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5th Circuit Court Finds SEC Enforcement Unconstitutional [pdf]

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Re: 5th Circuit Court Finds SEC Enforcement Unconstitutional [pdf]

#61
post #17

The gist of the decision is that the SEC’s imposition of civil penalties and disgorgement violated defendants’ seventh amendment right to a jury trial. Under the seventh amendment, you have a right to a jury trial for any claim that would have been an action at law in the courts of England at the time of the founding, prior to the merger of law and equity.[1] There is an additional principle that so called “public ri…

Awesome write up thank you. What about executive orders? That seems like extreme overreach of the executive branch. It's it being used in an emergency either. The presidents are issuing hundreds of them during their terms.

> The presidents are passing hundreds of them during their terms.

There is a major lack of oversight on Executive Orders.

BUT for the most part they are an accurate use from what I can tell. Usually they are merely aspirational goals for agencies to implement, much more similar to a CEO's quarterly goals for subdivisions. The President is a dual office role of being head of the executive branch, and being head of the military.

I don't really see that much straight up unilateral ordering of specific actions, and those would be the only constitutionally questionable ones.

Re: 5th Circuit Court Finds SEC Enforcement Unconstitutional [pdf]

#62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It will be very interesting to see what happens if SCOTUS tries to roll back the administrative state, because this is how Congress wants things to work. They passed all those laws to create the agencies, after all. And the expanding administrative state is what has allowed members of Congress to do less and less actual work, and more and more performance art and fundraising. They barely even have to pass budgets any…

The practical answer is that every country needs a body of law to "bootstrap" with, and English common and case law isn't the worst place to start.

And the two major alternative starting points used in practice are Roman law or Sharia law, both of which are likely even less acceptable to someone who doesn't want the baggage of English common law.

On the other hand, in the civil law systems when new countries are formed, as soon as you get the core laws passed (which takes some years of transition) you do generally make a clean start where only the new code of laws matter and everything else is discarded - you explicitly choose which parts of earlier code get included in the new laws, and that's it, old laws get pulled out only if there's a relevant dispute about some events which happened back when those old laws were in force.

Re: 5th Circuit Court Finds SEC Enforcement Unconstitutional [pdf]

#64
post #17

The gist of the decision is that the SEC’s imposition of civil penalties and disgorgement violated defendants’ seventh amendment right to a jury trial. Under the seventh amendment, you have a right to a jury trial for any claim that would have been an action at law in the courts of England at the time of the founding, prior to the merger of law and equity.[1] There is an additional principle that so called “public ri…

Excellent explanation.

I wonder what % of the entire judiciary budget could be paid via the budget SEC division of enforcement.

From that standpoint, this assertion of jurisdiction could entail a better staffed judiciary.

Re: 5th Circuit Court Finds SEC Enforcement Unconstitutional [pdf]

#65

> In keeping with Founding conceptions of separation of powers, the Supreme Court has made clear that Congress cannot “delegate to the Courts, or to any other tribunals, powers which are strictly and exclusively legislative.” I love this. I hope this trend catches on, I can't wait to gut these bloated agencies and force Congress to get back to work at the risk of a completely paralyzed society if they don't. Any supr…

I don't understand how this is supposed to work or why we would believe it would work. Why would we want politicians haggling over the nitty gritty details of how to regulate, for example, pollution? Applying cost-benefit analysis to make rules for countless pollutants and toxins? When they themselves apparently would rather delegate this to experts?

The courts and agencies still have the option of finding a different rationale to reach the same desired goal.

If they can't, then they have to rely on Congress, if they can't then national government cant be involved.

Simple order of operations.

Re: 5th Circuit Court Finds SEC Enforcement Unconstitutional [pdf]

#66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is silly. A conservative opinion writer could write the exact same thing about the 9th circuit court.

No, you couldn't. The Ninth Circuit isn't nearly as politically lopsided[1]. [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Court_of_Appeals...

[deleted]

Re: 5th Circuit Court Finds SEC Enforcement Unconstitutional [pdf]

#67

"The Supreme Court is, no doubt, the nation’s most powerful court. But the 5th Circuit, the federal appeals court that covers Louisiana, Mississippi and Texas, is staking out a claim to be the most dangerous — the least wedded to respecting precedent or following an orderly judicial process. The 5th is arguably the most conservative among the country’s dozen appeals courts." - https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/…

This is silly. A conservative opinion writer could write the exact same thing about the 9th circuit court.

[deleted]

Re: 5th Circuit Court Finds SEC Enforcement Unconstitutional [pdf]

#68

> In keeping with Founding conceptions of separation of powers, the Supreme Court has made clear that Congress cannot “delegate to the Courts, or to any other tribunals, powers which are strictly and exclusively legislative.” I love this. I hope this trend catches on, I can't wait to gut these bloated agencies and force Congress to get back to work at the risk of a completely paralyzed society if they don't. Any supr…

> I love this. I hope this trend catches on, I can't wait to gut these bloated agencies and force Congress to get back to work at the risk of a completely paralyzed society if they don't.

You seem to be making the bold assumption that both parties are acting in good faith. A completely paralyzed society is actually a victory for one party.

Re: 5th Circuit Court Finds SEC Enforcement Unconstitutional [pdf]

#69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is silly. A conservative opinion writer could write the exact same thing about the 9th circuit court.

No, you couldn't. The Ninth Circuit isn't nearly as politically lopsided[1]. [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Court_of_Appeals...

A judge being nominated by a Republican isn't exactly a great indicator of the political philosophy of a justice.

Quite liberal justices of the Supreme Court were nominated by Republicans (https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2019/07/john-paul-stevens-an...). To be fair, prolly still too soon to tell with Trump.

Also: https://www.google.com/search?q=site+nationalreview.com+9th+...

Re: 5th Circuit Court Finds SEC Enforcement Unconstitutional [pdf]

#70
post #17

The gist of the decision is that the SEC’s imposition of civil penalties and disgorgement violated defendants’ seventh amendment right to a jury trial. Under the seventh amendment, you have a right to a jury trial for any claim that would have been an action at law in the courts of England at the time of the founding, prior to the merger of law and equity.[1] There is an additional principle that so called “public ri…

It will be very interesting to see what happens if SCOTUS tries to roll back the administrative state, because this is how Congress wants things to work. They passed all those laws to create the agencies, after all. And the expanding administrative state is what has allowed members of Congress to do less and less actual work, and more and more performance art and fundraising. They barely even have to pass budgets any…

At the founding, the Constitution documented all the things that were going to be different, but courts were intended to continue to apply the rest of the common law as it was. So, it's less about being beholden to England's legal history as much as it is being beholden to American history as it was at the time. It's just that most of the legal writing that courts depended upon was published by English legal scholars.

One of the downsides of the fixed written Constitution being hard to change is that you end up with these strange rules where the law today is dependent upon intuition about how a current problem would have been viewed through the lens of the common law at the time of the founding, and we mostly only have English legal treatises to fall back on, so it feels like being beholden to English legal history.

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