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Comment by gjsman-1000 | Hacker News Reader

Does he seriously think the US SCOTUS is going to override the will of 79 senators, for the sake of a company with documented ties to the Chinese Communist Party?

If I was a senator, I would consider that almost treasonous. Frankly, even if you disagree with the vote, a democracy can and should be able to make such judgement calls. At that rate, the CCP should be able to buy beachfront property in California, ship military and nuclear weapons to the property, and claim that we can’t stop them because they paid the import fees.

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Isn't overriding the will of senators literally the point of the supreme court?

No. The Supreme Court exists primarily to interpret the law, reconcile laws with other laws, and address vague language or other inconsistencies. Overriding the will of senators, immediately after a bill’s passing, is very rare and threatens their perceived legitimacy. Senators can always impeach SCOTUS judges, and to do such an act begs for it.

It is... not rare.

https://constitution.congress.gov/resources/unconstitutional...

Considering Congress passes almost 500 laws per year (1229 from 2019 to 2021, 1234 [sic] from 2021 to 2023), it is a little less than 1% of cases.

But that’s just the federal branch. Your list includes states and local municipalities - which makes the real number much, much lower. Much closer, arguably, to 0.1% or less of all legislation.

The fact remains that it is entirely within the role of the court to overturn unconstitutional legislation, which the court does regularly.

The idea that the court would not give proper scrutiny to a legislative act -- one which may violate the first amendment, fifth amendment, and may amount to an illegal bill of attainder -- just because it had support from the senate, well, that's just preposterous.

> Much closer, arguably, to 0.1% or less of all legislation.

You're missing the giant flip side of that coin; that local, state, and Federal courts can all determine laws conflict with other laws or the Constitution, and do so regularly.

(For example: This never needed to go to SCOTUS. https://www.aclum.org/en/press-releases/states-highest-court...)

Things largely get to SCOTUS when there's disagreement between the courts. (https://www.law.cornell.edu/wex/circuit_split / https://www.law.cornell.edu/rules/supct/rule_10)

If your town passes a "no black people allowed after 10pm" law, it'll never get to SCOTUS, but it's still unconstitutional. The first level of courts it encounters will immediately overturn it.

(Two other notes: clearly unconstitutional laws tend to be a bit rare, because they're a bit embarassing when they get readily overturned. A significant portion - as much as 20% - of those 500 average bills is naming post offices; for example, https://www.congress.gov/bill/117th-congress/house-bill/203. Much of the rest are similarly void of thorny constitutional questions.)

Judicial review has been the accepted norm since Marbury v Madison.

As a thought exercise I would argue 2A protects the right of a Chinese national owning nuclear weapons legally in the US.

> Frankly, even if you disagree with the vote, a democracy can and should be able to make such judgement calls

That's literally SCOTUS's job though, particularly as it relates to the US Constitution. The whole point is that unconstitutional laws "in theory" should be struck down.

> That's literally SCOTUS's job

Its job is to resolve cases and controversies. If that requires finding the Constitution supersedes a law (or a federal law supersedes a state law), so be it.

Right - so the question is: should the Senate be able to pass any law, no matter what, because it was overwhelmingly voted for? To me the "overwhelmingly voted for" criteria is not enough. Why would we even need a Supreme Court in that case? Just let the legislative branch do whatever it wants as long as most vote in favor.

> If I was a senator, I would consider that almost treasonous.

The Constitution - in this case, probably the First Amendment - very clearly limits what the Senate can do. The entire three-branch system is built on checks and balances of this nature.

> Frankly, even if you disagree with the vote, a democracy can and should be able to make such judgement calls.

Can we vote to put redheads in extermination camps?

Determining whether to allow a business incorporated offshore to operate in our country is completely incomparable to a inherited permanent genetic trait.

I won't be intentionally obtuse, but I was under the impression that basically all large tech companies are incorporated offshore. We think of them as American certainly, but when it comes time to pay taxes, I get the feeling they don't exude patriotic enthusiasm to do so. I'm quite sure that they feel much more allegiance to shareholders wherever they might be in the world than they do for Americans as a group.

1. That's completely missing the point. The will of the Senate isn't the only thing that matters in our system, as it has concrete protections even for minority rights (for example, free speech for Nazis, as distasteful as it is to most of us) that cannot be overridden by mere legislative fiat, and thank goodness for that.

2. This bill, among other things, tells American private companies they must censor their app stores by excluding a particular application. It is, inherently, an act of censorship, and I think there's a good chance it doesn't survive court review. At the very least, it'll be years of litigation.

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