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PaperclipPerfector  1yr ago (text post)   28780 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of May 29, 2023

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As usual with the Supreme Court it does look like Congress really needs to step in and clarify their law.

This. For the most part, the Supreme Court ought to enforce the law as written, only bending words when the strict wording leads to absurdities that were obviously unintended. If Congress wants X, they need to write a law that unambiguously says X.

Honestly, I would like for some sort of formalized law amendment process that can be initialized by the Supreme Court. Something like "This Law is vague, you need to fix it. We've interpreted it as X for this particular case. If that's what it's supposed to be in the future, please reword the Law to state that less ambiguously. If you meant something else, please reword the Law to state that less ambiguously and we can apply that to future cases. But something needs to change here." And then Congress has a limited time to go through some version of the Lawmaking process to fix that Law and clarify their intentions.

For the most part, the Supreme Court ought to enforce the law as written, only bending words when the strict wording leads to absurdities that were obviously unintended. If Congress wants X, they need to write a law that unambiguously says X.

They've tried.

From the decision:

In addition, it would be odd indeed if Congress had tucked an important expansion to the reach of the CWA into convoluted language in a relatively obscure provision concerning state permitting programs. We have often remarked that Congress does not “hide elephants in mouseholes” by “alter[ing] the fundamental details of a regulatory scheme in vague terms or ancillary provisions.” Whitman v. American Trucking Assns., Inc., 531 U. S. 457, 468 (2001). We cannot agree with such an implausible interpretation here.

Of course this is a conservative thing.

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