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In wickard vs filburn the govt made the case that a wheat farmer that grew wheat only for himself was subject to the interstate commerce clause. The reasoning w

In wickard vs filburn the govt made the case that a wheat farmer that grew wheat only for himself was subject to the interstate commerce clause. The reasoning was that he impacted markets by not having to buy wheat and therefore he should be fined for violating farming restrictions. The supreme court ruled in favor of the US govt. This expansion of the commerce clause could lead to trump being able to get something like this through. Be wary of expansions of federal power predicated on reinterpretation of the constitution.

Xcelerate 8y ago
> The reasoning was that he impacted markets by not having to buy wheat and therefore he should be fined for violating farming restrictions I see the government is familiar with interaction-free measurements of quantum systems. But seriously, it sounds like people will "interpret" anything in any way that is most convenient to them. I almost wish we had a formal system of language so these sorts of things would not occur. Of course, then we would have bugs in that system that would miss important edge cases...
- evv 8y ago
  > I almost wish we had a formal system of language You mean "legalese"? The language used in law is very specific and nuanced. I enjoy how similar it is to programming, where a bug in the source language can be exploited, much how imperfections in legal documents can be used as a loophole. I'd love to see a software system that is able to reliably output high-quality legal documents. If developed in the open, any lawyer could theoretically contribute and help avoid loopholes for everyone. In theory we could build a framework that makes it easy to write loophole-free contracts that are easy for all parties to understand.
  - acobster 8y ago
    > In theory we could build a framework that makes it easy to write loophole-free contracts You mean similar to how, in theory, we could build a framework that makes it easy for us all to write readable, bug-free code? Edit: I was mostly being tongue in cheek, but I also recognize that this is about provably correct code à la Coq, etc. That'd be cool for sure. :)
    - epicureanideal 8y ago
      Maybe more similar to strongly typed languages vs weakly typed languages rather than frameworks. Static types, linters, virus scanners, etc.
  - denkmoon 8y ago
    Fortunately in software we can patch in a matter of moments. Unfortunately bugs written in legalese tend to take years or decades to patch.
  - Xcelerate 8y ago
    > You mean "legalese"? No, more so something that could be verified using an interactive theorem prover; e.g., Coq (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coq https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coq). All lawsuits would then consist of running a computer program against the legal "code".
  - seltzered_ 8y ago
    >I'd love to see a software system that is able to reliably output high-quality legal documents I think that's what Meng Wong's startup 'legalese.com' is for: https://legalese.com/ https://legalese.com/ He gave a talk about it here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NlGqifLBsy8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NlGqifLBsy8
bdhess 8y ago
Congress would need to repeal the relevant portions of the CAFE laws, which specifically allow CARB to propose their own standards.
millstone 8y ago
What would fuel efficiency standards look like under a strict interpretation of the commerce clause?
mehrdadn 8y ago
There was another comment claiming this is what happened last month, and there was a rebuttal saying that this interpretation of the case is wrong. See here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17396635 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17396635
elgenie 8y ago
That wouldn't be the issue here. The question is not whether the federal government gets to set standards at all under the Commerce Clause. Instead, the issue here would be whether the Act of Congress that specifically governs air efficiency standards gives any quarter to this administration's laughable potential reasoning for not granting a waiver that the law dictates must be granted by the EPA Administrator to allow any state to exceed the federal standard.
forapurpose 8y ago
> This expansion of the commerce clause could lead to trump being able to get something like this through That is not the strategy the Trump administration is using, according to the article. California is regulating emissions under a 2009 waiver granted by EPA. The administration is seeking to revoke that waiver.
- ubernostrum 8y ago
  The federal Clean Air Act states the EPA shall grant California the waiver unless California fails to meet certain conditions. The EPA (and by extension the head of the EPA, and the head of the EPA's boss who happens to be a President who hates California) does not possess the power, under the Act, to deny the waiver on a whim.
derefr 8y ago
I know the case. If he was literally only “growing wheat for himself” as a subsistence farmer, the commerce clause wouldn’t apply. The reason it applies is that he was already operating a business that does interstate commerce. Such a business, when it makes a choice to not execute a sale that it would have had an opportunity to execute, has “mens rea” for that act’s effects on interstate commerce—because such companies keep track of such things, and their decisions are driven by such metrics. It’s just like insider trading: not executing a trade that would have otherwise (i.e. given only public knowledge) been in your best interests to execute, where you didn’t execute it because of corporate-internal knowledge, is still just as illegal as the reverse. In either case, since it’s your job as a trader to be aware of the effects of both executing and not executing trades, either “act” can be said to be the result of an explicit, intentional choice you made. (Of course, that’s different from just not executing a trade that you would have had no particular reason to execute. You can’t blame someone for insider trading just because they don’t short a stock, if they don’t already have a pattern of shorting stocks!) In all such cases, the guilty party is a more abstract type of actor than an individual (e.g. a corporation; an accredited investor) and their guilt is driven by the fact that such actors behave predictably according to some preference function, such that it’s clear where such actors act against that preference function both through explicit action; and through inaction. Or, as a formalism: when it’s 100% of your job, as an agent in a system, to decide whether to make deals, then a lack of a deal, together with evidence that you considered the deal, can be regarded as an explicit choice you’ve made to not make that deal.
- LyndsySimon 8y ago
  How do you reconcile this with Gonzales v Raich? https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gonzales_v._Raich https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gonzales_v._Raich
- edanm 8y ago
  > I know the case. If he was literally only “growing wheat for himself” as a subsistence farmer, the commerce clause wouldn’t apply. The reason it applies is that he was already operating a business that does interstate commerce. Are you sure about that? I don't know that much about the law, but I've always heard of this case specifically because the excess wheat he was producing was for his own consumption. Wiki seems to agree with this, not mentioning anything about his having a business that I see (although I only skimmed the article and may have missed something).
tmaly 8y ago
This was from the famous Stitch in Time that Saved Nine. Since the US Constitution does not put a limit on the number of Supreme Court justices, FDR threatened to increase the number and stack the court in his favor if they did not rule in his favor. Given my understanding of how lower courts work on case law, this set a whole bunch of biased precedents from this one ruling. The ability of California to set good environmental law could still prevail if they could get a ruling using some other way like the 10th amendment.
- ubernostrum 8y ago
  Commerce Clause jurisprudence is all over the place. For any given Commerce Clause case you pick as your example of how it's "gone too far this time!" (or "not gone too far enough!"), there'll be another one you can pick that's exactly the opposite. Even the same general panel of judges will about-face on it sometimes.
ubernostrum 8y ago
First: you literally do not know what you're talking about here. There's no Commerce Clause issue, because California's waivers to continue developing stricter standards, and the option for other states to adopt those standards instead of the federal ones, do not present a Commerce Clause issue: Congress has explicitly enacted into federal statute the permission for all of this. Second: you still don't know what you're talking about, because even if there weren't federal statute explicitly covering this, California's rules apply to cars sold in California. SCOTUS has never reliably pushed far enough into expansive Commerce Clause jurisprudence to be able to strike that sort of thing down, and never ever will (hint: because doing so would create a legal precedent for federal gun control to pre-empt more-permissive state-level gun laws, something the Court's conservatives will never allow a hint of a possibility of a thought of an option of a shadow of a consideration of...). Third: cherry-picking Commerce Clause cases is a really bad way to make an argument. SCOTUS has been all over the damn place on the Commerce Clause at different points in US history, and you can ultimately find a Commerce Clause case to justify basically anything you want to say, which is why any given example tends to be pretty meaningless as an argument.
Upvoter33 8y ago
Yes, but hilariously, the right-wing justices appointed by him and other right wing presidents are recently pushing back against the breadth of the commerce clause; see http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/scocca/2012/06/roberts_health_care_opinion_commerce_clause_the_real_reason_the_chief_justice_upheld_obamacare_.html http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/scocca/2012/... for example on one such example.

Xcelerate 8y ago

> The reasoning was that he impacted markets by not having to buy wheat and therefore he should be fined for violating farming restrictions I see the government is familiar with interaction-free measurements of quantum systems. But seriously, it sounds like people will "interpret" anything in any way that is most convenient to them. I almost wish we had a formal system of language so these sorts of things would not occur. Of course, then we would have bugs in that system that would miss important edge cases...

evv 8y ago
> I almost wish we had a formal system of language You mean "legalese"? The language used in law is very specific and nuanced. I enjoy how similar it is to programming, where a bug in the source language can be exploited, much how imperfections in legal documents can be used as a loophole. I'd love to see a software system that is able to reliably output high-quality legal documents. If developed in the open, any lawyer could theoretically contribute and help avoid loopholes for everyone. In theory we could build a framework that makes it easy to write loophole-free contracts that are easy for all parties to understand.
- acobster 8y ago
  > In theory we could build a framework that makes it easy to write loophole-free contracts You mean similar to how, in theory, we could build a framework that makes it easy for us all to write readable, bug-free code? Edit: I was mostly being tongue in cheek, but I also recognize that this is about provably correct code à la Coq, etc. That'd be cool for sure. :)
  - epicureanideal 8y ago
    Maybe more similar to strongly typed languages vs weakly typed languages rather than frameworks. Static types, linters, virus scanners, etc.
- denkmoon 8y ago
  Fortunately in software we can patch in a matter of moments. Unfortunately bugs written in legalese tend to take years or decades to patch.
- Xcelerate 8y ago
  > You mean "legalese"? No, more so something that could be verified using an interactive theorem prover; e.g., Coq (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coq https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coq). All lawsuits would then consist of running a computer program against the legal "code".
- seltzered_ 8y ago
  >I'd love to see a software system that is able to reliably output high-quality legal documents I think that's what Meng Wong's startup 'legalese.com' is for: https://legalese.com/ https://legalese.com/ He gave a talk about it here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NlGqifLBsy8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NlGqifLBsy8

bdhess 8y ago

Congress would need to repeal the relevant portions of the CAFE laws, which specifically allow CARB to propose their own standards.

millstone 8y ago

What would fuel efficiency standards look like under a strict interpretation of the commerce clause?

mehrdadn 8y ago

There was another comment claiming this is what happened last month, and there was a rebuttal saying that this interpretation of the case is wrong. See here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17396635 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17396635

elgenie 8y ago

That wouldn't be the issue here. The question is not whether the federal government gets to set standards at all under the Commerce Clause. Instead, the issue here would be whether the Act of Congress that specifically governs air efficiency standards gives any quarter to this administration's laughable potential reasoning for not granting a waiver that the law dictates must be granted by the EPA Administrator to allow any state to exceed the federal standard.

forapurpose 8y ago

> This expansion of the commerce clause could lead to trump being able to get something like this through That is not the strategy the Trump administration is using, according to the article. California is regulating emissions under a 2009 waiver granted by EPA. The administration is seeking to revoke that waiver.

ubernostrum 8y ago
The federal Clean Air Act states the EPA shall grant California the waiver unless California fails to meet certain conditions. The EPA (and by extension the head of the EPA, and the head of the EPA's boss who happens to be a President who hates California) does not possess the power, under the Act, to deny the waiver on a whim.

derefr 8y ago

I know the case. If he was literally only “growing wheat for himself” as a subsistence farmer, the commerce clause wouldn’t apply. The reason it applies is that he was already operating a business that does interstate commerce. Such a business, when it makes a choice to not execute a sale that it would have had an opportunity to execute, has “mens rea” for that act’s effects on interstate commerce—because such companies keep track of such things, and their decisions are driven by such metrics. It’s just like insider trading: not executing a trade that would have otherwise (i.e. given only public knowledge) been in your best interests to execute, where you didn’t execute it because of corporate-internal knowledge, is still just as illegal as the reverse. In either case, since it’s your job as a trader to be aware of the effects of both executing and not executing trades, either “act” can be said to be the result of an explicit, intentional choice you made. (Of course, that’s different from just not executing a trade that you would have had no particular reason to execute. You can’t blame someone for insider trading just because they don’t short a stock, if they don’t already have a pattern of shorting stocks!) In all such cases, the guilty party is a more abstract type of actor than an individual (e.g. a corporation; an accredited investor) and their guilt is driven by the fact that such actors behave predictably according to some preference function, such that it’s clear where such actors act against that preference function both through explicit action; and through inaction. Or, as a formalism: when it’s 100% of your job, as an agent in a system, to decide whether to make deals, then a lack of a deal, together with evidence that you considered the deal, can be regarded as an explicit choice you’ve made to not make that deal.

LyndsySimon 8y ago
How do you reconcile this with Gonzales v Raich? https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gonzales_v._Raich https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gonzales_v._Raich
edanm 8y ago
> I know the case. If he was literally only “growing wheat for himself” as a subsistence farmer, the commerce clause wouldn’t apply. The reason it applies is that he was already operating a business that does interstate commerce. Are you sure about that? I don't know that much about the law, but I've always heard of this case specifically because the excess wheat he was producing was for his own consumption. Wiki seems to agree with this, not mentioning anything about his having a business that I see (although I only skimmed the article and may have missed something).

tmaly 8y ago

This was from the famous Stitch in Time that Saved Nine. Since the US Constitution does not put a limit on the number of Supreme Court justices, FDR threatened to increase the number and stack the court in his favor if they did not rule in his favor. Given my understanding of how lower courts work on case law, this set a whole bunch of biased precedents from this one ruling. The ability of California to set good environmental law could still prevail if they could get a ruling using some other way like the 10th amendment.

ubernostrum 8y ago
Commerce Clause jurisprudence is all over the place. For any given Commerce Clause case you pick as your example of how it's "gone too far this time!" (or "not gone too far enough!"), there'll be another one you can pick that's exactly the opposite. Even the same general panel of judges will about-face on it sometimes.

ubernostrum 8y ago

First: you literally do not know what you're talking about here. There's no Commerce Clause issue, because California's waivers to continue developing stricter standards, and the option for other states to adopt those standards instead of the federal ones, do not present a Commerce Clause issue: Congress has explicitly enacted into federal statute the permission for all of this. Second: you still don't know what you're talking about, because even if there weren't federal statute explicitly covering this, California's rules apply to cars sold in California. SCOTUS has never reliably pushed far enough into expansive Commerce Clause jurisprudence to be able to strike that sort of thing down, and never ever will (hint: because doing so would create a legal precedent for federal gun control to pre-empt more-permissive state-level gun laws, something the Court's conservatives will never allow a hint of a possibility of a thought of an option of a shadow of a consideration of...). Third: cherry-picking Commerce Clause cases is a really bad way to make an argument. SCOTUS has been all over the damn place on the Commerce Clause at different points in US history, and you can ultimately find a Commerce Clause case to justify basically anything you want to say, which is why any given example tends to be pretty meaningless as an argument.

Upvoter33 8y ago

Yes, but hilariously, the right-wing justices appointed by him and other right wing presidents are recently pushing back against the breadth of the commerce clause; see http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/scocca/2012/06/roberts_health_care_opinion_commerce_clause_the_real_reason_the_chief_justice_upheld_obamacare_.html http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/scocca/2012/... for example on one such example.