[windthrown]

In theory sure but have you been following Congress for the past decade? They can't even come to terms on continuing resolution funding bills, let alone pass complex rules related to new contentious technologies. Perhaps I'm just a pessimist but is something that makes you think this might drastically change?

[Kamq]

> In theory sure but have you been following Congress for the past decade?

On one hand, fair. On the other hand, you can only coast along on the old post-cold war bi-partisan consensus for so long without getting new consensus before institutions lose their legitimacy (you can already see this happening a bit).

We can default back to the last time we had consensus for some things, for some time, but you do need to get it again before big changes happen. If you get to the point where the last time we had consensus is before the majority of the people in the system were alive, you either need to hard pivot your society to focus on ancestor worship, or you need to focus on something you do have consensus on.

[mindslight]

The problem is that the previous consensus was created by corporate centralized media, and in many ways was actually against the interests of most people who accepted it. Now that corporate consensus has fallen apart, so we've got two tribes each focused on the specific ways they were screwed over, with each ascribing the previous state of affairs to the other tribe. In a vacuum their differences could certainly be worked out to support a consensus. But given how well ragebait sensationalism seems to work, and the popularity of feel-good (well, feel-something at least) authoritarian demagogues like Trump, I don't see much hope.

[lokar]

Decade? Nothing substantial has gotten done since Gingrich took over the house in 95. It’s been scorched earth (on both side, mostly) since then.

This puts the courts in a difficult situation. The answer is often “congress needs to fix this”, but that can’t actually happen.

[clarionbell]

I would argue that existing setup which abdicates power of congress to courts and agencies is only making things worse. It keeps things running, somewhat, but only by applying bandaids that can be removed just as easily with new set of judges or new administration.

It's something that US political system allowed to fester for decades, arguably since 70s.

Take the entire situation around abortions. Supreme Court determined that there is a right, based in protection of privacy, that prohibits states from banning abortion before certain date. Congress didn't have to make a law about it, or even add amendment to constitution. So they didn't have to explain anything to their constituents. "It's the court! I can't do anything!" everybody was happy.

Except not. People who opposed it, saw it as undemocratic. Taking controversial issue out of the hands of representatives forever. So they pushed against it, and attempted to circumvent the ruling. Mostly they failed. But they never gave up, and their movement never died down. In fact it only became more and more powerful. And when they finally had favorable judges on the court they finally had their way.

Angering their opponents, who were now using similar "this isn't democratic" arguments. In the end, nobody really won. The only certain result is that people on both sides of political spectrum now have reasons to distrust Supreme Court.

Compare that to the situation in Europe. Lawmakers took their time, but eventually they arrived at set of laws that most of society agrees with, or at very least is able to tolerate.

TLDR: The existing system led to the congress being incapable of making laws. If america is to survive, courts can't keep saving congress from controversial laws.