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This Supreme Court is, and always has been, political. The idea of the "textualist" or "originalist" interpretation of the Constitution as a philosophy is just
by jmyeet 3y ago
This Supreme Court is, and always has been, political. The idea of the "textualist" or "originalist" interpretation of the Constitution as a philosophy is just propaganda invented in the 1980s shortly after the Federalist Society was founded.
This court seems determined to overturn Chevron [1], which is the basis for deference given to administrative bodies empowered by Congress, the so-called "administrative state" (or "deep state" depending on how far down the rabbit hole you are).
It's the same politics behind the major questions doctrine [2]. This was an approach invented by this court that basically says in matters of statutory interpretation if the issue is sufficiently large, which is subjective, then Congress needs to be absolutely explicit in the powers granted. This was used to deny student loan forgiveness because even though the exeuctive was granted this power, the Court decided the amount was large enough that Congress had to be more explicit.
Put another way: the legislative branch is overruling both the legislative branch that drafted a law and the executive branch that signed it into law. It's quite literally legislating from the bench.
Chevron is another prong in the attack on executive authority. Instead of deferring to experts in the various departments, Congress would need to decide every matter. So if the law isn't explicit enough (according to SCOTUS) then Congress would need to decide every little thing with new laws.
This is untenable. Congress doesn't have the bandwidth to, say, decide fish quotas or hunting seasons or, more importantly, things like what constitutes "clean water" and the allowed actions to enforce that.
This is a very deliberate attack on government itself. It's a form of deregulation to transfer even more wealth to the hands of the very few. Why? Complying with regulations costs money. That's what this is about.
[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chevron_U.S.A.,_Inc._v._Natural_Resources_Defense_Council,_Inc https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chevron_U.S.A.,_Inc._v._Natura....
[2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Major_questions_doctrine https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Major_questions_doctrine
- nradov 3y agoWhy doesn't Congress have the bandwidth to decide fish quotas or hunting seasons or the definition of clean water? The Affordable Care Act (Obamacare) was 906 pages. Congress had bandwidth to deal with that. The other issues you listed are relatively simple by comparison.
- PH95VuimJjqBqy 3y agoWhy should congress be dealing with such local concerns?
- M95D 3y agoThe definition of clean water is a local concern? Yeah, I guess some communities are more concened than others...
- PH95VuimJjqBqy 3y agoIs it your supposition that states can't define it?
- TheCleric 3y agoIt’s my supposition that some states don’t care, and that’s a dereliction of duty.
- PH95VuimJjqBqy 3y agowhich states?
- M95D 3y agoThey are free to define it locally in a more strict way than federal gov/agencies do.
- PH95VuimJjqBqy 3y agoJust because you disagree with their stance doesn't mean it's political in a derogatory sense. > Congress doesn't have the bandwidth to, say, decide fish quotas you're absolutely right, that would be overstepping, which is why this case is being brought. To argue they're overstepping. You agree with the case then.
- rayiner 3y agoThe idea that the constitution is a written document that means what it says, or what it was intended to say, is neither propaganda nor was it invented in 1980. In fact, it’s obviously correct and it’s wild that we ever pretended otherwise. We aren’t talking about some ancillary provision here, or some detail where we could expect judges to fill gaps in the written text. The very first thing in the Constitution after the preamble is Article I, Section 1, which says: “All legislative powers herein granted shall be vested in a Congress of the United States, which shall consist of a Senate and House of Representatives.” And Article I sets for a detailed process for two houses of Congress working to make law, with the signature of the President. It’s unambiguous that the Constitution only allows Congress to make laws. It’s so clear that nobody pretends otherwise. Even proponents of the administrative state rely on the legal fiction that administrative rulemaking is an exercise in enforcing the law, not making the law. So in these cases we are simply arguing about the permissible scope of this legal fiction. Your consequentialist arguments are irrelevant. Whether Congress has the bandwidth or expertise to take up particular issues doesn’t change the governmental structure the Constitution created. The framers went to a huge amount of trouble to provide for two houses of Congress to make a law, and then have the President sign each one. The document obviously doesn’t allow that power to be exercised by unelected bureaucrats in an executive branch agency.
- dctoedt 3y ago> Your consequentialist arguments are irrelevant. Whether Congress has the bandwidth or expertise to take up particular issues doesn’t change the governmental structure the Constitution created. It seems fair to say that you ascribe more importance to rigid fidelity to a 200-year-old document — written by people who knew far less about the world and lived in a much smaller and less-populous country — than to addressing the practical challenges of keeping a nation together, as circumstances change over the decades, in a semi-reasonable manner that kinda-sorta fits the document's text. In Christianity that's been referred to as "bibliolatry" — the idolatrous worship of the literal text of the Bible, in the manner of a golden calf. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bibliolatry https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bibliolatry
- raincom 3y ago
- friend_and_foe 3y agoCongress doesn't have the authority to determine fish quotas or hunting seasons. Those are all intra state commerce. The various legislatures of the states and the US congress do have the bandwidth to govern in each of their respective spheres and jurisdictions, it's a bit of a distributed system. Let the state governments handle the day to day inside their state, let the federal government do what it's charter says it is to do: maintain common defense, diplomatic relations, regulate interstate commerce and guarantee a specific set of rights to the people from their state government.