His opinion talks about considering whether the court overstepped it's bounds on those rulings, not whether those behaviors should or shouldn't be illegal.
> The purpose of SCOTUS isn’t to rule based on what the desired outcome is, it’s to rule based on what the law explicitly does say and is permitted to say per the Constitution.
That's a farcical excuse to achieve the desired outcome. If the only "acceptable expert advice" is 200 years old, then they're just being obstinate.
The supreme Court primarily hears important cases where there are strong and reasonable legal arguments on each side. The idea that they can just apply the law in these cases is a bit unrealistic. It's just not that clear cut in the majority of SC cases.
In order to justify the New Deal the Court lowered its standard for state infringement of liberty to: "You just need any reason for this law, it doesn't have to be a good one"
I also think it is reasonable - however - what the SC has done is throw out precedent here - there is a tremendous amount of "law" that has not been codified by the constitution or by congress, but instead relies on decades and decades of cases that have come before the supreme court. So in this instance they have specifically decided that these previous decisions were wrong and reversed it. I believe this was done selectively and purposefully.
> Consider that the US Supreme Court does not render advisory opinions; to overturn an unconstitutional law, one must violate it first, then defend oneself all the way to the Supremes.
Please don't take this the wrong way: Research this topic further!
SCOTUS can of course overturn any statute for any reason, valid or not, subject to very few practical restrictions. So when we're talking about where they'll intervene, we're always doing that with the proviso that we're predicting their behavior based on their charter and their history.
Having said that, the history of 4A law suggests that the word "reasonable" in 4A connotes a mandate for unusual deference to the legislature --- and SCOTUS already tends strongly towards deference.
> So the end goal even according to SCOTUS is for these measures to eventually become unconstitutional.
This shouldn't be an acceptable justification, "righting historical wrongs" is a highly subjective policy goal which shouldn't be relevant to a verdict of "constitutionality".
> The court isn't empowered to do something just because two parties agree.
It can find executing an innocent person to be unconstitutional under the Eighth Amendment, and that the statute preventing review of the case on its merits is similarly unconstitutional as a result.
Its job is to resolve cases and controversies. If that requires finding the Constitution supersedes a law (or a federal law supersedes a state law), so be it.
They don't even have to be reasonable justifications, judging by the justifications they've used for other rulings recently.
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