Earlier quoted context omitted.
The Doric columns in the Old Supreme Court chamber were monolithic marble. I hadn't expected the visual metaphor to be so literally applicable! https://www.aoc.gov/explore-capitol-campus/buildings-grounds...
Your link doesn't appear to mention any columns that aren't sandstone? It also doesn't say whether those columns were monolithic or not.
The Case That Could Destroy the Government
41–50 of 85 posts
Re: The Case That Could Destroy the Government
#42It’s better to read the SCOTUSblog coverage without the editorializing: https://www.scotusblog.com/case-files/cases/securities-and-e... . The issues in the case are: > 1) Whether statutory provisions that empower the Securities and Exchange Commission to initiate and adjudicate administrative enforcement proceedings seeking civil penalties violate the Seventh Amendment; (2) whether statutory provisions that authorize…
The Supreme Court sure seems like they want to challenge everything that Congress or the Executive branch executes. They threaten to do so publicly. Congress ought to likewise threaten to pass laws that have allow no judicial review or the President should threaten to reform the Court. Both are explicitly allowed in the Constitution.
The Supreme Court is mostly fixing its own precedents which are clearly wrong. You have to huff the glue off a bunch of law review book bindings to think that the framers went to all this trouble to create a tripartite government of distinct powers, but that they permitted Congress to create executive agencies that exercise the power of all three branches at once. The fact that we even pretend that’s constitutional is merely the result of the last time the President threatened to pack the Court to achieve political ends. (And no, the power to set the size of the Supreme Court is not meant to be used to “threaten” it to decide cases in particular ways. That’s an insane interpretation of that provision.)
Re: The Case That Could Destroy the Government
#43It's not very well-argued, in that if regulation was pervasive since the founding as the author states, then what would unwinding something from the New Deal era accomplish in the grand scheme of things?
It would accomplish a Supreme Court precedent that would allow unwinding all the delegation of regulation and enforcement since the founding based on a partial reading of Madison and Hamilton (just the bits that extreme libertarians like without any of the "but also" stuff). If that were to happen then all oversight of any company deals would fall to the specific whims of whomever the current US Congress might be ..…
You think the framers went to all that trouble to create this complex process for making laws between two houses of the legislature and the signature of the president, but thought it would be totally cool for unelected bureaucrats in some executive branch agency to do the same thing?
Arguments about the “current scale of the US” obviously don’t tell you what the Constitution means. And even on its own terms that argument makes no sense. The federal government isn’t in charge of “running the entire nation.” It’s pretty remarkable to say that we should ignore the tripartite system of government because that’s makes it easier to disregard federalism.
Re: The Case That Could Destroy the Government
#44This 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"…
Just 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.
Re: The Case That Could Destroy the Government
#45This 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"…
Why 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.
Why should congress be dealing with such local concerns?
Re: The Case That Could Destroy the Government
#46Earlier quoted context omitted.
It would accomplish a Supreme Court precedent that would allow unwinding all the delegation of regulation and enforcement since the founding based on a partial reading of Madison and Hamilton (just the bits that extreme libertarians like without any of the "but also" stuff). If that were to happen then all oversight of any company deals would fall to the specific whims of whomever the current US Congress might be ..…
You think the framers went to all that trouble to create this complex process for making laws between two houses of the legislature and the signature of the president, but thought it would be totally cool for unelected bureaucrats in some executive branch agency to do the same thing? Arguments about the “current scale of the US” obviously don’t tell you what the Constitution means. And even on its own terms that argu…
s/tasked with running/tasked with coordinating states and federal matters/
I think nothing about the US framers - not my country. I simply answered the question posed without delving into the merits of any specific position.
On the matter of stock exchanges and securities Congress did lawfully choose to regulate and bind public companies to declare honest and true infomation to the public yada yada .. that's within the scope of Congress.
The delegation is to have a seperate ideally independant group oversee that every one of hundreds of thousands of listed companies abide by regulation - just as Congress doesn't ride shotgun on every stagecoach.
It's fair to bring back to Congress any disagreements with how regulation is being managed, just as it's fair to bring back to a judge a complaint that an appointed sheriff is a lying conniving son of a bitch using a badge as an ATM (for example).
Re: The Case That Could Destroy the Government
#47Earlier quoted context omitted.
Why 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.
Why should congress be dealing with such local concerns?
The definition of clean water is a local concern? Yeah, I guess some communities are more concened than others...
Re: The Case That Could Destroy the Government
#48Clickbait -> it would destroy's Government ability to create unlimited agencies, not to destroy the Government. sigh
Same thing. Governments can't govern without those.
Re: The Case That Could Destroy the Government
#49This 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"…
The 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.
Re: The Case That Could Destroy the Government
#50It’s better to read the SCOTUSblog coverage without the editorializing: https://www.scotusblog.com/case-files/cases/securities-and-e... . The issues in the case are: > 1) Whether statutory provisions that empower the Securities and Exchange Commission to initiate and adjudicate administrative enforcement proceedings seeking civil penalties violate the Seventh Amendment; (2) whether statutory provisions that authorize…
Agreed that the article is extremely opinionated. Separation of powers contains a lot of very subtle and non-obvious answers to society's fundamental organizacional sociology.
Particularly noticeable with regards to this subject is https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federalist_No._78 where Hamilton posits that the Judicial power is the most frail one: with the executive holding the military power and the congress holding the money.