891–900 of 1001 posts
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The DOJ? What are you talking about? This is the judicial branch, you know one of the three coequal branches of government. It just ruled that the power to set tariffs is not in fact a power of the executive branch.
I am not sure what you are not understanding since you know there are 3 branches. The judicial has no say on this. The judicial branch is more and more pushing political agenda when it’s not their role. Tariffs were always part of the executive branch, it’s by itself an executive action in the spirit of the law. Still if the US decides that it should not be part of the executive branch anymore, it is not to the judic…
Also the power of the purse has always been with congress, the constitution is very clear on that.
Finally the notion that the US is stripping power from the executive is honestly farcical. The exact opposite has been happening for decades now.
If you are a US voter then the reason for the current political situation is becoming very clear to me right now.
The actual decision: https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/25pdf/24-1287_4gcj.pdf
When I came to the opinion from Jackson, J., I found it extremely compelling. He says this:
... But some of TWEA’s sections delegating this authority had lapsed, and “there [was] doubt as to the effectiveness of other sections.” Accordingly, Congress amended TWEA in 1941, adding the subsection that includes the “regulate ... importation” language on which the President relies today. The Reports explained Congress’s primary purpose for the 1941 amendment: shoring up the President’s ability to control foreign-owned property by maintaining and strengthening the “existing system of foreign property control (commonly known as freezing control).”
When Congress enacted IEEPA in 1977, limiting the circumstances under which the President could exercise his emergency authorities, it kept the “regulate ... importation” language from TWEA. The other two relevant pieces of legislative history—the Senate and House Reports that accompanied IEEPA—demonstrate that Congress’s intent regarding the scope of this statutory language remained the same. As the Senate Report explained, Congress’s sole objective for the “regulate ... importation” subsection was to grant the President the emergency authority “to control or freeze property transactions where a foreign interest is involved.” The House Report likewise described IEEPA as empowering the President to “regulate or freeze any property in which any foreign country or a national thereof has any interest.”
However, then I read Kavanaugh, J. who writes the following:
In 1971, President Nixon imposed 10 percent tariffs on almost all foreign imports. He levied the tariffs under IEEPA’s predecessor statute, the Trading with the Enemy Act (TWEA), which similarly authorized the President to “regulate ... importation.” The Nixon tariffs were upheld in court.
When IEEPA was enacted in 1977 in the wake of the Nixon and Ford tariffs and the Algonquin decision, Congress and the public plainly would have understood that the power to “regulate ... importation” included tariffs. If Congress wanted to exclude tariffs from IEEPA, it surely would not have enacted the same broad “regulate ... importation” language that had just been used to justify major American tariffs on foreign imports.
And I also find this compelling.
To add onto this, Roberts, C. J. says: IEEPA’s grant of authority to “regulate ... importation” falls short. IEEPA contains no reference to tariffs or duties. The Government points to no statute in which Congress used the word “regulate” to authorize taxation. And until now no President has read IEEPA to confer such power.
This seems directly contradictory to Kavanaugh, J.'s dissent! Kavanaugh, J. claims that Nixon used the word “regulate” to impose tarrifs. And apparently the word isn't just in some random other statute — Nixon did so from TWEA, the predecessor of IEEPA: when Congress enacted IEEPA in 1977 it kept the “regulate ... importation” language from TWEA. (from Jackson, J.) So the point that no President has read IEEPA to confer such power seems pretty weak, when Nixon apparently did so from TWEA.
I have no conclusion from this, but IMO both Jackson, J. and Kavanaugh, J. have pretty strong points in opposing directions.
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There have been no decisions about refunds. The court avoided addressing that. That topic will surely go back to the courts, kicking and screaming
Personally think it should not get refunded. There’s no sane way to get it back to its source. And no one group should be making profit from it. Best if it stays with the government like a federal forfeiture so in theory we all benefit from it as citizens , maybe it goes against the national debt or lessens our deficit next year.
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Scalia wrote some really interesting opinions for sure. Feel like the arguments are only going to get worse :(
Because in practice the US Supreme Court is a partisan body, the United States is deprived of the potential for excellent jurists you'd expect with a population of hundreds of millions and some of the world's best law schools. Only a subset of your best will exhibit the desired partisan skew. Despite the larger population and improved access, my guess is that the quality of Supreme Court Justices today is probably wo…
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Fully agree, but that's what happens when you keep piling laws on top of laws on top of laws and never go back and refactor. If I recall correctly, the case hinged on some vague wording in a semi-obscure law passed back in 1977.
The whole legal apparatus of the US doesn't want to hear that but your laws suck. They're flawed because of the political system borne of compromise with parties incapable of whipping their members to just vote in favour of a law they don't fully agree with.
"In fact, [proportional representation] robs him of personal responsibility; it makes of him a voting machine rather than a thinking and feeling person. In my view, this is by itself a sufficient argument against proportional representation. For what we need in politics are individuals who can judge on their own and who are prepared to carry personal responsibility."
https://www.economist.com/democracy-in-america/2016/01/31/fr...
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That's the case in any country where a parliamentary body is split so closely. When you need every vote to get legislature to pass, because you control 51% of a chamber, backbenchers on the ideological fringe of a party, (DINOs and RINOs) have a lot of power. When you have a majority with comfortable margins, you can care a lot less about what the Sinemas and Manchins and McCains of a party think.
You're looking at the world with your American blinders on. The rest of the world's elected representatives vote with their party or they leave their party. What you're describing is a fundamentally American phenomenon.
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Remember when a conflict of interest was so important that Jimmy Carter sold his peanut farm, because heaven forbid, he accidentally made some money while president. Like his peanut farm would unduly sway government peanut policy.
An even more interesting one is that Ford was the first president to go on paid speaking tours after office. It's not like the 37 other presidents couldn't have also cashed in on the office in a similar fashion, but it was felt that such a thing would impugn the integrity of the office and also undermine the perception of somebody working as a genuine servant of the state. There has most certainly been a major declin…
Are you sure that people in the past viewed wealth as less important? If anything, the 1960s hippie movement would represent a shift away from a cultural emphasis on wealth, no?
I would suggest that internet commenter nihilism and politician nihilism form a self-reinforcing spiral. If commenters will take a nihilistic view of your actions no matter what you do, you might as well secure the bag. And if politicians are always securing the bag, you might as well write nihilistic internet comments about them.