Comment by rdbl27
15 hours ago
Nationwide injunctions are a very recent legal innovation -- as in, extremely rare until the 2000s, and uncommon until the 2010s.
They were not how this situation was handled for nearly all of the existence of the United States.
Seems like a perfectly valid one. If the government is violating the constitution or a persons rights why should there be suits all across the country to get that recognized? Especially when the question isn't on something with a lot of particularized tests that's sensitive to the exact case, eg 4th amendment law? Why should rights be so dependent on someone in my particular part of the country having sued?
> If the government is violating the constitution or a persons rights why should there be suits all across the country to get that recognized?
Because one judge in one county shouldn't be defining the laws for the whole country? Sure it's great when they issue a ruling you like, but what about when it's a ruling that you don't. If it's a knife-edge situation then letting several judges rule and having the supreme court sort it out is the right thing; if there's an obvious right answer then every court will rule the same way and it doesn't matter.
> Why should rights be so dependent on someone in my particular part of the country having sued?
Your rights are always dependent on your willingness to sue to defend them. It's nice if someone else does the legwork and sets the precedent, but you shouldn't depend on that.
On the other side, why should one crazed/corrupt judge in some state which has nothing to do with me be able to infringe on my freedoms and make my life worse? Worse, why is it possible to jurisdiction shop for the single bad actor and impose your will on the entire country?
You're not wrong, but (like most issues in a 350M-person country) it's complicated. The system is tailored to some expected level/type of corruption and bad actors. If you expect that the government is basically fine and that out of 50M people per region surely somebody will file suit if the issue is important then the current system makes a lot of sense. You get judges with more knowledge and awareness of your local issues, anything important still gets addressed, and you're resilient to some degree of random bad judges and bad actors. If those expectations are out of whack then you get worse outcomes.
In reality, the world is complicated enough that even boiling down the lists of judges and whatnot to that simple of a description is misleading at best. Neither solution is anywhere near optimal by itself. So...what next?