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This seems like the judicial branch just voted to give itself substantially more power. Are there any checks against this? Or can justices just keep granting themselves more powers and invalidating any restraints?
You should read the actual opinion, because that's not what happened here.
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…
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.
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So if something that is seen as a bad idea should be kept in place because "that's the way we've always done it"?
No but this is not a bad idea. Why should congress have to be experts and pass hyper specific laws for every aspect of a government agency rather than just deferring to experts?
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So if something that is seen as a bad idea should be kept in place because "that's the way we've always done it"?
Obviously an outright bad idea should not be kept around just because that's how we have always done it, but don't underestimate the value of predictability and stability. Society can't operates if laws change every day, even if it's driven by a desire to make the laws better.
Funny you should mention that. Gorsuch wrote the exact same thing while arguing in favor of overruling Chevron. You can find it by Ctrl+F-ing the string "though the laws do not".
> "Chevron’s fiction has led us to a strange place. One where authorities long thought reserved for Article III are transferred to Article II, where the scales of justice are tilted systematically in favor of the most powerful, where legal demands can change with every election even though the laws do not, and where the people are left to guess about their legal rights and responsibilities"
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It would be somewhat amusing if Congress took the bait and wrote some legislation telling the Court to get back in its lane. Maybe the majority of justices would actually be okay with that.
SCOTUS is governed by the constitution. All congress has control over is the purse (money paid to the justices), number of justices, and appointment of justices. SCOTUS rules are set out in Article III. If congress wants to change the rules of SCOTUS, they will need to amend the constitution. Note that congress does have power over all lower federal courts, as they were created by congress. SCOTUS is special here tho…
It seems unpopular to point out this morning, but the vast majority of the power SCOTUS currently exercises is not enumerated anywhere in the Constitution. They gave it to themselves. Congress is by design the most powerful branch of the government and they absolutely can dramatically curtail the power of the judiciary if they want to.
I'd advise the folks who are quick with the downvote button to go learn more about the Constitution and in particular Article III. It is really fascinating and you can go down quite the rabbit hole learning about it.
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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.
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…
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
From Justice Kagan's dissent on page 82: > This Court has long understood Chevron deference to reflect what Congress would want, and so to be rooted in a presumption of legislative intent. Congress knows that it does not—in fact cannot—write perfectly complete regulatory statutes... > It knows that those statutes will inevitably contain ambiguities that some other actor will have to resolve, and gaps that some other…
> This Court has long understood Chevron deference to reflect what Congress would want, and so to be rooted in a presumption of legislative intent. Congress knows that it does not—in fact cannot—write perfectly complete regulatory statutes... I really hope she meant to convey a different point here, because it reads as if congress doesn't care and wants unelected bureaucrats figuring out what laws mean because they t…
I never understood the whole "un-elected officials" argument. How many people should we have on the ballot? 10s of thousands?
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"They get things done" has been one of the selling points for more than a few tyrannical regimes throughout history.
And comparing the likes of the IRS or FDA to the tyrannical regimes of the past is the hallmark of sovereign citizens, tax protestors, healthcare deniers, and other bunker-dwellers who see view traffic tickets as an attack on their god-given right to drive a Tesla while trading bitcoin on a cellphone.
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FDA finds food factory to be non compliant with food safety standards. FDA can't shut down the factory. It has to take it to court. A Judge with a JD or a jury of random people will decide if the factory can stay open. Factory stays open. Millions of people eat salmonella contaminated food.
I'm guessing the next stage is to prevent people from being able to sue said factories?
Devastating that expertise will no longer influence the application of law and policy. The biggest question is who will interpret the application of law? Will it be challenged in court once again until a clear statement is made? Meanwhile, what will be the effects of this “deregulation” until a clear statement is made
The constitution mandates that the courts interpret the law. Thomas and Gorsuch are right in their concurrences, allowing the executive branch to both enforce and interpret law is abhorrent to our constitution's proscribed separation of powers.
Congress cannot be expected to craft every bit of law and regulation down to the finest detail, and the gridlock that has been congress over the past several decades should make it clear that it's practically impossible. The regulatory power of federal agencies has never been broad and without oversight from other branches - they operate on the authority given to them by Congress.
The executive branch has not just been creating agencies wholesale and giving them sweeping regulatory powers, congress has passed laws creating them and delegating authority to them.
As others have mentioned, you can look at the joke that is the patent system and the absurd games played around the law there to get an idea of what we're in for with this decision. I don't understand how anyone can think that's the place we want to get to for everything else.