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Supreme Court limits EPA’s power to cut emissions

bbc.com

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Re: Supreme Court limits EPA’s power to cut emissions

#861

Post by iostream24 »

philwelch wrote: post #679
JeremyNT wrote: post #651

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Headlines about Supreme Court cases are almost uniformly misleading, because they suggest the Court is making decisions on policy issues rather than legal issues. This is the naive version of how SCOTUS works that they teach us in elementary school. History has shown that the Supreme Court is a political body with its own political agenda. The doctrine and precedent cited is used as a justification for whatever pol…

The majority of justices on the current Supreme Court have been doing a good job of sticking to the law rather than attempting to enact policy. What you’re describing is a good criticism of the mid-20th century Supreme Court, but the current Court has done a good job of rolling back those excesses.

I strongly disagree. I see this current court having extremely low legitimacy engaged in naked power grabs: In one session they’ve removed the ability to sue over Miranda rights, stricken down a fifty year precedent and told a state that they can’t enact their own concealed carry act. I don’t doubt that you will claim that these actions are the logical course of originalism in its purest form, but I find it judicial activism of an obtuse society-wrecking despicable sort.

They shall go down in our childrens history as villains.

Re: Supreme Court limits EPA’s power to cut emissions

#862

Post by carabiner »

rayiner wrote: post #306

Headlines about Supreme Court cases are almost uniformly misleading, because they suggest the Court is making decisions on policy issues rather than legal issues. The very first words of the opinion, on p. 2, make clear that the legal issue before the Court is very different: https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/21pdf/20-1530_n758.pdf The Clean Air Act does not purport to give the EPA blanket regulatory authority ov…

Why does HN, or SWEs in general, have a libertarian / small govt bias?

Re: Supreme Court limits EPA’s power to cut emissions

#863

Post by burkaman »

cryptonector wrote: post #273
wkearney99 wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

have you met any congress personnel? fence posts would be insulted to be compared to some of them. there's definitely a gap between regulatory officials making regulations and legislature codifying the details. This is where appointing heads of those departments is supposed to come to bear. It's a mess, but the answer isn't to let lobbyists and special interests burn the house down.

It's not like the regulators are incorruptible. The regulators get captured all the time. I don't know what the right answer is here.

The right answer here is that Congress explicitly delegated a decision to the EPA administrator, so they should be allowed to make that decision. The court's decision is well-argued, but it seems to come down to "I know Congress said you could do this, but it's a really big deal and they might not have thought it through enough, so you have to go ask for permission again before you do it". It's kind of patronizing to both the EPA and Congress, and I don't think it's a good decision or precedent.

Re: Supreme Court limits EPA’s power to cut emissions

#864

Post by JamesBarney »

citilife wrote: post #847
joshstrange wrote: post #746

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I understand the idea of the SC kicking things back to congress and that would be well and good if we didn't have minority rule in this country coupled with the outsized power that land has over people. On top of that we have a disgusting high rep->citizen ratio because of a silly law congress passed capping it's size. Throw in gerrymandering and election boards rejecting results of elections (and things like Jan 6th…

> it's clear democracy is dying. The united states has never been a democracy. The united states was designed with a state being a nation, each nation joined a federation (the united states). This is similar to the EU (they're following the same model). Your local governments still have WAY more power over your life than the federal government. Think about your daily life, when you drive do you worry about speeding i…

> Your local governments still have WAY more power over your life than the federal government

This was true a 100 years ago, i don't know if it's true anymore. My retirement, how much i pay in taxes, can I get healthcare, what does that healthcare look like, how much pollutants can the power plant produce, how safe is the car I drive, and many more questions are determined by the federal government.

Re: Supreme Court limits EPA’s power to cut emissions

#865

Post by gumby »

wkearney99 wrote: post #103
elmerfud wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't agree it will be chaos. Congress has for far too long abdicated what it is supposed to be directly responsible for to unelected bureaucrats that exist in agencies that are overseen by the executive branch of government. Congress is now free to focused on creating chaos between the people that elect them. When is the last time you've seen anyone from Congress campaign on any substantive issue? I've not seen it…

have you met any congress personnel? fence posts would be insulted to be compared to some of them. there's definitely a gap between regulatory officials making regulations and legislature codifying the details. This is where appointing heads of those departments is supposed to come to bear. It's a mess, but the answer isn't to let lobbyists and special interests burn the house down.

> have you met any congress personnel? fence posts would be insulted to be compared to some of them.

have you met any congress personnel? "dedicated", "idealistic", and/or "thoughtful" apply to some of them.

Re: Supreme Court limits EPA’s power to cut emissions

#866

Post by tcj_phx »

briandear wrote: post #526
Arubis wrote: post #486

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> All Congress needs to do… And therein lies the problem. We know Congress is too deadlocked to be effective. Does the Court pushing back on them have a shot at getting the legislative branch to do their jobs?

Deadlock is a feature not a bug. You want deadlock because one side or another pushing their agenda against the majority is the road to totalitarianism. If there is a deadlock, should one side of another simply dictate? Of course not. If Trump ran the executive branch, would you want him pushing through via administrative fiat things that Congress doesn’t want? I certainly don’t want the EPA making policy — I want th…

Justice Scalia basically agreed with you: gridlock is essential for protecting minority interests.

> And I hear Americans saying this nowadays, and there's a lot of it going around. They talk about a "dysfunctional government" because there's disagreement. And the Framers would have said, "Yes, that's exactly the way we set it up. We wanted this to be power contradicting power -- because the main ill that beset us" -- as Hamilton said in The Federalist when he talked about a separate Senate -- He said, "Yes, it seems inconvenient, but inasmuch as the main ill that besets us is an excess of legislation, it won't be so bad." This is 1787 -- he didn't know what an excess of legislation was.

> So, unless Americans can appreciate that and learn to love the separation of powers, which means learning to love the gridlock, which the Framers believed would be the main protection of minorities -- the main protection. If a bill is about to pass that really comes down hard on some minority [and] they think it's terribly unfair, it doesn't take much to throw a monkey wrench into this complex system.

> So, Americans should appreciate that and they should learn to love the gridlock. It's there for a reason -- so that the legislation that gets out will be good legislation.

https://www.americanrhetoric.com/speeches/antoninscaliaameri...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ggz_gd--UO0

Re: Supreme Court limits EPA’s power to cut emissions

#867

Post by shrimpx »

zeroonetwothree wrote: post #538
shrimpx wrote: post #521

Earlier quoted context omitted.

These literalist justices are of the mind that if it wasn’t explicitly written, then it’s not allowed. Generalist/broad swath language is to be ignored. Only specific instruction is to be interpreted.

Only when it’s convenient for their position. For the 2nd amendment they take a very broad reading.

Yes good point.

Re: Supreme Court limits EPA’s power to cut emissions

#868

Post by hellojesus »

Buttons840 wrote: post #765
philosopher1234 wrote: post #699

Every surpreme court article makes me hate this community a bit more. There is far too much obsessing over "their logic is consistent" and far too much intentional ignorance of the fact that they chose which logic to bring to bear on which issues, and that there are many other possible ways to apply consistent logic. Their logic can be consistent and they can still be partisans, looking to implement a specific agenda…

As an example, my understanding is that the federal government can regulate my ability to grow a plant and consume it in my own home based upon their argument that I'm participating in interstate commerce. The feds argued that growing a plan is participating in interstate commerce[1]. This law will stand while the court clutches their pearls about the environmental protection agency seeking to protect the environment…

Wickard v Filburn has got to be one of the worst precedents ever. I sincerely hope the SC reverses it next.

By the same logic, I can never collect my own rain water as it would impact interstate commerce.

Similarly, I could never have a free school play for parents, because I would be taking money away from local theaters, and that would eventually resonate to interstate commerce.

The Constitution's interstate commerce clause has been purposely misinterpreted to mean regulation of commerce within a state if you can abstract nth order effects to another state. In actuality, all it is supposed to to is allow the regulation of commerce across state lines, meaning regulation on the transport of materials from one state to another.

Re: Supreme Court limits EPA’s power to cut emissions

#869

Post by vdnkh »

philosopher1234 wrote: post #699

Every surpreme court article makes me hate this community a bit more. There is far too much obsessing over "their logic is consistent" and far too much intentional ignorance of the fact that they chose which logic to bring to bear on which issues, and that there are many other possible ways to apply consistent logic. Their logic can be consistent and they can still be partisans, looking to implement a specific agenda…

Over the past few years I've noticed that HN has swung very far to the right. Any politically-adjacent topic tends to feature more than a few upvoted right-wing grievance posts. I still like HN for the articles but it's honestly insufferable to read the comments.

On this particular topic, it's infuriating to see the average HN bozo think of the constitution as a set of unit tests for justices to run through.

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