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The Case That Could Destroy the Government

theatlantic.com

61–70 of 85 posts

Re: The Case That Could Destroy the Government

#61
post #49
post #24

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"…

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…

> 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

Re: The Case That Could Destroy the Government

#62
post #61
post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> 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 addressi…

well, then go for constitutional amendment.

Re: The Case That Could Destroy the Government

#63
post #62
post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 addressi…

well, then go for constitutional amendment.

The system is rigged against doing so.

Re: The Case That Could Destroy the Government

#64
post #49
post #24

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"…

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 article goes into detail about how the framers did not do this thing you claim they did; for instance, in Hamilton's defense of the Senate as trier of impeachments, rather than the judiciary, in Federalist 66.

Re: The Case That Could Destroy the Government

#65
post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 t…

Well, it's really pretty simple. The way the US government is supposed to work, courts adjudicate, legislature makes the rules and the executive enforces them. All this hand wringing is about returning to that. The legislature cannot create an executive department that is able to create what amount to laws, execute them and adjudicate them. You can have an SEC; it can only enforce laws passed by Congress and if you d…

That's clearly not the case; for instance, Congress has created Article I courts since the dawn of the republic.

Re: The Case That Could Destroy the Government

#66
post #61
post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> 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 addressi…

> It seems fair to say that you ascribe more importance to rigid fidelity to a 200-year-old document than to addressing the practical challenges of keeping a nation together, as circumstances change over the decades

The requirement to follow the written text follows from the very nature of a written constitution. It’s not a matter of preference or priority. If I have a car rather than a boat I’m going driving rather than sailing, and it doesn’t really matter that the bridge is out and I have to go the long way around to cross the river.

The other approach isn’t an alternative way of following the law. It’s a way of intellectually justifying breaking the law.

Re: The Case That Could Destroy the Government

#67
post #64
post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 article goes into detail about how the framers did not do this thing you claim they did; for instance, in Hamilton's defense of the Senate as trier of impeachments, rather than the judiciary, in Federalist 66.

Federalist 66 indicates the opposite. That the principle of separation of powers is so entrenched in the Constitution, that objections were raised to giving the Senate the quasi-judicial power to try impeachments, even though that was (1) explicitly incorporated into the Constitution by design, and (2) was designed that way to address the separation-of-power problem that could arise if the executive could prosecute legislators in the courts.

The framers thought very hard about, explicitly codified, and had to justify even that explicit and special-purpose deviation from the separation of powers.

Re: The Case That Could Destroy the Government

#68
post #67
post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The article goes into detail about how the framers did not do this thing you claim they did; for instance, in Hamilton's defense of the Senate as trier of impeachments, rather than the judiciary, in Federalist 66.

Federalist 66 indicates the opposite. That the principle of separation of powers is so entrenched in the Constitution, that objections were raised to giving the Senate the quasi-judicial power to try impeachments, even though that was (1) explicitly incorporated into the Constitution by design, and (2) was designed that way to address the separation-of-power problem that could arise if the executive could prosecute l…

So just in this one very specific case of the Senate literally taking over the Judiciary's entire role was it the legitimate design of our system that there be shared responsibility.

Re: The Case That Could Destroy the Government

#69
post #68
post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Federalist 66 indicates the opposite. That the principle of separation of powers is so entrenched in the Constitution, that objections were raised to giving the Senate the quasi-judicial power to try impeachments, even though that was (1) explicitly incorporated into the Constitution by design, and (2) was designed that way to address the separation-of-power problem that could arise if the executive could prosecute l…

So just in this one very specific case of the Senate literally taking over the Judiciary's entire role was it the legitimate design of our system that there be shared responsibility.

In this one case which doesn’t even seem necessarily to be a judicial function to begin with (since it relates to the internal working of the government, not the public), the framers not only wrote the deviation from separation of powers into the constitutional text, but felt the need to justify that departure by explaining that in this unique context, mixing the powers is necessary to preserve the separation of powers overall.

Re: The Case That Could Destroy the Government

#70
post #69
post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So just in this one very specific case of the Senate literally taking over the Judiciary's entire role was it the legitimate design of our system that there be shared responsibility.

In this one case which doesn’t even seem necessarily to be a judicial function to begin with (since it relates to the internal working of the government, not the public), the framers not only wrote the deviation from separation of powers into the constitutional text, but felt the need to justify that departure by explaining that in this unique context, mixing the powers is necessary to preserve the separation of powe…

And the courts-martial system?
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