4 ms·
When a statute is ambiguous the tie should go to the citizen not the government
- lern_too_spel 3y agoIn prosecuting certain citizens, the government is acting for the benefit of all citizens, so Suderman's sloppy argument is actually for the Chevron deference. The regulators can't argue that an ambiguous statute applies just because they dislike the defendants. They are required to show that the ambiguous statute applies because it is for the public benefit that the statute was originally written for.
- bell-cot 3y ago> In practice, the Chevron deference undermined the Court's independence, since it forced courts to just accept executive branch interpretations in many tough cases. > The doctrine also creates perverse incentives for the other two branches. For example, by giving deference to agencies in ambiguous cases, it gave executive branch regulators incentive to hunt for ambiguities in order to expand their own power. This led to decades of executive overreach, as administrations used convoluted readings of statutes to pursue agendas Congress never imagined. Reaction I: Does Reason magazine consider a corporation to be a citizen? Reaction II: Do they envision Congress feeling any inclination to write less-ambiguous laws, to preserve their own power?* Reaction III: With the size of the Federal law (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_United_States_federal_legislation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_United_States_federal_...), and the massive overhead of deciding even trivial matters via the Federal Courts - just how many hundred hours per week is Reason thinking that the average Federal Judge should be working, to keep up? *Yes, part of me says "The only power that Congress cares about is their ability to extract political donations. And so long as the last donation check has clear the bank before the first legal challenge to the Incomprehensible Blather Act of 2024 is heard by a judge..."
- Gunax 3y agoI think it's pretty much impossible to write unambiguous laws. That's just reality. Congress are already criticized for writing laws which are too long. But there is a conflict here between writing laws which are unambiguous and laws which are easy to understand. Also, I don't know that corporate citizenship matters in this case.
- serevi 3y agoOpinion devoid of evidence.
- klyrs 3y agoStandard fare for reason.com
- wmf 3y agoIsn't there precedent in common law that ambiguity in contracts should be interpreted in favor of the party that didn't write the contract? Reason is making essentially the same argument here but for laws.
- adbachman 3y agoI like the, "if you slice, your sister gets to pick first" energy.
- olliej 3y agoCan’t speak for common law but as I understand it international law has settled on “the version of a treaty written in the native tongue is the definitive text”, so that might be equivalent?
- CogitoCogito 3y agoWhat is the “native tongue” of a treaty written my two countries with no common native tongue?
- olliej 3y agoSorry, in the case of a treaty signed with colonizers, not a general treaty between two independent countries. My upbringing means when thinking of treaties in different languages it's in that context. [edit]Additional sorry, I re-read the phrasing here so to clarify, this is a real apology, not passive aggressive, I do mean my initial comment lacked this context, which obviously impacts things, but I also can't edit the comment to add it in anymore either, woo!.[/edit] So in New Zealand (my birthplace) the legal text of Te Tiriti o Waitangi is the Māori version, not the English one, and you'll be shocked to hear that through out most of history the English one was used by the English speaking government to justify decisions, and the English version gave more up than the Māori version. Similar applies to treaties with indigenous people through out the world, of course in many such cases neither language was actually honored, and in a sad number of cases the indigenous groups were literally exterminated.
- cvalka 3y agoThe rule of leniency