[Xeoncross]

If you ignore the labels here, it's a small group of lawyers giving themselves more power because the large group of politicians can't get their act together and pass well-reasoned and descriptive laws.

So the large body isn't functioning well and the small body doesn't trust it anymore. So if we make the small body (the supreme court) large like the large body (congress) will that actually fix the issue?

Isn't the issue that politicians are corrupt and ignorant of actual expertise in the areas of the laws they pass? How will the Supreme Court overcome this same issue?

[matthewdgreen]

Congress may be inefficient (by design, basically) but they have one advantage: they're elected. Everyone fantasizes about government by an unelected group of experts, until they wake up one day and find out those unelected experts don't share their values at all -- and there's nothing they can do about it.

[digging]

This implies the common false dichotomy though that public officials can only be either: elected in toxic, wasteful campaign cycles every 4 years; or completely independent of public oversight. Those aren't the only two mechanisms that exist to develop an administrative apparatus. They are actually two points on a spectrum, and in fact closer to being at either end of the spectrum.

One, quick example: You can have appointed experts who can be recalled by public input but never have to campaign for election. I'm writing this in short minutes with zero research so be assured there are countless possible systems that exist in the infinite space between the two binary options implied by your dilemma.

In other words, being elected to office is not the advantage of congress. The advantage we seek is public accountability. Public elections are a pretty fucking poor proxy for accountability though because we end up with single-issue voters acting out of rage and electing people who are specifically inept at their job.

[hypothesis]

> Everyone fantasizes about government by an unelected group of experts, until they wake up one day and find out those unelected experts don't share their values at all -- and there's nothing they can do about it.

Does SCOTUS fit into this hypothetical?

[db48x]

No, because they neither make laws nor execute them.

[btilly]

You may trust the nation's top lawyers more than Congress. But in recent decades those lawyers have been picked for ideological purity in a process that distills what is bad about our political process. As a result I now trust Congress more than the Supreme Court. And not because I trust our broken Congress more than I used to!

[starkparker]

> I would trust the nations top lawyers more than most of the congress members we have

If you're referring to the justices, who are approved by those Congress members you don't trust, it is a dramatic stretch to assume they are the nation's best lawyers.

[TylerE]

There’s no requirement for them to be a lawyer at all, or have any legal training.

[jjmarr]

There's no federal constitutional requirement for anyone to have legal training or certification to practice law in the USA.

The requirements to practice law in the federal system are set by the judiciary itself. This dates back to England where getting "called to the bar" meant the judge giving you permission to go to a physical bar separating the spectators from the court.

It wouldn't make sense to mandate judges to be lawyers if they decide who is and isn't a lawyer. That would give the judicial branch control over their own appointments.

[TylerE]

The Supreme Court is explicitly subject to not even that.

[masklinn]

Also congress is full of lawyers.

[luddit3]

This is taking power away from regulator bodies like EPA that enforce the laws and giving it to the courts... taking the enforcement out of the hands of the experts.

[psunavy03]

How is it "taking the enforcement out of the hands of the experts?" Judges are supposed to be experts on law. That's literally their job. If the parties before them feel that they need expert knowledge to render the right ruling, then they need to take those experts and either depose them or have them testify. Expert witnesses are a thing; this is not some new idea.

[adriand]

> How is it "taking the enforcement out of the hands of the experts?" Judges are supposed to be experts on law.

Because the laws are about particular things in the real world that have nothing to do with the legal system. They are frequently about scientific matters, for example. What constitutes a threat to public health? What constitutes pollution of a waterway?

When Congress authorizes an agency to maintain, say, clean drinking water, it entrusts scientific experts to determine, based on the most up-to-date evidence, what constitutes a pollutant that is harmful to human health. We do not need Congress to pass a new law every time we get new scientific evidence that a particular chemical (say, PFAS), is harmful.

[psunavy03]

> Because the laws are about particular things in the real world that have nothing to do with the legal system.

The laws have nothing to do with the legal system? That's a new one.

[stale2002]

Thats great and all. But if congress wants that power to be delegated to those agencies, then they should write a law to do so.

Thats all people here want. Whatever power it is that you think that agencies should have, try to pass a law to do that first.

[vkou]

They did do that, every agency exists with a mandate.

SCOTUS just decided that despite the madnates existing, being funded, and being regularly renewed, that's not good enough.

But they haven't defined how specific the mandate and laws must be. They can just, you know, keep shifting the goal posts until they get the desired result.

[stale2002]

> that's not good enough.

Then make a law saying that yes this is ok and good enough.

Problem solved.

[masklinn]

Because this is not law in terms of billy having stolen a bushel of apples, and the expert is not called on to evaluate the value of the apples in order to determine whether billy is below or above the line for a class 3 misdemeanour.

The statutes regulating agencies are generally broad signposts, giving the agency a mission statement and a direction but leaving it a large latitude to implement it and decide on the details. That latitude has a legal implication since the agency is generally responsible for setting and enforcing standards.

The Chevron Deference is the legal doctrine that since congress delegated its power to the agency as matter and implementation experts, the agency's policy decisions should be deferred to so long as:

- it's legally ambiguous aka congress has not answered the precise issue themselves

- it is a permissible construction of the statute

The entire point of the chevron statute is that it's not up to the judicial branch to set government policy, and if a problem is a legal void then they have no authority, and unless and until congress makes a specific decision the agency does.

[intended]

The courts are HIGHLY ideologically divided.

Take a look at the recent Murthy verdict and Justice Alito’s dissenting opinion.

The point is to avoid “experts”.

[refurb]

The US is a constitutional republic, not a dictatorship of experts. Go to Singapore if you want that.

What I find funny is how the court is simply asking Congress to do their job - be clear in the intent of how laws should be executed. None of this "well, I'll leave it up to unelected bureaucrats to decide" and people think this is somehow a bad thing.

[malcolmgreaves]

> "well, I'll leave it up to unelected bureaucrats to decide"

This is not *at all* related to what the Chevron defense is about.

[refurb]

It absolutely is.

"is a legal test for when U.S. federal courts must defer to a government agency's interpretation of a law or statute."

The idea Congress could pass a law "you can't pollute", and then a all of the legal details behind it aren't actually a part of the law, but rather "administrative decisions" by unelected state apparatus is a run-around of the system.

Congress can still pass such laws, and bureaucrats can create rules. The only difference is now the courts can overturn their interpretation.

How is that not a good thing?

[malcolmgreaves]

Because congress cannot predict which new chemicals will be invited. They cannot act quickly enough to actually adapt to realities of the world today.

Is CO2 a pollutant? Who decides? Congress or scientists? Judges or scientists?

Now do that for every tiny detail of every part of every law.

It is computationally intractable to write laws specifying every possible scenario and exactly how an agency should act.

I don’t think you realize that these laws were passed with the understanding that agencies would fill in these gaps. Congress wanted these agencies to make these decisions at the time these laws creating said agencies were passed.

[navigate8310]

It looks like the Court may inadvertently cause substantial delays in implementing projects due to the fear it might instill in bureaucrats.

[refurb]

> due to the fear it might instill in bureaucrats

Bureaucrats living in fear that the laws they pass might be held up to scrutiny?

That sounds like a good thing!

[saveferris]

But, this decision didn't take those powers from Congress. It took those powers from federal agencies. Congress empowers the agencies, yes. But, Congress also deferred any technical decisioning to the agencies. Those agencies are filled with actual experts who are fully committed to their field. Now, the court just said that those experts aren't the right place to enforce anything but judges are.

[megaman821]

These could easily by Donald Trump's experts soon. And if so, will you hold true to this line of reasoning?

[dilawar]

>Personally, I would trust the nations top lawyers more than most of the congress members we have. However, it doesn't take much imagination to see the new issues that could arise)

Good luck with this.

At least these corrupt politicians come to face the music every four years.

[datavirtue]

These judges need to face election like most judges, and we need more. I agree.

[brookst]

> because the large group of politicians can't get their act together and pass well-reasoned and descriptive laws

How do you figure? This ruling says that Congress must be domain experts in every area, and agencies must merely implement the specific policies that Congress dictates.

Is that even possible? For anyone? Sure, Congress is dysfunctional but so what? This new regime is unworkable, and it doesn't matter if it's dysfunctional politicians or "top lawyers".

[mike_hearn]

People on this thread are talking as if this decision stops Congress delegating powers to the executive, or the executive drafting laws for Congress to pass. It clearly does neither.

It's actually constitutionally entirely reasonable to demand that lawmakers are the people who make law, because there's no specific reason to assume that the volume of laws should naturally drown the people responsible for them. But even if you do assume that, nothing in this judgement would restrict the volume of laws passed in any way. It's just not about that at all.

[andyjohnson0]

The "volume of laws" required to regulate a complex modern society is far greater than that required for the US 200+ years ago. Thats why successful nations use rule-making agencies to regulate commerce, environmental protection, workplace safety, etc. Expecting the legislature to do it all is just not going to scale - which I suspect is the objective. The people behind these decisions want an overloaded, ineffectual legal system because that creates the best conditions for unrestricted accumulation of wealth and power.

[somenameforme]

I think you're missing the ideological motivation. It's all about ensuring a healthier system of checks and balances. When courts are forced to defer to unelected bureaucrats, they serve basically no purpose - yet our entire legal system is supposed to be predicated on checks and balances at all levels. By returning the ability of courts to hear and legally judge the merits of law, at their discretion, you help maintain an overall healthier system of checks and balances.

It all comes down to centralization vs decentralization. In a completely decentralized system you will never have an amazing outcome, because there will always be plenty of people doing stupid things - this includes judges. Yet you will also never have a horrible system, for basically the same reason - there will always be plenty of people doing 'smart' things. By contrast, centralized systems can yield a complete utopia under the oversight of socially motivated, intelligent, and highly capable leadership. Yet they can also yield the most unimaginably horrific dystopias under self centered, foolish, and incapable leadership.

So which does one prefer? In the end I suspect this is one of those issues where we all think other people think the same, but they most certainly do not. I personally could not imagine anything other than a system decentralized, to its greatest extremes, in every way imaginable. Because if I look at the political types of modern times "socially motivated, intelligent, and highly capable" are not generally the first words that come to mind.

[mike_hearn]

> The "volume of laws" required to regulate a complex modern society is far greater than that required for the US 200+ years ago.

I'm not going to get into debating this directly, but please be aware that arguments about the complexity of society are ideological in nature. It's not a simple factual matter on which there's widespread agreement. Many conservatives don't even agree with the premise that society has such a thing as complexity, or if it did that there's a higher level today than in the past.

[beaeglebeachedd]

Excellent. Deregulate then. That's the desired effect of this anyway.

[brookst]

The desired effect is to break the federal government so states that want to e.g. pollute the environment and leave the poor uneducated can do so without interference.

[zaphar]

Congress people are supposed to hire and listen to domain experts in the field they legislate on.

[dec0dedab0de]

Congress could hire their own experts instead of having them work for the president.

[brookst]

But that means they would never be done with any law. Rather than creating the EPA in the 70’s and funding and authorizing it to do its thing, every session of congress would have to consider every topic that comes before the EPA every year.

It’s unworkable. And that is the goal.

[dec0dedab0de]

but that’s better than an unelected group answering to the president coming up with rules on their own.

[mlsu]

This might be a cynical view of things, but I think it's planned, rather than a happenstance result of dysfunction. Gosh gee Willikers, the fellers in congress just can't get anything done ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

It's no coincidence that Republicans simultaneously obstruct congress AND have a well-oiled machine to get their political allies on the bench. The playbook is like this:

- The Federalist Society establishes a pipeline of ideologically consistent judges. From law school to the supreme court.

- Congress blocks anything and everything on the legislative, so that any actual new change to the laws of the land come from new interpretations by the courts.

- This bloc in the lower courts works to bubble up good cases when they come, to get them before the higher courts.

- Every time there is a Republican in the executive, they appoint as many judges as they possibly can from this ideological bloc [1]. This ensures that a good case, when it comes, has a clear path from the bottom (local) courts to the top (supreme) court. The merits of appointees do not matter in the selection process - only a pledge of ideological fealty.

This project has been actively working for decades to change policy. There is nothing like this on the other side of the aisle. These are lifetime appointments. You cannot win on "good faith" against tactics like this. "Good faith" is insisting that the Judicial is "not political," it's not stepping down when it's politically opportune to do so.

[1] "At the 2018 Federalist Society gala, Orrin Hatch, the former Republican senator from Utah, declared, to the crowd’s delight, “Some have accused President Trump of outsourcing his judicial selection process to the Federalist Society. I say, ‘Damn right!’” https://www.nytimes.com/2020/05/20/opinion/trump-judges-fede...