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The Supreme Court Made Just About Everyone Happy for Once
- nadermx 3y agoSeems like a great win that should not have to be fought in the first place; at $2,400 an hour
- jmeister 3y agoRaises the question: what’s happening in the courts below?
- dylan604 3y agoThis is the first I had ever heard of this case, and I'm flabbergasted it's even a thing. I have heard many a tales of people having to sell off their belongings to settle a tax bill. I've even heard of the government placing liens on property so they get their due from the sale first. Why is any of that not an option vs the taking and keeping the forced sales. The only way this could have been worse would be if they seized the property, sold it for a lower value than was owed and send a bill for the less amount still owed. Sheesh, we have some f'd up government rules
- grensley 3y agoIt's very strange to see the sentence "render unto Caesar what is Caesar's" coming from the Chief Justice. I don't like seeing a person and an entity like the government used interchangeably like that. Leaves that Citizens United bad taste in my mouth.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- dehrmann 3y agoYou should read "Caesar" as "Uncle Sam." It's just that the quote is "render unto Caesar..." Like sibling said, the church and state bit is more interesting.
- grensley 3y agoEven that is weird. Anthropomorphizing the government.
- Retric 3y agoThe freaky bit is it’s a biblical quote though he left off the god bit at the end of it.
- baggy_trough 3y agoWhy would that be “freaky”? The Bible is one of the most important and highly recognized works in Western culture.
- Retric 3y agoBoth article 6 and the first amendment make it in very poor taste. You may personally appreciate it, but suppose he had been quoting different religions texts. Say the need to nourish Mayan gods using sacrificial blood.
- sirspacey 3y agoIt’s a quote from the Bible (Matthew 22:15-22). Still jarring.
- flangola7 3y agoThat's why it is jarring...
- quickthrower2 3y agoI thought it sounded pompous
- supernova87a 3y agoThe justices of the Supreme Court are highly literate -- as well as literal people. Their livelihoods and judgements rely on the meaning of words. Their opinions draw from history, precedent, Latin, analogy, similarity and they have to communicate it through words, not code. In terms that can convey generally understood meaning and principles without having to rehash entire books to ensure thorough understanding. Opinions have included Shakespeare, poetry, wit, sarcasm. Perhaps you may be disturbed or offended by a phrase that happens to come from the bible. Others are not, and take it simply as a historical analogy. I'm not Christian and I don't find it disturbing. You might be getting overly offended in this case.
- grensley 3y agoI'm a big fan of the quote “Be kind to people, be ruthless to systems” and I just don't like to blur the line between the two.
- supernova87a 3y agoAnd what does that mean in this situation? The using of a historical analogy in a legal opinion contributes to making our government have the appearance of a dictatorship?
- grensley 3y agoJust a general trend of humanizing things that aren't human: governments, corporations, AI.
- supernova87a 3y agoThe opinion in this case prevented a "evil" government entity from taking an individual's property unjustly, and was written by a person using anecdotes and references to people. So honestly I don't know what you're on about.
- Turing_Machine 3y agoCaesar (most likely Tiberius) was most definitely "the government". The full context of the quote is specifically about rendering taxes to the government, so I think the quote is fully on-point.
- dehrmann 3y agoI don't think it'd be legal, but when the court's this divided, there needs to be some penalty for losing 9-0. You're trying to do something that egregiously wrong and defend it?!
- asperous 3y agoI don't think the score necessarily reflects the strength of the case. Particularly weak cases are dismissed or handled in lower courts with appeals dismissed. Second, the court's makeup is politically decided Third, the court has in the past ( roe v wade ) chosen to be unanimous when reports say internally there was some dissenters.
- icodestuff 3y agoRoe v. Wade was 7-2, not 9-0.
- tbrownaw 3y ago> needs to be some penalty for losing 9-0. Public mockery on teh interwebs?
- dehrmann 3y agoThat counts as cruel and unusual.
- SllX 3y agoThe lines of division aren’t as clear as who appointed who. 9-0 decisions are not uncommon, and recent decisions suggest it may be more of a 3-3-3 court with an Institutionalist axis and the “partisan” axis hyped by the media is obscuring a much more salient Judicial doctrine axis. But we’ll know more about how well that 3-3-3 theory holds as the body of opinions published by Justices Barrett and Jackson becomes more fleshed out.
- dehrmann 3y ago> Institutionalist axis That's an interesting take. I'm guessing the divisions are Bush appointees are institutionalists, Democrat appointees are partisans, Trump appointees are partisans?
- anigbrowl 3y agoNeal Katyal, a self-professed “extremist centrist” [...] argued that Hennepin County’s position was supported by the Statute of Gloucester of 1278, which gave feudal lords in England the ability to recover their land from tenants. This is why I'm against centrists. They don't stand for anything other than enforcing the status quo, no matter how unjust it is. They have no principles; they're just conflict-avoidant. There is something broken both intellectually and morally in trying to leverage a 750-year old feudal statute to win an argument in a 21st century democratic Republic (or even an 18th century one, if you consider the US dysfunctional in the way I do) which exists specifically because its founders rejected feudalism. I'm genuinely surprised because Neal Katyal is an intelligent person and a very experienced litigator, so he had to know that this argument was bullshit on multiple levels.
- dylan604 3y ago>so he had to know that this argument was bullshit on multiple levels. Isn't a lawyer supposed to argue on behalf of their client and not necessarily their personal beliefs? Sure, sometimes they align, but I've heard some pretty crazy things come out of a lawyer's mouth in whatever they need to provide the full throated legal argument for their client (even if it's not the best legal argument)
- whatshisface 3y agoIt's kind of strange that one of the major professions in our society is one where you pretend to be insane!
- anigbrowl 3y agoYou are certainly supposed to argue on behalf of your client, but with good arguments. If your client doesn't have a leg to stand on, praising their running ability is a waste of everyone's time.
- SllX 3y agoThey used what they had available to support a position that was ultimately determined to be an aberration under a 21st century court; but it’s worth noting we rejected a Feudal system but we did not reject the entirety of the English legal tradition nor the body of law associated with it except insofar as it is found to be abhorrent to our own republican laws in the States and in the Federal judiciary.
- rynld2 3y agoIt's very common for the court to be 9-0, in fact only 10-25% of cases are divided across "jurisprudential philosophy" lines.
- hotpotamus 3y agoThat was true on the pre-Trump court. It's less so these days. https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/the-supreme-courts-partisan-divide-hasnt-been-this-sharp-in-generations/ https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/the-supreme-courts-part...
- photochemsyn 3y agoSupreme Court just undermined the Clean Water Act, I don't know who is supposed to be happy about that - agribusiness interests dumping pig feces and urine into wetlands, maybe? https://www.reuters.com/legal/us-supreme-court-rules-against-epa-wetlands-regulation-challenge-2023-05-25/ https://www.reuters.com/legal/us-supreme-court-rules-against... > "The environmental advocacy group Earthjustice, which filed an amicus brief in the Sackett case, said the court's decision "undoes a half-century of progress generated by the Clean Water Act," eliminating protections from almost 90 million acres (36.4 million hectares) of wetlands."
- baggy_trough 3y agoTry to think about court decisions less in terms of whether you like the policy outcome and more in terms of whether they uphold the rule of law. This was a 9-0 decision so presumably it was based on something more than helping polluters.
- tbrownaw 3y agoThat's a different case.
- ryandrake 3y agoThis is a win for sanity, but not a huge win. The court is simply saying if you owe $15,000 in taxes, the local government can take your home, sell it for $40,000 and they can only keep $15,000 of that rather than keeping all the proceeds. Wait, what? Back up a second. Why the hell can the county simply take your home in the first place? The court didn't address the heinous practice of Tax Foreclosure at all. If someone owes a debt, place a lein on the property that prevents it from being sold until the owner makes good... or work out some kind of installment plan. It should not be legal to simply -yoink- take someone's home that they paid for and rely on for shelter. That's pretty messed up.
- quartesixte 3y agoUnless Tax Forfeiture was happening because the counties could get excess profit off the forfeiture. If it costs more money to sell the house at face value of taxes owed then the state may be deterred. Unless, corruption occurs where a tax hike is implemented one year causing undue hardship, forfeiture happens, houses are seized, sold at the value of tax shortfall to a “unrelated private citizen” and then sold off for profit, profit then being somehow funneled into the local politician who made that unreasonable tax hike? Prop 13 in California doesn’t exist for just any old reason…
- pixl97 3y ago1. Buy most property in the county. 2. Don't pay taxes. 3. County goes out of business. 4. Profit? I'm assuming they foreclose, because in the same way like banks they have their own series of expenses that 'the public' voted to spend that need paid.
- quickthrower2 3y agoYeah that the problem being solved: the rich person who does something dumb with their money such as buying up all properties in one county to try and play mafia.
- hsn915 3y agoThe Supreme Court's job is not to legislate.
- RayVR 3y agoThe Supreme Court has simply required the small governments to come up with a long list of exorbitant fees that will now be assessed on all tax forfeitures. +15k tax due, plus penalties +5k in administrative fees related to the seizure +5k in administrative fees related to the sale +5k in accounting and administrative fees for the processing of the return of excess value +10k service fee +10k convenience fee Now she still owes them 10k…
- saxonww 3y agoThe article did mention a concurring opinion that suggests how this would be viewed: “Economic penalties imposed to deter willful noncompliance with the law are fines by any other name,” he wrote. “And the Constitution has something to say about them: They cannot be excessive.”
- pdonis 3y agoThe amounts in this case were already excessive. As the Court's opinion notes, Taylor only owed about $2300 in unpaid taxes, but $13,000 in interest and penalties. Excuse me? When the interest and penalties are more than five times the base amount, something is amiss.
- bombcar 3y agoInterest makes some sort of weird sense, but since the government is (effectively) perpetual and unending, it can just wait. Charge interest on the unpaid tax equivalent to the prevailing bonds it is issuing, and upon death, seize the estate or a portion thereof.
- AlbertCory 3y ago> He argued that Hennepin County’s position was supported by the Statute of Gloucester of 1278, which gave feudal lords in England the ability to recover their land from tenants. Justice Neil Gorsuch told him, “I just don’t understand what on earth any of that history has to do with this case.” Since I just got done reading this: https://www.amazon.com/Foundation-History-England-Earliest-Beginnings-ebook/dp/B007TJ17O8/ref=sr_1_2 https://www.amazon.com/Foundation-History-England-Earliest-B... I was highly amused. The basis of English common law was, indeed, being laid back then, and it probably won't surprise you to know that landless peasants had very few rights.
- lsllc 3y agoI got to the part where it says "feudal lords" and I don't need to read any further. I can't fathom how they actually tried to defend this based on the abuse and exploitation of the dark ages. Seriously.
- throwaway173738 3y agoWe inherited our entire legal tradition from English common law, so an appeal to precedent from back then isn’t totally outlandish.
- galleywest200 3y agoThe US did fight a war to not have to follow English laws, however.
- SllX 3y agoThe English Monarchy and Parliament, really. Our laws (States and Federal) have continued to evolve in the English tradition as modified by republican Constitutional values.