Hacker News Reader

Although, I was hoping for forgiveness to proceed. The decision is not really the upsetting part (for me). IMO the interpretations of the legal framework and decisions for SCOTUS often quite conveniently align to modern political party lines.

As I've mentioned in another comment, SCOTUS is compromised by political interests despite the facade of impartiality. The legal framework we have is no different than the bible or quran or any other text that has produces religions, political parties or ideologies. There are many interpretations one could make about such texts, but somehow judgement often is split by modern party affiliation. It was kind of cool to think for a while that SCOTUS was just doing their job and above political polarization. I no longer hold faith in that belief.

Obviously the court is somewhat political (as it always has been). But I think modern reporting makes it seem far more that way than it actually is. For example look at Bostock from just a few years ago.

This explanation is always trotted out whenever a decision is unpopular, portraying the court as a neutral arbiter that's just reading the rules back to the public.

The truth is, that hasn't been the court's operating model since at least 1964, when the court decided Heart of Atlanta Motel v. United States (1964). In that case, the court decided that since someone could cross state lines to stay at a hotel, that Congress had the right to tell a business who their customers were under the Interstate Commerce clause.

For clarity, the Commerce Clause states that Congress has the right to Regulate Commerce with foreign Nations, and among the several States

The court is textualist or pragmatist depending on its political leaning. The court is political. The court has no code of ethics, and the mechanism to remove justices for bad behavior is ill-defined in the constitution. In summary, they get to play by their own rules, and pretending otherwise is pure fantasy.

Um, that was a unanimous decision where they indicated that the Commerce Clause extends the Civil Rights Act of 1964 to hotels that host travelers from outside a state. Essentially, the Court held the government could prevent the motel from discriminating on the basis of race under the Commerce Clause. Since the motel was positioned near Interstates 75 and 85 and received most of its business from outside Georgia, this showed that it had an impact on interstate commerce, which is all that is needed to justify Congress in exercising the Commerce Clause power. Please explain to me how is that political, given the Civil Rights Act?

It was political because the federal government had not previously had the right to regulate businesses within a state. Only states could do that themselves. But gradually this overreach of the federal government has expanded and now they can essentially regulate anything because it could hypothetically tangentially affect commerce (see Gonzales v Raich). It is clear that the framers did not intend the interstate commerce clause to be used in this way, they intended for states to be able to regulate most things themselves (the so-called “police power”).

I guess since the federal government is allowed to prevent various forms of discrimination, including on the basis of race, color, religion, sex, or national origin, this so-called overreach makes sense. And I suppose since one particular party wants to discriminate against those people, that makes it political?

The older I get, the more I see States' Rights as a smokescreen that originally protected slavery, and is now used to block civil rights, health care, privacy rights, and environmental protection.

I would say the court has been political since at least Dred Scott and probably more like since John Marshall.

To add to this, it frustrates me when people complain about institutions being "undemocratic" and then get upset by the Supreme Court upholding the authority of congress.

I get that they are striking down laws that might be good things. But keep in mind that we are all guilty of picking and choosing our justification when it fits our side.

> So often it seems that people are upset about SCOTUS decisions, especially when it's to strike down an existing law

> Don't blame the Court when they're doing their job properly

Part of the problem is that, there isn't a lot of widespread confidence that they are doing their job properly. When they do their job properly, part of that is to strike down bad laws. But the mere fact of them striking down a law doesn't mean that they did their job properly.

There's not a lot of trust in the Supreme Court right now—this Court especially.

The Supreme Court manufacturered a "Major Questions" doctrine that's vague enough to apply to anything, but in practice only to policies that the Republican judge majority has ideological disagreements with. I encourage you to read the court's decision. It's partisanship packaged in ad hoc legal justification.

So are you admitting that the decision we're talking about here is a good one, and just lamenting that it isn't applied in certain other cases? Which are the cases where you believe it should have been applied?

Or are you saying that the Major Questions doctrine is bad, and that so long as some addled brain can come up with the slightest chain of rationale to something in an otherwise-unrelated law, we should always open the floodgates? Because if legislating leads to such danger of misinterpretation, then I think we should all be praying for a whole lot more gridlock so that the Executive (whatever party he/she may be from) gets less rationale to do whatever the heck they want.

>So are you admitting that the decision we're talking about here is a good one

Quote where I'm "admitting" that the decision is good.

Go ahead and read the dissent if you think the Court was acting properly here.

Big stretch to say the court was doing it's job properly here