail".
| That was a backdoor coercive thing where the gov't tried
| to say "if you want to do business with the gov't then
| all your employees must be vaccinated (leading to
| employees getting fired)", in conjunction with the fact
| that the government is already so damned big that they
| can be the 800lb gorilla in purchasing as a backdoor
| alternative to legislation. And while this was going on,
| people who I'm very sure support _Roe_ were nodding their
| heads saying it 's the right thing to do. Again, there
| may be a principled argument for treating this
| differently. But I think it's incumbent on the _Roe_
| protesters to explain what that principle is, or they
| appear to be unprincipled hypocrites.
| ceejayoz wrote:
| > But I think it's incumbent on the Roe protesters to
| explain what that principle is, or they appear to be
| unprincipled hypocrites.
|
| I'll take a stab at one potential explanation.
|
| Pregnancy isn't infectious; you will not get pregnant by
| sitting next to a pregnant woman on the bus. Rights
| become more complicated when they impact others.
| vel0city wrote:
| FWIW when it comes to the argument of bodily autonomy in
| regards to covid vaccinations, you're still free to not
| get a covid vaccine. The government isn't marching into
| your house with armed men injecting you with covid
| vaccines. Making vaccine standards for things like public
| schools (which you can still choose to homeschool or send
| to private schools) is not the same as the government
| forcing you to get a vaccine.
|
| When it comes to marijuana, it can be more difficult to
| get past _Wickard_ and _Heart of Atlanta Motel_ when it
| relates to things like commodities sold on near
| international markets. Abortion services are often way
| more local of a law, far more difficult to argue
| interstate commerce.
| CWuestefeld wrote:
| _when it comes to the argument of bodily autonomy in
| regards to covid vaccinations, you 're still free to not
| get a covid vaccine._
|
| I think you're making it sound more black-and-white than
| it really was. It's true that they weren't talking about
| coming into your house and holding you down. But they did
| try to make it as close to "you can't get a job to earn
| money to buy food" as they could. Pres Biden did issue an
| EO saying that anybody doing business with the federal
| government, and anybody in their supply chain, must
| ensure that their employees are vaccinated. Given the
| enormous size of the federal government, this covers a
| huge proportion of the country. (the courts did throw
| this out, but not before they'd coerced a lot of people
| to go against their own conscience)
|
| Further, that's as far as the politicians and regulators
| were able to go. I seem to recall talk in some locales
| (NYC?) talking about wanting to implement vaccine
| passports, with which local businesses would deny entry
| to unvaccinated people, so you can't even go to the
| grocery store to buy food.
|
| And, of course, my main point was about what the masses
| were arguing for. I don't think you could seriously deny
| that a sizable faction of people were arguing that the
| government SHOULD do all of the above. And that's exactly
| what I'm saying: people are claiming to back the idea of
| "bodily autonomy", but for a whole lot of them, their
| actions demonstrate that this is much less a fundamental
| inalienable right than they're willing to admit today.
| vel0city wrote:
| Bodily autonomy, right? Like, the right to not to get
| infected by a communicable disease in which there _are_
| preventative measures out there?
|
| A pregnant woman the next desk over to you doesn't have
| any effect on your body. A person infected with covid the
| next desk over does. You do understand how pregnancy
| works, right?
|
| I imagine most would agree I have bodily autonomy to move
| my arms. I can't then swing my arms and beat someone to
| death, right? Your right to swing your arms ends just
| where the other man's nose begins.
|
| You have all the right you want to not get vaccinated so
| long as your action doesn't impact everyone else around
| you. Feel free to go live in the woods with everyone else
| who doesn't interact with the rest of society. Nobody is
| going to come by and say you need to get vaccinated, just
| that there are a lot of benefits to being a member of
| society if you choose to do so.
| shrimpx wrote:
| That works in principle but not in practice. The core issue
| in roe v wade was tossing out precedent while failing to show
| reasoning why tossing out precedent should be ok. So now the
| court seems to be chaotic. Whatever the makeup of the court,
| they may toss out precedent that doesn't match the current
| majority's interpretation of the constitution (of which there
| are many). Then suppose the scotus becomes a liberal
| majority. Then they may reinstate all the tossed out
| precedents. That's just chaos, with the main focus becoming
| which party chooses justices, not any reasonable continuity
| and coherence of constitutional law.
| CWuestefeld wrote:
| I agree with your concerns about thrashing. I think that
| the fact that justices aren't elected politically, together
| with their typical lengthy tenure, is intended to buffer
| against that. But as politics becomes more polarized,
| perhaps the buffer doesn't serve as well anymore.
| mistrial9 wrote:
| on the other hand, there have been confrontations with the
| judicial branch Supreme Court and others in the past, just not
| seriously in living memory. I was surprised to find in
| Wikipedia a discussion of changing the number of judges in the
| pre-WWII era also ("court packing").
| 2OEH8eoCRo0 wrote:
| This right here. Taking a single US Govt elective was an eye
| opening experience for me.
|
| People also need to try and understand that not every issue is
| a federal issue. There are also 50 state governments.
| mc32 wrote:
| I'm hopeful they will visit AUMF at some point and revert back
| to having the Congress have to explicitly authorize war and
| also not redefine things as near-war but not war. Deploying
| troops in active conflicts = war.
| davidw wrote:
| I'm old enough to remember when I could grudgingly accept that
| there was some wisdom in decisions I disagreed with, even if
| perhaps not enough to sway me. But I could see something argued
| intelligently.
|
| This is just nakedly partisan stuff going on. I think viewing
| it through that lens - "we're going to do what we want because
| it fits our politics" - makes the most sense.
| zionic wrote:
| > This is just nakedly partisan stuff going on.
|
| The problem is much of the left's gains over the last few
| decades have been based on shaky legal/constitutional ground.
| Even leftist judges like Ginsberg admitted that, and they
| were counting on the mistakes being in place for too long to
| correct (precedent).
|
| Now all that technical debt is coming back to kick our ass.
|
| This isn't the end of the world though, Congress can fix
| everything that's happened in the last few weeks via proper
| laws.
| jayd16 wrote:
| >Congress can fix everything that's happened in the last
| few weeks via proper laws.
|
| If you don't think they'll call any regulation (or
| enumeration of rights) they don't like unconstitutional, I
| don't know what to tell you.
| krolden wrote:
| Stop saying g 'the left'. There is no 'the left' in us
| politics.
|
| >This isn't the end of the world though, Congress can fix
| everything that's happened in the last few weeks via proper
| laws.
|
| No, this us pretty much what the end of the world looks
| like.
| gsibble wrote:
| No it isn't. Stop exaggerating.
| ALittleLight wrote:
| By the standards of the Soviet Union, both US political
| parties are extremely far right; by the standards of
| Pharaonic Egypt, they're incomprehensibly far left. Whose
| standards for center are you using? The objective
| standard? Are you sure that exists? Are you sure you're
| not just taking your own personal beliefs about what
| seems reasonable, declaring the middle of that the
| objectively correct center, and then getting angry when
| the real Overton Window isn't centered around that point?
| People act as if you should just be able to take the
| leftmost thing imaginable, the rightmost thing
| imaginable, draw a line between them, find the middle,
| and then get angry if both US parties are on the same
| side of that line. But maybe they have poor imaginations.
| The leftmost thing I can imagine is an insectoid hive-
| mind; the rightmost thing I can imagine is a rapidly
| expanding cloud of profit-maximizing nanobots. Are we
| sure that a line drawn exactly midway between those two
| things lands on Joe Biden? What if it lands on anarcho-
| capitalism? Does that mean every existing human is left-
| wing?
|
| Taken as a relative claim, it at least could make sense.
| But relative to what?
|
| Relative to the US? False; both parties usually get about
| half of the vote, suggesting one is to the right of the
| median American, and the other to their left. You can
| probably argue that the Republican Party's structural
| advantages cause both parties to be a little to the right
| of where they'd be without them, or that Americans'
| ignorance of party platforms means you can smuggle a few
| points in that are slightly more extreme than what they'd
| endorse, but it's going to be a small effect.
|
| - https://astralcodexten.substack.com/p/against-there-
| are-two-...
| wistlo wrote:
| By this reasoning, women voting and eliminating the 3/5
| coefficient for certain people are on "shaky constitutional
| ground."
| josephcsible wrote:
| No they aren't, because of the Equal Protection Clause.
| xnx wrote:
| > much of the left's gains over the last few decades have
| been based on shaky legal/constitutional ground.
|
| As opposed to shaky electoral/gerrymandering grounds
| davidw wrote:
| > This isn't the end of the world though, Congress can fix
| everything that's happened in the last few weeks via proper
| laws.
|
| Proper laws are no match for calvinball rulings.
| usrn wrote:
| This is very much the opposite of calvinaball. The rules
| are in the constitution and that hasn't changed in quite
| a while.
|
| EDIT: RE: no right to poop(sic) in the constitution
|
| It's a list of things the government _may not_ do, not a
| list of things you may do. Try reading it, it 's very
| short. I would imagine the court would rule a law against
| that would violate the right to life.
| hotpotamus wrote:
| Curious then that it took until 2008 to find an
| individual right to gun ownership in the constitution
| then, no?
| usrn wrote:
| That rule has been there since the beginning even if you
| don't acknowledge it.
|
| EDIT: It didn't need to be acknowledged because there
| wasn't a strong push to disarm the population until
| fairly recently.
|
| EDIT2: It looks to me like they only really go back to
| just after the civil war, largely to keep African
| Americans from carrying firearms. The first attempt by
| the Federal Government to ban them was in the mid 20th
| century which was exactly what I expected.
|
| EDIT3: James Madison tried _and failed_ to pass the
| legislation (presumably because it was unpopular), at the
| state level (not federal level) and _it didn 't prevent
| people from owning guns_ just carrying them in public.
| hotpotamus wrote:
| But isn't it strange that it was there in the beginning
| and no one acknowledged it for about two centuries?
|
| EDIT for your edit: Huh? When I was a kid in Texas way
| back in the 90's, it was illegal to carry a gun period.
| You could take them out hunting or to the range or
| whatnot, but carrying a gun was illegal. The first
| concealed handgun law was 1995 if memory serves. Carry
| bans go back to the colonial era.
| davidw wrote:
| James Madison, the author of the 2nd amendment, tried to
| pass gun control legislation:
|
| https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2022/06/26/conserv
| ati...
| ceejayoz wrote:
| > The rules are in the constitution
|
| The Ninth Amendment basically says "this isn't a list of
| all the rules".
|
| There's no right to poop in the Constitution. Do we have
| one? If Congress banned pooping, how would the court
| rule?
| ceejayoz wrote:
| > It's a list of things the government may not do, not a
| list of things you may do.
|
| And yet, they saw fit to include the Ninth Amendment, so
| some nincompoop wouldn't go "there's no right to
| privacy!"
|
| > I would imagine the court would rule a law against that
| would violate the right to life.
|
| The wording is "nor shall any state deprive any person of
| life, liberty, or property, _without due process of law_
| "; what happens if pooping is made a capital crime?
|
| Why is banning abortion, marijuana, and whatnot not a
| similar violation of the "liberty" part of the same
| clause?
|
| (and what's with this edit-to-reply thing you've got
| going?)
| unsui wrote:
| > Congress can fix everything that's happened in the last
| few weeks via proper laws.
|
| Can it?
|
| In principle, sure, anything can happen.
|
| In practice, given how it's not possible to pass any
| legislation without a filibuster-proof majority?
|
| As others have commented in this and related threads, this
| is a win for industry precisely because congress CAN'T do
| anything in practice, given the reakpolitk of how congress
| actually "works" today.
|
| I wish folks would stop saying "well, it should just go
| back to the spec, problem solved". This isn't code. This is
| the convoluted and complex world of political reality,
| where, unfortunately, might does often mean right. And more
| often than not, addressing the root cause isn't even
| possible, much less practical.
|
| If anything, it's the current supreme court that is taking
| a binary view of legal interpretation and have "fixed the
| glitch". Glitches which in reality are patches which have
| been added organically over time to address changes to the
| underlying OS, new and unheard of use cases, changing specs
| and requirements, etc.
|
| Unfortunately, a full rewrite often requires systemic
| overhall and reboot (something I would hope people are
| averse to doing in practice)
| Sporktacular wrote:
| "This isn't the end of the world though, Congress can fix
| everything that's happened in the last few weeks via proper
| laws."
|
| Dream on. You're trolling right?
| cmurf wrote:
| Not everything.
|
| It's abundantly clear from the Dobbs majority opinion they
| will not accept a Roe statue from Congress, that they would
| overturn it on 10th amendment grounds. It's not an express
| power Congress has, thus it's strictly up to states. Since
| they also stated in Dobbs they'd use rational basis
| scrutiny, the lowest scrutiny possible, when judging state
| laws on abortion restrictions, I expect they will accept
| state laws that:
|
| * define moment of conception as murder
|
| * fetus as citizen in fact, meaning out of state abortions
| are also subject to murder charges
|
| * high burden of proof on women, low burden of proof for
| the state, that a miscarriage rather than abortion occurred
|
| * hold abortion-is-legal states to article 4, section 1
| "full faith and credit", i.e. civil fines and extradition
| for persons fleeing judgements in abortion-is-not-legal
| states
|
| * hold companies paying for abortion procedures and travel
| as party to a crime
|
| The Court is lost for a generation, short of expanding the
| Court. There is no chance 3/4 of the states will ratify a
| constitutional amendment on this issue. And there's a lot
| more litigation to come.
|
| And should it come to the Court, I expect they will set
| aside Griswold, Lawrence, Obergefell using the same logic -
| it's not a federal power. How they could possible not
| reverse Loving, I'm not sure, except that likely no state
| is as yet backward enough to try and making interracial
| marriage illegal once again.
|
| I think there is merit in the argument that we've been
| asking the Court to be expedient, while then not doing the
| dirty work of putting these rights in constitutional
| amendments. Instead we're kicking the can down the road,
| but then we are also avoiding a lot of public contention
| arguing about it - for good and probably not for good to
| some degree. But look at the polling. Most Americans now
| disapprove of the judiciary nearly as much as Congress.
| With all three branches of government at historic low
| approval, it is very damaging to representative democracy
| that this has happened, not least of which is that an
| unpopularly elected president put these three justices on
| the Court who lied under oath that these cases are "settled
| law", and yet just deeply unsettled one of them.
| matthewdgreen wrote:
| Reminder: decisions like Roe v. Wade (and many others in
| the era before this court) weren't passed by "the left" in
| a political sense. For example: five of the seven-justice
| majority in Roe were Republican appointees.
| ZeroGravitas wrote:
| Lewis Powell voted for it (apparently one of his
| secretaries died from a illegal abortion) and also wrote
| the Powell memo:
|
| https://www.thwink.org/sustain/articles/017_PowellMemo/
| vel0city wrote:
| Roe v. Wade was decided in 1971. That's not too soon
| after the great realignment from the election of 1964.
| Some of those Republican appointments like Brennan and
| Stewart happened well before the realignment. And even
| then, the author of the opinion was written by Blackmun
| who was appointed by Nixon. Nixon, the guy who brought us
| the EPA and many other things the modern Republican party
| likes to hate. Meanwhile one of the dissents to Roe was
| written by White who was appointed by JFK.
|
| The parties of 1971 were both very different compared to
| today. You can't assume that someone active in the party
| in 1956 (Brennan) holds the same values as what's talked
| about on OAN today.
| ceejayoz wrote:
| > Congress can fix everything that's happened in the last
| few weeks via proper laws.
|
| SCOTUS deliberately kneecapped the Voting Rights Act quite
| a bit in recent years. For example:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shelby_County_v._Holder
|
| Legislation isn't much protection from a nakedly partisan
| Court.
| chronotis wrote:
| In this new climate, it will take more than laws.
| Permanence will require constitutional amendments (which is
| actually how most things get rooted at the state level, the
| state constitutions change pretty regularly).
| barelysapient wrote:
| Exactly this. And by putting this off, we've avoided the
| hard work to get the laws we deserve. After all, if the
| courts can just wave a wand and make something a `right`,
| who cares who you vote for or if you even vote at all?
|
| I think the temporary pain will be worth it in the long
| run as we do the hard work to pass the laws the majority
| agrees will improve the environment, human rights, and so
| on.
| phpisthebest wrote:
| Which is ironic since FDR most of the Court decisions were
| nakedly partisan in the other direction, massively expanding
| the power and scope of the federal government well beyond
| would should be constitutionally allowable
| zeroonetwothree wrote:
| Let's have some consistency at least. Bring back both Roe
| and Lochner.
| phpisthebest wrote:
| I want them to keep going, go all the way back to the one
| that started it all, Wickard
|
| Reverse Wickard, and put the Federal Government back in
| its narrow scope
| kasey_junk wrote:
| These days I'm looking for them to roll back Marbury vs
| Madison.
| gsibble wrote:
| Highly disagree. All of the recent decisions make perfect
| legal sense, this coming from the son of a Constitutional
| attorney who has described to me the rulings, reasons behind
| them, precedents, etc.. And he's a pro-choice, anti-gun
| Democrat. He still agrees with the legal decisions. I read
| the rulings myself too and they make total sense given what
| I've learned over decades of listening to him.
| Victerius wrote:
| > I read the rulings myself too
|
| [X] Doubt
| gsibble wrote:
| You can doubt all you want, I read the rules,
| concurrences, and dissents on most SC decisions. The
| media doesn't really report the facts on them so I prefer
| to get them right from the source.
| davidw wrote:
| They're pretty much at the point of flat out lying about
| things, like the prayer case. Sotomayor, in her dissent,
| included actual photographs of the coach huddling/praying
| with the whole team, which is quite coercive behavior. It
| wasn't a 'quiet prayer'.
|
| https://twitter.com/cristianafarias/status/1541427338826629
| 1...
| waffleiron wrote:
| I think the dissenting opinion on this one makes a lot of
| sense. Even so, making legal sense doesn't mean they are
| not biased, seeing as the court decides which cases to rule
| on, and which ones to ignore.
| Miner49er wrote:
| It is impossible to keep partisanship out of the court, so it
| is a lot like a second version of Congress.
| JohnHaugeland wrote:
| We managed for hundreds of years.
| Miner49er wrote:
| Not everyone thinks so:
| https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2022/04/03/the-
| suprem...
| mynegation wrote:
| "We managed it for 900 years" someone in the Roman Empire
| circa 394 AD.
| luma wrote:
| Yet somehow we also managed to appoint SC judges without
| the senate stalling nominations to prevent the president
| from being able to appoint them.
|
| Let's not pretend that the current situation represents
| anything like "normal", and further, that we don't all
| recognize that bad-faith actions by the Republican party
| are responsible.
| JohnHaugeland wrote:
| > Yet somehow we also managed to appoint SC judges
| without the senate stalling nominations to prevent the
| president from being able to appoint them.
|
| Yeah, that's because change happened.
|
| Pretending that something can't be done because it worked
| for hundreds of years and then something bad happened
| isn't actually very correct.
| colinmhayes wrote:
| And the internet has changed everything. What used to be
| possible no longer is
| JohnHaugeland wrote:
| No evidence supports this.
| colinmhayes wrote:
| No evidence supports the internet causing hyper
| partisanship or no evidence supports hyper partisanship
| infecting the Supreme Court?
| thesiniot wrote:
| That was before the Senate hijacked the normal nomination
| process in 2016.
|
| The court has been an illegitimate and partisan body ever
| since Garland's seat was denied.
| ohCh6zos wrote:
| The process was hijacked long before 2016. See "Borking".
| JohnHaugeland wrote:
| > That was before the Senate hijacked the normal
| nomination process in 2016.
|
| Yes, it was. What's your point?
|
| Parent poster claimed that a non-political Supreme Court
| isn't possible, and in reality, the Supreme Court has
| been essentially completely non-political for all but
| about 22 years of its existence
| InTheArena wrote:
| No, that process was broken in 2001 - and temporarily
| restated wit the gang of 14 - see
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gang_of_14
|
| It's a much bigger problem then just this.
| SilasX wrote:
| The first hundred had a deadly civil war.
| bandyaboot wrote:
| Right up until we didn't.
| thomascgalvin wrote:
| Mitch McConnell broke the Senate, and through that, the
| Judiciary.
| Bhilai wrote:
| Yes and the recent stuff with the wife of a SCOTUS
| justice involved in conspiracy to overturn an election is
| definitely a sign of hyper partisanship.
| InTheArena wrote:
| This is the problem with partisanship.
|
| Blockade of judges started in 2001, when Democrats
| declared Bush illigetimate, and decided that no judges
| would be selected. Republicans threatened the "nuclear
| option" (removing fillibusters). The "Gang of 14" in 2005
| wrote ideological ground rules and approved a set number
| of judges to keep the nuclear option from being used.
|
| Obama came to office, and the Democrats used the nuclear
| option - despite the gang of 14 framework, but then said
| that it doesn't apply to supreme court ballots.
| Republicans came in and decided that yes, it did apply.
|
| We've been destroying our own government with crap like
| this for the last 20 years.
|
| Partisanship is a hell of a drug.
| rabuse wrote:
| The constitution isn't partisan though.
| Miner49er wrote:
| How it is interpreted is.
| teakettle42 wrote:
| Which is why "textualism" is the only appropriate
| interpretation an unelected court should be using.
|
| It's not their job to write laws or advance policy, it's
| their job to enforce the constitution as written.
| ceejayoz wrote:
| Textualism is just one of many excuses to rule the way
| you want to, as it leaves an immense amount of leeway to
| interpret.
|
| A textualist reading of the First Amendment would permit
| the President to infringe free speech/religion/press etc.
| rights, as it says "Congress", and the "no law" bit would
| texutally forbid things like banning human sacrifice in
| religious ceremonies.
|
| Textualists always find an out when they need one.
| jdasdf wrote:
| Did you actually read the constitution end to end? It's
| not that big, and if you had you would have see that such
| things you propose aren't in line with the text
| ceejayoz wrote:
| A textualist reading of the First Amendment doesn't
| permit banning human sacrifice in religious ceremonies.
|
| A textualist reading of the Second Amendment doesn't
| permit banning of personally owned nuclear arms.
|
| Textualists don't seem too interested in overruling the
| relevant unconstitutional laws in these cases.
|
| (Yes, I've read it. It's vague - deliberately, I'd argue
| - in spots, like in defining "general welfare", and some
| folks like to pretend things like the Ninth Amendment
| don't exist at all.)
| teakettle42 wrote:
| Do you have a better suggestion that's less partisan and
| less prone to abuse?
|
| Humans will always bring bias, but I can't think of
| anything better than "interpret as it was plainly written
| and would have been understood by the people who wrote it
| at the time".
| ceejayoz wrote:
| _Interpreting_ how it would have been understood at the
| time is quite subjective; how do we _interpret_ how the
| Founding Fathers would 've considered semi-automatic
| rifles or Facebook to fall in First/Second Amendment
| jurisprudence, or how far you can push the General
| Welfare Clause? The Founding Fathers themselves often
| disagreed on such things.
|
| > Do you have a better suggestion that's less partisan
| and less prone to abuse?
|
| I'm of the opinion that textualism, in actual practice,
| is a highly partisan and heavily abused concept intended
| to be a thin veil over "I rule the way I want". I prefer
| the concept of a living Constitution; per Jefferson:
|
| > I am not an advocate for frequent changes in laws and
| constitutions, but laws and institutions must go hand in
| hand with the progress of the human mind. As that becomes
| more developed, more enlightened, as new discoveries are
| made, new truths disclosed, and manners and opinions
| change with the change of circumstances, institutions
| must advance also, and keep pace with the times. We might
| as well require a man to wear still the coat which fitted
| him when a boy, as civilized society to remain ever under
| the regimen of their barbarous ancestors.
| greedo wrote:
| Textualism/Originalism is just cover for the SCOTUS to
| rule based on what they want, not the intent of the law.
| solarpunk wrote:
| They made booze illegal using it lmao
| nhinck wrote:
| Even if that was true, which it isn't, the interpretation
| of the constitution undeniably is.
| rabuse wrote:
| Which is why federal government was designed to be
| extremely limited with the founding of the nation. Want
| change? Pass laws through congress.
| corrral wrote:
| We can't because our system of government is broken. If
| the courts are going to stick to stricter interpretations
| of the constitution, the US is more likely to rapidly
| decline or fall apart completely than to fix its problems
| via legislation. We have _only_ limped along this far
| because the courts have been lenient on that since our
| ~3rd major reformulation of our government (FDR). Our
| system of government _cannot_ support a modern developed-
| world (go easy on me, citizens of other OECD states--we
| 're _kinda_ developed, anyway) state, without that
| leniency. The only hope is that monied interests will
| step in and force a fix because their money 's threatened
| --we've got issues with 70+% support from the public that
| can't get any traction in the legislature, so clearly
| "lots of people want it" isn't enough (see again: our
| system of government is broken) so we have to hope rich
| people's interests align with ours, or nothing will be
| fixed. Given modern stateless capital and that so many
| rich Americans seem to have been working on a comfortable
| escape route from the US in the last few years, I'm not
| optimistic.
| scotty79 wrote:
| But its interpretations are.
| azemetre wrote:
| Parts of the constitution were literally written to appease
| slave owners. How is that not partisan?
| kergonath wrote:
| In the end, they still accept or reject laws, with no
| accountability whatsoever. The supreme court's decisions _are_
| laws, for all intent and purposes, and have just as much weight
| as what Congress writes.
|
| The incestuous relationship between the judiciary and the
| legislative branch in common law systems is very problematic
| and does not allow true separation of powers. Like so much in
| our democratic governments, this works as long as most
| participants behave in good faith, but breaks down when some do
| not.
| andrekandre wrote:
| > instead of treating it like a second version of Congress.
|
| what do you mean specifically?
| gedy wrote:
| Not the OP, but many folks treat the SCOTUS as divided into
| the red and blue teams, and that they have to vote like
| whatever party would, vs an independent check on the other
| two branches of gov't.
| DantesKite wrote:
| The Supreme Court does not create laws. Congress does. The
| Supreme Court interprets those laws, making sure they do not
| violate the Constitution.
|
| The Supreme Court is like a compiler simply running the
| instructions it's been told. It doesn't have any input over
| what's written.
|
| Historically, people have used the Supreme Court to create
| laws, circumventing the voting process and giving 9 people
| oligarch-like power. This is not ideal.
|
| There's also the general expectation the Supreme Court should
| do what's "right" which again, isn't a relevant metric for
| judging whether something is constitutional. The Supreme
| Court at its best is an amoral, apolitical institution.
| forgetfulness wrote:
| The SCOTUS is a political battleground where Federal laws can
| be passed as jurisprudence on the interpretation of the US
| Constitution, circumventing the legislative process.
|
| Instead of laws on reproductive rights, you had a ruling even
| detailing the time frames in which abortion was legal.
|
| Instead of legalizing gay marriage, you have a ruling on the
| federal recognition of licenses issued in individual states.
|
| Instead of a law on lobbying, you have a ruling saying that
| monetary contributions to campaigns are the free speech of
| lobbying groups.
|
| Instead of an organic law on weapons permits, you have a
| ruling saying what kinds of firearm regulations states can
| pass.
|
| But people can't say this politicization of the SCOTUS is
| new; back when the hot topic were worker rights, in the early
| XX century, those were the battles being fought there, to
| skip Congressional debates:
|
| https://reason.com/2021/12/02/the-laissez-faire-origins-
| of-t...
| andrekandre wrote:
| great answer thanks
| boringg wrote:
| The way in which judges are brought to the bench in America and
| subsequently to SCOTUS is political. While it isn't Congress it
| isn't as independent as many people previously portrayed it.
| coredog64 wrote:
| I wonder if there's a change within living memory that has
| caused that _cough_ Bork _cough_
|
| Snark aside, there's a reasonable case to be made that
| Congress has been increasingly treating the judiciary as a
| super-legislature. Far easier to avoid the work of compromise
| etc. when you can punt it to the USSC. Whether that's pure
| laziness or something structural based on a reduction of
| overall party power is up for discussion.
| CWuestefeld wrote:
| As far as I can tell, the nonsense with Court appointments
| began back in the 80s, with the campaign against Reagan's
| nominee Robert Bork. Since then there's been a gradually
| ramping escalation of hostility from both sides. The GOP had
| to pay back the DEMs for the Bork thing, the DEMs try to
| smear Thomas, vetting of nominees is held up, then entirely
| withheld until the President leaves office, and so forth.
|
| The politicization of the Court is a completely bipartisan
| affair going back 4 decades at least.
|
| We might even say it goes back 8 decades, to FDR's threats to
| pack the court (see "a switch in time saves nine").
| zeroonetwothree wrote:
| It's not as if Bork was first. Haynsworth and Carswell were
| rejected by democrats for political reasons (leading to
| Blackmun being confirmed). Abe Fortas was rejected as Chief
| Justice by republicans.
|
| And we can find many earlier examples as well.
| generj wrote:
| Bork's appointment problems stem from Reagan's essentially
| rewarding him for obstructing impeachment of Nixon.
|
| I've never understood why the Democrats are painted as the
| bad guys interfering in a non-partisan appointment of Bork.
| Nominating Bork was an insane act.
| mberning wrote:
| Absolutely correct. There is a process for writing laws. There
| is a process for amending the constitution. But instead of
| building a broad coalition to go and do these things they would
| rather roll the dice with the judiciary. And when they lose try
| to change the judiciary. Completely wrong headed. We need to
| get our legislature working. We also need people to realize
| that living in a democracy means that you don't always get your
| way.
| cryptonector wrote:
| Make the court large enough and it can be our version of the
| House of Lords, and a third house of Congress.
| nostromo wrote:
| The theme this session has been the court pushing lots of
| decisions back to congress, away from the executive, and away
| from the court itself.
|
| For all the consternation, these decisions are very mutable.
| Congress just needs to pass laws.
| cryptonector wrote:
| That's true in this case. It's not true in Bruen or Dobbs.
| zeroonetwothree wrote:
| And all the religion cases as well.
| nostromo wrote:
| No, Dobbs returns the power to legislate abortion to the
| congress.
|
| You are correct however on Bruen limiting the power of
| congress and the states.
| cryptonector wrote:
| > No, Dobbs returns the power to legislate abortion to the
| congress.
|
| It does? I thought it left it to the states.
| nostromo wrote:
| Congress can ban or legalize abortion federally now. Or
| they can leave it up to the states -- which is the
| current default without Roe.
|
| In fact, congress could have codified access to abortion
| at anytime in the past 40-odd years.
| cryptonector wrote:
| From page 8 of the decision:
|
| > The Constitution does not prohibit the citizens of each
| State from regulating or prohibiting abortion.
|
| Seems pretty clear: it's for the states to legislate, not
| Congress, notwithstanding this:
|
| > The Court overrules those decisions and returns that
| authority to the people and their elected
| representatives.
|
| which clearly does not refer to Congress given the
| preceding.
|
| That said, state laws regarding abortion almost certainly
| don't reach a) federal land within those states, b)
| interstate travel. Congress can easily fund abortion
| clinics on federal lands, and it can fund travel by
| pregnant women seeking abortions. So in a way, you're not
| wrong.
| nostromo wrote:
| You're simply wrong about this friend. Congress could
| make the Roe standard the law of the entire US tomorrow.
| This is why you see Biden and others asking them to do
| just that.
| cryptonector wrote:
| I'm dead certain Congress couldn't before Roe, between
| Roe and Dobbs, or after Dobbs, not w/o a Constitutional
| amendment. That much is quite clear. I quoted from Dobbs,
| and as to Roe, Roe declared a constitutional right, which
| means Congress couldn't do anything about it w/o a
| constitutional amendment. If federal statute could
| compete, then Congress would have made Roe law long ago
| in any one of the many sessions in which there were vast
| majorities for it in both houses and in the White House.
| But no, it requires an amendment, which is why it's never
| happened -- it's hard to get 2/3rds majorities for
| anything, let alone controversial things.
| rory wrote:
| > _I 'm dead certain Congress couldn't before Roe,
| between Roe and Dobbs, or after Dobbs, not w/o a
| Constitutional amendment._
|
| Well, they certainly thought they could:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freedom_of_Choice_Act
| cryptonector wrote:
| Of course they can _think_ that they can act.
| rory wrote:
| So you're saying you're "dead certain" that Barbara
| Boxer, Hillary Clinton, Dianne Feinstein, etc.
| misunderstand what kinds of laws are and are not
| constitutional? Where does such a high degree of
| confidence come from?
| chronometry888 wrote:
| We don't have time for that. By the time a congress is elected
| that is willing to make laws that curb emissions, it will be
| too late. So much damage will already have been done.
|
| Pushing responsibility to literally save the world onto a
| broken legislative body is idiotic.
| tialaramex wrote:
| > Congress just needs to pass laws.
|
| For so long as the American people respect the US Supreme
| Court, their laws can be nullified on the say-so of this Court
| and are thus worthless. That's the underlying _point_ of this
| whole suite of rulings.
|
| Congress can write laws, the Court can decide they don't mean
| what you thought they mean, and, apparently, you will
| cheerfully conclude that the Court is wise and you're foolish,
| perhaps only realising the danger when it is too late.
| nostromo wrote:
| You're catastrophizing.
|
| So far this court seems to be largely giving more power to
| voters and their representatives to create law, limiting
| their own power (Dobbs), and giving power to the states.
| intrasight wrote:
| Markets and technologies will have to play the leading role. And
| eventually a carbon tax.
| thepasswordis wrote:
| Good.
|
| I have to say that, as an anti-authoritarian, conservative
| advocate of individual liberty, this last week has been extremely
| inspiring.
|
| To those who are confused about how the system in the US works:
| the court has basically _decreased_ their own power with some of
| these decisions. That's the type of thing that should give
| everybody, regardless of affiliation, hope about the future.
| pylon wrote:
| Making it easier for states to ban abortion is good for
| individual liberty?
| gsibble wrote:
| It also makes it easier for states to expand access to
| abortion, including expanding it up through the 3rd
| trimester. Just today, CA put a Constitutional amendment on
| the ballot in November to allow up to the final minute
| abortions.
|
| That ruling gave power back to the people and state
| legislatures. It benefit blue states as much as red.
| pylon wrote:
| None of this sounds good for individual liberty. It just
| becomes an issue of are you lucky enough to live in a state
| that doesn't hate you
| zeroonetwothree wrote:
| That's just as horrific as banning abortions altogether.
| gsibble wrote:
| But it's up to the people to decide. That's what freedom
| is.
| thepasswordis wrote:
| The court self limiting their own power, and pushing it down
| to an democratically elected body (the congress) is good for
| individual liberty.
| zeroonetwothree wrote:
| It's literally not. Individual liberty is about freedom
| from government interference.
| thepasswordis wrote:
| So 9 unelected lifetime appointees should be able to
| dictate laws, but 538 democratically elected
| representatives that change every 2 years based in the
| will of the people shouldn't?
|
| Huh.
| VoodooJuJu wrote:
| It's about giving power back to the states, and in turn the
| people. So a state and its people would have the power to
| decide on something like abortion rather than a single
| centralized leviathan-authority.
| chimprich wrote:
| > power back to the states, and in turn the people
|
| That sounds quite Stalinist. The people are not the state.
|
| > So a state and its people would have the power to decide
| on something like abortion rather than a single centralized
| leviathan-authority.
|
| Right, so your federal government is a centralised
| Hobbesian leviathan, but state government is not? How is
| state government not centralised? It's just centralised at
| a different level.
|
| You know what would _not_ be centralised? Allowing
| individuals bodily autonomy. Let them decide whether they
| want an abortion, not have them be forced to carry foetuses
| to term against their will.
| VoodooJuJu wrote:
| On the particular of abortion, in terms of liberty, the
| baby's liberty must be considered, not only the mother's.
|
| In the general case of state vs federal sovereignty,
| state sovereignty is closer to the individual is and more
| malleable/escapable than a federal sovereign, and is thus
| preferable (state sovereignty was the original ideal of
| the United States and the founders go on at length about
| the benefits of this arrangement.)
| pylon wrote:
| And if the people choose to vote to limit individual
| liberty of others then this decision is still good for
| individual liberty?
| gsibble wrote:
| It is inspiring.
| Miner49er wrote:
| How was Dobbs a win for individual liberty? Shouldn't you want
| the 14th amendment to protect individual liberty as widely as
| possible? Or do you think it's better for the Constitution to
| not protect individual liberties?
| redler wrote:
| It's a necessary step on the road to Blastular Personhood.
| spacemanmatt wrote:
| criddell wrote:
| Fix the SCOTUS. I like the proposal to have term limits (long
| ones, maybe 20 years) and increase the number of justices so
| that every four years two of them are replaced by the sitting
| president.
| spacemanmatt wrote:
| Agreed, however I was not referring to the institution.
| cryptonector wrote:
| The Constitution says "for life". Fixing that will require an
| amendment.
| criddell wrote:
| Sure. It's a document that was designed to evolve and we've
| done that 27 times already.
| AlexTWithBeard wrote:
| Pretty much by definition whatever decision a court takes,
| someone will be disappointed.
|
| Otherwise we wouldn't need courts.
| spacemanmatt wrote:
| Thanks, but I'm a grown-up, and that is not why I said fuck
| the SCOTUS.
| ivalm wrote:
| I just want my court to be consistent with multi-decade
| precedent and not dramatically pivot when the composition
| changes.
| AlexTWithBeard wrote:
| You mean the court should've stuck with Plessy vs. Ferguson
| [1]?
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plessy_v._Ferguson
| morninglight wrote:
| Donald Trump lives, and his legacy will be controlling your life
| for many years.
| parrellel wrote:
| This is more the John Bircher's bag. So McConnell's your
| bizarre Litch-like man.
| txsoftwaredev wrote:
| syspec wrote:
| Lmao! Right... if only trump was around im sure things would
| be better.
| pigtailgirl wrote:
| -- from an outside perspective it feels like declined American
| manufacturing / skilled labour simply continuing it's
| reflection into the American society? - this started long
| before trump? -- bail out the banks > 1% hate > occupy wall st
| etc > "coastal elite" > state pride > trump etc > appetite in
| the country for the court to address federal vs state
| precedent? Could be wrong, just how it looks from the outside
| --
| vkou wrote:
| There's more to it. The American right has been working a
| multi-decade long plan to pack the supreme court with...
| Well, people like this. And now the chickens are coming home
| to roost.
|
| They'd have done this regardless of the state of
| industrialization or 1% hate. It's an alliance between
| religious fundamentalism, and the business community, and
| what they want has stayed constant despite the short term
| ebbs and flows of politics.
|
| Also, please don't buy into the states rights nonsense. This
| group only believes in states rights when they don't control
| the federal government.
|
| It's really best to just not listen to what it says, and
| instead look at what it does.
| lkxijlewlf wrote:
| Trump is a tool. He didn't do this. He doesn't have the brain
| power to do this. This was the CNP, the Federalist Society, the
| Koch bruhs, etc. They've worked on this for decades. DECADES.
| unethical_ban wrote:
| The goal of this Supreme Court seems to be the dismantling of the
| past century of reading the Constitution. They are pushing hard
| to put the onus on Congress to pass explicit amendments to
| protect human rights, and to be more explicit in the power they
| grant the Executive. And they don't seem to care about religion
| being defacto intertwined with public education.
|
| The United States was "the first modern democracy". But we're
| running on shoddy, unpatched OS that none of the maintainers feel
| like fixing, and the users can't change the maintainers due to
| the rules.
|
| Ideally:
|
| The Senate would be gone.
|
| Either gerrymandering would be dismantled, or state elections for
| House would be multi-member elections. The House would scale with
| population.
|
| Justices of the Supreme Court would have a term limit of say, 18
| years.
|
| Constitutional amendments would not require such a supermajority
| of state legislatures.
|
| The Federal government would have a standard for voting audits
| and take a more active role in protecting voting rights, since
| the ability for the Constitution to be amended depends on the
| integrity of state elections as well as federal elections.
|
| Frankly, I don't see a way out of the slow death spiral this
| country is in without significant upheaval.
| biggieshellz wrote:
| Major questions doctrine. They ruled that the current law does
| not empower EPA to require producers to shift generation to
| different methods (e.g. natural gas, renewables), and that if
| Congress had meant for the law to do that, they would have
| written it explicitly.
|
| Congress can still pass a law empowering EPA to regulate
| greenhouse gas emissions.
| chronometry888 wrote:
| No they can't. I mean, legally they have the authority to do
| so. But congress is pretty broken. By the time a congress is
| elected that can effectively legislate a solution to climate
| change, it will be too late.
|
| Giving a broken legislative body the sole responsibility of
| literally saving the world is a really, really dumb idea.
| matthewdgreen wrote:
| > Congress can still pass a law empowering EPA to regulate
| greenhouse gas emissions.
|
| Congress gave the EPA broad discretion that it could have
| revoked -- using your argument -- at any moment. This issue has
| been bouncing around for over a decade, and Congress has
| systematically declined to do so.
| AbrahamParangi wrote:
| I think the argument is that the EPA considered itself to
| have broad discretion and congress was silent on the matter,
| and more generally do the executive functions have whatever
| discretion they assume to have unless congress specifically
| limits them? Or rather, do they have only the permit that
| congress gives them?
| barsonme wrote:
| They've declined to do a lot over the last decade :)
| AnimalMuppet wrote:
| Well, see, that's exactly the question. How broad was the
| authority that Congress gave them?
|
| "Congress gave them broad authority" != "they have authority
| over everything they can in any way claim relates (however
| loosely) to their mandate".
| tick_tock_tick wrote:
| That's a horrible argument. The Executive branch should never
| had default allow permissions for anything. The amount of
| mental gymnastic many of our current regulator bodies have
| used to claim more authority is already obscene.
| fzeroracer wrote:
| Do y'all not consider how the EPA came into being in the first
| place? It exists because a previous congress did do something
| and delegated their authority for a very specific reason. Like
| it was a joint effort between Republicans and Democrats even.
|
| What this Supreme Court has decided to do is say that what they
| did doesn't matter, knowing that the current makeup in congress
| is in gridlock due to how modern day Republicans behave. Like
| the dissent was posted here. Congress explicitly empowered the
| EPA to work towards the best system of emission reduction.
| extheat wrote:
| Congress has to be explicit with what powers they delegate.
| They can't just say "do whatever you want to fix this
| problem". Neither does it say that in the law. It's not the
| job of SCOTUS to give you the outcome you want. It's to rule
| on what the law does say and is constitutionally acceptable.
| iostream24 wrote:
| Congress granted the EPA power to regulate air pollution.
| CO2 and methane are harmful pollutants that cause a
| greenhouse effect, and the EPA was granted the authority to
| address this. Our activist extremely biased Supreme Court
| has several members who are part of a political advocacy
| operation called the federalist society and ensures that
| members get Supreme Court placement specifically to achieve
| federalist society goals. Nothing about this is secret.
| Nothing about this is acceptable
| micromacrofoot wrote:
| > Congress can still pass a law
|
| Since when
| wbradmoore wrote:
| jeffbee wrote:
| Ah yes, but that would require Congress to actually do
| something, which hasn't happened in the last 18 months so we
| shouldn't expect it to start.
|
| Congress could have mooted this case with ordinary statutory
| procedures at any point, but did not.
| karaterobot wrote:
| But they probably should, and I hope this will get them to do
| it.
| jeffbee wrote:
| Impossible because their 50th guy in the Senate is a W.
| Virginia coal mining millionaire. He's all but literally
| the appellant in this case.
| AnIdiotOnTheNet wrote:
| Unlikely. Republicans were only barely willing to work with
| democrats after the latest in a long string of people
| gunning down school children. Since hatred of the
| environment is practically a party platform, they certainly
| aren't going to cooperate on giving the EPA anything ever.
| xthrowawayxx wrote:
| I think a good thing that laws can't pass without sufficient
| consensus. If you can bypass consensus for the greater good
| then so can the other side.
| xpe wrote:
| This statement is an obvious assumption of democracy. Am I
| missing something more?
| cogman10 wrote:
| The issue is one of "arms racing".
|
| Consider, for example, how the FDA operates. They have a
| broad mandate to keep food clean and drugs safe. They
| don't have an explicit mandate of "you must only regulate
| tylenol and aspirin, we need to pass a law for new drugs
| each time they come up."
|
| This ruling finds the EPA, who has the mandate to keep
| pollutants out of the air, can't determine that CO2 is a
| pollutant. Why is that? The 2016 clean air act
| specifically gave them the power to regulate air
| pollutants.
|
| The only answer is political activism. There is no
| difference between the FDA's broad mandate and the EPA's
| broad mandate.
|
| I recommend reading the dissent on this case. It makes it
| absolutely clear that this is an EPA power. The
| conservatives couldn't get new laws passed repealing the
| EPA, so instead they packed the court with political
| activists so they could make law from the bench.
| iostream24 wrote:
| Yet another reasonable comment that some shadow bully has
| downvoted gray.
|
| HN is broken
| shadowgovt wrote:
| HN is very ill-suited to discussing politics in general.
| That's a known feature.
| gruez wrote:
| It might be obvious, but I feel like it's lost due to
| partisan motivated reasoning. eg. when your preferred
| party doesn't control the senate, then the filibusterer
| is an important part part of democracy that forces
| widespread consensus, but when your party does control
| the senate the filibusterer is a undemocratic tactic used
| by the minority to obstruct the majority.
| matthewdgreen wrote:
| The key word here is " _sufficient_ consensus. " Your
| judgement of sufficiency is a personal opinion.
|
| I could, for example, define "sufficient consensus" as
| requiring that all laws require a 90% supermajority in
| the Senate. Or I could reduce this to 50% of the Senate.
| Alternatively I could reform Congress so that lawmaking
| requires voting totals representing 50% of the
| population.
|
| Each of these is one possible version of "sufficient
| consensus", and still none of them actually matches the
| version we actually have. What is clear is that the
| sclerotic nature of today's Congress is problematic, and
| it's doing a great deal to undermine faith in our
| democratic system.
| Victerius wrote:
| The rise of China is testing and will continue to test this
| assumption. The Chinese government does not require
| consensus. It can build 40,000 kilometers of high speed
| rail in just a few years. It can pull hundreds of millions
| from poverty. It can shut down entire companies and
| industries overnight (e.g. private school tutoring), jail
| corrupt corporate executives, and in general coerce
| compliance to any law.
|
| Do you know how many school teachers in China must buy
| supplies for their students with their own money? Zero.
|
| Do you know how many Chinese ambassadorships are left
| vacant because of political bickering? Zero.
|
| I am not a shill for the Chinese Communist Party, Xi
| Jinping, or the ideology of the Chinese political system,
| but I increasingly _am_ a shill for the ruthless efficiency
| of the Chinese government.
| sunnycareboo wrote:
| nixgeek wrote:
| They're ruthlessly efficient at persecuting the Uyghurs
| as well. I'm not sure "ruthless efficiency" is actually
| that desirable in a government.
| shadowgovt wrote:
| China does not have a monopoly on persecuting minorities,
| especially in comparison to the United States.
|
| The US's genocidal oppression has been ongoing far, far
| longer than the oppression of the Uyghur people.
|
| https://www.npr.org/2022/06/29/1108717407/supreme-court-
| narr...
| robonerd wrote:
| > _The US 's genocidal oppression has been ongoing far,
| far longer than the oppression of the Uyghur people._
|
| And knowing that, you'd take the guard rails off? Crazy.
| shadowgovt wrote:
| I'm not sure what you mean in this context. Which guard
| rails off of what?
| robonerd wrote:
| The system of checks and balances that impede the
| efficiency of the American government.
| Victerius wrote:
| China is one extreme. The other extreme is the United
| States, which isn't able to accomplish anything, good
| _or_ bad. All the US does anymore is renaming post
| offices, mailing social security checks, funding the
| army, and tax stuff. Tax cuts, tax credits, tax rebates,
| tax incentives.
|
| China may well supersede the United States in the future,
| despite its treatment of minorities.
| Aarostotle wrote:
| aaomidi wrote:
| I mean there are a lot of people who are looking into
| moving to China. I suspect this line is going to age like
| milk in the next few years.
| Aarostotle wrote:
| I'll set a reminder to come back to this in 3, 10, and 20
| years. We'll see.
| vorpalhex wrote:
| They also can't enforce building codes leading to fires
| that kill a lot of people, have no real food safety and
| dramatically impinge on any sense of individual rights.
| swader999 wrote:
| We can do the same kinds of things in war time and have.
| teucris wrote:
| I agree, but the current political climate has made
| consensus appear as weakness.
| camgunz wrote:
| The problem is that our federal legislative system is
| heavily tilted in favor of Republicans despite them being
| firmly a minority party. This is most apparent in the
| Senate, but gerrymandering gives them an edge in the House
| too.
|
| So when you're talking about consensus, the country has it.
| There's consensus on immigration, gun control, and
| abortion. It's just that Republicans prevent us from acting
| on it.
| extheat wrote:
| Consensus doesn't just mean 51%. It means general
| agreement. If you have 100 people in a room, 51 people
| are in favor of something and the other 49 are not, is
| that your "consensus"? Prior to the US each of the states
| were their own sovereign entities. Why enter the US (or
| stay in it) if you are going to be ruled against your
| will? The states agreed to give up some of their power
| and joined under the explicit conditions of the senate
| that they would have an equal say.
| camgunz wrote:
| These are a little dated but:
|
| A majority of Americans support the right to choose [1]
| (61%), a path to amnesty for undocumented persons [2]
| (60%), restrictions on firearm purchase and ownership [3]
| (> 64%), moving off of fossil fuels and treating climate
| change like the threat it is [4] (76%), a wealth tax on
| people with a net worth of over $50m [5] (56%), the
| expanded voting rights in HR 1 [6] (>61%), etc. etc. etc.
|
| These are _big_ majorities, and I 'd wager most Americans
| don't think this stuff is broadly popular.
|
| [1]: https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-
| tank/2022/06/13/about-six-i...
|
| [2]: https://www.politico.com/f/?id=00000177-d4f4-dd7d-ab
| 77-fcfd4...
|
| [3]: https://www.politico.com/f/?id=00000178-cfbd-d112-a9
| 7e-ffbde...
|
| [4]: https://morningconsult.com/2021/04/27/paris-
| agreement-climat...
|
| [5]: https://www.businessinsider.com/over-half-americans-
| see-weal...
|
| [6]:
| https://www.filesforprogress.org/datasets/2021/4/dfp-vox-
| hr-...
| andy_ppp wrote:
| One man's consensus is another man's deliberately bought
| off by an unholy alliance of special interests and stupid
| people.
| brodouevencode wrote:
| This is as much a blow to chevron deference than anything. This
| is a good thing.
| xpe wrote:
| Please explain.
| willis936 wrote:
| I'll attempt to explain on their behalf: technocracy bad,
| regulatory capture good.
| AnimalMuppet wrote:
| Don't put words in other peoples' mouths. Especially
| strawman words.
|
| It's not honest, it's not nice, and it's against the site
| guidelines.
| brodouevencode wrote:
| This is a decent definition: "administrative law principle
| that compels federal courts to defer to a federal agency's
| interpretation of an ambiguous or unclear statute that
| Congress delegated to the agency to administer." The ruling
| basically undermines the previous notion of the judiciary
| deferring to an administrative agency, because it just
| didn't, therefore forcing the legislature to be more
| explicit in its desires.
| jrochkind1 wrote:
| Why do you see a blow to the chevron deference doctrine as a
| good thing?
|
| I'd say that the doctrine properly tries to keep the supreme
| court, the least democratically responsible branch of US
| federal government, from being the most powerful of the three
| branches of government.
| mn3gs wrote:
| The least democratically responsible branch of the US
| federal government is the administrative state.
| gruez wrote:
| How are civil servants _less_ responsible than supreme
| court justices that are appointed for life? At least with
| civil servants they can be fired.
| jrochkind1 wrote:
| How do you see the Supreme Court as being more
| democratically responsible than the administrative
| personel of the executive branch?
|
| To me, it seems clear that the "administrative state" is
| overseen by the president, who can overrule them and fire
| individual people, and the president is elected by the
| people every four years, and that makes the executive
| branch more democratically responsible than the supreme
| court, which is not elected by the people, and who serve
| for life with no democratic accountability.
|
| But I'm open to hearing your argument for how the supreme
| court is more democratically responsible than the offices
| of the executive branch! Maybe we don't mean the same
| thing by "democratically responsible".
| brodouevencode wrote:
| > being the most powerful of the three branches of
| government.
|
| By pushing the responsibility to lifelong bureaucrats? I
| honestly don't see a difference there.
| camgunz wrote:
| The "lifelong bureaucrats" are typically (but not always,
| see the CDC) policy and subject matter experts.
|
| Chevron deference's main purpose is to free Congress from
| writing exhaustive laws. If the executive branch does
| something Congress doesn't like, they can change the law
| and make it more specific. Of course Congress does almost
| nothing, so when you say it has to take legislative
| action to regulate something, what you're effectively
| doing is deregulating it.
|
| This decision follows more from the Court where they pick
| and choose what they doom in this way based on their
| personal politics, contrary to precedent and reliance
| interests.
|
| We shouldn't think too hard about what this Court does;
| it's a nakedly ideological power grab that's the endgame
| of a generation long effort by Conservatives to control
| the US through the court as they slide further and
| further into permanent minority status. Future
| generations will look back on this era as one of infamy.
| laverya wrote:
| > The "lifelong bureaucrats" are typically (but not
| always, see the CDC) policy and subject matter experts.
|
| We really, really needed one of those groups of unelected
| bureaucrats to be policy and subject matter experts, and
| they weren't. But don't worry, all the others we haven't
| actually checked are!
| camgunz wrote:
| I'll try and read into your low-effort dismissal here a
| critique of my singling out the CDC and explain further:
|
| The CDC is a relatively unique case of an institution
| that was really gutted by a mistake decades ago (the
| swine flu vaccine in the late 70s [0]) and then got some
| pretty bad Trump-nominated leadership [1] [2]). Elections
| matter, it turns out.
|
| [0]: https://www.npr.org/2021/05/03/991570372/michael-
| lewis-the-p...
|
| [1]: https://www.cnn.com/2020/06/04/politics/cdc-
| redfield-aids-wa...
|
| [2]: https://www.politico.com/story/2018/01/18/cdc-
| director-avoid...
| jrochkind1 wrote:
| The buerocrats take their orders from the president, and
| if they don't can be overruled and fired by the
| president, who is elected by the people every 4 years.
| That's a pretty big difference, no?
| 31835843 wrote:
| The Supreme Court can just ignore its own precedents, so
| this doesn't really help.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _Supreme Court can just ignore its own precedents_
|
| I'm not a fan of the current Court, but _stare decisis_
| has never been binding. Landmark rulings are landmarks
| because the create or break precedent. Courts have been
| doing that since there were courts.
| camgunz wrote:
| Stare decides bound _Casey_ , at least. It's never before
| been ignored when it established a new individual right (
| _Dobbs_ overturns precedent to remove a right, which has
| never been done before). This really can 't be minimized
| as "Courts gonna Court".
| khuey wrote:
| I haven't read the opinion in detail but it doesn't appear
| they touched Chevron, merely ruling this particular case
| falls under the preexisting major questions
| doctrine/exception to Chevron.
| voxic11 wrote:
| If you read the dissent they seem to be claiming the
| majority opinion greatly expands the circumstances in which
| the major questions exception applies. Which would be a big
| hit to Chevron making it apply in far fewer cases.
| rabuse wrote:
| I hope they go after the unconstitutional agency known as the
| "ATF" next.
| the_only_law wrote:
| Or the DEA, CIA, NSA and other criminal cabals.
| zeroonetwothree wrote:
| SC rules on cases that are appealed. They can't "go after"
| anyone on their own.
| oaththrowaway wrote:
| Hoping this ruling will help with that
| post_break wrote:
| That's exactly what this may do. The ATF in theory can't just
| up and decide what to ban without congress making a law.
| Turning law abiding citizens into felons overnight. Bumpstock
| ban? That's gone in theory. FRT trigger? Braces? ATF is going
| to quickly realize they can't just make shit up on the fly if
| it's not a law.
| barsonme wrote:
| Or Congress could pass legislation granting ATF authority to
| determine what constitutes a machine gun under the National
| Firearms Act.
| post_break wrote:
| A machine gun is already defined as something that fires
| multiple times with a single trigger pull. Not sure what
| you're saying?
| barsonme wrote:
| To be clear: I'm not advocating anything, just stating
| that Congress could choose to delegate that authority as
| a result of the ruling.
| post_break wrote:
| I'm just not sure what you're saying even still. Under
| the NFA it's already a law on the books. Moving mountains
| to pass something that's already law.
| maxwell wrote:
| In light of _Bruen_ and this one, maybe.
|
| But based on _Egbert_ and _Vega_ , there's now precedent for
| federal agents to perform warrantless raids, seizures, and
| arrests, without reading _Miranda_ warnings, with no legal
| consequences.
| xdennis wrote:
| Considering that the ATF has incancerated over 1000 people over
| fake crimes[1], they should.
|
| [1]:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ATF_fictional_sting_operations
| system2 wrote:
| So bizarre to see USA to be derailed like this, by Americans.
| Difficult to understand what the long game is. By hurting the
| country, who is benefiting?
| lelandfe wrote:
| Seriously: power plant owners and investors, and politicians
| involved with the same. Those politicians have spent time and
| money convincing their constituency this benefits _them_ , too.
| nharada wrote:
| For many Americans the enemy IS Americans. It's worth getting
| bruised up as long as the other guy is hurt more.
| andrekandre wrote:
| > By hurting the country, who is benefiting?
|
| who do you think it is?
| stakkur wrote:
| The EPA's power to cut emissions has _always_ been limited. That
| 's always been part of the problem. The current Supreme Court
| didn't suddenly create those limits, they just adjusted the dial
| a little.
|
| TL:DR; the EPA has _never_ 'protected people from emissions'
| well. This article seems to ignore all that history and focuses
| on the hot take of ruling reactions.
| pzautke wrote:
| Highly recommend Uncivil Law's analysis of this and other court
| decisions - https://youtu.be/a0THZi7H6LI?t=595
| itslennysfault wrote:
| These guys are on a roll. Yesterday was giving states legal
| rights over indigenous nations. Today this.
|
| I was already planning to expat soon, but this all makes me want
| to try to hurry that timeline. Sorry to those of you that are
| stuck in this hellscape.
| brodouevencode wrote:
| selimthegrim wrote:
| Weird, I thought Gorsuch was pretty pro indigenous.
| Miltnoid wrote:
| Yeah, he was on the dissenting side. But it was still 5-4.
| rootusrootus wrote:
| > stuck in this hellscape
|
| It looks much less so if you turn off the news. I have a good
| life here, and I'm unconvinced it would be a net improvement to
| move to Europe. I enjoy visiting there, but it's not like they
| don't have their own problems.
| pigtailgirl wrote:
| -- America began the process of un-uniting quite some time ago
| - it's unsurprising that the supreme court is reflecting that -
| curious what Americans here think about this? - much of the
| country is trending towards "live in the state that you're
| comfortable in" - seems somewhat reasonable? --
| rootusrootus wrote:
| > live in the state that you're comfortable in
|
| That's a pipe dream. The division is urban-vs-rural, not
| state-vs-state. What is now a red state will inexorably
| become blue as people flock to it. Rinse and repeat.
|
| America has been through divisive times in the past. We'll
| survive. I think what's notable now is that it's been so damn
| peaceful for most of our lives that this looks like
| unprecedented tribalism.
| cujo wrote:
| Thoughts:
|
| 1. Moving is hard. Even harder for people that have little
| means. Living in the state you're comfortable isn't going to
| work for a lot of people.
|
| 2. Currently, it doesn't feel like "the state you're
| comfortable in" will be that way for long in this country.
|
| 3. Moving to a country you're comfortable in is the same
| principle, so why not do that if you're already comfortable
| moving?
|
| But to play this card,
| davidw wrote:
| > 1. Moving is hard. Even harder for people that have
| little means. Living in the state you're comfortable isn't
| going to work for a lot of people.
|
| Also, don't forget that a lot of blue states (if that's
| where someone wants to live) have been really bad at
| providing enough housing, so are pretty difficult for
| someone to move to if they don't have a lot of money.
| pigtailgirl wrote:
| -- I'd think that if you wanted to progress your country
| and change it toward your perspective - it would take folks
| moving to the areas they're uncomfortable to do the work in
| those communities - from an outside perspective it seems
| the conservatives are going to swallow the liberals in the
| states simply because they're more comfortable literally
| going to other areas of the country to change/bolster
| views? (I don't live in the USA)- however - I suppose
| that's a lot to ask - that said- it's fairly common in some
| countries --
| [deleted]
| akmarinov wrote:
| You're looking to become an immigrant somewhere?
| cujo wrote:
| Is this supposed to be a gotcha? That's clearly what OP is
| saying. What makes that unreasonable?
| artemonster wrote:
| In ,,their" mind that a very ,,bad" thing, I guess.
| [deleted]
| gonzo41 wrote:
| Don't pick a country that's between the tropics of Capricorn or
| Cancer, or you'll just be escaping to a hellscape shortly
| anyway.
| mark_l_watson wrote:
| While I think that I understand your feelings, here is
| something to consider: Yuval Noah Harari (historian who has
| written some great books for understanding the world) recently
| said that if countries like the USA can solve the partisanship
| problems we have then there is no limit to where our society
| and civilization can go.
|
| This seems well worth working hard for.
|
| My personal approach is to be very hard on family members and
| friends who if democrats talk about republicans as evil
| incarnate and if they are republicans then talk about democrats
| as woke idiots who are ruining the country.
|
| I try to point out how stupid both sides are and they are
| fighting the wrong battles against the wrong enemy.
|
| Another reason to stay in the USA: currently the world is
| splitting into two economies led by:
|
| 1) BRICS countries (Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South
| Africa) - they will probably have about 60% of the world's
| population aligned with them.
|
| 2) USA/Europe/Canada/Australia/etc. - they will probably have
| about 40% of the world's population aligned with them.
|
| Except for the USA and Russia who have the resources (food,
| energy, defensibility), I think that most all of the other
| countries can not exist without external trade. If the shit
| really hits the fan for the world, being in the USA might be a
| very good thing, even if we don't solve the political bigotry
| of democrats and republicans hating each other.
| KingOfCoders wrote:
| As an European, please don't put me in a basket with the USA.
| Thanks.
| ericmay wrote:
| I'd like to caution other people who are feeling despondent and
| thinking of leaving that this is _exactly_ what they want. They
| want you to give them your homes, your relationships, your
| friends, your resources, your job and everything you 've cared
| about.
|
| So instead of being cynical and celebrating people who are
| abandoning ship, which I totally understand, we should instead
| spend time uniting people in opposition. Stay where you are and
| fight. It's _your_ country. It 's mind-blowing that people
| won't engage in trying to actually do something, even something
| as simple as helping a campaign, or donating money, but instead
| they're like "well I'm going to just give up and spend all this
| time and effort moving to some other country where I also won't
| uphold any civic responsibility". Madness.
| davidw wrote:
| I've been pondering this myself. At a certain point, in
| places going downhill, like Venezuela or Russia, the smart
| move is just to get out. Tough to decide when that moment is,
| though, I guess.
| notafraudster wrote:
| It's not just about chronic malignant threats like those
| countries; it's also about acute threats. Take as an
| example, if you were Ukrainian, you had about 2 months of
| runway during which there was ample evidence Russia was
| going to invade Ukraine and the country would likely be
| flattened. And yet, when Russia did invade Ukraine, there
| were throngs of people trying to escape. I'm not talking
| about people who are disabled or immobile, I'm talking
| about middle class people who simply thought they had more
| time and didn't want to disrupt their life for nothing. See
| also Afghans in Kabul, who thought either the Taliban
| wouldn't win or they'd have several more months to get
| their lives in order.
|
| This is also a popular trope in fiction. In the recent
| Handmaid's Tale series, there are several episodes devoted
| to life immediately before the fall, and what you see is a
| lot of evidence stuff is going to hit a crisis point, and a
| lot of people insisting that it hasn't quite yet.
|
| Obviously the threshold to act has to be fairly high -- and
| I'm not saying America is Kabul or Kyiv or Gilead -- but I
| think there's nothing wrong with listening to the part of
| your brain that says "wow, it feels like the shit is
| imminently going to hit the fan". Because if you wait until
| it actually does, you'll have significantly less capacity
| to act.
|
| There are also options beyond leaving the country. Some
| places are physically safer and physically more isolated
| from threat than others. For example, in the event that
| there is a rapid institutional collapse in the United
| States, it seems likely that Hawai'i would be among the
| places most likely to endure a little while extra or to
| most easily facilitate leaving the country. Areas near
| unguarded border crossings on the northern border also have
| an appeal in that regard. I think the right degree of
| seriousness with which to take something like this is not
| so much "I should move to Hawai'i tomorrow in case there's
| a civil war" and more "If I can work remotely in Hawai'i or
| if a job opens up, I might gain some degree of personal
| safety/sovereignty by moving there."
|
| Personal context: I am a non-American. I spent most of the
| 2010s living in the U.S., and I emigrated to another
| country in early 2021. The pull factor to emigrate was a
| job opportunity abroad that was great and that my wife
| agreed would be a fun way to spend a few years, but the
| push factor to emigrate was significant uncertainty about
| the institutional stability of the U.S. We were setting up
| our paperwork just as the Capitol Insurrection happened.
| davidw wrote:
| I think some kind of dramatic failure less likely than a
| gradual descent. More like Hungary, Turkey, Venezuela or
| something than some of the more, uh, 'exciting' examples
| from history.
|
| Of course, things going badly in the US is going to have
| spillover effects everywhere else too, so that's
| something to keep in mind. I'm not sure how isolated
| various places would be.
| SantalBlush wrote:
| We have a long way to go before we can reasonably be
| compared with Venezuela.
| tehjoker wrote:
| The main thing would for us to be under crushing US
| sanctions. However, because the US needs their oil now,
| things may be loosening up and Venezuela may do a lot
| better.
| davidw wrote:
| As much as these things can be objectively measured,
| that's certainly correct. But the trend is not a good
| one, and the US is considered a 'flawed democracy' rather
| than a full one according to this:
| https://www.economist.com/graphic-
| detail/2022/02/09/a-new-lo...
| CyanBird wrote:
| I honestly couldn't live living in the US, I just
| couldn't exist there knowing that my tax dollars and
| simply my existence there helps bolster such violence in
| other countries, good that I don't need to with how
| common wfh is these days
|
| But yeah, rough stuff
| davidw wrote:
| No place is perfect. Much of the fossil fuels that
| European countries consume was coming from Russia and is
| paying for the horrific things Russia is doing in
| Ukraine.
|
| But narrowly, I'm talking about democracy itself, which
| is not doing well in the US.
| JohnHaugeland wrote:
| Oh stop it.
| halostatue wrote:
| I concur, _as_ an expat.
|
| Barring extreme circumstances++, one should not moving _from_
| the country of one's birth, but _to_ the country of one's
| choice. I emigrated from the U.S. two decades ago _to_
| Canada, because of the person who later became my wife--but I
| had to decide that I could live _with_ Canada, too. Family
| aside, nothing in the U.S. either held me _to_ America or was
| pushing me _from_ America.
|
| The process took almost two years, and it was almost five
| years before I got Canadian citizenship. As I understand it,
| it would take longer now.
|
| My wife and I are considering moving to Europe or the U.K.,
| but it would take time for this move to materialize, and we
| need to figure out what it is that we want (especially given
| our ages). Such a move is not likely to happen for two to
| five years at this point.
|
| ++ There are exigent circumstances where it becomes safer to
| leave one country with little care for where one goes, as
| long as it isn't worse. I fear with the extremists taking
| power legitimately and illegitimately and pushing toward
| their increasingly apartheid goals, there will be larger
| classes of people who could legitimately become _refugees_
| from America, especially if "liberal" states turn extremist
| --as they seem likely to do, since the divide here is (mostly
| old, mostly white) rural vs (mostly younger, mostly diverse)
| urban.
|
| Sitting where I sit, I truly think that America is fucked,
| and am doing what little that I can to make sure that Canada
| does not follow in its footsteps, but we have our homegrown
| extremists whose crypto-christo-fascist messages are being
| treated with bemusement to respect, and even being promoted
| by fools like Poilievre.
| itslennysfault wrote:
| Yeah, to be clear, I'm not running away from America. I'm
| in a similar situation where my partner wants to move to
| Germany (in a couple years), and I think that sounds like a
| swell idea.
| freedomben wrote:
| > _I 'd like to caution other people who are feeling
| despondent and thinking of leaving that this is exactly what
| they want._
|
| Could you clarify who "they" is in:
|
| > _this is exactly what they want._
|
| ?
|
| And are you being a little hyperbolic (nothing wrong with
| that, we all do it especially when impassioned) or do you
| really think the supreme court (or whoever "they" is) are
| trying to cause an exodus of people they disagree with?
|
| I'm not challenging/disagreeing with you, just very
| interested in understanding your thinking.
| ericmay wrote:
| I intentionally left _they_ up to interpretation here
| because I think the same logic applies to anyone who is
| potentially being forced from their home. This could apply
| to California w.r.t firearms, or perhaps San Francisco and
| their lethargic response to a public health crises, or
| perhaps Ohio where I live where Christian Communists are
| attempting to subvert the United States and the
| Constitution.
|
| I've actually always felt this way about immigration and
| refugees as well. I certainly understand taking people in
| (from wherever, to wherever), but the big problem with that
| is once all the good people leave an area you have nothing
| but the bad people. It's sort of fragile on a global scale.
| What's the end goal? All "good" people go to a select few
| countries and then the rest of the world is run by bad
| people?
|
| > And are you being a little hyperbolic (nothing wrong with
| that, we all do it especially when impassioned) or do you
| really think the supreme court (or whoever "they" is) are
| trying to cause an exodus of people they disagree with?
|
| I don't think there's an active campaign just yet, but I do
| think that state legislatures are happy when this filtering
| process happens because it solidifies power. So far they
| have not undertaken active, visible campaigns, but I
| believe that it's coming and will come more aggressively
| from Christian Communists that have taken power in state
| legislatures. It's not something that Democratic Party
| leaders will say out loud but of course they're happy when
| so-called Republicans leave their jurisdiction as well.
|
| > I'm not challenging/disagreeing with you
|
| Please do! We can't get better if we don't explore and have
| discussions.
| [deleted]
| kevin_b_er wrote:
| I have no intent on living through a new North Korea, a new
| Russia, a new Greater German Reich, or a Gilead.
|
| We're only a few years away from the collapse. It is a smart
| move to escape while you can. If I need heart pills or
| insulin in the future and they can't be made safe, then it
| won't be safe if you have any medical issues. If the _water_
| won 't be safe because we couldn't regulate new chemicals
| invented, then it won't be safe to live here. If it isn't
| safe to have a pregnancy, because they've decided to sentence
| to death those with an ectopic pregnancy, why should you
| stay?
| scotty79 wrote:
| If you stay you are giving them your work and taxes,
| potentially your children.
|
| It's better to gtfo.
|
| Some people are deriving plasure from fighting the fights
| even at high personal cost. But most people don't.
|
| Your top responsibility is to yourself, to make the best of
| the short time you have. Fighting loosing fights doesn't seem
| to be that for most people.
| jl6 wrote:
| > Your top responsibility is to yourself, to make the best
| of the short time you have.
|
| Ironically this is the mindset behind keeping the coal
| plants online.
| scotty79 wrote:
| Every mindset can justify every action if you
| sufficiently want it.
| queuebert wrote:
| We can't take the natural resources, benefits of geography,
| and nuclear weapons with us, so those we leave behind will
| inherit a very powerful nation. Something to think about.
| KingOfCoders wrote:
| You can't inherit something you have stolen.
| Aunche wrote:
| Couldn't agree with you more. Democracy literally means
| "people rule." As the rulers, you occasionally have to rule.
| It blows my mind that so many people act really angry about
| states that gerrymander or take away abortion rights, but
| can't even name a single state legislature. The little
| political motivation people have gets funneled into a few
| super-popular national issues regardless of their political
| feasibility, so Congresspeople are incentivized to virtue
| signal rather than get legislation though.
| cujo wrote:
| > We should instead spend time uniting people in opposition.
| Stay where you are and fight.
|
| That is definitely one approach, and one I'm hoping to see
| through. But simultaneously you have to acknowledge that
| there could come a point where it's time to jump ship. That
| point is going to be different for everyone. Recent events
| have pushed some past that point. That doesn't seem hard to
| grasp.
|
| > It's mind-blowing that people won't engage in trying to
| actually do something, even something as simple as helping a
| campaign, or donating money...
|
| Have you been paying attention? People in this country have
| been more engaged over the last few years than at any point
| in my lifetime, and at this point the ship is still sinking.
|
| Every time there is a school shooting, there is outrage and
| no change. Proud boys terrorize another fucking library
| event, and there aren't even reports of a single arrest.
| Women's rights being slaughtered and we get to hear how we
| need to vote. Another hearing laying out the obvious coup
| attempt on Jan 6th, and no action taken but another news
| headline.
|
| This is just a snippet of the last ~30 days. 1 short month. I
| don't argue that it's my country. My country just looks like
| a real shithole lately.
|
| > but instead they're like "well I'm going to just give up
| and spend all this time and effort moving to some other
| country where I also won't uphold any civic responsibility".
|
| This is such a weird take. Consider employment. You can join
| a startup, work your ass off, cross your fingers, and hope
| for that big payday. High risk, high reward. Alternatively,
| you can join a mature company, collect a comfortable paycheck
| and moderately help to steer the bigger ship.
|
| Right now, the US is looking like that startup. You can work
| your ass off, and it may give you a great payoff in the form
| of opportunity. But it's looking increasingly like it's going
| to fail. Alternatively, you can move somewhere that has all
| the big stuff in order, and you get to work on the small
| stuff that still has effect while not worrying as much about
| whether you're one injury away from bankruptcy.
|
| Who knows? Maybe if we vote harder it'll turn around. At this
| point, I'm inclined to believe it's cultural. We barely voted
| out an insurrectionist. 48% of the country voted to keep that
| in play. This country is full of people who are actively
| encouraging someone to overthrow our government. 48%.
| hirundo wrote:
| Large economically disruptive policy changes should come from the
| legislative rather than the executive or judicial branches, as
| they are more democratically accountable, at a finer level of
| detail. To the extend that the consitution codifies that, it's a
| good thing.
| [deleted]
| Victerius wrote:
| I don't know how I should react to this news. I can imagine every
| argument:
|
| "EPA regulations were inconsequential in GHG emission reductions
| in the US during the last 20 years"
|
| "This decision could doom humanity"
|
| "An excess of environmental regulations is accelerating climate
| change, scientists find"
|
| "Experts say the private sector will continue to seek emissions
| efficiencies on its own, regardless of environmental regulations"
|
| "ESG investing norms could be 10x better for the environment than
| EPA regulations, climate scientists say"
|
| Etc.
| WillPostForFood wrote:
| "If you want to regulate greenhouse gasses, we have a
| legislature that can regulate greenhouse gasses"
| Arrath wrote:
| But first they need to....you know, legislate.
| [deleted]
| colincooke wrote:
| For those looking to get an objective understanding of this
| decision I found this article useful[0]. The gist of it is that
| this is more about preventing future rules to be put in place
| rather than changing anything that the EPA is actively enforcing.
| Essentially the EPA cannot force the shut-down of coal fired
| power plants (or other high emission energy sources) using the
| Clean Air Act.
|
| As someone very pro renewable energy obviously I would prefer a
| different outcome, but the good news is that these types of power
| sources are just plain uneconomical these days, so their shutdown
| is going to happen anyways. Perhaps renewables won't have as many
| regulatory assists as we hoped, but the good news is that they
| can stand on their own, and the clean power industry keeps
| building better systems then capitalism will take care of the
| transition for us.
|
| [0] https://reason.com/volokh/2022/06/30/supreme-court-
| rejects-b...
| asdajksah2123 wrote:
| It's not clear to me if the court has ruled broadly regarding
| delegation here (we still need experts to read through the entire
| ruling), but they've clearly indicated that they believe that
| delegation is not okay with them.
|
| Which basically means that this court will reduce the Federal
| government to a non-entity very soon, making its functioning
| absolutely impossible.
|
| That may even be "constitutionally" correct (although no court
| since the founding of the US has ever found that to be an
| issue...this is an entirely new creation by a few members of this
| court), but it makes the US completely incapable of operating in
| the modern world.
|
| If you thought China taking over Africa because the US govt was
| distracted by the Middle East (and isolationism) was bad, it's
| gonna get way worse when US federal agencies will constantly need
| to check back to see if they even have the power to do anything
| because the current SC has decided to curtail Federal powers in a
| way that every court before had absolutely no problem with.
| A4ET8a8uTh0 wrote:
| >>That may even be "constitutionally" correct
|
| This is the entire purpose of SCOTUS. They are not supposed to
| wade into politics. It is the same beef I have with Powell and
| his giving in to political demands. There is a reason you have
| the power and independence you do. It is not to please
| everyone.
|
| I get that people will disagree, but ends do not justify the
| means.
| usrn wrote:
| >If you thought China taking over Africa because the US govt
| was distracted by the Middle East (and isolationism) was bad
|
| Wait I thought people (especially the left) morally condemned
| the rush for Africa as well as modern day "neo colonialism."
|
| EDIT: Alright, so I'm getting downvoted. What am I missing?
| turdit wrote:
| rlewkov wrote:
| An attorney friend of mine summarized it by saying that the
| Supreme Court said it's OK for the EPA to dictate particular
| emission levels for power plants but not OK to require a plant
| to change it's method of power generation.
| mc32 wrote:
| Wow... if this is the actual impact, that seems... fair.
| Yeah, you can regulate pollution levels but not go a step
| further and regulate the inputs that create pollution, unless
| that power is vested in you by Congress.
| jvanderbot wrote:
| So CO2=0 would be legit? That seems against the spirit /
| motivation of the court at present moment. My third-hand
| impression was that they ruled that regulating CO2 at all was
| outside their responsibilities.
| nitsky wrote:
| The deal is that Congress can delegate administrative
| authority to agencies like the EPA, but answers to "major
| questions" must be backed up by legislation. Where is the
| line? Wherever the Supreme Court decides it is.
| im_down_w_otp wrote:
| Alternatively, there's always the opportunity to reappropriate
| Andrew Jackson for the modern era and say, "John Roberts made
| his decision, now let him enforce it."
|
| Were the country so inclined.
| vintermann wrote:
| Yes, the ironic thing is that it's not even clear from the US
| constitution that the court should have the sweeping powers
| it has, and it certainly hasn't always had them. But like the
| pope declaring that the pope is infallible, they have decided
| that they should. And since elected politicians have found it
| expedient to play along for a long time, now it's not easy
| for them to go back.
| josephcsible wrote:
| 2OEH8eoCRo0 wrote:
| I think that we will adapt and Congress just needs to adjust to
| a hostile Supreme Court and legislate more. People need to
| vote.
| hotpotamus wrote:
| Yeah, they're ahead of you on that one. Already zapped the
| Voting Rights Act and ruled that gerrymandering is legal.
| They're pretty competent at setting up the doom loop for
| Democracy - that and cutting taxes for the wealthy.
| 2OEH8eoCRo0 wrote:
| Adapt and overcome. I'm against panic and FUD.
| hotpotamus wrote:
| You know, it occurs to me that pessimism is pretty
| inherently toxic, but not always wrong, but optimism can
| have the same quality.
| 2OEH8eoCRo0 wrote:
| I do what I can. I donate to principled and pragmatic
| political campaigns, I vote, and I encourage others to do
| the same. I've just heard too much doom and gloom that
| never turns out as bad in practice as I've been led to
| believe. c'est la vie. One must cultivate one's own
| garden.
| hotpotamus wrote:
| I mean, I see the inflation now, I've lived through a
| climate disaster already (and quite the opposite of what
| I expected from global warming). I see the financial
| meltdown, the accelerating costs of living such that most
| people in my generation are actually poorer (and less
| healthy) than Boomers or Gen Xers. Also the president
| nearly had his vice president hanged by a crowd he
| whipped up. That last one might have had some
| entertainment value at least, but seems like it came
| pretty close to gloom and doom, no? Oh yeah, and the
| plague that apparently wasn't too bad because it only
| kills your grandparents and apparently they've had their
| time. And then the rich conservatives trot out their
| apparatchiks to tell you that actually you're just a
| sourpuss because your phone is too entertaining and your
| TV is too big and that's the most condescending part of
| it all I think. So yeah, not much of an optimist here I
| suppose.
| [deleted]
| vintermann wrote:
| You think that the court is principled? You think that will
| work?
|
| A subsidiary of the "just world" hypothesis is what they call
| in Russia the "just tsar" theory. The theory that the final
| legal authority, the tsar, is reasonable. He just doesn't
| know what all his bloodsucking boyars and rampaging Cossacks
| are doing.
| JohnGB wrote:
| I'm just dumbfounded by the fact that the US Supreme Court has
| no term limits, age limits, or reasonable impeachment mechanism
| for justices that have unethical behaviour or outright lie on
| their job interview.
|
| The USA is the most "at will employment" country in the world
| until it comes to the most critical functions of a government.
| It's absolutely crazy to me.
| gwbrooks wrote:
| Term limits are possible with a congressional vote; an
| impeachment process already exists, and the only time it was
| invoked against a Justice was 1804.
|
| Don't mistake politicians' unwillingness to do something for
| an inability to do it.
| RhysU wrote:
| It could have all of those things, however, by act of
| Congress and/or constitutional amendment.
| throwoutway wrote:
| Lots of fear mongering here. The federal government has always
| been intended to have limited powers & courts have not always
| been pro-federal gov. That's an unreasonable thing to posit.
|
| What does China and Africa have to do with this? The federal
| government is explicitly given powers of national security &
| defense & diplomacy. States don't get to have embassies or
| choose foreign policy.
| bmelton wrote:
| For more information on the topic, you can look towards
| previous decisions creating the modern statutory
| interpretations (that have been pretty much declining in favor
| since their inception)
|
| The two main cases that framed how much (or little) _deference_
| the courts should lend in matters of dispute broadly derive
| from Chevron v NRDC[1] and Auer v Robbins[2]
|
| [1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chevron_U.S.A.,_Inc._v._Nat
| ura....
|
| [2] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Auer_v._Robbins
| bhupy wrote:
| > it makes the US completely incapable of operating in the
| modern world.
|
| A less pessimistic outcome is that it forces the US to operate
| more like the EU, which seems more than capable of operating in
| the modern world.
|
| Whether that actually happens remains to be seen.
| nostromo wrote:
| > this court will reduce the Federal government to a non-entity
| very soon
|
| This is an absurd take. All Congress needs to do is clarify
| that they'd like the EPA to regulate carbon emissions. That's
| it. The laws regarding pollution control, many of which date
| back to the 1950s and 1960s, we're not written with global
| warming in mind. So the court is saying the EPA needs to get
| permission from elected officials to regulate carbon.
| evanpw wrote:
| That's not it at all. All parties agreed that Congress passed
| a law allowing the EPA to regular carbon emissions by setting
| emission limits on different types of power plants based on
| the best current technology available for emission reduction.
| The disagreement is whether that allows the EPA to set
| emission limits which are impossible to achieve, with the
| goal of forcing fossil fuel plants to shut down or subsidize
| renewable sources.
|
| I encourage all the tech people around here to "read the
| code":
| https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/21pdf/20-1530_n758.pdf
| Arubis wrote:
| > All Congress needs to do...
|
| And therein lies the problem. We know Congress is too
| deadlocked to be effective. Does the Court pushing back on
| them have a shot at getting the legislative branch to do
| their jobs?
| throwaway09223 wrote:
| "We know Congress is too deadlocked to be effective."
|
| In areas where there's no consensus, sure. Congress is very
| effective when the parties align. This is government
| working as intended.
|
| Not being able to bulldoze opposition is very different
| from existential destruction, or "becoming a non-entity" as
| was written above.
|
| The government only taking actions supported by a mandate
| from the people is an ideal result.
| jonstaab wrote:
| Deadlock is the point, less is more, worse is better.
| Arubis wrote:
| I agree that that appears to be the tactic in use.
|
| The Court could choose to act with the knowledge that
| Legislative won't do things, and so behave as the last
| bastion of relative non-partisanship across the Federal
| government by allowing the overall public opinion to
| influence what cases they choose to hear & their eventual
| outcomes. That would conflict with the letter description
| of their job, but arguably be in support of the spirit of
| the system as a whole.
|
| They're not going to go that route, though, it appears.
| whatshisface wrote:
| A political supreme court would be a Republican supreme
| court, presently, meaning this is actually a high point
| for how happy Democrats should be about textual
| originalism.
| krapp wrote:
| I don't see a lot of Republicans annoyed by anything the
| Supreme Court is doing - every decision they've made
| since repealing Roe seems to favor the right and
| undermine the left. Trump's list for Supreme Court
| appointees was written by the Federalist society, which
| is politically biased in favor of Republicans,
| libertarians and Christian conservatives.
| whatshisface wrote:
| The question is whether the precedents established in
| these cases will be respected and "swing both ways" in
| practice as they do on paper, or whether the SC will
| conveniently discover new legal principles to avoid them
| when, say, the legality of NSA's programs eventually
| comes up.
| briandear wrote:
| Deadlock is a feature not a bug. You want deadlock because
| one side or another pushing their agenda against the
| majority is the road to totalitarianism. If there is a
| deadlock, should one side of another simply dictate? Of
| course not.
|
| If Trump ran the executive branch, would you want him
| pushing through via administrative fiat things that
| Congress doesn't want? I certainly don't want the EPA
| making policy -- I want them doing what Congress explicitly
| tasks then to do. Same for other agencies. It's the Major
| Questions doctrine.
|
| Congress exists for a reason. The executive branch executes
| the will of the states and people as indicated by Congress.
| That's the entire point of Congress.
| tcj_phx wrote:
| Justice Scalia basically agreed with you: gridlock is
| essential for protecting minority interests.
|
| > And I hear Americans saying this nowadays, and there's
| a lot of it going around. They talk about a
| "dysfunctional government" because there's disagreement.
| And the Framers would have said, "Yes, that's exactly the
| way we set it up. We wanted this to be power
| contradicting power -- because the main ill that beset
| us" -- as Hamilton said in The Federalist when he talked
| about a separate Senate -- He said, "Yes, it seems
| inconvenient, but inasmuch as the main ill that besets us
| is an excess of legislation, it won't be so bad." This is
| 1787 -- he didn't know what an excess of legislation was.
|
| > So, unless Americans can appreciate that and learn to
| love the separation of powers, which means learning to
| love the gridlock, which the Framers believed would be
| the main protection of minorities -- the main protection.
| If a bill is about to pass that really comes down hard on
| some minority [and] they think it's terribly unfair, it
| doesn't take much to throw a monkey wrench into this
| complex system.
|
| > So, Americans should appreciate that and they should
| learn to love the gridlock. It's there for a reason -- so
| that the legislation that gets out will be good
| legislation.
|
| https://www.americanrhetoric.com/speeches/antoninscaliaam
| eri...
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ggz_gd--UO0
| zarzavat wrote:
| There is a difference between a system working as
| _intended_ , and a system working _well_. Given that the
| US constitution is now 230+ years old, we are seeing a
| huge divergence between the two.
|
| The deadlock may be intentional, but it cannot be said
| that this is a desirable mode of operation when comparing
| to other countries that have much more effective
| governance and healthier societies.
| nostromo wrote:
| You may claim an old constitution is a problem - I see it
| as a reason for optimism.
|
| The US is the world's oldest democracy in no small part
| because of that document.
| nitsky wrote:
| Conservatives love deadlock, it means the federal
| government does less, and power remains at the local level.
| CPLX wrote:
| It means power remains at the corporate level.
| citilife wrote:
| To be fair, the states are effectively countries that
| have joined a federation (similar to the EU). The power
| is supposed to be primarily at the local level, the
| federations primary goal is collective bargaining and
| protection.
|
| Pollution may make sense to regular here, but the states
| / federation needs to have a large majority agree (>60%).
| You can't have an unelected group of bureaucrats from the
| EPA dictating that a large number of states can't make
| money, for instance.
| nostromo wrote:
| > We know Congress is too deadlocked to be effective.
|
| This just isn't true. Congress continues to pass thousands
| of laws a year, in line with their historical trends.
|
| https://www.govtrack.us/congress/bills/statistics
|
| Congress is only too deadlocked to be effective on issues
| that the American people are divided on. And that's
| basically the point of democracy.
|
| I'm sorry to say that if you want a different set of laws,
| then you'll need to do the hard work of talking to other
| voters and convincing them you're right.
| res0nat0r wrote:
| The entire point was to kick this to Congress, which they
| know can't pass anything, thus achieving their entire goal
| of allowing companies to pollute and do whatever they want
| to make an additional buck.
| DiggyJohnson wrote:
| I see it more as a fundamental perspective that we need
| to _give Congress a kick_ , which is might be
| excruciatingly ineffective right now, but we cannot
| continue with the expectation that our Federal
| legislature is too incompetent or disincentivized to do
| their jobs.
| lolinder wrote:
| This tendency of people to attribute the worst possible
| motives to their political opponents is tiring.
|
| I live in a deeply conservative state, but I spend most
| of my online time on HN. This puts me in the middle of
| two _vastly_ different cultures with _vastly_ different
| sets of values. I have listened to both sides explain
| their sincerely held views. I have listened to both sides
| talk about the other side.
|
| Each group will tell me "but those other guys are evil
| and only want to ____!" Each group then explains their
| own views, and you know what? Each group's views are
| rational. Each group's views are compassionate. Both
| groups _really believe_ that they want what 's best for
| the world, and neither group has thought through their
| ideas better than the other. Both have severe flaws in
| their reasoning, but both also really care.
|
| In a word: both groups are human.
|
| I think it would do us all good to assume that most
| people are acting out of sincerely held beliefs, and that
| most people really do want to do good. I know there are
| exceptions, but the world would be a better place if we
| didn't treat those exceptions as though they were the
| rule.
| res0nat0r wrote:
| There is absolutely *zero* reason to rule that the EPA,
| which has existed since the 70's has no authority to
| regulate the environment. None.
|
| I'm attributing the worst to these people, because we
| know who they are. They want the government to have no
| ability to at all to put any restrictions on capital at
| all costs. They're simply doing it now because they have
| the raw power to do so.
| lolinder wrote:
| I've commented elsewhere on the reasons why the Supreme
| Court might rule the way they did. If you're sincerely
| curious, feel free to look at my other comments.
|
| Here, I'll just observe that you're doing it again:
| you're projecting the worst possible motive on someone
| else's decision without giving due consideration to _why
| else_ they might believe differently than you.
| nostromo wrote:
| If the authorization of the EPA was to "regulate the
| environment" then there is nothing they couldn't do.
|
| The EPA was largely create to regulate pollutants based
| on laws written in the 1950s and 60s. It's not at all
| clear that the original lawmakers would consider carbon a
| pollutant -- it's something you and I are exhaling right
| at this moment.
|
| So saying that the EPA needs authorization to regulate
| emissions that can cause climate change seems reasonable
| to me.
| waffleiron wrote:
| > All Congress needs to do is clarify that they'd like the
| EPA to regulate carbon emissions
|
| That is one interpretation. The dissenting opinion of Kagan
| argues that carbon emissions are covered due to Section
| 111(d), as this covers all pollutants.
| Supermancho wrote:
| > > this court will reduce the Federal government to a non-
| entity very soon
|
| > This is an absurd take.
|
| Indeed, OP overstated the reality. If the SC rules all day
| every day to reduce federal power, it would never be able to
| keep up with Federal power expansion.
| SllX wrote:
| Yes. The US Fed Govt was never intended to have unlimited and
| arbitrary power, but POTUS candidates make big promises they
| don't really have the power to deliver and try anyway. Right
| now it still has power very very close to that because even
| once a mook is elected and finds out he can't really say, _run
| the economy_ , he'll still end up expanding the power of his
| branch of government falling short of the goal.
|
| The path forward is clear for every single political ideology
| working within the legal Constitutional framework of the United
| States: get popular support, build a _political_ coalition and
| then _pass laws_. Anything that tries to take shortcuts around
| that process deserves the axe.
| nitsky wrote:
| > That may even be "constitutionally" correct... but it makes
| the US completely incapable of operating in the modern world.
|
| The Constitution was designed to be amended to adapt to a
| changing world. Let's amend it! However, it is the role of the
| Supreme Court to apply what the Constitution DOES say, not
| decide what it SHOULD say.
| rpearl wrote:
| how exactly do you propose finding the political will
| necessary to amend it?
| midislack wrote:
| Let's not. Why would we? This is a victory for the little
| guy.
|
| EDIT: downvoting me isn't going to save administrative
| courts and rule making.
| ZeroGravitas wrote:
| The political will is fairly easy in terms of broad
| democratic support, but following the rules as they're
| currently set out, which gives small groups outsized power
| makes it hard.
|
| I'm not sure confusing those two things is helpful though.
| colinmhayes wrote:
| > let's amend it!
|
| Lol good luck with that. Zero chance 3/4 of the states agree
| on literally anything. The culture wars are in full swing,
| owning the other side is more important than being effective.
| nitsky wrote:
| Alternatively, a simple majority in Congress could enact
| the regulations that were deemed not enforceable by the EPA
| alone. If a majority in Congress won't authorize it, should
| they be enacted? I guess it depends on your level of
| commitment to democracy as an ideal.
| colinmhayes wrote:
| A majority in congress isn't enough to pass regulatory
| laws. You need 60 votes unless you've got 50 willing to
| overturn the filibuster.
| happythebob wrote:
| You seem to think this is a both side's issue. Putin has a
| few bridges to sell you.
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| How is it culture wars when one side does not want to
| regulate pollution?
| briandear wrote:
| Defining CO2 as a pollutant is a problem for me.
| whatshisface wrote:
| Before CO2, you had pollutants like NOx, which were toxic
| pollutants, and CFCs, which were pollutants but not
| toxic. CFCs were considered pollutants because they
| damaged the Earth in a way that would have a negative
| impact on human health, but non-toxic because their harm
| was not directly effected on the human body. CO2 would be
| the kind of pollutant that CFCs are. (CFCs are toxic in
| high concentrations, but the mechanism of their harm when
| released into the environment is not toxicity.)
| tsimionescu wrote:
| By what possible definition is CO2 _not_ a pollutant?
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| The topic is not defining CO2 as a pollutant.
|
| The topic is about controlling proportions of different
| molecules in the environment to maintain a preferable
| quality of life for citizens of the world.
| briandear wrote:
| Good. If we can't agree, then we shouldn't do it. We are a
| republic. Every state should have a say.
| colinmhayes wrote:
| Then we can't do anything. Personally I don't think never
| doing anything is a path to success.
| kens wrote:
| The last amendment to the constitution was in 1992, so
| amendments aren't impossible. The story behind the 27th
| amendment is pretty amusing. An undergrad student wrote a
| paper saying that the proposed amendment was still live and
| could be ratified even though it had been proposed in 1789
| and not passed, but got a C grade on the paper since his TA
| disagreed. Annoyed by this, the student started a letter-
| writing campaign which eventually succeeded in getting the
| constitutional amendment passed. Years later, his grade was
| changed to an A to recognize that he had been right.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Twenty-
| seventh_Amendment_to_th...
| colinmhayes wrote:
| The political outlook has changed a lot since 92. Newt
| Gingrich was not yet speaker at that point, the
| republicans strategy of "never agree to anything
| democrats propose no matter what" was just getting
| started. I suspect passing that amendment would be much
| more difficult today.
| raverbashing wrote:
| Amendments to the constitution need adults in congress
| and the senate, not what we have today
| tablespoon wrote:
| >> let's amend it!
|
| > Lol good luck with that. Zero chance 3/4 of the states
| agree on literally anything. The culture wars are in full
| swing, owning the other side is more important than being
| effective.
|
| The problem is that a lot of people want to use amendments
| to force non-consensus policy preferences on the whole
| country. For many decades, it seems like Supreme Court
| decisions have frequently been serving as the
| constitutional amendments those people want in all but
| name.
| kilroy123 wrote:
| Agreed. Wasn't that the original intention? That it would be
| a living document that changes and grows as time goes on?
|
| Sadly, it seems near impossible to get consensus to change it
| now.
| jonny_eh wrote:
| There's two mechanisms to keep the constitution alive,
| amendments and rulings.
|
| It's both normal and necessary for judges to consider the
| complexities and competing interests in cases to determine
| how the law should be applied. The constitution does not
| need to enumerate every single right for the court. See the
| 9th amendment, it specifically says that.
|
| It's best to think of the constitution as a framework for
| how to think of our rights.
| falcolas wrote:
| Why, then, has no previous SC viewed its role in this way?
|
| Courts have historically always considered the intent of law
| (constitution) in addition to the word of law (constitution).
| Why isn't this one?
|
| It feels like this SC intends to use pedantry to hobble the
| federal government. But... why? Because they can?
| lolinder wrote:
| Have you read the decision? I haven't read the whole thing,
| but it consistently talks about what Congress intended to
| do. Here's a relevant extract, in which the EPA itself
| acknowledges that to the extent Congress expressed intent,
| it went _against_ the EPA 's rulemaking:
|
| > EPA argued that under the major questions of doctrine, a
| clear statement was necessary to conclude that Congress
| intended to delegate authority "of this breadth to regulate
| a fundamental sector of the economy." It found none.
| "Indeed," it concluded, given the text and structure of the
| statute, "Congress has directly spoken to this precise
| question and precluded" the use of measures such as
| generation shifting.
|
| The problem here is that what most people here _wish_
| Congress intended to do isn 't what Congress actually
| intended to do, because they couldn't build the political
| will to do it. I'm sympathetic to that view, but it's not
| the Supreme Court's job to fix Congress's deadlock.
| enragedcacti wrote:
| Have you read the dissent? it has clear legal answers to
| the questions being asked, including how the supreme
| court is ruling against non-existent policy as a
| political statement. The EPA guidance quoted exists
| because the EPA decided to move in a different direction
| before ever applying the Clean Power Plan.
|
| How does issuing preemptive and overly broad rulings
| against regulatory action that doesn't exist align with
| SCOTUS "just doing their job" as many people are
| asserting?
| bmelton wrote:
| It largely had been up until 1984, when Chevron v NRDC was
| decided in a way that yielded a _deference_ that previously
| didn't exist in determining the scope of executive branch
| delegation authority via statutory interpretation - e.g.,
| "Can the agency I've tasked with regulating John also
| regulate the Boy Scouts of America, of which John is a
| member?" and "If a regulatory agency can regulate John, can
| it determine for itself that it may also regulate John's
| best friend Janet just by reinterpreting the statute for
| itself without input by the executive or congressional
| branches?"
| falcolas wrote:
| The intent of the EPA is to regulate things that
| negatively impact the environment. To use your analogies,
| the EPA can by the word of law regulate John, and by the
| intent of law should be able to regulate BSA and Janet if
| they are operating in ways that negatively impact the
| environment.
|
| If you limit an entity to only ever operate by the word
| and not the intent of law, then it's trivial for
| malicious (more accurately greedy) actors to skirt
| regulation, because the government will never be able to
| keep up with the exploitation of loopholes.
|
| Kind of like how the IRS can tax bitcoins, despite
| cryptocurrencies not being explicitly written into the
| constitution or tax laws.
| briandear wrote:
| > Kind of like how the IRS can tax bitcoins, despite
| cryptocurrencies not being explicitly written into the
| constitution or tax laws.
|
| Nope. The IRS could always tax assets. And bitcoin is
| another form of asset.
| falcolas wrote:
| And what legally labeled a bitcoin as an asset? There's
| enough wiggle room that someone, somewhere had to make a
| call, and I doubt it was congress.
| nradov wrote:
| That's not how it works. The IRS can tax profits earned
| from transactions in any medium of exchange (bitcoin or
| anything else) because Congress has specifically granted
| them that statutory authority. The EPA does not have
| blanket authority to regulate anything that might happen
| to negatively impact the environment. Congress could give
| them that authority, but has chosen not to do so.
| tcmart14 wrote:
| Because we are now at the point where we can just make shit
| up as we go along and anyone who can string together 3
| words has a coherent argument for whatever they want.
| azinman2 wrote:
| Because it's a way to fit their world view. Don't expect
| consistency, this will be done per topic.
| briandear wrote:
| It isn't hobbling the federal government. It's
| strengthening it by giving powers to Congress and the
| states where it belongs. It's hobbling the executive branch
| to prevent them from ignoring the will of the people via
| Congress.
| falcolas wrote:
| Highly personal opinion:
|
| Congress is no more respecting the will of the people
| than the executive branch, nor the Supreme Court.
|
| They're all respecting their own opinions, followed only
| by the will of the lobbyists.
| brewdad wrote:
| The problem is that pollution easily becomes someone
| else's problem. If Wisconsin decides that Lake Michigan
| should be it's dumping ground, what recourse is there for
| Illinois, Indiana, or Michigan if there can be no federal
| oversight? Inter-state war is not really something I look
| forward to.
| willis936 wrote:
| fassssst wrote:
| The whole system was designed so wealthy landowners could
| maintain max power while keeping people complacent. It's as
| evident as ever.
| yladiz wrote:
| However, even if you read the Constitution and attempt to do
| apply what it "does say", you still need to interpret it,
| which is often ambiguous.
| nitsky wrote:
| Yes, it's ambiguous and there are no good answers.
| Conservative justices say "unless the Constitution says it
| plainly, it's a no". Liberal justices say, "even if the
| Constitution doesn't say it plainly, they kinda imply it,
| so it's a yes".
| kemayo wrote:
| I do find it amusing (-ly hypocritical) that the big
| exception to this conservative position is the role of
| the Supreme Court itself. The entire concept of "judicial
| review" which is being employed here to _allow_ the
| justices to strike down laws which they feel are outside
| the constitution is, famously, not a thing explicitly
| described in the constitution. Rather it 's the very
| height of "well, it kinda implies we can do that".
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marbury_v._Madison
| cloverich wrote:
| That's one of those things that is technically true but
| sweeps a lot of the practicalities under the rug. The
| constitution was not designed to be changed, it was designed
| to be VERY DIFFICULT to change. That has important
| implications when the court suddenly changes or repeals
| numerous rulings about it all at once. It will take years or
| decades to adapt.
| stefan_ wrote:
| The very constitution that all but guarantees a 50.1/49.9
| split in just about every election.
| vintermann wrote:
| The role of the court is whatever the hell it pleases. It is
| the court which gets the final word on what they should be.
|
| They do write opinions, but they might as well not since they
| answer to no one. No one can hold them accountable for
| blatantly contradicting themselves.
|
| They can very theoretically be impeached, but that's a 100%
| political process - it's equally (im)possible whether they're
| "fulfilling their role" or not.
|
| It's not a very smart system. I'm hoping Americans start
| questioning some of those patriotic pieties they're taught in
| their civics classes as a result of the mask-dropping that's
| happened lately.
| dawnerd wrote:
| They can be checked but that's require an amendment
| which... yeah good luck. We can't even get bipartisan bills
| through.
| bdowling wrote:
| > No one can hold them accountable for blatantly
| contradicting themselves.
|
| The democratically elected Congress can pass new laws to
| overrule most SCOTUS decisions. A few decisions on
| constitutionality would require an amendment, but those are
| the exception.
| nescioquid wrote:
| > The role of the court is whatever the hell it pleases.
|
| Sort of seems like it. It was only in the early 19th
| century that the Supreme Court gave itself a) the power of
| legislative review, and b) declared itself the supreme
| interpreter of the constitution.
|
| Since we've been busy upending precedent, why not upend
| these two precedents as well?
|
| > They can very theoretically be impeached
|
| In the past, one SC justice resigned under the threat of
| impeachment over his financial conflict of interest. At
| least one of our justices has been in violation of ethics
| rules around financial (and political) conflicts of
| interest. Several other have lied under oath at their
| confirmation hearings. I'd at least like to see Congress
| open some investigations as the first step towards
| impeachment.
|
| But you're right, it _is_ a political process, and I think
| the democrats are more than happy to simply fundraise off
| of this rather than exercising any check at all.
| Ekaros wrote:
| Seems like they are really working towards democracy. Making them
| actually make the laws.
| mywittyname wrote:
| They are limiting the ability of the government to make and
| enforce laws. The EPA is created with Congressional authority
| and is empowered to act on their behalf.
|
| Castrating the federal government will have negative
| repercussions. If the federal government doesn't have the power
| to control the states, then why bother having one?
| Ekaros wrote:
| They do, they just need to make laws that EPA can enforce.
| Not let EPA to act on its own. Isn't everyone always talking
| about unelected burecrauts going against the will of the
| people?
| timeon wrote:
| > Isn't everyone always talking about unelected burecrauts
| going against the will of the people?
|
| populists are not 'everyone'
| outsidetheparty wrote:
| Not everyone. The phrase "unelected bureaucrats" is almost
| exclusively a Republican talking point in US politics, used
| when they want deregulation of exactly this sort.
| InTheArena wrote:
| It's the usual attack on anyone who isn't in power at the
| particular moment.
|
| For example, I am hearing a awful lot of complaints about
| un-elected judges this week.
| outsidetheparty wrote:
| It's really not that at all. It's a very one-sided
| talking point, if you're hearing it a lot that simply
| demonstrates which media bubble you're in.
|
| Search for the phrase "unelected judges": the results are
| all right-wing sources, literally starting with the
| Heritage foundation and Daniel Horowitz.
|
| Over here in my media bubble I'm hearing a lot of
| complaints about judges who borderline perjured
| themselves in their confirmation hearings, "activist
| judges" (also a Republican talking point, now being used
| by Democrats to point out the hypocrisy of that talking
| point being used when the Heritage Foundation exists),
| "theocrats", and "destroying stare decisis".
|
| "Unelected" doesn't enter into it, because of course
| judges _shouldn 't_ be elected, the whole point of the
| judicial system was supposed to be for them to be
| insulated from politics and focus on the law.
| InTheArena wrote:
| https://www.reddit.com/search/?q=unelected%20judge
| outsidetheparty wrote:
| Yes, thank you for demonstrating precisely my point!
|
| The results are r/shitliberalssay, r/conservative,
| multiple quotes from FOX News, r/roevwadecelebration,
| r/conservative, r/deplatformed_ (a pro-Trump QAnon crank)
| and Donald Trump himself.... One single story using the
| phrase in reference to the Dobbs decision was posted to a
| handful of leftwing subreddits seven months ago;
| otherwise it's almost exclusively right-wingers using the
| phrase.
| InTheArena wrote:
| We must be getting different search results, because I
| saw /r/liberal, /r/shitredditsays, /r/news, r/inthenews
|
| But maybe our bubbles might be reversed.
| vkou wrote:
| When people complain about unelected bureaucrats, what they
| actually mean is that they are unhappy that the executive
| is doing its job, while the legislature, which has the
| power to change the direction of the executive, is choosing
| not to change that direction.
|
| Its some weird Schroedinger's legislature, where it is
| legally empowered to direct the executive, it chooses not
| to, and somehow, that choice is the executive's fault, and
| we need an activist judge to rescue us from it. Instead, of
| the normal process of 'if the legislature is unhappy with
| the direction of the executive, _it could just issue a
| course-correction by passing a law_ '.
|
| The republicans know they can't pass that law right now, so
| they are using the courts to avoid having to pass it. Then
| they'll seize control of the legislature in the midterms,
| and they won't need to pass it. The beauty of having a
| stacked court, is that you can sit around and do nothing,
| and not have to write any unpopular legislature, while you
| sit around and lay all the blame for any consequences of
| bad governance on appointed-for-life judges.
| ejb999 wrote:
| >>They are limiting the ability of the government to make and
| enforce laws.
|
| They are in fact doing the exact opposite - telling elected
| officials that you need to make and enforce laws - not give
| that responsibility to someone else.
|
| Do you think the IRS should be able to set tax rates? then
| how is this different?
| mywittyname wrote:
| Congress passed a law to delegate their power and authority
| to the EPA.
|
| If Congress made a law that the IRS should have the power
| to set tax rates, then I'd be fine with them being able to
| set tax rates. Because I think that Congress should have
| the power to delegate a portion of their power, should they
| choose to.
|
| This is a weird, and frankly idiotic ruling. Regulations
| are too complicated and numerous for Congress to decide on
| every single one. Have you ever read one? They go into
| excruciating detail about everything because they are
| written by experts. The best case outcome from this is that
| the new rules from agencies get tossed into some existing
| process so that they are rubber stamped, thus adding red
| tape.
| the_doctah wrote:
| What's the point of states?
| colmmacc wrote:
| I've lived here in the US for 12 years and recently became a US
| Citizen. Coming from Ireland, to me the US is quite far from a
| functioning democracy. The democratic will of the people is not
| reflected in the make-up of congress, the courts, or three
| times in my lifetime - the Presidency (Clinton, W. Bush, and
| Trump were each elected by popular minorities).
|
| Much of this is a result of the court's rulings (very directly
| in the case of Bush!), entrenching gerrymandering and making it
| harder and harder to remove the massively corrupting bribery
| for access that fuels the political system.
|
| Deferring administrative decisions to congress is not a recipe
| for more democracy, but for more gridlock, and it hands a
| historically and internationally extremist faction the
| political victories they want anyway. It will generate
| Republican outcomes even from Democratic Party executives and
| congresses (like the current one).
|
| That's not democracy.
| Sporktacular wrote:
| Bastards. This will neuter the US administration's ability to
| form international treaties and create pressure abroad, in
| addition to domestically. An environment increasingly unable to
| support life itself, but let's all take comfort knowing that this
| may lead to 4% of the planet having more deliberately worded
| laws.
|
| As Chomsky said, the US Republican party is the most dangerous
| organisation in history. Congress has been captured and they
| won't undo this.
|
| This might become one the most significant stories we'll read in
| our lifetimes.
| DonnyV wrote:
| These disruptive rulings are making the Supreme Court irrelevant
| and dangerous to running of the country. They will push people to
| destroy it and rebuild it into something completely different.
| clukic wrote:
| The EPA was created to empower experts to make informed decisions
| with the goal of benefiting the public good. The science of
| regulating pollutants is hard, and neither our representatives
| nor the voters who elect them and ultimately hold them
| accountable should be expected to develop that expertise.
|
| The vested interests who benefit from the fossil fuel industry
| control the flow of information to our representatives through
| lobbyists, and to the public through advertising. Panels of
| experts in their field are harder to influence.
| InTheArena wrote:
| So pass a law, giving them more power to regulate things that
| you previously didn't give them power to do.
|
| Don't throw out democracy to do so.
| iostream24 wrote:
| Congress granted the EPA power to address this, that the
| Supreme Court has now taken away in their extremely partisan
| fashion.
| InTheArena wrote:
| Except they didn't. It doesn't include in the language. Did
| you read the opinion?
| [deleted]
| Splendor wrote:
| It's interesting how this court consistently rules to limit the
| power of government when it is acting against corporations but
| happily expands the power of government when it is being wielded
| against people.
| marmada wrote:
| People use idealism to justify decisions that would only be
| useful in an ideal world, but are terrifying in the real world.
| This comment thread is a good case study.
|
| Sure, maybe, in an ideal world we want congress to pass laws in
| the place of every single regulatory body. (This in and of itself
| is totally unclear to me).
|
| However, the reality is that by getting rid of regulatory
| agencies we prevent important limits from being enforced.
|
| I mean, read this part of the dissent: > Again, Section 111(d)
| tells EPA that when a pollutant--like carbon dioxide--is not
| regulated through other programs, EPA must undertake a further
| regulatory effort to control that substance's emission from
| existing stationary sources.
|
| There's a backstop in place to allow the EPA to prevent
| pollutants from fucking us up. Ideally it would be regulated
| through a formal program. It's not. Does that mean we should just
| get rid of all backstops & regress to the stone age?
| vuciv1 wrote:
| Of course, this will come off as reactionary, but I gotta say it.
|
| I don't understand the logic behind the Supreme Court. How can
| such a tiny group of people, until the day they die, that weren't
| appointed by the people, make decisions that affect all of human
| society?
|
| Seems so anti-democratic to me.
| macinjosh wrote:
| k8sToGo wrote:
| Is this sarcasm?
| Faaak wrote:
| I don't think you'll thank "low energy costs" when your house
| will be under water
| ohboii20202 wrote:
| It's time to de-sanctify the Supreme Court.
|
| I really don't like having this unelected councils of wizards who
| get wield god-like "authority"-- it feels a bit gross in a
| democracy.
|
| I 'get it' w/ respect BrownvBoard, Miranda, etc, but at least in
| my lifetime the court hasn't done much to expand or protect my
| rights. Greatest hits from them are weird election cases (Florida
| 2000) making it easier for really shadowy/fucked organizations to
| plow $$$ into elections.
|
| If these folks are indeed just umpires & good old legal
| "scholars" who are there to call balls & strikes, why are
| hundreds of millions dollars spent promoting + grooming these
| individuals?
|
| Going forward I'm very much in favor of subtle "judicial
| humiliation"-- across the board de-sanctify this institution
|
| Step 0-- make 'em take C-SPAN cameras
| arjas-mva wrote:
| > gross in a democracy.
|
| It is happening at the state level too. In Wisconsin, the
| gerrymandered (google it for background on Wisconsin)
| legislature has chosen to not conduct hearings on governor
| appointees, with the result that holdovers from prior
| administrations can remain in office indefinitely.
|
| ""(T)he expiration of Prehn's term on the DNR Board does not
| create a vacancy. Prehn lawfully retains his position on the
| DNR Board as a holdover," wrote Chief Justice Annette Ziegler
| for the majority. "Therefore, the Governor cannot make a
| provisional appointment to replace Prehn." [1]
|
| [1] https://www.wpr.org/wisconsin-supreme-court-rules-former-
| hea...
| InTheArena wrote:
| Add to that list - Ferguson, Korematsu, Dredd Scott. You can
| keep going.
|
| Ironically, I think you are agreeing with the court right now -
| They don't want the power that the court has previously taken.
| readthenotes1 wrote:
| "I really don't like having this unelected councils of wizards
| who get wield god-like "authority"-- it feels a bit gross in a
| democracy."
|
| So you feel the Cabinet posts should also be elected positions?
| InTheArena wrote:
| YES.
|
| Start with the Secretary of the Treasury and move on to the
| Secretary of Defense and HHS.
|
| The sooner the better.
| kelseyfrog wrote:
| Overturn Marbury vs Madison.
| ejb999 wrote:
| >>I really don't like having this unelected councils of wizards
| who get wield god-like "authority"
|
| but you are OK with the 'unelected council of wizards' at the
| EPA wielding their god-like authority instead?
| taylodl wrote:
| Congress delegated their authority to the EPA. Congress is
| empowered to retain that authority and they're empowered to
| overrule any EPA regulation they disagree with. Congress
| retains all the power.
|
| When it comes to the Supreme Court - that's it. Congress
| can't do anything about Supreme Court rulings. Your
| comparison of the EPA to the Supreme Court is misguided.
| extheat wrote:
| Congress can't just say "do whatever you want to fix X
| problem". They have to be explicit with what powers they
| delegate to the executive branch and what they are
| permitted to do. Otherwise the law is plain
| unconstitutional since breaks the fundamental separation of
| powers. The purpose of SCOTUS is not to decide cases based
| on the desired outcome. It's to decide based on what the
| law actually says, not what it should say.
| ejb999 wrote:
| >>Congress can't do anything about Supreme Court rulings.
|
| Actually, they can, that is the whole point - congress has
| the power to pass laws - SC does not. That is exactly what
| the SC just told congress to do - their job.
| taylodl wrote:
| If Congress is adhering to their oath and acting in good
| faith then they may not pass laws that violate the
| Constitution. The Supreme Court determines what the
| Constitution does or doesn't say, which impacts the laws
| Congress may or may not pass. Putting this together we
| conclude Congress can't do anything about Supreme Court
| rulings.
| arjas-mva wrote:
| This is an incorrect summary of the EPA. The EPA can only act
| according to laws passed by Congress, which is an elected
| body. [1]
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Environmental
| _Pr...
| wing-_-nuts wrote:
| If it's backed by scientific consensus? absolutely.
| qalmakka wrote:
| The fact that people can't see that the conservatives are
| basically advocating worldwide for short term economic growth in
| exchange for basically our future is appalling to me.
|
| I am afraid we will see an immense amount of instability,
| increased poverty, mass migrations and authoritarian regimes
| rising up due to the fact that we couldn't manage to convince
| people that those parties do not care about them.
|
| In a previous post I wrote that conservatives everywhere use
| moral issues to make people enraged in order to get vote, and in
| exchange to that they use their power to help the rich get
| richer. This is exactly what I was talking about. Those
| Conservative judges were appointed by a President elected by
| people that rallied behind him hoping to see Roe overturned, and
| in exchange for that they also gave them a free pass to alter the
| US political system in a way that is favourable to the Republican
| party, i.e. the party of big industry and capital.
|
| This is also another small hint that "countries" are a stupid
| concept - we must stop to pretend that a single country is an
| island, everything has consequences that irradiate and reflect on
| the rest of the world, and it's stupid to think everyone can be a
| ruler of its own tiny spot of our planet.
|
| Countries are like homes, but they aren't cottages in the middle
| of nowhere, they are flats - if you set your own house on fire,
| everyone will suffer, everyone will lose something, if not
| everything.
|
| "$countryname first!" and Nationalism in all its forms is
| basically just a more general form of Fascism.
| User23 wrote:
| I'm not a conservative, but this ruling is good because it's
| interpreting the law as written, which is the only fair way to
| apply it. Reducing the politicalization of the courts by
| getting judges away from ruling based on their desired policy
| rather than the law is probably insufficient, but it's
| necessary to maintain general confidence in the system over
| time.
|
| If you want policy changes to handle whatever real or imaginary
| threats you believe you face, then the correct way to deal with
| that is through the elected branches. They are the ones meant
| to make policy.
| sdenton4 wrote:
| ...said the unelected supreme court, as it enacted sweeping
| policy changes over the course of two weeks.
| Clent wrote:
| No it's not. Anyone can interpret anything as anything else,
| this is proven over and over throughout history.
|
| This supreme court has been stomping the other branches of
| government.
|
| Congress created the EPA. If they don't like what they
| created, it's on them to fix it.
| NeonVice wrote:
| Congress created the EPA, but the court ruled that some
| regulations were outside of their charter. Congress can fix
| it by updating the EPA charter.
| Clent wrote:
| The court should have stayed out of it. At most they
| should press congress to clarify the charter.
| vorpalhex wrote:
| I interpret your comment to mean you agree with this
| decision.
|
| ...yeah no, obviously not. The law has meaning and that
| meaning is stable. Words mean things. If you are stuck in
| "Anyone can interpret anything as anything else" land you
| have fallen prey to being too clever.
| User23 wrote:
| > Anyone can interpret anything as anything else, this is
| proven over and over throughout history.
| "When I use a word," Humpty Dumpty said in rather a
| scornful tone, "it means just what I choose it to mean--
| neither more nor less." "The question is," said
| Alice, "whether you can make words mean so many different
| things." "The question is," said Humpty Dumpty,
| "which is to be master--that's all."
|
| I suppose that may be a workable political system, but I'm
| not certain it will produce outcomes anyone will like.
| tristor wrote:
| You are oversimplifying. Generally speaking, most of the
| work of SCOTUS is reigning in the Executive because of
| overzealous regulators. The US regulatory framework is
| theoretically designed to be based in law, made by the
| legislature, not the whims of unelected bureaucracy.
|
| Congress delegating it's power is suspect at best, and
| likely unconstitutional entirely (something something, War
| Powers Act). Congress created the EPA through the power of
| the purse, but it's operated by the Executive, and
| therefore is not and should not be empowered to
| unilaterally create regulations with the force of law.
| Making law is Congress' job.
| User23 wrote:
| I agree and the executive branch has at least two major
| roles in the constitutional law-making process. First is
| the presidential veto, and second the Vice President in
| his or her office of President of the Senate can vote on
| bills from time to time.
| dionian wrote:
| cool well if you have the votes then pass a law, and btw, BRICS
| will take over economically and keep pumping gases into the
| atmosphere the whole time
| ohCh6zos wrote:
| If nationalism is a more general form of fascism, are all, or
| almost all governments prior to the modern era fascist?
| kar5pt wrote:
| Nationalism is very specific to the modern era. It didn't
| really exist before the French Revolution. So no.
|
| Unless that was a typo and you mean to write "after the
| modern era"
| osullivj wrote:
| From Shakespeare's Henry V, circa 1599...
|
| Once more unto the breach, dear friends, once more, Or
| close the wall up with our English dead. Cry 'God for
| Harry, England, and Saint George! '
|
| Res ipsa loquitor...
| ohCh6zos wrote:
| You're right, I wasn't careful enough typing.
| swader999 wrote:
| There's something to be said for rules and policy being
| adapted to a locale. What's right for people in one region
| might not work for some in another. You'll get a tyranny of
| the majority in much of your life the broader you go away
| from local governance. I agree there's benefit to have
| federal and international rules and policy but it's more
| nuanced than just saying sentiments for keeping power at a
| national level are fascist.
| [deleted]
| scifibestfi wrote:
| This sounds like GPT-3 trained on partisan talking points. If
| it's not, isn't it weird that you didn't notice that Democrats
| keep promising to codify Roe but never do? They had 40 years!!
| If they solved the problem, they wouldn't have that to campaign
| on and raise money with. Keep people enraged to get their vote.
| You're spot on about that, but it's how both parties operate.
| Never solve the problem so it'll be there next cycle.
| 2OEH8eoCRo0 wrote:
| Roe v Wade becomes codified, abortion becomes legal in all 50
| states, immediately there is a lawsuit, they appeal to the
| supreme court, supreme court chooses to hear the case,
| supreme court repeals the codified Roe v. Wade.
|
| IANAL but how does codifying Roe v Wade change this?
| brodouevencode wrote:
| By codified I think most people refer to it being enshrined
| into the Constitution.
| openasocket wrote:
| The decision made by the Supreme Court was that abortion
| was not a constitutionally-protected right, I doubt they
| would hold that allowing abortion was somehow
| unconstitutional. If that's what they wanted they would
| have gone ahead and declared that in their recent ruling.
| Instead they explicitly stated this is a matter for the
| legislature to decide.
| 2OEH8eoCRo0 wrote:
| Ahhh gotcha. Subtle but important difference. I think
| that I agree then.
| [deleted]
| deelowe wrote:
| Yep. Wedge issues. I'm glad the SC is trying to force
| congress to do its job. If only someone would do something
| about executive orders, we may make some real progress.
| xpe wrote:
| You sound very naive.
|
| There is a long history and philosophy around the proper
| roles and relationships of a legislature and court such as
| SCOTUS. The current Court could claim to make decisions
| upon a strict originalist philosophy of jurisprudence.
| Maybe they think they do, and maybe they really do. But...
|
| Take an open-eyed look at history. Look at the process by
| which the justices are selected. This shows a different
| ultimate motivator: conservatives have been working for
| decades to pick justices whose claimed philosophies align
| with the conservative agenda.
| deelowe wrote:
| And you sound like a one party voter.
|
| I don't care the motivation. The SC shouldn't be doing
| congress' job. Congress got burned because they've been
| complacent.
|
| RvW has always stood on tenuous footing. We've known
| this. Congress has literally had decades to do something
| and they chose instead to keep the status quo. Why?
| Because the republican threat helps democrat voter
| turnout. Same reason nothing is being done about the
| failed drug war.
| xpe wrote:
| > Congress got burned because they've been complacent.
|
| This is a bizarre metaphor to use. This isn't a zero sum
| game. It is a three branch government.
| rootusrootus wrote:
| The Democrats have rarely had a filibuster-proof majority in
| congress that would allow them to codify Roe. And they have
| been working under the assumption that it was a settled
| issue. As I recall, even some of the recently appointed
| Supreme Court justices were under that impression as well. At
| least until they were sworn in.
| cogman10 wrote:
| Even when they had a filibuster-proof majority, they didn't
| have a majority that believed in abortion rights. Some of
| the democrats in obama's brief filibuster proof session
| were pro life. Even now, at least 1 democrat senator is pro
| life.
| xpe wrote:
| Please do not equate the parties. It is incredibly naive to
| see two parties that aren't perfect and somehow wave your
| arms and say they are equivalently bad. They are clearly
| different both in terms of their policy objectives and their
| willingness to stay within the realm of truth and science.
| scifibestfi wrote:
| Please do equate them. Neither stays at all within the
| realm of truth and science. I can't believe anyone still
| genuinely thinks either party does in the year 2022.
| camgunz wrote:
| Are you legitimately "both sides"-ing Democrats and
| Republicans here? Wake me up when a horde of armed
| Democrats storms the Capitol.
| xpe wrote:
| If Democrats stormed the capital they would probably do
| an energy efficiency retrofit. HANG the chandeliers ...
| show them the LED ... lights.
| scifibestfi wrote:
| camgunz wrote:
| Sorry let me be more polite.
|
| Your attempt to compare the Republican and Democratic
| parties creates a false equivalency. This is demonstrated
| by the January 6th insurrection fomented by a Republican
| president and covered up by the Republican establishment,
| which has no analog in the Democratic space.
|
| Democrats do bad things. The bad things they do aren't as
| bad as what Republicans do. It's like having both
| pancreatic cancer and a zit, one's worse than the other.
| xpe wrote:
| OK let's throw snowballs at each other and see where that
| gets us.
|
| We're on hacker news and hopefully we've all read the
| guidelines. Please respond to a charitable interpretation
| of the other party.
|
| I'm still waiting you for you to address the questions
| presented.
| xpe wrote:
| You are defining an arbitrary boundary and making a false
| dichotomy. Do you understand what I'm saying?
|
| Stop putting them in the same category. This is useless
| and nondescriptive. Here's what I mean by that : if you
| were to build a machine learning classifier with a
| decision tree algorithm, what do you think some of the
| most important differentiators would be?
|
| Tell me which party tends to acknowledge scientific
| evidence more often.
|
| A fool sets impossible standards and moans that everyone
| falls short.
|
| Accept reality. Choose from the better options. There is
| no perfect except in mathematics (and maybe some physics
| we don't know yet)
| xpe wrote:
| You act like this was completely up to the Democrats. Please
| point to a time in history when codifying Roe with
| legislation would have passed the Senate.
| xpe wrote:
| One part of what you say is largely true: fear motivates in
| the short term more than many other techniques.
| hnrodey wrote:
| The Supreme Court is focused on laws, not outcomes - as it
| should be.
| VoidWhisperer wrote:
| How would you apply this to the Roe v Wade decision overturn?
| I'm not saying it is infeasible to apply it to that but I am
| curious to see the argument that that was explicitly focused
| on laws and not outcomes (especially given some of the
| language used by some of the justices to refer to abortion)
| hnrodey wrote:
| I'm a software developer, not a legal scholar. Anything I
| said that could be considered intelligent regarding
| analysis of SCOTUS opinions would be nothing more than
| regurgitation I've heard from another source in the media.
|
| As such, I will decline to offer anything beyond what I've
| already said.
| jrochkind1 wrote:
| Is it though?
| 2OEH8eoCRo0 wrote:
| They are the final say on legal interpretation. Outcomes
| are for legislators to worry about.
| jrochkind1 wrote:
| It seems to me like they are considering outcomes. I'm
| not sure how we know for sure if they are or not, we
| don't know what's in their heads. But this court appears
| to many like they've got some outcomes in mind and are
| fitting the law to them.
|
| And, I mean, Trump literally said that he could guarantee
| he was going to appoint justices that would overturn Roe,
| and then they did, as he guaranteed. That's an outcome,
| right?
| hnrodey wrote:
| This type of non-sense is what ruins the comments
| section.
| jrochkind1 wrote:
| Right back atcha!
| 31835843 wrote:
| The Constitution doesn't say any of that.
| 2OEH8eoCRo0 wrote:
| The Constitution doesn't say that the Supreme Court is
| the final say?
|
| Constitution, Article 3
|
| > The judicial Power of the United States, shall be
| vested in one supreme Court, and in such inferior Courts
| as the Congress may from time to time ordain and
| establish. The Judges, both of the supreme and inferior
| Courts, shall hold their Offices during good Behaviour,
| and shall, at stated Times, receive for their Services, a
| Compensation, which shall not be diminished during their
| Continuance in Office.
| 31835843 wrote:
| If your question was intended to claim that the Article
| you quoted gives The Supreme Court 'the final say on
| legal interpretation,' I'm interested to know which words
| in that Article you believe gives that say.
| jeffbee wrote:
| Very much a "The law in its majesty ..." take on the matter.
| golemotron wrote:
| Indeed. People are upset with the Supreme Court recently, but
| what it has been doing is empowering democracy, which people
| are nominally for.
|
| You want effective standards, do the work and pass a law.
| aaomidi wrote:
| For example scotus coming out in the next few months and
| going against the ruling that allowed gay marriage would be
| empowering for democracy?
|
| The scotus is still operating in this environment. I don't
| see how "fuck it throwing you to the wolves" has any
| immediate or future benefits?
| golemotron wrote:
| A number of people on both sides of the issue have noted
| that the country was on an arc toward more liberal
| abortion laws before Roe. When SCOTUS steps in and
| decides issues without a solid Constitutional basis it
| interferes with the consensus process of democracy and
| produces division. The same is likely true with the other
| privacy rulings.
|
| Have some faith in people. Inventing rights and
| privileges autocratically is definitely problematic in a
| democracy. It's better to do the work of persuasion. We
| all have to live together. Note as well, the number of
| countries who have arrived at gay marriage through
| legislation rather than judicial fiat. It's a more
| respectful way to go.
| fzeroracer wrote:
| 'More respectful'? What was respectful about states
| denying people the ability to see their partner in the
| hospital because they have the crime of being gay? Or
| being denied the ability to participate in basic rights
| because they're gay?
|
| Or is it just because it doesn't inconvenience you? Like
| these are all things that are very fresh in the memory of
| anyone gay that's lived in southern or red states. It's
| not a democracy if you have a bunch of people you treat
| as second class citizens.
| abigail95 wrote:
| Majority rule literally the definition of democracy.
|
| This is obviously in conflict with minority rights.
|
| If you care more about minority rights than democracy,
| fine. Lots of governments have limits on majority rule.
| The USA constitution is a famous example.
|
| But those limits are limits on democracy. Which make them
| anti-democratic.
|
| The more strictly you protect minority rights the less
| democratic your society is.
|
| > It's not a democracy if you have a bunch of people you
| treat as second class citizens.
|
| That's the purest democracy there is. A direct democracy
| that let people vote on absolutely anything would always
| produce that result.
| aaomidi wrote:
| So if the majority rules that the minorities should be
| slaves, that's democratic?
|
| In that case, is democracy good?
| swader999 wrote:
| Yeah supreme court is doing its job just fine. Main issue
| seems to be Congress peeps voting party line with omnibus
| bills instead of discrete policy being legislated that they
| can vote freely on with just their constituents in mind.
| And then of course the money and corporate capture. I don't
| think elected members even write the bills anymore.
| xpe wrote:
| > but what it has been doing is empowering democracy, which
| people are nominally for.
|
| I know what you are trying to say, but it is too narrow.
|
| If you think broader, the above is a laughable claim.
| Overturning the current understanding of laws is jarring to
| democracy. (Sure, there are times when it is morally
| necessary.) Why? Previous legislatures operated under the
| assumption that the Clean Air Act worked in a certain
| manner.
|
| The Supreme Court has effectively overturned previous
| democratic work knowing full well the practical
| implications.
| walls wrote:
| It's just that easy when half of everything is controlled
| by obstructionists who do nothing other than entrench their
| parties power.
|
| Oh and they've also convinced their party that cooperation
| is weakness because they are literally fighting the devil.
| kar5pt wrote:
| Judges use outcomes to interpret the law all the time.
| There's nothing, on it's face, invalid about that approach.
| You may personally disagree with it, but then you'd have to
| justify why the rest of us should believe in a legal
| philosophy that's clearly going to degrade our quality of
| life by destroying the environment.
| xpe wrote:
| It depends what you mean. Of course the mechanisms under
| their control are mostly about legal interpretation and
| Constitutionality. If you read a lot of Supreme Court
| opinions you'll see that the justices do care about outcomes
| to a large degree.
| [deleted]
| 40acres wrote:
| I really don't understand the decision. In my mental model the
| executive branch exists to implement the laws that Congress
| passes, Congress deliberately leaves leeway in laws to give the
| executive branch flexibility, this flexibility has been
| previously affirmed by the court decision Chevron v. NRDC.
|
| This decision seems to give more power to Congress but on net I
| think it makes the laws Congress passes weaker because it strips
| away the effectiveness of the implementation.
| PathOfEclipse wrote:
| andrepd wrote:
| >the very left biased BBC
|
| Major "code smell" right here
|
| > Right now, the corporate legacy media are working hard to
| paint the false narrative that the current conservative
| justices are extreme partisan hacks
|
| Well they are, and I don't need "muh mainstream media" to
| tell me about it. I can draw that conclusion based on primary
| sources, i.e. the court opinions, the justices' own words and
| actions, etc.
| elsonrodriguez wrote:
| > The major questions doctrine works in much the same way to
| protect the Constitution's separation of powers. ... It is
| vital because the framers believed that a republic--a thing
| of the people--would be more likely to enact just laws than a
| regime administered by a ruling class of largely
| unaccountable "ministers."
|
| Congress will never have the bandwidth or speed to tackle
| every problem via legislation. Delegating areas to expert
| "ministers" is the only way to have a functional government
| in today's complex world.
|
| This seems like just another reframing of "my ignorance is
| just as good as your knowledge".
| asdajksah2123 wrote:
| The Major Questions doctrine is an invention of the Roberts
| court that no court before has even considered.
|
| So yeah, they made up new rules, and yes, you're right, that
| the rules they made up to achieve a certain goal indicate
| that those goals are indeed correct.
|
| Edit: The unsaid part of the "Major Questions" doctrine is
| that what it basically means is that the only decision maker
| in the US government is the Supreme Court.
|
| This Supreme Court has chosen to parse Congress's bills text
| both strictly and loosely depending on whether it achieved
| their political priors. Further, they've alternatively
| decided to use, and disallow the usage of public statements
| by Congress members and/or the President for the same reason.
|
| This is little more than a dismantling of the US govt.
| rufus_foreman wrote:
| >> The Major Questions doctrine is an invention of the
| Roberts court that no court before has even considered
|
| "The major questions doctrine originated in two Supreme
| Court decisions: MCI Telecommunications Corporation v.
| American Telephone & Telegraph in 1994 and FDA v. Brown &
| Williamson Tobacco Corporation in 2000."
|
| -- https://www.theregreview.org/2021/11/15/revesz-
| brunstein-reg...
|
| Roberts was appointed to the Supreme Court in 2005.
| kemayo wrote:
| To quote Kagan's dissent in this case: "The current Court
| is textualist only when being so suits it. When that method
| would frustrate broader goals, special canons like the
| 'major questions doctrine' magically appear as get out-of-
| text-free cards".
| bombcar wrote:
| We have 50+ years of Congress delegating authority _and
| blame_ to various other branches and groups without actually
| legislating it, which gives politicians perfect cover and
| someone else to blame.
|
| If Congress wants to do something, they can pass the law to
| do so.
|
| Ever since the "it's not a tax healthcare penalty" was upheld
| by the Court as "yes it is you idiots" it's been painfully
| clear that Congress wants no part in actually doing their
| job.
| bumby wrote:
| > _We have 50+ years of Congress delegating authority and
| blame to various other branches_
|
| This became very apparent to me after pushed Congress to
| pass an Authorization of Military Force around ~2014. They
| balked, effectively continuing the trend of delegating
| their war-making abilities to the executive branch.
| bombcar wrote:
| Presidents are disposable; congress critters are for
| life. They'd much rather have a figurehead take the
| credit _and_ blame, since no matter what they 're gone in
| a max of 8 years.
| Goronmon wrote:
| _The decision looks simple and correct to me, even with only
| reading from the very left biased BBC article._
|
| Despite your very right biased comment, I don't buy the idea
| that congress needs to write legislation down to specific
| policy details that might come up with every minute aspect of
| what is intending to be legislated. I don't think elected
| politicians are capable of being knowledgeable enough to give
| specific guidance on the broad range of issues necessary to
| govern the entire country.
|
| I mean, do you really want a US senator voting on what level
| of chemicals are allowed to be present in drinking water? Is
| that the goal here?
|
| _Right now, the corporate legacy media are working hard to
| paint the false narrative that the current conservative
| justices are extreme partisan hacks. Don 't fall for their
| deceptions. Do your own research._
|
| And if I do my own research and decide that the current
| conservative justices are extreme partisan hacks?
| barsonme wrote:
| > do you really want a US senator voting on what level of
| chemicals are allowed to be present in drinking water?
|
| That's not the level of granularity here. Using your
| hypothetical example about clean drinking water, Congress
| would need to delegate authority to EPA to regulate clean
| drinking water instead of EPA inferring or assuming it has
| that authority because of some other unrelated statute.
| Congress itself would not decide what a safe level of
| arsenic in drinking water is, EPA experts would.
| Goronmon wrote:
| _Congress itself would not decide what a safe level of
| arsenic is, EPA experts would._
|
| But as you said the EPA only would have the authority to
| regulate "clean drinking water", and since arsenic isn't
| drinking water, then the EPA would have no authority to
| regulate it unless Congress specifically says so.
| barsonme wrote:
| By "a safe level of arsenic" I meant "a safe level of
| arsenic in drinking water." I've edited my comment to
| make this more clear.
| timeon wrote:
| > left biased BBC article
|
| This reminds me how was Ben Shapiro burned by conservative
| guy from BBC. And Shapiro called him 'liberal'.
|
| Anything that is not regressive is by default left/liberal
| for these people.
|
| You have made God from your Constitution while in other
| countries it is an tool. You have just one more party than
| China and call your self beacon of democracy. Tunnel vision.
| PathOfEclipse wrote:
| If you can't see this article as left-biased, then you have
| some serious blinders on. If you're willing to take them
| off for a second, here are some major bias flags:
|
| * It only quotes one legal expert, Hajin Kim, who paints
| the ruling in a negative light. There are no quotes from
| any other legal expert with a differing viewpoint.
|
| * It quotes from the environmental defense fund, which is
| on the spectrum as extremely leftwing:
| https://www.quora.com/What-is-the-environmental-defense-
| fund...
|
| * It puts high priority towards telling us how the feelings
| of environmental groups got hurt: "Environmental groups
| will be deeply concerned by the outcome as historically the
| 19 states that brought the case have made little progress
| on reducing their emissions - which is necessary to limit
| climate change."
|
| * It quotes from a U.N. official, which is of course only
| going to have negative things to say about it. The U.N.
| could care less about whether a policy hurts America. The
| BBC also fails to mention how similar policies in the EU
| have led to more dependence on Russian oil, which was
| absolutely disastrous in hindsight. Don't knock out your
| current energy infrastructure when you have nothing to
| replace it with.
|
| * The BBC focuses on what it perceives as the Supreme court
| bucking decades of precedent: "For decades, the Supreme
| Court has held that judges should generally defer to
| government agencies when interpreting federal law."
|
| * The BBC says absolutely nothing about how the other side
| feels about this ruling, another major sign of their bias.
| Take a look at a conservative source:
| https://www.dailywire.com/news/supreme-court-rules-
| against-b...
|
| "We joined WV to fight the EPA's overreach & challenged the
| agency's overly-broad interpretation allowing them to
| regulate almost any part of the economy, the consequences
| would lead to higher utility bills, job loss and overall
| increased energy prices. This is a huge win for MO!"
|
| "This is a big victory for small businesses and a big
| defeat for the Biden administration and the regulatory
| state," Ortiz said in a statement provided to The Daily
| Wire. "Whether it's greenhouse gas emissions, Covid
| lockdowns, vaccine mandates, or scores of other issues, the
| Biden administration keeps claiming authority it does not
| possess, as the Supreme Court ruled today."
|
| The BBC doesn't care at all about the sheer economic damage
| that would have been dealt to the relevant states. The BBC
| also doesn't care at all about the fact that the federal
| bureaucracy has grown staggeringly in size and power over
| the past decades, or what that means for our constitutional
| republic. The BBC doesn't care that our courts have been
| ruling very much for the left for the past several decades
| and we are just starting to see a reversal back towards the
| center. And that's fine. The BBC is in Britain and
| shouldn't be expected to care about these things. But
| please don't pretend they are not left-biased on this
| issue.
| heretogetout wrote:
| Your citation doesn't entirely support your argument. The
| court said "[vast] economic and political significance." This
| seems like a power grab by the court because now they and
| they alone can decide what has "vast significance," not the
| legislature and not the executive.
| xpe wrote:
| I see that you haven't let facts get in the way of a good
| theory.
|
| I don't think you've read the dissenting arguments yet.
|
| The core of this case is how do you interpret legislative
| text. The current Court is taking a radically strict view of
| legislation. They act like they are only reading the words.
| But in fact everyone has to interpret written words somehow.
| The question is what context do you use when you interpret
| the words.
|
| Also keep in mind how the conservative justices were picked.
| Even if the justices truly decide cases based on non-partisan
| judicial ideologies (doubtful), the composition of the court
| has been picked in such a way that their decisions have
| conservative outcomes written all over them.
| abigail95 wrote:
| Let's go one meta level up.
|
| It's not like they cornered the decision into their own
| branch of government like they did with abortion (before
| Dobbs).
|
| If there's disagreement on how a text should be interpreted
| I don't care whether a conservative court produces a
| different opinion to a liberal one.
|
| I care whether congress still retains the ultimate
| authority in the matter, and in this case it does.
|
| If congress thinks the court is wrong, it can say so.
|
| However I think you'll find that just as there is
| disagreement within the court as to what this text actually
| means - there is just as much if not more disagreement in
| congress.
|
| If congress itself is in disagreement - I think being
| radically strict is a good way to go.
|
| I think it's healthy for judicial review and separations of
| powers for legislative interpetation to be kicked back to
| congress if there's any disagreement.
| jcranmer wrote:
| > decisions of vast "'economic and political significance."
|
| How is "economic and political significance" defined? From
| what I understand of the decision, it's defined as "6 of 9
| people on SCOTUS don't like this regulation." And the deeper
| you dig into it, the more you find that these 6 people are
| willing to throw out just to be able to strike down this
| policy decision.
|
| Supposedly, these 6 justices are advocates of textualism--the
| actual text, as written in the statute, should be dominant in
| the analysis of what can and can't be done in terms of
| interpretation. And here they completely ignore that in favor
| of trying to second-guess what Congress intended because...
| they can't use textualism to achieve what they want, I guess.
| noSyncCloud wrote:
| >very left biased BBC
|
| Truly hilarious. You should do a NewsMax comedy special
| zionic wrote:
| >Congress deliberately leaves leeway in laws
|
| This is the crux of the problem. The "Executive branch" is
| basically the cops. That leeway lets the cops invent law,
| prosecute you, and potentially imprison you. There's another
| case where the executive branch effectively acted as the
| legislator, cops, and the judicial branch (they prosecuted
| someone for a rule they created and found them guilty, all
| internally).
|
| Congress needs to do these things, via simple and explicit laws
| that are clear and easy to understand. The role of the
| executive is _enforcement_, while the judicial arbitrates.
| coldcode wrote:
| Congress won't act, the Executive isn't permitted to do much
| even with what they were given by Congress, and the People are
| powerless to do anything unless 100% of them vote, which never
| happens, and even then may be overruled in many places.
|
| No future for any of us I guess.
| pclmulqdq wrote:
| It's still very much an open question as to whether congress
| is allowed to abdicate its power of rule making to the
| executive branch. The constitution seems to imply that the
| answer is "no," but the past interpretations of it say "yes."
| Chevron is a younger precedent than Roe.
| xpe wrote:
| > It's still very much an open question as to whether
| congress is allowed to abdicate its power of rule making to
| the executive branch. The constitution seems to imply that
| the answer is "no," but the past interpretations of it say
| "yes." Chevron is a younger precedent than Roe.
|
| You say abdicate. Not true.
|
| Congress is obviously empowered to delegate.
|
| Please be specific. Who (written where?) thinks this is an
| open question? Please cite evidence of this.
| pclmulqdq wrote:
| Here is a discussion on Chevron and a neighboring ruling
| (Auer), from a favorable perspective, which outlines some
| of the challenges: https://www.law.georgetown.edu/public-
| policy-journal/wp-cont...
|
| This is also a common theme of many recent cases.
| Examples include: American Hospital Association v.
| Becerra, SEC vs Cochran, SEC vs Jarkesky, Gundy vs United
| States.
|
| It is not clear that Congress can actually "delegate" the
| power to write laws.
| lbotos wrote:
| > People are powerless to do anything unless 100% of them
| vote
|
| I'm not following this logic? Why do we need 100% of people
| to vote?
|
| I assume you mean to "oust ineffective elected officials" but
| I suspect that there are many people that don't vote because
| they are "happy" and don't feel at risk of their desired
| official being outed. But again, I might be off base. Hoping
| you can clarify more of what you meant.
| shrimpx wrote:
| Many people don't vote because they're skeptical that their
| vote can affect anything -- either because they're in a
| definite minority in their legislatures or they think
| elections are bought, in a "changing minds" sense.
| jefurii wrote:
| Most of the public cares about climate change and wants the
| government to do something. The overwhelming majority of
| the public supports abortion in some form or other. If they
| actually voted maybe we could change things, but lots of
| people just don't vote.
|
| Having participated in several cycles of political
| organizing, the actual ground game is Get Out The Vote
| (GOTV): not trying to get people to change their minds, but
| getting people to just get off their asses.
| akavi wrote:
| > Most of the public cares about climate change and wants
| the government to do something
|
| Most of the public cares about climate change and wants
| the government to do something _so long as it doesn 't
| cost them anything_ (Or more precisely, more than 10
| $/mo)[0]. Or you can just see the consternation about gas
| prices right now to predict how well any climate change
| related regulation that actually materially affected
| carbon production would go.
|
| [0]: https://apnorc.org/projects/what-americans-think-
| about-the-e...
| zugi wrote:
| > Congress won't act
|
| Under a legal constitutional system, when Congress "won't
| act", the laws stay the same as they were.
|
| The Executive branch taking unilateral action beyond its
| authority because the Legislative branch "won't act" scares
| me even more, for the long-term health of our democracy, than
| laws staying the same as they are now for a bit longer.
| xpe wrote:
| I see you've fixated on an obvious truth but missed out on
| the actual chess game.
| rayiner wrote:
| Nobody denies that "Congress deliberately leaves leeway in laws
| to give the executive branch flexibility."
|
| The whole point of this case is that Congress gave the EPA
| leeway to decide standards and scrubbing technologies for toxic
| pollutants, and the EPA stretched that leeway far beyond what
| Congress intended to address a completely different problem
| involving a non-toxic alleged pollutant.
| 40acres wrote:
| The court has already ruled in Chevron v. NRDC that executive
| agencies have deference in interpretation of statues if
| Congress has not explicitly granted that power. The Clean Air
| act was passed in 1970 to ensure air quality, through science
| and the advancement of our understanding the EPA has
| identified CO2 as a toxic pollutant. I don't understand why
| we need an updated law by Congress when the EPA is much
| closer to the issue.
| JamesBarney wrote:
| But does Congress or the EPA get to determine that scope?
|
| You're arguing that the EPA gets to make that call. The
| supreme court says it's Congress.
| xxpor wrote:
| You have to know the actual motivation:
|
| The point is to limit the administrative state and move power
| to congress (as you said), because federal rule making is
| relatively open, and the administration has experts.
|
| If it moves to congress, they'll just take the legislation
| lobbyists hand them and pass it, because they don't have the
| expertise to actually write technical regulations.
|
| This is a win for industry.
| fooey wrote:
| Congress doesn't remotely have the bandwidth to explicitly
| write out and decide all the little rules it takes to
| regulate the country, even if they had a clue what they were
| doing in each case
|
| It's pretty clearly designed to dismantle the federal
| regulatory apparatus
| extheat wrote:
| Then it should explicitly delegate that to the executive
| branch where applicable, as it does for other things. You
| don't just throw away separation of powers because it's
| convenient.
| 40acres wrote:
| And the court has previously understood and affirmed this
| "leeway" after Chevron v. NRDC. So its another case of the
| court overruling precedent.
| danenania wrote:
| Could the same agencies that now regulate industry directly
| pivot to assisting congress with writing the laws?
| jdgoesmarching wrote:
| Sure, if they're lucky they might get a 30 second
| courtesy chat between lobbyists.
| xxpor wrote:
| That's exactly correct.
| meatsauce wrote:
| Congress has plenty of time and money. They are too busy
| jockeying for votes to do anything. The problem with
| congress is that they are too focused on winning elections
| instead of doing the GD job. I view this as yet another
| reason why we need strict term limits for members of
| congress. There are too many leeches.
| Balgair wrote:
| I don't think that's true.
|
| Typical staff sizes for congresscritters seem to be about
| 60 people. I managed to get some salary data on them, and
| $5M total per congresscritter seems to be reasonable [0].
| So, I dunno, double that cost for ancillary expenses and
| the like, you get ~$10M per congresscritter. Multiply
| that all out and you have ~26,000 people and ~$4.4B
| total.
|
| The total spending of the whole US federal government is
| ~$4T with ~4M people employed. So, ~1000x the budget and
| ~150x the staff of all of congress and their staffers.
|
| Sure, yeah, you can double or 10x the staff of congress,
| even up the budgets by 100x. Maybe only 1/10th of the
| budget is actually needed. Maybe you can get by with
| giggling the staffer pay ratios. Whatever. You're still
| _really_ short.
|
| Oh, and you still have to have the staff that was doing
| the original jobs of the congresscritter.
|
| Unless you completely rejigger how congress works to the
| tune of a _~100x increase_ in budget and staff[1], there
| 's just no way congress can take over that job.
|
| [0] There's not really a database on this that I found. I
| just took a random sample of 35 congresscritters and then
| googled for their staff sizes and salaries. It's not
| definitive and it varies a fair amount, but 60 seems to
| be a high yet good estimate.
|
| [1] Imagine trying to grow any business or enterprise by
| 100x. It would take a very very long time for the dust to
| settle. Let alone working all the kinks out of the system
| that you're creating from whole cloth. And that's a new
| system. You'd also have the fight with the old system
| when trying to do this between congress and the exec.
| branch. The likelihood of it occurring in any kind of
| reasonable timeline and in any kind of reasonable
| effectiveness is precisely 0.
| InTheArena wrote:
| Government works off of law, not merely intentions.
| Intentions can change. Laws are documented. otherwise what's
| the keep of random police officer from deciding that they
| have the ability to regulate the applications on my phone?
| After all, they're just keeping me safe.
| mullingitover wrote:
| Legislation often deliberately leaves interpretation of
| statutes to the agencies implementing the laws. The
| legislation can just say "The parks department shall keep
| the park safe and well-maintained," without specifying what
| 'safe' means, or how often they collect the trash.
| themaninthedark wrote:
| Under that law, I could clear cut the forest, turn it
| into a meadow and put up a fence around it to prevent
| people from getting in.
| mullingitover wrote:
| Yes, a functioning government depends on parties acting
| in good faith and assumes everyone is working for the
| common good, not always achievable when vast sums of
| money are in play. This case is a great example.
| rayiner wrote:
| Yes, this is a win for republican democracy, and a loss for
| "governance by experts."
| xxpor wrote:
| If we had a parliamentary system, I would agree with you.
| But the actual on the ground reality is Congress does not
| represent the actual will of the people due to
| malaportionment.
| bhupy wrote:
| The main implication here is that the policy making
| decision tree needs to change.
|
| Whereas before it was:
|
| Do we have the political will to enact this from sea to
| shining sea via Federal legislation? -> YES/NO -> Can we
| enact this from sea to shining sea via fiat through an
| existing administrative agency? -> YES/NO -> Can we enact
| this from sea to shining sea via the SCOTUS? -> YES/NO ->
| Can we enact this policy gradually via the States? ->
| YES/NO
|
| Now it is:
|
| Do we have the political will to enact this policy from
| sea to shining sea via Federal legislation? -> YES/NO ->
| Can we enact this policy gradually via the States? ->
| YES/NO
|
| The States themselves don't have the "malapportionment"
| problem, and insofar as Congress does, it's because the
| system was always set up for change to occur from the
| bottom-up, not the top-down. The EU refers to this as
| subsidiarity [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Subsidiarity_
| (European_Union)]. Congress is structured in exactly the
| same way as the EU, as well as other federations like
| Australia and Switzerland.
| rayiner wrote:
| Justin Trudeau became Prime Minister of Canada last year
| despite his party winning almost 200,000 fewer votes than
| Conservatives. Does that mean that Canada's Parliament
| "does not represent the actual will of the people?"
|
| If "we had a parliamentary system"--where the executive
| is selected by the Party that wins the most votes in the
| lower house--Bush still would have won in 2000 (https://e
| n.wikipedia.org/wiki/2000_United_States_House_of_Re...)
| and Trump still would have won in 2016 (https://en.wikipe
| dia.org/wiki/2016_United_States_House_of_Re...).
|
| If 'we had a parliamentary system" Biden would be shown
| the door next year when Republicans again win a majority
| of not only House seats, but total votes for House
| candidates.
| TheCoelacanth wrote:
| Looking at the results for only the two largest parties
| when there are five parties in Canada's Parliament and
| none has an outright majority of seats is completely
| misleading.
|
| Trudeau can only govern with the support of the NDP.
| Liberals plus NDP got a majority of the popular vote[1].
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Results_breakdown_of_th
| e_2021_...
| throw0101a wrote:
| > _Yes, this is a win for republican democracy_ [...]
|
| It is a win for the anti-government minority:
|
| * https://www.vox.com/2018/9/12/17850980/democracy-tyranny-
| min...
|
| * https://harpers.org/archive/2017/03/tyranny-of-the-
| minority/
|
| * https://www.orlandosentinel.com/opinion/guest-
| commentary/os-...
|
| * https://www.politico.com/story/2009/03/the-tyranny-of-
| the-mi...
| rayiner wrote:
| Yes, the "minority" party that's currently 2 points ahead
| on the generic Congressional ballot
| (https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/polls/generic-
| ballot/), won 1.5 million more votes than Democrats in
| the 2016 House elections, and is on pace to win several
| million more votes than Democrats in the 2022 House
| elections. That's an interesting definition of "minority"
| you have there?
| tablespoon wrote:
| > The point is to limit the administrative state and move
| power to congress (as you said), because federal rule making
| is relatively open, and the administration has experts.
|
| > If it moves to congress, they'll just take the legislation
| lobbyists hand them and pass it, because they don't have the
| expertise to actually write technical regulations.
|
| Huh? Remember Ajit Pai? It hasn't been that long.
|
| It's _profoundly anti-democratic_ for major decisions to be
| made by unelected, unaccountable technocrats (with a comment
| period) than by actual elected representatives who can at
| least theoretically be held accountable through elections.
|
| IMHO, the solution to this is probably just to pass a law
| that authorizes this regulation that simultaneously pays off
| the states who object so they feel it's an overall good deal
| for them (e.g. fund a nuclear plant and a bunch of new
| infrastructure for each of them).
| xxpor wrote:
| Ajit Pai got kicked out when the administration changed!
| Exactly how it should be!
|
| They're not unaccountable, the president can dismiss them.
| Just like Trump fired Janet Yellen, and SCOTUS already
| ruled the structure of CFPB where removal for cause was
| required is unconstitutional.
|
| The idea congress is "democratic" is a huge joke. There's a
| reason why the House of Lords has essentially no power any
| more. Let alone the literal open corruption campaign
| finance is.
| neosystem wrote:
| Everything you say may or may not be true, but it doesn't
| address the point of the ruling or what's under debate.
| If you don't believe that the Congress is representative
| of the will of the people, your issues are not with this
| or that law or SCOTUS ruling, but with the fundamental
| structures of the American republic.
| Sporktacular wrote:
| throw0101a wrote:
| > _Would you really like to live in a world where every
| judge, inspector and policeman is a politician too?
| Subject to the whims of popular sentiment?_
|
| A lot of these positions _are_ elected in various US
| jurisdictions.
|
| * https://ballotpedia.org/Judicial_election_methods_by_st
| ate
|
| *
| https://ballotpedia.org/Judicial_selection_in_the_states
| Sporktacular wrote:
| Exactly. And look how well that's turned out:
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=poL7l-Uk3I8
| tablespoon wrote:
| > Biden is elected. He appoints experts. Experts craft
| regulations. When regulations screw up, Biden gets
| elected out. Experts get kicked out.
|
| So just elect a king, then? There's a pretty strict
| division of powers in the US, and for good reason.
| Congress just needs to do its job and pass some
| legislation.
|
| > Jesus, can you put aside the taking points and just
| think for yourself? Obviously no one is unaccountable.
| This is not some tin pot dictatorship like Fox is telling
| you to pretend it is.
|
| I can tell you I _am_ thinking for myself, at least as
| much as you probably are. Making an accusation like you
| have is also, frankly, against the site guidelines and
| not conductive to discussion.
| Sporktacular wrote:
| Congress is not going to do it's job in this political
| climate and we don't have the luxury of new found
| proceduralism when so much is at stake.
|
| "Just elect a king then?"
|
| No, because that would be creating unaccountability where
| I just demonstrated it already exists. How is putting
| everyone's future in the hands of Joe Minchin and Mitch
| McConnell an improvement on that?
|
| And again with the hyperbole. Instead of kings, let's
| stay in reality - the accountability issue you speak of
| is a red herring. Environment degradation presents an
| existential danger. Current legal and regulatory
| procedures are already slow in addressing it but they
| could have worked (for everyone except polluting
| industries and their shills). Scientist agree that faster
| action is required. Legislative obstructionism and a new
| appetite for legal originalism are just more obstacles
| that we can't afford.
|
| All these points can be defended. You're just repeating
| ungrounded, abstract, Fox News, boogie man talking points
| without demonstrating any of them. I apologise if I
| caused offense, but saying that's thoughtless is not an
| accusation.
| kevin_b_er wrote:
| This is a win for corruption.
| electrondood wrote:
| > This is a win for industry.
|
| I would frame it more as a loss for the planet, at a time
| when we're facing the greatest existential threat in all of
| history.
| nradov wrote:
| That's not really how it works. If Congress wants the executive
| branch to have leeway then they need to explicitly grant it.
| _jal wrote:
| Correction: That's exactly how it worked until a large change
| in the court composition decided to change the rules.
|
| People like to pretend that SCOTUS decisions are
| retroactively true, that somehow they're discovering legal
| nuances previously overlooked.
|
| That's not how it works. As the cliche goes, they're not
| final because they're right, they're right because they're
| final.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _how it worked until a large change in the court
| composition decided to change the rules_
|
| FDR created the modern administrative state. _Chevron_ was
| decided in the 80s. None of this is how it's always been.
| jayd16 wrote:
| What is the argument here? You want us to use law theory
| from before the industrial revolution or something?
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _What is the argument here?_
|
| That limiting the administrative state is far from a
| monumental changing of the rules. Nobody is challenging
| the administrative state _per se_. The major doctrines
| principle is just being expanded, which limits _Chevron_
| , something that only came into being a few decades ago.
| _jal wrote:
| That's an OK summary of FedSoc talking points, but you're
| missing some of the barbs. Might want to try again.
|
| The effective reuslt of the non-delegation doctrine is
| that, when Republicans do not like a policy outcome,
| Congress is required to employ a time machine to give
| explicit instructions to an agency decades ahead of time.
| CrazyPyroLinux wrote:
| Some sort of pesky "constitution...?"
| _jal wrote:
| Quibble all you like, it has been that way for living
| memory, and reversing this is going to cause an enormous
| amount of chaos, because the modern state is built on
| these assumptions.
|
| This is not some minor change, you're going to throw the
| federal government into chaos. I know that's the goal for
| a lot of people, but they should have the courage to
| admit that.
| phpisthebest wrote:
| For many of us this is a welcome change, the roll back of
| the administrative state is very very much needed
| throwaway0a5e wrote:
| Discussions about the EPA seem to have to magical ability
| to make people forget that gems like the DEA and DHS
| exist. Heck, until recently the FCC was headed by a
| corporate shill.
| phpisthebest wrote:
| People take a very narrow look at the issue, they fail to
| see the forest for the trees
| nradov wrote:
| Avoiding chaos is not a valid reason for allowing a legal
| injustice to persist even one day longer. I support legal
| mandates to reduce emissions, but it needs to be done the
| right way as an Act of Congress, not by unelected
| bureaucrats creatively reinterpreting a law to suit their
| political goals.
| _jal wrote:
| > Avoiding chaos is not a valid reason for allowing a
| legal injustice to persist even one day longer.
|
| Wow, people are sure selective about which injustices
| they cannot tolerate "even one day longer".
|
| > I support legal mandates to reduce emissions
|
| Bullshit. You are doing the opposite and know perfectly
| well what's going to happen.
| dang wrote:
| Please don't cross into flamewar like this. It's not what
| this site is for, and it destroys what it is for.
|
| Even in a divisive thread like this one, your comment
| here stands out as breaking the site guidelines. Would
| you mind reviewing them and sticking to the rules when
| posting here? We'd be grateful.
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
| cmurf wrote:
| The dissent indicates the power is already explicitly granted
| in the EPA statute plain as day. It really isn't clear to me
| what language would satisfy the majority.
| nostromo wrote:
| "The EPA may regulate carbon emissions" would do the trick.
| cmurf wrote:
| Why do you propose every single atom needs to be
| explicitly listed? 42 USC 7411 does grant EPA the power
| to determine what emissions need regulating, and how to
| best regulate them.
| throwaway5752 wrote:
| Now repeat for every chemical, and you have an
| unregulated mess, as this decision intends to create.
| nostromo wrote:
| "The EPA may regulate emissions that contribute to global
| climate change" would also do the trick.
|
| These laws are all quite old, many pre-date the EPA even
| and are from the 1950s and 1960s. They were clearly
| written for toxic pollutants, which carbon is not.
| throwaway5752 wrote:
| Let me ask you plainly: are you a lawyer? You seem well
| informed, but not lawyerly. I feel like you have good
| theoretical knowledge of how this should work in an ideal
| world, but not as much understanding of how it works in
| practice.
| agentultra wrote:
| Supreme Court really showing how irrelevant they are.
| [deleted]
| sschueller wrote:
| How will this affect international agreements and commitments to
| reduce green hours gasses?
|
| If the US can't abide by the agreement how can we expect India or
| China to do so.
| queuebert wrote:
| This decision seems largely irrelevant to me, because the
| Democrats with their majority and White House could pass new
| legislation next week to authorize the EPA to do what it needs to
| do.
| gsibble wrote:
| It's called the filibuster.
| sofixa wrote:
| Isn't there a couple of Democrats in the Senate (who also
| happen to be anti-green due to blatant conflict of interest -
| why the hell is a senator with financial interests in coal
| allowed??) who refuse to allow the majority to do away with the
| filibuster that forces the need for a supermajority? So nobody
| has a majority?
| jrd79 wrote:
| Carbon dioxide was not considered a pollutant when the law was
| passed, so congress should specifically authorize such a
| significant expansion of the EPA authority. Rule by executive
| fiat is never wise, and if the case were clear cut on this
| matter, it would not be so hard to get congress to act. There
| isn't and never was democratic consensus on this topic, and
| people who support it need to convince people who do not before
| it can become public policy.
| Bostonian wrote:
| What the government should do about climate change should be
| decided by legislation agreed upon by the President and Congress,
| not by an administrative agency.
| Marazan wrote:
| Maybe they could create an agency for the protection of the
| environment and delegate some authority to it.
| anon291 wrote:
| Or they could legislate. What's the purpose of electing
| lawmakers if they just hire random bureaucrats. If they want
| advice they have the money to get that advice
| xpe wrote:
| ?. You mean the EPA?
| Arrath wrote:
| That could employ subject matter experts and scientists to
| draft reasonable and prudent regulations, hopefully away from
| the influence of lobbyists? What a novel concept.
| xpe wrote:
| No, such a claim is overly broad.
|
| It is common and reasonable for legislation to delegate
| responsibility. Administrative rulemaking has been around for a
| long time and will continue to exist.
| micromacrofoot wrote:
| Now consider for a moment, who created this administrative
| agency.
| qalmakka wrote:
| The fact that people can't see that the conservatives are
| basically advocating worldwide for short term economic growth in
| exchange for basically our future is appalling to me.
|
| I am afraid we will see an immense amount of instability,
| increased poverty, mass migrations and authoritarian regimes
| rising up due to the fact that we couldn't manage to convince
| people that those parties do not care about them.
|
| In a previous post I wrote that conservatives everywhere use
| moral issues to make people enraged in order to get vote, and in
| exchange to that they use their power to help the rich get
| richer. This is exactly what I was talking about. Those
| Conservative judges were appointed by a President elected by
| people that rallied behind him hoping to see Roe overturned, and
| in exchange for that they also gave them a free pass to alter the
| US political system in a way that is favourable to the Republican
| party, i.e. the party of big industry and capital.
|
| This is also another small hint that "countries" are a stupid
| concept - we must stop to pretend that a single country is an
| island, everything has consequences that irradiate and reflect on
| the rest of the world, and it's stupid to think everyone can be a
| ruler of its own tiny spot of our planet.
|
| Countries are like homes, but they aren't cottages in the middle
| of nowhere, they are flats - if you set your own house on fire,
| everyone will suffer, everyone will lose something, if not
| everything.
|
| "$countryname first!" and Nationalism in all its forms is
| basically just a more general form of Fascism.
| mywittyname wrote:
| > I am afraid we will see an immense amount of instability,
| increased poverty, mass migrations and authoritarian regimes
| rising up due to the fact that we couldn't manage to convince
| people that those parties do not care about them.
|
| This has already been happening for a decade now. But it has
| been limited to poorer regions, such as north Africa, south-
| central Americas, and war-torn regions of the Middle East.
|
| Most of this instability was precipitated by food prices, which
| wealthier nations found themselves immune to. But they are no
| longer immune, food prices are spiking by double digit annual
| percentages all over the world. Fuel prices too. The G7 are
| already in talks about how acquiesce to Russia for their
| natural gas.
| justinzollars wrote:
| gumby wrote:
| What's interesting about this ruling (if you listened to the oral
| arguments and read the ruling) is that it appears to undercut the
| ability for any executive agency to make a rule, under them claim
| that congress cannot delegate its powers.
|
| So the FAA can't determine and then require that aircraft have
| transponders. Congress has to do this.
|
| If they continue down this path it will be chaos.
| giantg2 wrote:
| I didn't see the claim that they can't delegate. The issue I
| saw discussed is whether or not a specific power was delegated.
| I don't see rhem invalidating all agency regulations. I do see
| them requiring better definitions to support that regulation.
| (Eg C02 was not considered a pollutant under the original grant
| of power, so the court doesn't _want_ to interpret it to be
| inclusive).
| andrekandre wrote:
| > it appears to undercut the ability for any executive agency
| to make a rule, under them claim that congress cannot delegate
| its powers.
|
| this had been a goal for a long time, since even before
| goldwater... its called "deconstruction of the administrative
| state" (steve bannons phrase)
| Miner49er wrote:
| I don't think this is correct. Congress can definitely delegate
| its power, they are just saying that Congress didn't delegate
| the power the EPA is trying to use in this case.
|
| From the final paragraph of the opinion:
|
| "But it is not plausible that Congress gave EPA the authority
| to adopt on its own such a regulatory scheme in Section 111(d).
| A decision of such magnitude and consequence rests with
| Congress itself, or an agency acting pursuant to a clear
| delegation from that representative body."
|
| So it seems that Congress can still give the EPA a more clear
| delegation that they have this power.
| AlotOfReading wrote:
| How do you write an entire opinion about delegation without
| mentioning _Chevron_? As the dissent points out, that
| delegation is inherently required to do the EPA 's job and
| the court has previously accepted their technical and policy
| expertise in this area.
| cryptonector wrote:
| You would think they would have reversed Chevron, or
| distinguished it. But note, I've not read this decision
| yet, and I'm taking your word for their not mentioning
| Chevron.
| AlotOfReading wrote:
| Maybe I missed something between reading and ctrl-f, but
| it's only mentioned in the dissent as far as I can tell.
| gnicholas wrote:
| The Court has been dodging _Chevron_ of late. This is their
| second opinion this month where they conspicuously avoided
| mentioning _Chevron_ :
| https://www.jdsupra.com/legalnews/court-side-steps-
| overturni...
| [deleted]
| gnicholas wrote:
| I read this differently (and am a former lawyer who worked on
| administrative law). This is about the "major questions
| doctrine", which involves a subset of administrative actions.
| It's not about whether administrative agencies can do anything
| whatsoever.
|
| > _Under this body of law, known as the major questions
| doctrine, given both separation of powers principles and a
| practical understanding of legislative intent, the agency must
| point to "clear congressional authorization" for the authority
| it claims._
|
| The reasoning for this is that:
|
| > _We presume that "Congress intends to make major policy
| decisions itself, not leave those decisions to agencies_
| [deleted]
| gumby wrote:
| > That is silly hyperbolic overreaction.
|
| Darn, my interpretation is shown to be naive by someone who
| actually has the specific relevant experience!
|
| Joking aside, thanks for your comment.
| jibe wrote:
| That is silly hyperbolic overreaction. The court literally
| upheld the EPA regulating greenhouse gasses at the point of
| creation. It upheld the specific regulations how coal was
| burned. All it said was the EPA wasn't empowered to move into
| grid management schemes. If congress wants to grant them that
| power, it can.
| [deleted]
| elmerfud wrote:
| I don't agree it will be chaos. Congress has for far too long
| abdicated what it is supposed to be directly responsible for to
| unelected bureaucrats that exist in agencies that are overseen
| by the executive branch of government.
|
| Congress is now free to focused on creating chaos between the
| people that elect them. When is the last time you've seen
| anyone from Congress campaign on any substantive issue? I've
| not seen it in my lifetime they leave that campaign up to the
| president. Congress is invested with the sole power to regulate
| our money when is the last time you've seen them do anything
| except throw up bloated budgets? They have completely advocated
| that power to the Federal reserve of which they exercise zero
| oversight of and apparently leave it to the president who also
| lets it run autonomously.
|
| So what you call chaos is reconnecting the actual
| responsibilities of our elected representatives with their
| duties. I for one would very much enjoy seeing my elected
| representative actually doing their constitutional duties
| instead of pitting citizen that one another's throat in order
| to get reelected again.
| [deleted]
| cloutchaser wrote:
| This is what people should take away from the last 2 weeks.
|
| These rulings are making things more democratic, or more
| decentralized at least.
|
| If you don't like that, perhaps you wanted things that the
| majority doesn't actually want, (in some states perhaps), but
| then you need to decide if are pro democracy or not.
| AlexandrB wrote:
| The idea that Republicans are seeking increased states'
| rights in good faith is contradicted my most available
| evidence. Not only have they fought legalizing weed
| federally, but right after the Roe v. Wade ruling we had
| Republican politicians advocating for a federal abortion
| ban[1].
|
| Believing that these ruling will make things more
| democratic requires ignoring what Republican lawmakers both
| say and do.
|
| [1] https://news.yahoo.com/mike-pence-celebrates-end-
| roe-1529376...
| refurb wrote:
| Fought weed legalization? The Republicans sponsored a
| bill to make it legal federally.
|
| https://www.forbes.com/sites/annakaplan/2021/11/15/republ
| ica...
|
| _A group of Republican lawmakers introduced a bill
| Monday to federally decriminalize and tax marijuana,
| adding an alternative to sweeping Democratic proposals
| for major marijuana reform and narrow GOP-backed efforts
| to deschedule the drug in the U.S._
| ceejayoz wrote:
| https://reason.org/faq/frequently-asked-questions-about-
| the-...
|
| > The States Reform Act has garnered attention as the
| first prominent bill sponsored by a House Republican to
| end the federal prohibition of marijuana, which could
| help give the proposal some political advantage in its
| efforts to secure bipartisan support. Congressional
| Democrats have previously introduced various marijuana
| legalization proposals, including the Marijuana
| Opportunity Reinvestment and Expungement (MORE) Act, and
| currently have draft language for the Cannabis
| Administration and Opportunity (CAO) Act. At this time,
| however, many observers believe neither of the proposals
| being led by congressional Democrats will be able to
| secure the necessary Republican votes for passage in the
| Senate. Any marijuana legalization proposal would need to
| secure the support of at least 10 Senate Republicans in
| order to overcome a potential filibuster.
|
| "A small group of Republicans has finally seen the light
| at a time they've no power to pass legislation, and it'll
| fail because of Republican opposition in the Senate" is
| not quite "The Republicans sponsored a bill".
| Eddy_Viscosity2 wrote:
| Due to things like the electoral college, gerrymandering,
| vote suppression tactics, and senate representation to name
| just few, the US is not very democratic. Nor can these be
| fixed under current conditions because of the above list.
| giantg2 wrote:
| There's a strong argument for senate representation being
| a feature, not a bug. After all, it's a democratic
| republic of a union of separate states.
| stormbrew wrote:
| Senate representation is one thing. Requiring a
| supermajority to pass anything in an already
| unrepresentative house is just ridiculous, and absolutely
| does diminish the quality of "democracy" the US has.
| Especially considering the US house isn't particularly
| representative either, due to a combination of an
| absurdly low representative cap and gerrymandering.
|
| The US is certainly more democratic than it was at its
| founding, when neither the president nor the Senate were
| entirely directly elected at all, but it's not even close
| to as democratic as most Americans appear to believe it
| is.
| giantg2 wrote:
| I assume you're just talking about the filibuster. What
| about the other super majority votes like ratifying
| treaties? Also, they could use budget reconciliation to
| pass a few things to bypass the filibuster.
|
| I think many Americans have been calling it a democracy
| for shorthand and people forget that it's an adjective
| for "republic".
| stormbrew wrote:
| Imo, "it's not a democracy it's a republic" is a pretty
| empty statement, because there are no pure democracies
| (and they are likely to be completely impractical
| anyways). It seems to be a weird meme among Americans
| that hints at some kind of exceptionalism, but has very
| little in the way of practical implications.
|
| For the most part, everyone in the world means
| approximately the same thing an American does when they
| say democracy ("a representative constitutional
| democracy, probably with some degree of regional
| federalism and bicameralism"). The US neither resembles a
| pure democracy or the republic the founders created at
| this point anyways, so it doesn't really matter. These
| terms are pretty fluid.
|
| Pure democracy is basically never the goal anyways. It's
| not a _bad_ thing for a system of government to be not
| entirely democratic, there do have to be checks on pure
| majoritarianism somehow, but the particulars of the US '
| democratic lacks seem to be both worse than most
| Americans imagine them to be, and also far more vestigial
| if not accidental than they ought to be (many were really
| there to help uphold slavery and/or prevent
| reconstruction from fully succeeding).
|
| At this point, the net effect of the US' democratic
| failings is to create a tyranny of the minority, which
| can hardly be considered a better failure mode than a
| tyranny of the majority.
| giantg2 wrote:
| "At this point, the net effect of the US' democratic
| failings is to create a tyranny of the minority, which
| can hardly be considered a better failure mode than a
| tyranny of the majority."
|
| Any source fir it only being tyranny of the minority? I
| see examples of tyranny of the majority too.
| stormbrew wrote:
| No system as complex as the US government is all one of
| anything in outcomes.
| Eddy_Viscosity2 wrote:
| There's also a strong argument to be made for citizens to
| get equal representation when it comes to the crafting of
| laws that affect them.
| giantg2 wrote:
| They do. The people get equal representation under the
| house. The states get equal representation under the
| senate. This is a feature to control populist movements
| as well as protect states' interests (which are also
| composed by the people, but this separate ensures that
| the culture of one set of state will not be imposed over
| the other set).
| Eddy_Viscosity2 wrote:
| The senate does not give people equal representation -
| regardless of the motivation for having it, this is
| objectively true.
|
| You can say that you like a system that has this feature
| for states or it has certain other benefits and so on,
| but you can't say that it is equal representation because
| it is not.
| giantg2 wrote:
| As I said, the house gives people equal representation. A
| bill will not become law without passing the with through
| representation of the house. The only limit is that some
| things the house wants won't pass because the states
| don't agree.
|
| If you truly want equal representation, then we have to
| go the direct democracy route since you will not have
| equal numbers of people under each representative. You
| also need to get rid of appointments by the executive
| (including rule making agencies), closed primaries, and
| provide universal voting including for felons and non-
| citizens.
|
| So what is this argument for equal representation across
| the board? I don't see any benefit other than if you want
| populist movements to succeed based on the whims of the
| day and potentially at the expense of the minority rights
| (even more so than today).
|
| The main point here is that state representation was
| necessary in order to create the country, and is likely
| necessary for the country to continue. I don't see any
| argument that supercedes this so far.
| Eddy_Viscosity2 wrote:
| I understand how it works, and you agree that the senate
| does not provide equal representation for people, only
| the states. I'm not suggesting that the numbers for each
| representative be exactly the same because that's not
| achievable in practice. What I am saying is that the
| current system is much less democratic than it could be
| if either there was no senate or it had proportional
| representation. You may think that would lead to chaos,
| but I disagree.
| giantg2 wrote:
| It wouldn't lead to chaos. It could lead to states
| leaving the union if the senate were dissolved. It's
| happened in the past when states didn't want to be
| trampled and the divide seems large today.
|
| But what is the objective benefit to removing the senate?
| The argument I'm hearing is just that it could be more
| democratic, but there are many changes that could make
| things more democratic. Some things are about fairness,
| like gerrymandering. But I don't see any benefit to
| removing the senate.
| Eddy_Viscosity2 wrote:
| Laws like something that could curtail the worst of
| gerrymandering will never be passed because of the
| senate. The people that benefit from unequal and unfair
| representation will never vote to change them. Those
| people largely sit in the senate unequally representing
| the people that want positive change.
| giantg2 wrote:
| "Those people largely sit in the senate unequally
| representing the people that want positive change."
|
| I thought we already covered that they represent states,
| not people.
|
| By the way, what bill would they pass that would fix
| gerrymandering? I thought the states had the authority to
| draw their districts and it can be contentious as to what
| a _good_ fix is.
|
| And of course we have the same logic on the other side -
| that a party in power will do what they can to add to
| their power. We see that with laws about non-citizens
| voting (struck down), restoring/giving voring rights to
| groups that would disproportionately support them, and
| such.
| Eddy_Viscosity2 wrote:
| > I thought we already covered that they represent
| states, not people.
|
| We did, and that's the point.
|
| > what bill would they pass that would fix
| gerrymandering? I thought the states had the authority to
| draw their districts and it can be contentious as to what
| a good fix is.
|
| There is no bill, also my point. Also, it's only
| contentious to those who are deliberately attempting to
| gerrymander.
|
| > that a party in power will do what they can to add to
| their power.
|
| I agree with this part, its also my point; that is,
| undemocratic processes are self-perpetuating and self-
| strengthening.
|
| > We see that with laws about non-citizens voting (struck
| down), restoring/giving voting rights to groups that
| would disproportionately support them, and such.
|
| Interesting that that all your counter examples here are
| about giving people rights to vote. People having the
| right to vote is fundamental to democracy. Seems your
| view on democracy is of the 'only the right sort of
| people should be allowed to vote' variety, pun intended.
| giantg2 wrote:
| "We did, and that's the point."
|
| Then why are you misrepresenting it to mean something
| that it doesn't? Only one house is meant to represent
| people.
|
| "Also, it's only contentious to those who are
| deliberately attempting to gerrymander."
|
| Maybe for the general idea. But I can see implementation
| ideas being contentious. That's my point - the solutions
| are likely to contain biases, and there's going to be
| opposition to that.
|
| "Interesting that that all your counter examples here are
| about giving people rights to vote. People having the
| right to vote is fundamental to democracy. Seems your
| view on democracy is of the 'only the right sort of
| people should be allowed to vote' variety, pun intended."
|
| Please name a democracy that has unlimited voting rights.
| All democracies have some limits. Requiring that someone
| is a citizen is a damn low bar. Losing rights for
| felonies can be debated, but that's not too uncommon
| either. The purpose of those most basic restrictions is
| do that society does not become influenced by the
| criminal elements (you're banned from office too) or from
| outside influence. And guess what, those restrictions
| were democratically implemented. So please stop with the
| attacks and more righteous than thou attitude. Please
| state some argument beyond "fundamental".
| [deleted]
| stormbrew wrote:
| > The people get equal representation under the house.
| The states get equal representation under the senate.
|
| Neither of these things are actually true in practice.
| giantg2 wrote:
| Elaborate, please.
| stormbrew wrote:
| A person in Wyoming doesn't have equal representation in
| the house as a person in California, by quite a large
| margin. The house is not representative in practice.
|
| As I said in another branch of this conversation, the use
| of the filibuster on nearly all bills of any significance
| (budgets and confirmations aside) in the Senate (and the
| chilling effect it's had on even bringing other bills to
| the floor) means that states are not represented equally
| either. The most obstructionist states have substantially
| more legislative power than the ones that want to
| actually pass bills. This is obviously more abstract, but
| it's pretty clear that in practice states are not equal
| in the senate.
| giantg2 wrote:
| The other states also have the power to filibuster things
| they don't like. This is feature not a bug. We want to
| fail open (liberty). The way to do that is placing
| safeguards that make it harder to pass laws, as they are
| generally imposing restrictions. The passage of any law
| will negatively affect some minority, the point is to
| make that group small and avoid straight partisanship via
| a modest supermajority.
|
| Yes, there are some outliers and discrepancy in the
| number a representative represents. It probably should be
| adjusted.
| stormbrew wrote:
| It's a feature _to a point_.
|
| I hope it's uncontroversial that, say, blocking a bill to
| ban slavery is not "failing open," for example, and the
| persistent effort to prevent slavery from being banned
| led to many failures in liberty?
|
| When your main bulwark is making it hard to pass bills,
| all you've really done is make it so that the status quo
| is powerful. The status quo is not, by default, freedom.
| giantg2 wrote:
| Yes, point in time the status quo may not be the most
| free. The point is that starting from a more free point
| (the beginning) there were fewer laws that there are now.
| By having g that protection, how many additional
| restrictive laws have we prevented? The laws on the books
| are predominately restrictions, not freedoms/rights. So
| on a whole, it seems beneficial, even if there have been
| failings (we can say that about almost any institution).
| jdgoesmarching wrote:
| No you don't understand, being more democratic in the
| abstract is more important than actual rights being
| stripped away or retaining the bare minimum environmental
| regulations on companies that are destroying the planet.
|
| It's sad how the flimsiest well-actuallys carry so much
| weight around here. Anyone making arguments around recent
| decisions being democratic has their head buried in the
| sand about how blatantly undemocratic the US has been
| since its inception.
| refurb wrote:
| That's a silly statement. The process is what makes a
| country democratic.
|
| Creating laws out of thin air and not through the proper
| processes is the opposite of democratic.
| Eddy_Viscosity2 wrote:
| Processes were followed and have been for generations.
| SCOTUS is just flipping the table over now for the
| benefit of biggest polluting industries, not the
| citizens, country, or the rule of law.
| refurb wrote:
| I mean it clearly wasn't followed, the legislature was
| trying to do a run around the right process (explicitly
| giving the EPA the powers).
|
| This ruling is the right one.
| jdgoesmarching wrote:
| It's only "clear" for people who accept paper-thin legal
| logic from a court with an obvious agenda. It's only
| clear if you're willing to slide down the slippery slope
| of the court stripping authority from all federal
| agencies they don't like with the logic that the
| legislature needs to codify every email sent by an
| agency.
|
| If you don't like the EPA just say so, but please stop
| pretending like the Supreme Court is some real arbiter of
| logic and constitutionality. It has always been (even
| during liberal courts) an unelected political institution
| that justifies huge legislative changes with high-minded
| philosophical hand waving. Occasionally they throw in
| civil rights decisions for good PR with their aligned
| base, but even that's on the chopping block with the
| current court.
| refurb wrote:
| The funny part is your criticism of "paper thin logic" is
| exactly what the original Roe v Wade decision was.
| [deleted]
| equalsione wrote:
| Over 60% of the US population think abortion should be
| legal. More than half of US states are (or are very likely)
| to institute abortion bans.
|
| To the broader point, there has to be _representative_
| democracy for decentralized decision making to be fair
|
| - https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/ng-
| interactive/2021/nov/...
| ahtihn wrote:
| > Over 60% of the US population think abortion should be
| legal. More than half of US states are (or are very
| likely) to institute abortion bans.
|
| Could it be that a majority of the population in those
| states are against abortion? Wouldn't Why should this be
| regulated at the federal level?
|
| I'm pro-choice but I can understand that some people
| believe life begins at conception and therefore abortion
| is murder. If a majority of people in a state believe
| that, isn't it democratic to let them make laws
| accordingly?
| belorn wrote:
| 50% of the US population don't live in 50% of the US
| states.
|
| This has both benefits and drawback. The decision of more
| than half of US states will impact less than half the us
| states citizens.
| cloutchaser wrote:
| Abortion isn't 0 or 1, legal or not legal.
|
| There's a million nuances in it, rape, incest, medical
| reasons, and the time of abortion.
|
| The abortion debate doesn't exist in Europe because
| almost all sides managed to agree on a 12 week limit and
| it's left alone.
|
| I would guess in 10-20 years the US would arrive at the
| same conclusion, with small differences between red and
| blue states.
|
| Stop making this a yes or no issue. And that's not what
| the Supreme Court did. They didn't ban abortion. If 60%
| want abortion legal they can vote for whoever gives them
| that.
| EntropyIsAHoax wrote:
| > The abortion debate doesn't exist in Europe
|
| That's simply not true.
|
| In Germany's last election, a major issue was about
| removing a clause disallowing "advertising" abortions. It
| remains controversial that people seeking abortions have
| to get extensive psychological counseling from an
| extremely limited number of therapists before getting an
| abortion.
|
| In Poland abortion is banned entirely and they are about
| to start keeping a pregnancy register.
|
| Ireland and Spain also have ongoing debates about the
| particulars of their laws, with Ireland having just
| legalized it all in 2018!
| equalsione wrote:
| > Abortion isn't 0 or 1, legal or not legal. As others
| have already pointed out below, and I already mentioned,
| over half of states are ready to enact total bans. The
| repeal of Roe doesn't make abortion illegal, but it does
| make a _ban_ on abortion legal, which is exactly what is
| happening.
|
| > I would guess in 10-20 years the US would arrive at the
| same conclusion, with small differences between red and
| blue states.
|
| This data visualisation [0] highlights the problem with
| this approach.
|
| This isn't an issue where you can sit back and
| contemplate it as some abstract exercise of democracy. So
| many women will die, or be persecuted during that 10-20
| year span you mention and it is completely needless. No
| one should be adopting a "it'll all work out in the end"
| mindset.
|
| [0] https://twitter.com/monachalabi/status/99956237146199
| 2448?la...
| cloutchaser wrote:
| Yeah, except you are taking a political or moral stance
| right there, so it's not fair to the rest of the
| population. Many people believe you are saving many lives
| in those 10-20 years.
| res0nat0r wrote:
| The GOP are going to immediately nuke the filibuster and
| ban abortion at the federal level if they control the
| government after the next election. Pence has even said
| this out loud recently. It will likely make no exceptions
| for rape or incest either. The majority of the country is
| against this.
|
| https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/06/24/aborti
| on-...
| brewdad wrote:
| Tell this to the states passing anti-abortion
| legislation. They seem to view it as a binary. At a
| minimum, the burden of proof for exceptions is high with
| the penalties being life in prison in more than a few
| states.
| throwaway4aday wrote:
| > there has to be _representative_ democracy for
| decentralized decision making to be fair
|
| So fix the actual problem instead of trying to kludge
| your way around it.
| timeon wrote:
| > things that the majority doesn't actually want
|
| Majority of square feet of land or majority of people?
| cloutchaser wrote:
| The majority of people don't want to allow abortions at
| 36 weeks, but they also don't want abortions completely
| banned.
|
| So there is a democratic debate to be had about where in
| the middle the non extreme two sides could meet. (In
| Europe there is no debate about abortion and most
| countries allow it to 12 weeks).
|
| Better to have a debate and both sides compromise than
| some court deciding on one of the most extreme views. The
| Supreme Court didn't ban abortion, they did however allow
| it to 36 weeks for decades.
|
| What they did do last week is say: hey guys, it's a
| federal democracy, why don't you fucking debate it and
| legislate it somehow where both sides can agree, as is
| normal with divisive issues in a democracy
| refurb wrote:
| Pretty much this.
|
| Even RBG said that Roe v Wade was on shaky ground as a
| legal precedent.
|
| And what people don't realize is that if Roe v Wade
| wasn't overturn the next ruling discussed was _allowing
| further restrictions by states_ , further eroding the
| precedent.
|
| The alternative was just kicking the can down the road
| until the next challenge.
|
| This just ripped the bandaid off.
| briffle wrote:
| I understand your point, but at the same time, I don't want
| the same "it is like a series of tubes" guys mandating some
| airplane technology pushed by the highest campaign
| contribution either.
| Siddarth1977 wrote:
| I have a degree in computer science and a couple decades
| of experience with software development for, and
| deployment on, the internet.
|
| I think the metaphor of comparing internet bandwidth to
| pipes/tubes carrying water is perfectly apt. It seems
| like a very simple, direct and effective way to describe
| issues of bandwidth, connectivity, congestion and overall
| infrastructure.
|
| I've never quite understood why we all pretended like
| that was a bad analogy. I guess just because it came out
| of the mouth of an old, white Republican.
| hairofadog wrote:
| It's because his delivery of that analogy came across as
| unhinged and shouty, and he posited that emails from his
| staff took days to arrive because of Netflix.
| prpl wrote:
| This is an interstate issue, as emissions do not respect
| state lines, so it can't be decentralized to the states if
| that's what you are implying.
| burkaman wrote:
| > Congress has for far too long abdicated what it is supposed
| to be directly responsible for to unelected bureaucrats that
| exist in agencies that are overseen by the executive branch
| of government.
|
| Yes, that's what the executive branch is for. That's how our
| government and basically every government in the history of
| the world has worked.
|
| > When is the last time you've seen anyone from Congress
| campaign on any substantive issue?
|
| Literally every campaign in my life that I've had any
| exposure to. Campaigning on real issues is not hard, the
| problem is getting into Congress and then being unwilling or
| unable to follow through.
| voisin wrote:
| Many of those unelected bureaucrats are experts in their
| fields due to their ability to focus for entire careers.
| zajio1am wrote:
| So they should prepare law novelization for cabinet,
| cabinet should push it to legislature, and legislature
| should vote on that. Like in any other country.
| throw10920 wrote:
| Is Congress not capable of listening to those experts and
| then publicly debating which of their suggestions to
| implement?
| lostcolony wrote:
| Even if we had a competent, non-bitterly partisan
| Congress, no.
|
| Because then you're left with who is better convincing
| uninformed people; the experts, or paid lobbyists.
| thrown321 wrote:
| Congress writes laws vague enough for the experts to
| implement the policy. It's always been this way. It will
| be total chaos if Congress has to explicate the specific.
| brewdad wrote:
| Have you met our Congress?
| drew-y wrote:
| They are not. Even if we assume congress wasn't a
| complete gridlocked mess, they simply do not have the
| bandwidth. There 535 Members of Congress and they work
| less than 200 days a year in a typical session.
|
| How many regulatory bodies are there that need rules
| passed? I can think of the FAA, FTC, EPA, FDA, USDA, and
| the NRC just off the top of my head. A quick google
| search shows there are 19 of these rule making agencies.
| Even with a wide distribution of rule making authority,
| these agencies struggle to keep up with our rapidly
| evolving world.
|
| Forcing congress to hear and make a decision on every
| single regulation these agencies propose would be a
| bottleneck that brings this country to it's knees.
| gumby wrote:
| > There 535 Members of Congress and they work less than
| 200 days a year in a typical session.
|
| Sure, Congress is in session for about 200 days, and even
| when it is the elected officials aren't typically on the
| floor for the full day. But that doesn't mean that when
| they aren't on the floor they aren't necessarily working.
| They could be meeting with constituents, with their
| staff, reading bills, going to committee meetings, just
| meeting with other reps/senators etc.
|
| You make it sound like they don't do anything.
| ISL wrote:
| 365 * 5 / 7 = 260.
|
| Removing ~3 weeks vacation gets you down to 245. Eleven
| federal holidays? 234.
|
| 200 days/year sounds like an almost full-time job?
| TylerE wrote:
| They have no obligation to actually show up. Many miss
| more votes than they are present for.
|
| Also, most sessions only run a few hours, and many more
| are pro forms, where the minimum quorum show up (I think
| this is something like 15 or 20), open the session and
| then immediately close it.
| elsonrodriguez wrote:
| Congress members bring snowballs to the floor as evidence
| that climate change isn't real. Some of this behavior is
| due to personal beliefs, but there are other factors:
|
| https://www.opensecrets.org/industries/indus.php?ind=E01
|
| So due to the ignorance and corruption among conservative
| lawmakers regarding climate change and carbon emissions,
| congress has been in an ideological deadlock on the issue
| of climate initiatives. The EPA existing somewhat
| independent of that framework was a benefit.
| specialist wrote:
| Congress has the powers to investigate, deliberate, and
| legislate. Not administrate. That power was explicitly
| granted to the executive branch.
| nimish wrote:
| And? It's Congress' job to make policy and pass laws.
|
| They can and should take advice but the whole point of
| democracy is that the policymakers are democratically
| accountable.
| xyzzyz wrote:
| wkearney99 wrote:
| have you met any congress personnel? fence posts would be
| insulted to be compared to some of them.
|
| there's definitely a gap between regulatory officials making
| regulations and legislature codifying the details. This is
| where appointing heads of those departments is supposed to
| come to bear.
|
| It's a mess, but the answer isn't to let lobbyists and
| special interests burn the house down.
| gumby wrote:
| > have you met any congress personnel? fence posts would be
| insulted to be compared to some of them.
|
| have you met any congress personnel? "dedicated",
| "idealistic", and/or "thoughtful" apply to some of them.
| cryptonector wrote:
| It's not like the regulators are incorruptible. The
| regulators get captured all the time. I don't know what the
| right answer is here.
| burkaman wrote:
| The right answer here is that Congress explicitly
| delegated a decision to the EPA administrator, so they
| should be allowed to make that decision. The court's
| decision is well-argued, but it seems to come down to "I
| know Congress said you could do this, but it's a really
| big deal and they might not have thought it through
| enough, so you have to go ask for permission again before
| you do it". It's kind of patronizing to both the EPA and
| Congress, and I don't think it's a good decision or
| precedent.
| steveylang wrote:
| The fundamental issue is, is carbon dioxide an air pollutant?
| This is not so much about interpretation of the Clean Air Act
| IMO, as it is about peoples' opposing views on carbon dioxide as
| a significant contributor to climate change.
|
| Those who believe carbon dioxide absolutely is contributing to
| climate change and harming our planet would likely classify
| carbon dioxide as an air pollutant and thus believe the EPA has
| the power to regulate it. Those that believe otherwise are not
| going to consider carbon dioxide an 'air pollutant' and thus not
| subject EPA regulation.
| vzcx wrote:
| I don't think that's at question in this case. It was decided
| in Massachusetts v. EPA that EPA is required to make that
| determination itself. Three years after that decision, EPA
| basically answered "we think it is."
|
| The court isn't bringing any of that up in this opinion. They
| are looking only at whether Congress specifically delegated EPA
| the power to regulate emissions by means of "generation
| shifting". The majority opinion was "no, they didn't."
| methehack wrote:
| enragedcacti wrote:
| A huge piece of this is that they are creating judicial tests
| that are hugely subjective.
|
| They are happy to issue this ruling because when some policy
| they like comes around they have given themselves the legal
| cover to interpret it as a constrained delegation of power.
|
| The same can be said for the historical tests they have
| introduced. They ask that judges look for the "history and
| tradition" of various activities knowing that they don't have
| to defer to an actual historian or linguist. They can find the
| history that agrees with them or _form the question_ such that
| the history agrees with them. e.g. in the case of Dobbs, the
| question they asked was "is access to abortion part of our
| history or tradition?" when they could have just as reasonably
| asked "is privacy and bodily autonomy part of our history or
| tradition?"
|
| It is calvinball as jurisprudence and the cases this term are
| far from the last time we will see these 5 blatantly contradict
| themselves and/or good faith interpretation to reach a policy
| outcome.
| redler wrote:
| This ruling subjects the ability of a regulatory agency to
| actually regulate to the "for my friends, anything; for my
| enemies, the law" test.
| pupppet wrote:
| Everyone stating this is a good thing because it's not the
| Supreme Court's job to do xyz are conveniently ignoring the fact
| these decisions are being made due to tribalism, not out of some
| concern for rule of law.
| the_doctah wrote:
| pclmulqdq wrote:
| These people could be part of their respective tribes because
| they believe that the rule of law dictates one thing or
| another. Many of these Justices in the past have followed their
| own philosophies, which happen to align with one party or
| another.
|
| We just happen to have people who have a very... different...
| idea about what the law means than their predecessors.
| chickenpotpie wrote:
| Also, even if the surpreme court was completely correct to do
| this: why is this their focus? Why is this so much more
| important than the the thousands of other cases waiting for
| their attention?
| the_doctah wrote:
| You ask this like there isn't some long-established, drawn
| out process for getting a case before the Supreme Court.
| chickenpotpie wrote:
| And many cases have already gone through this process. This
| wasn't the only case available for them.
| jimmygrapes wrote:
| The actual decisions do not reflect that at all, and they go
| into great depth to explain the reasoning, none of which seems
| remotely ideological (other than legal ideology which is
| orthogonal to political leaning).
| parrellel wrote:
| Like the school prayer case from yesterday where Gorsuch was
| literally making things up in his opinion, so Sontomayer
| included photos of the offending action to show that Gorsuch
| was making things up in his opinion?
|
| The legal trappings of the conservative positions have been
| explicitly merely legal trappings.
| justinhj wrote:
| ALittleLight wrote:
| How do you know this? Do you disagree with the outcomes or
| agree with them? If you disagree with the outcomes then it may
| come across as calling people who disagree with you tribal
| because they reached the "wrong" conclusions.
| [deleted]
| Bostonian wrote:
| I agree with the Court. Quoting a WSJ story
| https://www.wsj.com/articles/supreme-court-limits-environmen....
|
| 'WASHINGTON--The Supreme Court on Thursday curtailed the
| Environmental Protection Agency's powers to restrict greenhouse-
| gas emissions from power plants, in a decision that could limit
| the authority of government agencies to address major policy
| questions without congressional approval.
|
| Elaborating on earlier decisions, the high court said federal
| agencies need explicit authorization from Congress to decide
| issues of major economic and political significance, drawing on a
| principle known as the "major questions doctrine."
|
| In his decision for the 6-3 majority, Chief Justice John Roberts
| said Congress never gave the EPA the authority to change the
| methods a power plant uses--regulations known as "generation
| shifting" requirements.
|
| Chief Justice Roberts said that forcing a nationwide transition
| away from coal may be a "sensible" idea, but the EPA cannot do so
| without a clear authority from Congress.
|
| "A decision of such magnitude and consequence rests with Congress
| itself, or an agency acting pursuant to a clear delegation from
| that representative body," the chief justice wrote, adding that
| the "EPA claimed to discover an unheralded power representing a
| transformative expansion of its regulatory authority in the vague
| language of a long-extant, but rarely used, statute."'
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