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There's a tendency among certain people on HN to act like the conservative justices have no rhyme or reason and are just a bull running mindlessly through the c

There's a tendency among certain people on HN to act like the conservative justices have no rhyme or reason and are just a bull running mindlessly through the china shop breaking precedent at random or specifically to hurt specific groups of people. I'm not a fan of every ruling that they've made, but this should have come as absolutely no surprise to anyone who's been paying any attention to the arguments that this court has made over and over and over again. Their legal and constitutional philosophy has been very consistent: They believe that Congress makes the laws, the Executive branch enforces them, and the Judicial branch interprets them. They believe that the Executive branch and the Judicial branch have been compensating for Congressional failure for too long and they have been very clear that they're intent on undoing that and rolling the system back to how they believe it should be. There's an argument to be made that this theory is incorrect and/or harmful, but they've been remarkably consistent in applying it. Anyone who's been listening to them saw this coming years ago.

epicureanideal 2y ago
Also, if the commenters here READ the full decision, the court explains the history and its reasoning better than any of us can do here. That's a common feature of Supreme Court decisions, and I find many Supreme Court decisions to be very interesting reading, including those from past decades.
- throw0101c 2y ago
  > Also, if the commenters here READ the full decision, the court explains the history and its reasoning better than any of us can do here. Sometimes the reasoning is specious and a fig leaf (e.g., Heller); have no idea how good it is here.
  - vdqtp3 2y ago
    If you are stating that Heller is specious and a fig leaf, you are arguing from a position of bad faith. You may disagree with the constitutional basis for the decision and wish the second amendment to be abolished, but the decision was well stated and solid.
    - throw0101b 2y ago
      > You may disagree with the constitutional basis for the decision and wish the second amendment to be abolished, but the decision was well stated and solid. The decision, as written by the late Scalia, to create an individual right bears no resemblance to any historical or legal precedent. Acting as amateur linguist and etymologist, it is ironic that Scalia, a so-called Originalist, also ignores the original meaning of the terms in the amendment. This is independent of whether 2A is currently useful, or—even more importantly—whether it was even a good/effective idea in the first place.
      - arcbyte 2y ago
        [flagged]
        throw0101c 2y ago
        > I would point people to the decision itself. This throw0101b is clearly acting in bad faith to anyone happening to read this. People should read the decision. People should also read the dissent. They should also read commentary on the decision. They should also read the legal and cultural history of 2A. There's no bad faith in thinking Scalia et al got it wrong.
Spivak 2y ago
Yes but people who have been listening have also been dreading this coming for years. The fact that they're consistently knocking over shelves doesn't make it better. We've known that Roe was on the chopping block, but it doesn't make it good law even if it's consistent with the conservative justices' goals.
- lolinder 2y ago
  Like I said, there are legitimate arguments to be made against this change, but a lot of people are quick to assume that the Court is out to get them. The cases that people would approve of if they heard about them get ignored by social media, instead focusing exclusively on the cases that undo some rights that had been established by judicial or executive precedent. So we end up in a place where a lot of commenters are under the false impression that the Court just hates ___ people, rather than seeing the whole picture of the court systematically rolling back judicial activist rulings and executive rule makings.
  - jauntywundrkind 2y ago
    The court seems intent on allowing judge shopping conservatives to gut any even mildly inconvenient law. Going back to a "balance" where judges interpret law and no one else creates massive ambiguity across courts & greatly degrades any ability to govern. That seems to be the fantasy world that some parts of America desire. And that this court is working towards, hard as it can. It interprets that only the court gets to allow or deny
  - diffxx 2y ago
    I do not understand how you can not see this is an activist court. They have by fiat invented new judicial principles out of thin air: "history and tradition" and "major questions doctrine" come to mind. And they apply these arbitrary principles in a heavy handed, inconsistent and simultaneously predictable way while sanctimoniously acting as though we can't see what they are doing.
- GenerWork 2y ago
  >Yes but people who have been listening have also been dreading this coming for years. Why are they dreading this? I find it strange how so many people are upset that the Supreme Court is forcing Congress to do its job, which is pass laws.
throw0101c 2y ago
> They believe that Congress makes the laws, the Executive branch enforces them, and the Judicial branch interprets them. They believe that the Executive branch and the Judicial branch have been compensating for Congressional failure for too long and they have been very clear that they're intent on undoing that and rolling the system back to how they believe it should be. If Congress wants to delegate authority for micro-managing things to agencies, why shouldn't they be allowed to do so? > Kagan cited as one example a hypothetical bill to regulate artificial intelligence. Congress, she said, “knows there are going to be gaps because Congress can hardly see a week in the future.” So it would want people “who actually know about AI and are accountable to the political process to make decisions” about artificial intelligence. Courts, she emphasized, “don’t even know what the questions are about AI,” much less the answers. * https://www.scotusblog.com/2024/01/supreme-court-likely-to-discard-chevron/ https://www.scotusblog.com/2024/01/supreme-court-likely-to-d... If Congress doesn't like where an Executive agency is headed they can further change the Act governing it to clarify things. The guardrails can be set that way, and with-in them agencies—generally subject matter experts—can write and refine regulations as they are needed. The Executive agencies and departments are created by Congress. US regulatory agencies have authority because it was given to them by The People (through their elected representatives). The Judiciary seems to be limiting the Legislative here. Is there anything in the US Constitution that says Congress cannot delegate? * https://constitution.findlaw.com/article1/annotation03.html https://constitution.findlaw.com/article1/annotation03.html
- saint_fiasco 2y ago
  Congress can still delegate the known unknowns. They can say "because we are not experts in this subject, we delegate to agency X the power to decide whether this should be done in X or Y way" What they cannot do anymore is delegate unknown unknowns. They cannot leave X and Y unspecified, the executive agencies cannot do things in Z way that Congress didn't enumerate, or α and β way that Congress didn't even conceive.
  - p_j_w 2y ago
    >What they cannot do anymore is delegate unknown unknowns. And that's absurd. Congress should have the ability to do this. If they don't like what an agency is doing, they're perfectly able to amend the law.
doctoboggan 2y ago
I understand that one reason for the continuing of Chevron deference is that Congress has been writing laws for the past 4 decades assuming that the agencies can iron out the ambiguities. I wonder if going forward congress can just try to have those agencies iron out the ambiguities before passing the law? Or is the idea that its impossible to anticipate all possible edge cases and congress wants to let the agency iron out future issue?
- dctoedt 2y ago
  > Or is the idea that its impossible to anticipate all possible edge cases and congress wants to let the agency iron out future issue? This Plus, it's often a case of Congress kicking the can down the road: Enough votes in Congress might agree that something needs to be done, but they can't come up with agreement on the details — often because of conflicting special-interest (read: donor) lobbying about those details. So the legislators say, in effect, "OK, let's get 'a bill' passed [a minimum viable product, if you will] and let the agencies deal with it. Then later, if a major problem comes up with a particular agency ruling, we can revisit the issue then."
- Ancapistani 2y ago
  > Congress has been writing laws for the past 4 decades assuming that the agencies can iron out the ambiguities My understanding is that the big problem is that this expectation is implicit. Congress isn't granting agencies the authority to make determinations as to what falls into a category, for instance. Instead, they're creating a category without further elaboration. Compare that to 18 USC 921(a)(4)(C), which says in part: The term “destructive device” shall not include any device which is neither designed nor redesigned for use as a weapon; any device, although originally designed for use as a weapon, which is redesigned for use as a signaling, pyrotechnic, line throwing, safety, or similar device; surplus ordnance sold, loaned, or given by the Secretary of the Army pursuant to the provisions of section 7684(2), 7685, or 7686 of title 10; or any other device which the Attorney General finds is not likely to be used as a weapon, is an antique, or is a rifle which the owner intends to use solely for sporting, recreational or cultural purposes. This explicitly established a process through which the Attorney General may exclude weapons from the "destructive device" category at their discretion. My understanding is that this would not be impacted by overturning Chevron, as the process was established by Congress explicitly. Hypothetically, if that provision did not exist and the AG unilaterally decided that a weapon that was otherwise included in the category should not be, then that would be an example of executive rulemaking within the bounds of Chevron.
notabee 2y ago
Unless the way elections are handled changes, such as doing anything that selects for expertise instead of partisan hackery, all this is going to do is accelerate the gridlock, corruption, and dysfunction. It just does not logically follow that putting more pressure on the legislative branch to be functional is going to work when its functionality or lack thereof is based largely on a very gerrymandered population being blasted non-stop by a completely co-opted, corrupt media. When the corruption and control is so thoroughly embedded already, the difference between "unelected official" and "party-and-special-interest-approved elected official" becomes a silly fig leaf of a difference.
- thethimble 2y ago
  On the other hand, enabling the judicial and executive branch to overcompensate for this disfunction also seems problematic - particularly as the former groups aren’t elected (except for the President, of course).
  - HDThoreaun 2y ago
    I think everyone agrees congress being dysfunctional is problematic. The question is if it’s better for the other other branches to pick up the slack or if we should just let the government do nothing
- mike_hearn 2y ago
  Institutionally-declared experts are not exactly famous for their lack of partisan hackery, especially not in recent years. > It just does not logically follow that putting more pressure on the legislative branch to be functional is going to work You're talking like this is a political tactic or strategy used by the Supreme Court to achieve a specific outcome (which might "work" or "not work"), but it's not. Justices aren't meant to make such plans. They are supposed to do their job. If Congress does or doesn't do theirs, that isn't by itself the Court's problem nor something to which they should be the solution. But it's also worth remembering that what "works" means varies a lot depending on perspective. There is plenty of stuff that is bipartisan in Congress and which they get done fairly quietly. Additionally, to the school of thought known as libertarianism, Congress not doing things is the desirable outcome and thus a gridlocked Congress is in fact the system working as designed, in the sense that it is being limited by the degree of agreement amongst voters on what it should do.
o-90 2y ago
> They believe that Congress makes the laws, the Executive branch enforces them, and the Judicial branch interprets them. This process that you just described is what produced Chevron deference.
lolinder 2y ago
I'm probably going to get downvoted to hell for mentioning downvotes, but it's funny to me that when this comment was on the submission for the actual supreme court ruling it ended up pinned to the top with 20+ upvotes, but since the merge with the Axios article it's been steadily ticking down, having lost 18 points in less than an hour. I don't know if it's brigading or if it says something about the difference between readers of Axios articles and readers of full supreme court rulings.

epicureanideal 2y ago

Also, if the commenters here READ the full decision, the court explains the history and its reasoning better than any of us can do here. That's a common feature of Supreme Court decisions, and I find many Supreme Court decisions to be very interesting reading, including those from past decades.

throw0101c 2y ago
> Also, if the commenters here READ the full decision, the court explains the history and its reasoning better than any of us can do here. Sometimes the reasoning is specious and a fig leaf (e.g., Heller); have no idea how good it is here.
- vdqtp3 2y ago
  If you are stating that Heller is specious and a fig leaf, you are arguing from a position of bad faith. You may disagree with the constitutional basis for the decision and wish the second amendment to be abolished, but the decision was well stated and solid.
  - throw0101b 2y ago
    > You may disagree with the constitutional basis for the decision and wish the second amendment to be abolished, but the decision was well stated and solid. The decision, as written by the late Scalia, to create an individual right bears no resemblance to any historical or legal precedent. Acting as amateur linguist and etymologist, it is ironic that Scalia, a so-called Originalist, also ignores the original meaning of the terms in the amendment. This is independent of whether 2A is currently useful, or—even more importantly—whether it was even a good/effective idea in the first place.
    - arcbyte 2y ago
      [flagged]
      - throw0101c 2y ago
        > I would point people to the decision itself. This throw0101b is clearly acting in bad faith to anyone happening to read this. People should read the decision. People should also read the dissent. They should also read commentary on the decision. They should also read the legal and cultural history of 2A. There's no bad faith in thinking Scalia et al got it wrong.

Spivak 2y ago

Yes but people who have been listening have also been dreading this coming for years. The fact that they're consistently knocking over shelves doesn't make it better. We've known that Roe was on the chopping block, but it doesn't make it good law even if it's consistent with the conservative justices' goals.

lolinder 2y ago
Like I said, there are legitimate arguments to be made against this change, but a lot of people are quick to assume that the Court is out to get them. The cases that people would approve of if they heard about them get ignored by social media, instead focusing exclusively on the cases that undo some rights that had been established by judicial or executive precedent. So we end up in a place where a lot of commenters are under the false impression that the Court just hates ___ people, rather than seeing the whole picture of the court systematically rolling back judicial activist rulings and executive rule makings.
- jauntywundrkind 2y ago
  The court seems intent on allowing judge shopping conservatives to gut any even mildly inconvenient law. Going back to a "balance" where judges interpret law and no one else creates massive ambiguity across courts & greatly degrades any ability to govern. That seems to be the fantasy world that some parts of America desire. And that this court is working towards, hard as it can. It interprets that only the court gets to allow or deny
- diffxx 2y ago
  I do not understand how you can not see this is an activist court. They have by fiat invented new judicial principles out of thin air: "history and tradition" and "major questions doctrine" come to mind. And they apply these arbitrary principles in a heavy handed, inconsistent and simultaneously predictable way while sanctimoniously acting as though we can't see what they are doing.
GenerWork 2y ago
>Yes but people who have been listening have also been dreading this coming for years. Why are they dreading this? I find it strange how so many people are upset that the Supreme Court is forcing Congress to do its job, which is pass laws.

throw0101c 2y ago

> They believe that Congress makes the laws, the Executive branch enforces them, and the Judicial branch interprets them. They believe that the Executive branch and the Judicial branch have been compensating for Congressional failure for too long and they have been very clear that they're intent on undoing that and rolling the system back to how they believe it should be. If Congress wants to delegate authority for micro-managing things to agencies, why shouldn't they be allowed to do so? > Kagan cited as one example a hypothetical bill to regulate artificial intelligence. Congress, she said, “knows there are going to be gaps because Congress can hardly see a week in the future.” So it would want people “who actually know about AI and are accountable to the political process to make decisions” about artificial intelligence. Courts, she emphasized, “don’t even know what the questions are about AI,” much less the answers. * https://www.scotusblog.com/2024/01/supreme-court-likely-to-discard-chevron/ https://www.scotusblog.com/2024/01/supreme-court-likely-to-d... If Congress doesn't like where an Executive agency is headed they can further change the Act governing it to clarify things. The guardrails can be set that way, and with-in them agencies—generally subject matter experts—can write and refine regulations as they are needed. The Executive agencies and departments are created by Congress. US regulatory agencies have authority because it was given to them by The People (through their elected representatives). The Judiciary seems to be limiting the Legislative here. Is there anything in the US Constitution that says Congress cannot delegate? * https://constitution.findlaw.com/article1/annotation03.html https://constitution.findlaw.com/article1/annotation03.html

saint_fiasco 2y ago
Congress can still delegate the known unknowns. They can say "because we are not experts in this subject, we delegate to agency X the power to decide whether this should be done in X or Y way" What they cannot do anymore is delegate unknown unknowns. They cannot leave X and Y unspecified, the executive agencies cannot do things in Z way that Congress didn't enumerate, or α and β way that Congress didn't even conceive.
- p_j_w 2y ago
  >What they cannot do anymore is delegate unknown unknowns. And that's absurd. Congress should have the ability to do this. If they don't like what an agency is doing, they're perfectly able to amend the law.

doctoboggan 2y ago

I understand that one reason for the continuing of Chevron deference is that Congress has been writing laws for the past 4 decades assuming that the agencies can iron out the ambiguities. I wonder if going forward congress can just try to have those agencies iron out the ambiguities before passing the law? Or is the idea that its impossible to anticipate all possible edge cases and congress wants to let the agency iron out future issue?

dctoedt 2y ago
> Or is the idea that its impossible to anticipate all possible edge cases and congress wants to let the agency iron out future issue? This Plus, it's often a case of Congress kicking the can down the road: Enough votes in Congress might agree that something needs to be done, but they can't come up with agreement on the details — often because of conflicting special-interest (read: donor) lobbying about those details. So the legislators say, in effect, "OK, let's get 'a bill' passed [a minimum viable product, if you will] and let the agencies deal with it. Then later, if a major problem comes up with a particular agency ruling, we can revisit the issue then."
Ancapistani 2y ago
> Congress has been writing laws for the past 4 decades assuming that the agencies can iron out the ambiguities My understanding is that the big problem is that this expectation is implicit. Congress isn't granting agencies the authority to make determinations as to what falls into a category, for instance. Instead, they're creating a category without further elaboration. Compare that to 18 USC 921(a)(4)(C), which says in part: The term “destructive device” shall not include any device which is neither designed nor redesigned for use as a weapon; any device, although originally designed for use as a weapon, which is redesigned for use as a signaling, pyrotechnic, line throwing, safety, or similar device; surplus ordnance sold, loaned, or given by the Secretary of the Army pursuant to the provisions of section 7684(2), 7685, or 7686 of title 10; or any other device which the Attorney General finds is not likely to be used as a weapon, is an antique, or is a rifle which the owner intends to use solely for sporting, recreational or cultural purposes. This explicitly established a process through which the Attorney General may exclude weapons from the "destructive device" category at their discretion. My understanding is that this would not be impacted by overturning Chevron, as the process was established by Congress explicitly. Hypothetically, if that provision did not exist and the AG unilaterally decided that a weapon that was otherwise included in the category should not be, then that would be an example of executive rulemaking within the bounds of Chevron.

notabee 2y ago

Unless the way elections are handled changes, such as doing anything that selects for expertise instead of partisan hackery, all this is going to do is accelerate the gridlock, corruption, and dysfunction. It just does not logically follow that putting more pressure on the legislative branch to be functional is going to work when its functionality or lack thereof is based largely on a very gerrymandered population being blasted non-stop by a completely co-opted, corrupt media. When the corruption and control is so thoroughly embedded already, the difference between "unelected official" and "party-and-special-interest-approved elected official" becomes a silly fig leaf of a difference.

thethimble 2y ago
On the other hand, enabling the judicial and executive branch to overcompensate for this disfunction also seems problematic - particularly as the former groups aren’t elected (except for the President, of course).
- HDThoreaun 2y ago
  I think everyone agrees congress being dysfunctional is problematic. The question is if it’s better for the other other branches to pick up the slack or if we should just let the government do nothing
mike_hearn 2y ago
Institutionally-declared experts are not exactly famous for their lack of partisan hackery, especially not in recent years. > It just does not logically follow that putting more pressure on the legislative branch to be functional is going to work You're talking like this is a political tactic or strategy used by the Supreme Court to achieve a specific outcome (which might "work" or "not work"), but it's not. Justices aren't meant to make such plans. They are supposed to do their job. If Congress does or doesn't do theirs, that isn't by itself the Court's problem nor something to which they should be the solution. But it's also worth remembering that what "works" means varies a lot depending on perspective. There is plenty of stuff that is bipartisan in Congress and which they get done fairly quietly. Additionally, to the school of thought known as libertarianism, Congress not doing things is the desirable outcome and thus a gridlocked Congress is in fact the system working as designed, in the sense that it is being limited by the degree of agreement amongst voters on what it should do.

o-90 2y ago

> They believe that Congress makes the laws, the Executive branch enforces them, and the Judicial branch interprets them. This process that you just described is what produced Chevron deference.

lolinder 2y ago

I'm probably going to get downvoted to hell for mentioning downvotes, but it's funny to me that when this comment was on the submission for the actual supreme court ruling it ended up pinned to the top with 20+ upvotes, but since the merge with the Axios article it's been steadily ticking down, having lost 18 points in less than an hour. I don't know if it's brigading or if it says something about the difference between readers of Axios articles and readers of full supreme court rulings.