talkpolitics | (no subject)

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.

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For one thing the War Powers Act, which is IMHO unconstitutional but the Court will never rule on it. The Court never cared about wading into politics in the old days, it's just an excuse now.

I think the reason was that it'd be a huge power grab for the supreme court to make such a ruling for or against either branch.

The SC can't just pick shit out to "rule on". Someone has to bring a suit. And the Congress and the Executive have an unspoken agreement to never go to court about it.

Plus, there are rules restricting which cases they're ALLOWED to take, depending on standing, political questions, whether the question has become moot, etc. Now, mabye they do take ADVANTAGE of these restrictions to avoid taking on certain... controversial... subjects... but I think it's more that they're just not allowed to.