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Comment by ghaff | Hacker News Reader

News related to this a few days ago got me thinking that people who want the US Supreme Court to ratify "sensible" mandates and orders coming out of the Executive Branch even if they're legally sketchy should perhaps be careful what they wish for.

Korematsu v. United States which basically upheld FDR's executive order is probably one of the least defensible SCOTUS decisions of all time and definitely one of the worst if you include a few pre-Civil War cases.

ADDED: And, yes, SCOTUS is political too but it should act as at least some degree of check. I'm also not specifically commenting on any particular decision but I've certainly read decisions (as a non-lawyer) that were counter to my personal preference but which seemed the right thing legally.

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> News related to this a few days ago got me thinking that people who want the US Supreme Court to ratify "sensible" mandates and orders coming out of the Executive Branch even if they're legally sketchy should perhaps be careful what they wish for.

Please explain how science-supported public health measures to control the spread of a deadly infectious disease are similar to imprisonment of a group based on their nationality because they were assumed to be helping the enemy during a way.

You just compared antibiotics and the fear of eclipses.

If institutions can't tell these apart they have already failed...all of them.

SCOTUS is a legal institution that interprets laws given the facts and case in front of them. It is not their job to ratify Executive powers in the absence of Congressional action. They are not, nor should they be, a backup Congress.

> SCOTUS is a legal institution that interprets laws given the facts and case in front of them.

>that people who want the US Supreme Court to ratify "sensible" mandates and orders coming out of the Executive Branch even if they're legally sketchy should perhaps be careful what they wish for.

Yes...based on facts and laws...what are the facts and the laws in each case. Start with the facts, they are pretty simple.

The facts before them, which are provided by the plaintiff’s and defendant’s lawyers who are both charged with providing their best arguments; and according to the laws written by Congress.

This is not a small distinction.

You can read the decisions and there's no shortage of expert commentary on important SCOTUS decisions. If you actually care you're far better off going there than relying on comments from mostly non-lawyers.

The use of facts in the Supreme Court is to determine whether a law is legal, not good policy. The court is a check on legality of the actions of other two branches, not a check on their judgement.

I assume that any mandates re: vaccinations passed by states that roughly conformed to the facts of Jacobson v. Massachusetts would probably not even be taken up by SCOTUS as they would be matters of settled law (and have been effectively held up in more recent cases related to school vax requirements). However, expanding this to OSHA requirements was a bridge too far for (some) justices.

At the time, there was a widespread fear, even among (as someone else mentioned) liberal icon FDR, that there was a significant security risk associated with Japanese-descended Americans. Even so, SCOTUS should have (ideally) said there was no legal case for interning them or (less ideally but better) simply declined to hear the case. It sounds very similar if the legal justification in equally weak. It's not the job of SCOTUS to make up legal reasoning for whatever the other branches of government want to do even if you (or the majority) agree with them.

You don't understand - that won't happen because the good guys are in charge now.

Not sure if you're being sarcastic but it was liberal icon FDR who sent these citizens to prison camps.

Don't worry, he'll get cancelled soon enough. That way, there wont be a problem giving good guy government more power in the future.

I assume the comment (and early downvotes) was related to the fact that one could take this as commentary on SCOTUS shooting down some COVID vaccination mandates (along party lines). Which admittedly is what mostly triggered my thinking about the point.

Liberal in the traditional, economic, sense. On the social scale, he was still a racist and segregation guy ( on par for the times in the US, but segregation caused quite some issues around US troops abroad).

Please don't post unsubstantive comments or take HN threads further into hellish flamewar. It's not what this site is for, and it destroys what it is for. We want curious conversation here.

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