Is it time to restore the Supreme Court to legitimacy?

... and you are the very guys who moan about the "end of Democracy." You have to cheat to get your way. Where does growing the SC stop?

 

@Os Trigonum couldn’t have liked that post, @Invisible Fan. It plays hell with his narrative. I’m not surprised that he ignored it.

 

Opinion: If the Supreme Court kills the Chevron doctrine, corporations will have even more power

On Monday, the Supreme Court agreed to hear a case that could well advance two long-term conservative causes: the war on government and the parallel war on science.

The court accepted Loper Bright Enterprises vs. Raimondo, an innocent-looking case involving herring fishermen and the requirement by the National Marine Fisheries Service that they pay the salaries of government monitors to ensure compliance with regulations that protect overfished and endangered species.

From little herrings, whale-sized consequences for our world might grow.

The petitioners seek to overturn or greatly limit a 39-year-old Supreme Court case, Chevron vs. Natural Resources Defense Council. That ruling said that if a federal law is silent or ambiguous on a specific question, courts should defer to government agencies’ interpretation of the statute.

That’s important because Congress, in enacting a law, can rarely if ever predict every situation that might arise in applying or enforcing it. So it must leave details for expert administrators to fill in.


Think about how the Environmental Protection Agency, created in 1970, has developed rules to combat the causes and harms of climate change, which were understood poorly if at all until decades later. Or how the Occupational Safety and Health Administration must adapt and develop rules to protect workers in industries that did not even exist at its birth in 1970.

Eliminating or curbing the power of federal agencies to interpret and enforce federal laws in rapidly changing circumstances, as the court is being asked to do, would implement a long-standing Republican agenda: to shrink government and return to the days of laissez-faire capitalism, before child labor laws and Social Security created a broad social safety net almost a century ago.

In recent years, as a gridlocked Congress enacts ever fewer laws, it has been largely left to federal agencies to enforce those laws in unforeseen situations.

With federal agencies crippled in playing that indispensable role, whole industries would be unleashed to operate free from mandates that protect clean air and water; banks and predatory lenders could operate unconstrained by requirements that protect consumers; and the wealthy and powerful would make their own rules.

The easiest way for powerful economic and political interests to weaken regulatory constraints is to denigrate scientific expertise and truth itself. And the best way for them to achieve that is to enable judges to substitute their personal opinions for the decisions of expert administrators charged with carrying out Congress’ objectives. Hamstringing the agencies opens the door to what Kellyanne Conway, former President Trump’s senior counselor, famously called “alternative facts.”

Beyond that door lies great danger. As Tom Nichols wrote in “The Death of Expertise,” “know-nothingism,” amplified by social media, can render us helpless in solving complex problems — from climate change to deadly pandemics.

We’ve already seen the hazards of dismissing expertise. Even without overruling the Chevron case, last year the court prevented the EPA from adopting rules to keep industry from contributing to irreversible global warming. And last month, Texas U.S. District Judge Matthew Kacsmaryk, a Trump appointee, substituted his judgment for the Food and Drug Administration’s in evaluating the safety of abortion pills. Fortunately, that court ruling is now stayed, but it shows the dangerous direction in which judicial arrogance can take us.

Nobody can say for sure what the Supreme Court will do in the Loper case. But we can say this: There is nothing in the Constitution or in its history that justifies shifting the power to fill gaps in a statute from a government agency in the executive branch to the judiciary, provided courts retain the authority, as they do under the Chevron ruling, to prevent agencies from exercising powers not lawfully delegated to them.

The Chevron deference doctrine has worked tolerably well for four decades, and the case for changing it hasn’t been made. If the conservative justices choose to abandon the doctrine just because they have the votes, they will reinforce the message from Dobbs vs. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, the court’s abortion decision last year, that our reliance on precedent is out the window when it comes to the conservative majority’s agenda.

That will be one more reason why voters need to elect a president and a Congress in 2024 committed to redressing the judicial power grab by an increasingly right-leaning court working to undermine effective government that protects us all.

Laurence H. Tribe is the Carl M. Loeb University Professor of Constitutional Law emeritus at Harvard University. Dennis Aftergut is a former federal prosecutor, currently of counsel to Lawyers Defending American Democracy.

https://www.latimes.com/opinion/story/2023-05-02/supreme-court-chevron-case-conservative-majority

 

This is a mischaracterization of the argument by the author. The "power to fill gaps in a statute" would not be shifted from a government agency in the executive branch to the judiciary, it would be eliminated. Overturning Chevron wouldn't put the court in position to write the policies to be followed by the executive branch, they would just be limited to whatever the laws actually say.

Put another way, overturning Chevron would return the power to create the law from the Executive branch to the Legislative branch, where it was granted by the Constitution.

 

Dems: "Our rights and democratic institutions are under assault"

Also Dems: "We don't like the current make up of the supreme court so we will do everything we can to undermine it, question its legitimacy and change it to match our image if we can"

 

Start holding every politician accountable regardless if it's a Mayor of a small town, a US Senator, President, or Supreme Court justice. The GOP barely believes in elections anymore so they're not a beacon of honesty or integrity at the least.

 

Democrats don't like the current make up of the SCOTUS. So they have taken every opportunity to subvert it. It's hypocritical in light of the fact they complain about Republicans subverting other right and institutions.

If Democrats had a 6-3 majority we wouldn't be seeing all this nonsense and we probably wouldn't be having all of these investigations into the justices finances either.

 

The court should be as balanced as possible in favor of the actual populace, not corporations because they are comprised of people. The GOP since Nixon has been more corrupt than ever before, when the party switch occurred. You know this but probably don't care. It could be 9-0 all liberal majority and if something like what came to light with Thomas happened I would say the same thing...hold them accountable. Impeach and assign a new justice and pass ethic laws for them that they must abide by.

 

Take it up with Laurence H. Tribe, Professor of Constitutional Law at Harvard. I agree with him and nothing you say will change my mind. Like I stated and pretty much a majority of people in the D&D I completely agree with his sentiment.

I decline anarchy...

 

Cool rant about the GOP, corporations, Nixon and all.

Simply put, the Democrats don't like the results, that everyone operated under and you want to change the rules. They have no problem undermining the legitimacy of institutions and subverting the court when things don't got their way but criticize such conduct if Republicans do it. Hypocrites.

 

Whatever, keep voting red until the rivers and lakes are brown, doesn't matter to me...

 

Just don't complain about the GOP subverting our institutions if you're ok with Democrats subverting different institutions like the judiciary.

 

Yea, checks and balances aren't part of the Constitution.

 

Yea, that's what open calls to pack the court, constant questioning of the legitimacy of the court and investigations into the justices finances, which could have occurred at any time over the last few decades, but happen to bubble up now, when conservatives have a large majority is "checks and balances."

Subverting our institutions because they don't like the results of perfectly normal processes.

 

Corrupt is corrupt regardless of party. You seem to not understand that. Oh but I bet you support a fishing expedition into Hunter Biden...right?

 

Yea, I'm sure its just a massive coincidence those investigations into the justices finances are taking place now when conservatives have a 6-3 majority and the court is under siege from Democrats.

 

Are 6 and 3 the only numbers you know? How about 1 and 6 and 2021?

 

This is the thread about the legitimacy of the SCOTUS.

Hence, the SCOTUS is the topic of discussion.

Not a thread about wherever you want to move the topic or the goal posts to. Like the GOP, Nixon, Title IX, January 6, Fatphobia, Cleopatra or whatever.

 

I'm puzzled. I haven't been following this thread, but is anyone seriously arguing that Supreme Court decisions are somehow now being poorly argued and are poorly reasoned in comparison with Supreme Court decisions in the past? that to me is what "restoring legitimacy" would seem to suggest

or am I missing the point somewhere here

 

I'll post what I want when I want, don't like it, then don't respond. Simple...or maybe not for a guy that wants to argue about the left not playing fair...boo hoo.