2 ms·

> I have some ideas if anyone is interested. I'm a little interested, if you want to share a follow-up comment, but I had an idea of my own that I wanted to sh

> I have some ideas if anyone is interested. I'm a little interested, if you want to share a follow-up comment, but I had an idea of my own that I wanted to share too. My vague understanding is that in international law, there is a mechanism by which, in theory, a nation can take up the grievance of an individual citizen and elevate that issue into a case that the nation itself has an interest in, which is then subject to the international legal processes that exists between nations. Applying this principle within a nation, would mean that individual sub-national units (i.e. states, in the case of the US) would have standing to bring cases against other states or the federal government to the Supreme Court on behalf of individual citizens, even those resident in other states (presumably with the check and balance that the state legislature or executive bringing the case has to agree that the citizen's grievance was worth wasting their own state's tax payers' money to fight). Of course this could lead to a tidal wave of unnecessary culture-war lawsuits being filed, as blue states and red states tried to undermine each other's laws, but I think that objection is somewhat misdirected. The real problem would be either that courts are understaffed / underfunded, or that it's somehow good that only the richest people with the most time on their hands can afford to challenge unconstitutional laws. Neither of those are really good reasons for disallowing the mechanism that I'm suggesting.

yieldcrv 4y ago
That could be an okay stop-gap solution if consensus couldn't be reached on new laws, since conflicts between states have original jurisdiction with the Supreme Court. A concept that I heard about in at least one other country is that Governors and Presidents have an additional option when the legislature passes a bill to their desk. Instead of "sign" or "veto", there is at least an additional option of punting it directly to the constitutional court. (Another tweak is that the constitutional court is not simultaneously an appellate court.) and then of course is what I observed about who can have standing to bring something to the courts at all. I think one shouldn't need to be harmed already to bring a case to review.

yieldcrv 4y ago

That could be an okay stop-gap solution if consensus couldn't be reached on new laws, since conflicts between states have original jurisdiction with the Supreme Court. A concept that I heard about in at least one other country is that Governors and Presidents have an additional option when the legislature passes a bill to their desk. Instead of "sign" or "veto", there is at least an additional option of punting it directly to the constitutional court. (Another tweak is that the constitutional court is not simultaneously an appellate court.) and then of course is what I observed about who can have standing to bring something to the courts at all. I think one shouldn't need to be harmed already to bring a case to review.