Comment by overfeed
8 months ago
The fourt cases related to Watergate established that receiving classified information is not illegal, and affirmed 1A rights. I'd argue it's a exactly the same as a journalist overhearing this motley crew discussing the war plan in the halls of the White House without being aware there's a journalist nearby. I wouldn't bank on the current supreme court to uphold precedence, or the current administration persecuting the journalist for "hacking" into a "secure" government chat group - which is what they'll allege without evidence. I suspect the journalist cares more about national security than the cowboys in the chat group, and is acutely aware that they are a target for hacking by nation-states, which would leak classified information.
> I would bank in the current supreme court to uphold precedence
Counting on SCOTUS to respect precedent at this point is either extremely optimistic or extremely naive.
Oh, that was a typo. I do not trust the current supreme court to uphold precedence over naked partisanship.
The US Supreme Court hews close to precedent. The only two significant overturned decisions in the last decade are Roe v Wade, which regardless of your views on abortion was a poorly reasoned decision, which was really judicial legislation, that had to be essentially amended several times (whether abortion should be permitted is a separate question from whether Roe was good law, which it obviously wasn't) and Chevron, which was contrary to the most fundamental principles of the rule of law (that is, that the interpretation of the law is a fundamentally judicial function).
Neither were really political decisions. The SCOTUS doesn't split along ideological or party lines all the time. It often splits in different ways, and often makes decisions on very politically heated topics unanimously. You should have more confidence in it. It is the least bad of your three major institutions of government by far.
To go back to Chevron, you have to look beyond the US and understand that for anyone else anywhere else in the world, the idea of the courts deferring in their interpretation of the law to executive agencies is just ridiculous. It never made any sense. Its result was inevitable: a new government was elected and suddenly the law changed overnight because government departments all published their new "interpretations" of the law. That is just silly, it makes a mockery of the principles of the rule of law, and it gives too much power to the government. Law should be made by parliament (which you call congress, for some reason) and rulemaking powers should be explicitly delegated to executive agencies where appropriate. Vagueness in the law should be interpreted and resolved by the courts, not by the executive in a way that is subject to political whimsy.
> The only two significant overturned decisions in the last decade are Roe [...] and Chevron
That's really not true; just a couple of the other major decisions overturned in the last decade:
Apodaca v. Oregon, holding that while the 14th Amendment did incorporate the right to jury trial against the States, it did not incorporate the unanimity requirement that the Supreme Court has found against the federal government in the 6th Amendment against the states. (reversed in Ramos v. Louisiana, 2020.)
Abood v. Detroit Board of Education, holding that a certiied public-sector union could collect an “agency fee” attributable to representational activities but not other union functions to represented non-member employees. Reversed by Janus v. American Federation of State, County, and Municipal Employees Council 31 (2018).
Snyder v. United States, where it was decided that 'gratuities' after the fact are not bribes.
https://www.scotusblog.com/2024/06/supreme-court-limits-scop...
Maybe instead of significant I should have said significantly publicly controversial, or something along those lines.
>To go back to Chevron, you have to look beyond the US and understand that for anyone else anywhere else in the world, the idea of the courts deferring in their interpretation of the law to executive agencies is just ridiculous
My interpretation is difficult and complex domain specific regulation were handled by agency experts, and not lawyers. It is now up to congress to detail very specifically this potentially difficult regulation and to quickly adjust when research changes.
Is my interpretation incorrect? Since to me this current approach sounds terrible, inflexibly and set-up to fail.
Yes, it's about attacking the means by which we collectively hold bad actors in check. Also other countries absolutely do delegate regulatory minutae to experts. If we can delegate law making to elected representatives, we can do the same for regulations to ensure they do what is intended.
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Chevron was not about deciding regulation details.
It was about who interprets what a law an agency administers means.
Before Chevron, an agency could say "we interpret this law to mean we can do X", and then no one could stop it from doing X. That's a huge amount of unchecked power!
Now an impartial court get to interpret what laws mean. Seems like the obviously right thing to me.
Here are two examples.
First, a made up but illustrative one. The statute says something vague like "a term in a standard form consumer contract that is oppressive or unconscionable is void." In a common law system (anything derived from English law, including US, Australia, etc) the meaning of these terms, if they aren't defined elsewhere in the statute, is figured out based on decided cases. Someone will argue that it covers a particular clause, and the judge will decide if it does. The judge might give a detailed test for what constitutes "oppressive" or might reuse an existing one from a different context or whatever. The decision might be appealed and a panel of judges decide the meaning. But over time, and as cases are decided, the meaning becomes clear. You can point to half a dozen examples of clearly oppressive clauses and a dozen that clearly aren't, there is a legal test for what counts, etc. The law develops towards certainty and the doctrine of precedent also means it stabilises: it isn't going to change its meaning just because new judges are appointed, because they generally follow precedent pretty closely.
Under the Chevron doctrine, there is an extra step. If a government agency says that its interpretation is that "oppressive" means X, then if that interpretation is reasonable, if it is open on the wording of the statute, then the inquiry stops there. The court defers to the government agency. This has the benefit, admittedly, that the definition can change over time according to changing conditions. But it has downsides. It is giving the job of deciding what laws mean to the government, rather than the judiciary. The government is meant to act according to law, not to interpret it. That isn't the executive's proper function. But quite apart from the philosophical objections, it is no good for stability. A new government is elected and the official interpretation changes. This happens a lot. A new government is elected and it is decided that now "restraint of trade" clauses in employment contracts are legal. Four years later they're unenforceable. Four years layer they're enforceable again. No laws changed, no regulations are passed, a government agency just releases a new statement of its official interpretation of the law.
That is quite different to, e.g., there being a statute saying "terms in consumer contracts must accord with the regulations promulgated by the department of consumer protection as in force at the date of execution of the contract" because:
1. It is clear what is delegated to the executive and what is not.
2. It is clear that the definition applied is the definition at the time the contract was signed, and the "interpretation" is not retrospective.
3. It is still up to the court to give a clear, consistent, precedential ruling as to the meaning of the regulations themselves.
This example is real: Chevron itself. There, the EPA changed the definition of "source" of air pollution, without Congressional approval, so that "source" was much narrower (making pollution harder to regulate).
> The SCOTUS doesn't split along ideological or party lines all the time.
It happens enough on cases that matter that it's farcical not to put (R) and (D) after the names of the justices, for clarity, when discussing them in the press.
The fact that this is getting downvoted into the ground really shows the delta between reality and what the members of this site want to convince themselves is reality.
The majority of SCOTUS decisions are unanimous.
Historically it has not been unanimous: https://news.bloomberglaw.com/us-law-week/supreme-court-unan...
And as the article says the courts have been increasingly looking at narrowly scoped cases that are less precedent changing.