Comment by mrtesthah
1 year ago
>No, this changes nothing about the relationship between the branches. The judicial and legislative branches still have exactly the same roles and responsibilities they've always had.
That's blatantly false. You need to educate yourself on how our constitutional order actually works and how this EO attempts to claim illegitimate power.
https://www.reddit.com/r/law/comments/1isvzgu/the_full_execu...
>deciding they know better than the President and the Attorney General and making up their own interpretations of the law to follow instead?
Also false. The courts interpret the law and dictate what is legal to the bureaucrats. Under that executive order, the president -- rather than the courts -- interprets the law, which clearly violates separation of powers. You have thrice ignored this most basic fact.
If you're being truthful, then you are grossly misinformed. If you are not, then you're opposed to a free America. Either way this needs to be explained to anyone else reading this thread.
>Real internet tough guy huh.
Yep, it's all a big joke until you find yourself sitting in federal prison because you said something the president didn't like. That's where ignoring the courts will take us.
Your own link doesn't back up your claims. There is no sound constitutional or even legal basis for the concept of an independent regulatory agency, and to the extent that they exist they do exactly the thing you claim to be concerned about - combining legislative and executive power in the same entity, with all the accountability problems that implies. (The likes of the SEC even ran their own courts and judges as well, although the supreme court has thankfully put a stop to most of that now). Making it clear that executive agencies are part of the executive and accountable to the executive is a positive step.
The judicial branch doesn't interpret the law prospectively, it rules on cases and controversies. This EO doesn't affect court rulings, it's about interpretation as done by (from your own link) "agency lawyers, inspectors general, and independent counsel". It puts those people in the executive hierarchy and makes them accountable to someone.
>It puts those people in the executive hierarchy and makes them accountable to someone.
Again, that executive hierarchy has always been accountable to the courts.
Think about the difference between consulting independent agency lawyers vs the attorney general before taking action. What does that look like in practice? The attorney general and/or office of the president can now unilaterally decide that something grossly unconstitutional (e.g., eliminating birthright citizenship) is actually "legal" and instruct all federal employees to enact it on that basis. We then have to wait for courts to intervene, possibly for it to reach the supreme court, which could take a long time. In that time, the entire apparatus of the federal government would be engaged in gross violations of its citizens rights. Whereas before, the interpretation of the law would have been distributed across all the agencies, making it much harder to turn them toward nefarious ends.
Now let's go one step farther. Trump has already appointed cronies loyal to him to the federal agencies, so they won't go against him under any circumstance. As more of the federal workforce is replaced with loyal cronies (and that's indeed part of Project 2025), fewer and fewer barriers will stand in the way of complete dictatorship. Attacking the power of independent agencies is the first concrete step to making that happen.
https://www.americanprogress.org/article/project-2025-would-...
Maybe you think Project 2025 isn't happening? You'd be wrong -- it's being enacted as we speak:
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1QGG6wNHna-1tt91yXNkO...
> The attorney general and/or office of the president can now unilaterally decide that something grossly unconstitutional (e.g., eliminating birthright citizenship) is actually "legal" and instruct all federal employees to enact it on that basis. We then have to wait for courts to intervene, possibly for it to reach the supreme court, which could take a long time.
If the president ordered something actually grossly unconstitutional (and reversing Wong Kim Ark, a decision that the Supreme Court itself was split on, is hardly a good example of that), it would be the senate's duty to impeach.
The legal system is indeed overly slow to come down on federal agencies that do the wrong thing. If your side is onboard with improving that, that's all to the good.
> Whereas before, the interpretation of the law would have been distributed across all the agencies, making it much harder to turn them toward nefarious ends.
Unaccountability cuts both ways. Yes, if each agency is doing its own interpretation of the law, that makes it harder for elected officials to control what those agencies do. I don't see that as a good thing.
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