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Name a single court that hasn't made important decisions. You might not like the Roberts court and even disagree with its majority, but it operates no differen

Name a single court that hasn't made important decisions. You might not like the Roberts court and even disagree with its majority, but it operates no differently from any that has come before. What is different now is an explicit push to constantly highlight the supposed leanings of the members...but to do that you have to completely ignore the 7-2 and unanimous decisions they have come to just this session...

seadan83 2y ago
The number of long standing precedents that have been overturned is different from previous courts.
- lolinder 2y ago
  I'm not comfortable with saying that a court that removes too much precedent is inherently worse than a court that creates too much of it. Both courts are legislating from the bench, and if we treat precedent as entirely sacrosanct then we're effectively saying that a court that is aggressive at setting precedent can dictate the way things will be forever. What this court has been very consistently doing is rolling back decisions which substantially increased the authority of the Executive and Judicial branches and trying to restore power to the Legislative branch. That's a motivation that I happen to agree with for reasons I've explained elsewhere [0], and I don't see any reason why things must stay the way they are just because a different court got there first. [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40823298 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40823298
  - seadan83 2y ago
    I'm not sure what you mean by 'both' courts, Robert's has been lead justice for something like two decades. The pre and post conservative super majority is a distinction. Regardless, legislatures are not going to now create less ambiguous legislation (they are not experts, they do not understand nuances they are creating, nor do they really want to clarify them even if they did - cause they would get blamed) The thing i really want to point out - Overturning Chevron removes power from the executive branch and gives it to the judicial branch. Instead of an executive agency (which contains subject matter experts) making a good faith interpretation, it would now be up to a court instead. Congress could amend laws to fix ambiguous legislation, but they don't, won't, and it's too much (even if congress were interested to do so). Thus, there is no power going back to the legislature here that did not exist previously (if congress is not happy with how an ambiguous law they wrote is executed, they could always have and can still amend it). Thus, it's a shift from executive branch to judicial. This opens the door to shopping around for judges when an agency does something you don't like. (Per Harry Litman's analysis and opinion) this is perhaps the biggest shift of power from executive to judicial in decades.
guntars 2y ago
Going by https://constitution.congress.gov/resources/decisions-overruled/ https://constitution.congress.gov/resources/decisions-overru... Cumulative years of precedent overturned by year: 2009-2010 38 2011-2012 0 2013-2014 11 2015-2016 83 2017-2018 166 2019-2020 278 2021-2022 81 This does not include the latest ones. There are other upticks going back further, but the point is that you cannot say that all courts are the same.

seadan83 2y ago

The number of long standing precedents that have been overturned is different from previous courts.

lolinder 2y ago
I'm not comfortable with saying that a court that removes too much precedent is inherently worse than a court that creates too much of it. Both courts are legislating from the bench, and if we treat precedent as entirely sacrosanct then we're effectively saying that a court that is aggressive at setting precedent can dictate the way things will be forever. What this court has been very consistently doing is rolling back decisions which substantially increased the authority of the Executive and Judicial branches and trying to restore power to the Legislative branch. That's a motivation that I happen to agree with for reasons I've explained elsewhere [0], and I don't see any reason why things must stay the way they are just because a different court got there first. [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40823298 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40823298
- seadan83 2y ago
  I'm not sure what you mean by 'both' courts, Robert's has been lead justice for something like two decades. The pre and post conservative super majority is a distinction. Regardless, legislatures are not going to now create less ambiguous legislation (they are not experts, they do not understand nuances they are creating, nor do they really want to clarify them even if they did - cause they would get blamed) The thing i really want to point out - Overturning Chevron removes power from the executive branch and gives it to the judicial branch. Instead of an executive agency (which contains subject matter experts) making a good faith interpretation, it would now be up to a court instead. Congress could amend laws to fix ambiguous legislation, but they don't, won't, and it's too much (even if congress were interested to do so). Thus, there is no power going back to the legislature here that did not exist previously (if congress is not happy with how an ambiguous law they wrote is executed, they could always have and can still amend it). Thus, it's a shift from executive branch to judicial. This opens the door to shopping around for judges when an agency does something you don't like. (Per Harry Litman's analysis and opinion) this is perhaps the biggest shift of power from executive to judicial in decades.

guntars 2y ago

Going by https://constitution.congress.gov/resources/decisions-overruled/ https://constitution.congress.gov/resources/decisions-overru... Cumulative years of precedent overturned by year: 2009-2010 38 2011-2012 0 2013-2014 11 2015-2016 83 2017-2018 166 2019-2020 278 2021-2022 81 This does not include the latest ones. There are other upticks going back further, but the point is that you cannot say that all courts are the same.