Which is ironic since FDR most of the Court decisions were nakedly partisan in the other direction, massively expanding the power and scope of the federal government well beyond would should be constitutionally allowable
Yes that is unfortunate. It appears that President Roosevelt forced the current expansive interpretation of the Commerce Clause by threatening to pack the Supreme Court with political cronies if the justices ruled against his New Deal legislation. Hopefully some day the Supreme Court will have the courage to overturn those precedents and limit federal government power to what the Constitution's authors originally intended.
You mean like how FDR threatened to do that during the new deal, and then the court backed down and let all sorts of unconstitutional stuff through?
When we ended a government of enumerated powers and everything could be done at the federal level without an amendment - great things like the drug war.
Yes, the ironic thing is that it's not even clear from the US constitution that the court should have the sweeping powers it has, and it certainly hasn't always had them. But like the pope declaring that the pope is infallible, they have decided that they should. And since elected politicians have found it expedient to play along for a long time, now it's not easy for them to go back.
Which is only convention, not by law, and in any case, just an arbitrary number.
FDR threatened to pack the court with lackeys if they didn't vote in favor of his programs.
Which raises the obvious question of, since that event, has the Supreme Court really even served as a check on executive power?
I suppose, at least, FDR would have had to answer to public opinion if he had actually carried out that threat. Unlike, say, if the secret FISA court were so threatened.
The Supreme Court is not a political organization. The rulings being made now are a continuation of 140 years of judicial precedent that alloted states enormous latitude in instituting their own laws, and that only ended in 1937, when FDR interfered with the SCOTUS's independence by threatening to "pack the court".
It’s kind of ironic that the Supreme Court keeps declaring parts of the government as unconstitutional, when its own powers are not defined in the constitution.
Edit: when the power of Judicial Review (to declare a law unconstitutional) was not defined in the constitution. It was a result of Hylton v United States in 1796 and Marbury v Madison in 1803
Many people disagree with that interpretation so its not at all obviously correct. It was not interpreted that way at all until FDR threatened to pack the court.
This was from the famous Stitch in Time that Saved Nine. Since the US Constitution does not put a limit on the number of Supreme Court justices, FDR threatened to increase the number and stack the court in his favor if they did not rule in his favor.
Given my understanding of how lower courts work on case law, this set a whole bunch of biased precedents from this one ruling. The ability of California to set good environmental law could still prevail if they could get a ruling using some other way like the 10th amendment.
Others have said this using different words, but I'm going to chime in anyway. I don't think the courts will have more power. SCOTUS is saying that congress needs to actually make clearer (better?) use of its power by being more explicit when legislating (i.e. when writing laws) instead of relying on the executive branch agencies (for those unfamiliar with the US political structure, agencies like the FDA, EPA, etc. are executive branch agencies that, ultimately, report to whomever is the current US president) to interpret and in many cases read into the laws that congress has passed.
The more practical reality of this ruling is, I think, this: there is no world where this is a win for anyone who believes in a bigger US federal government. This is a huge win for those people who believe the power of the federal government should be limited. It's likely the biggest challenge to the size of the federal government in my lifetime and I've been alive for a good bit. The dysfunctional congress that the US currently has makes it a certainty that in the short term countless regulations will be unenforceable and therefore this will be a picnic for anyone who is anti-regulation (note Trump in the debate last night where he talked about scrapping regulation. In comparison to this decision, Trump's regulation-slashing will look like he shot a rifle in comparison to the shotgun SCOTUS just fired).
Last comment: this SCOTUS has made it clear that the federal government will be massively restrained. There are two avenues by which they've made this clear: first, they have ruled very aggressively in favor of state's rights (especially when it comes to social issues like abortion), and, second, with this Chevron ruling, federal agencies will not be able to make decisions unless there is explicit intent in the laws that congress passes.
I'm having an extremely difficult time wrapping my head around just how epic of a change this SCOTUS has brought to the way the US population is governed, at both the state and federal level. Hard to really comprehend the gravity of the coming change, which will take decades and decades to fully understand.
It's interesting how this court consistently rules to limit the power of government when it is acting against corporations but happily expands the power of government when it is being wielded against people.
But increasingly that's what the supreme court has been doing. They are vastly overstepping their authority in multiple regards. More recent examples include their stance on the ability of congress to delegate authority to various agencies (See: the EPA restrictions on carbon emissions). It's very easily for the court to subvert the authority of other branches by forcing them to 'redelegate' or re-litigate previously authorized agencies knowing full well that congress has been in deadlock for partisan reasons.
So flip the entire thing and say Congress and the presidency were hyper-progressive. Do you not think this court would use the constitution to strike down their laws (say universal healthcare or something)? They are only rolling back these excesses because it fits their ideology.
It shouldn't be democratic, but for a non-democratic institution, the Supreme Court in the U.S. has outsized power at a level not originally intended in the constitution.
Federal power can be used to eliminate civil rights just as easily as it can be used to create them.
Besides, the congress stopped expanding civil rights decades ago. Now it only comes from the Supreme Court, which is unaffected by more federalism.
Congress could vote tomorrow to cement abortion as a right, or gay marriage as a right… but they choose not too. The cynic in me thinks that they choose not to so both sides can continue to raise money fear mongering about the Supreme Court.
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