Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

5th Circuit Court Finds SEC Enforcement Unconstitutional [pdf]

ca5.uscourts.gov

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

71–80 of 191 posts

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

#71

Post by colinmhayes »

gpm wrote: post #58
colinmhayes wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> in the time of war So are military courts going to close down since we’ve now ended the Afghanistan war? Or is that comma before “militia” going to mean that the time of war phrase is on for people who in a militia?

> or public danger; Whether or not we're in a time of public danger is definitely up for debate, but you can't just leave off the second condition in an or statement and pretend it doesn't exist when trying to claim the statement is false.

Yea I’m on mobile so didn’t want to deal with full quote, it I assumed public danger meant like martial law. Do you know of any precedent on that part?

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

#72

Post by IG_Semmelweiss »

PeterisP wrote: post #62
woodruffw wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 la…

The code of Hammurabi (eye for an eye) seemed to be popular back in the day.

One must wonder if its host nation-state had survived for longer, what iteration would be out in the wild.

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

#73

Post by snowwrestler »

woodruffw wrote: post #55
snowwrestler wrote: post #46

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.

Sure our forefathers needed some bootstraps, but we’re coming up on 250 years of independence here.

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

#74

Post by vkou »

xyzzyz wrote: post #59
linkjuice4all wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While I dislike poorly written laws (including those that work around some failing of our current "state" of government) and judges lacking accountability - this seems to be in the same league as the EPA Regulator Case[0] that's sitting at the Supreme Court right now. The end-goal doesn't appear to be justice for the aggrieved party but more so the elimination of agency-issued oversight. The jurisprudence seems to fo…

> On a basic level this seems to make sense but the practical application of this would mean that legislators would need to explicitly pass legislation anytime a regulatory body needs to address a specific issue or regulate some behavior Yeah, can you imagine the horror of making the congressmen actually do their job and pass the laws, instead of delegating all their authority to unelected, nameless, and effectively…

> Yeah, can you imagine the horror of making the congressmen actually do their job and pass the laws, instead of delegating all their authority to unelected, nameless, and effectively unaccountable bureaucrats

1. Those bureaucrats are appointed by the President, whom you vote for, and by Congress, whom you vote for, and may be fired by the former. If you don't like what the executive branch of the government looks like, I have great news for you - you elect your chief executive! And people you elect appoint his immediate underlings!

2. In 2022, I wouldn't hold my breath for congress to pass any laws. Half of congress governs under the explicit mandate that the people paying for their campaign should be above any law, and the other half governs under an implicit mandate to the same effect.

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

#75

Post by civilized »

vmception wrote: post #65
civilized wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Legally, it's a very flimsy basis on which to attack the current structure and operation of the country. It is simply untrue that Congress is not allowed to delegate its powers, and where to draw the line has always been a subjective judgment that different courts have drawn differently. https://constitution.findlaw.com/article1/annotation03.html

And frankly, I think the anti-administrative state people are on the payroll of polluters who want the regulators to be politicians who are more dependent on big business for funds.

Congress should be allowed to leave things to the experts if it wants to. After all, it is free to change the scope of regulatory agencies at any time.

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

#76

Post by woodruffw »

snowwrestler wrote: post #73
woodruffw wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Sure our forefathers needed some bootstraps, but we’re coming up on 250 years of independence here.

Practical, not good :-)

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

#77

Post by adrianba »

tomcam wrote: post #11
paxys wrote: post #5

Sets an interesting precedent for literally every other federal body that "acts as prosecutor and judge" while skipping the judicial system. Should everyone fighting an immigration or deportation case be able to request a jury trial? What about the military? Labor violations? EPA fines?

Anyone can request a jury trial in the USA. It's guaranteed by the Constitution.

That's not true for all civil cases, though. The Seventh Amendment says, "In suits at common law, where the value in controversy shall exceed twenty dollars, the right of trial by jury shall be preserved, ..." As has been described elsewhere here, this was interpreted to provide a jury right in suits at law but not in equity. You can also waive your jury right by agreeing not to invoke it, say in a contract.

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

#78

Post by munificent »

vmception wrote: post #56
rayiner wrote: 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…

Every creature from the New Deal is probably unconstitutional. Additional context on that threat of court packing is that the Supreme Court was already invalidating and gutting the New Deal! Its such an important story to me because my grade school history books all upheld the New Deal as this monumental and amazing thing. From what I can tell, 75% of it (or 75% of the programs it created) was declared unconstitution…

I think implicit in your comment is that the New Deal must not actually be amazing because it turns out that it's likely unconstitutional but... how does that logically follow? It's not like the Constitution was handed down from the heavens as a flawless document.

It may be that the New Deal does contain many unconstitutional provisions, but also that that same legislature was in fact a net benefit for Americans.

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

#79

Post by seanw444 »

paxys wrote: post #5

Sets an interesting precedent for literally every other federal body that "acts as prosecutor and judge" while skipping the judicial system. Should everyone fighting an immigration or deportation case be able to request a jury trial? What about the military? Labor violations? EPA fines?

Get outta here ATF.

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

#80

Post by bayareabadboy »

munificent wrote: post #78
vmception wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Every creature from the New Deal is probably unconstitutional. Additional context on that threat of court packing is that the Supreme Court was already invalidating and gutting the New Deal! Its such an important story to me because my grade school history books all upheld the New Deal as this monumental and amazing thing. From what I can tell, 75% of it (or 75% of the programs it created) was declared unconstitution…

I think implicit in your comment is that the New Deal must not actually be amazing because it turns out that it's likely unconstitutional but... how does that logically follow? It's not like the Constitution was handed down from the heavens as a flawless document. It may be that the New Deal does contain many unconstitutional provisions, but also that that same legislature was in fact a net benefit for Americans.

Processes were included to amend the constitution for this exact reason! Of course the framers knew that it was a flawed document.
Post reply on HN