(no subject)

[gunslnger.livejournal.com]

Judge’s Harsh Words for High Court

Since the 1930s, the Supreme Court has ordered lower courts to review economic regulations with an extremely deferential “rational basis test,” which requires only that such regulations be “rationally related” to a “legitimate government interest.” In practice, this amounts to no meaningful review at all. Courts applying the rational-basis test have concluded, for example, that states may shut down unlicensed florists to protect consumers from the hypothetical dangers of stray corsage pins. Indeed, the test is so deferential that one federal court of appeals upheld a law that restricted the sale of caskets for the sole purpose of “dishing out special economic benefits” to licensed funeral directors.

I'm glad there's some judges (at least one) that are able to see the problems that they're perpetuating. Even SCOTUS decisions need to be reviewed and reconsidered at some point just to make sure that we don't get locked into something that is actually untenable over the long term. And this isn't even dealing with actual decisions but merely with the guidelines for how to come to a decision, which should be much more flexible than they apparently are. I totally agree with Judge Brown's opinion here.