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Comment by kergonath | Hacker News Reader

That is not a question of good guys and bad guys. It’s just that a system where the legislative branch micro-manages things like electrical safety in new homes to what you’re allowed to put in baby formula is completely unworkable. If “the bad guys” get into power, then the agency is still checked by the courts that are perfectly able to stop blatant overreach.

OTOH, congress physically cannot keep abreast of the state of the art in all of medicine to have an informed opinion on whether to ban or control a specific compound that turned out to be carcinogenic, to give but one example.

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It is incorrect, but widespread among left-leaning pundits, that this ruling will force Congress to micromanage everything that would normally be left to the agencies. Agencies can still make rules. If Congress would like to be out of the details business, they can even write statutes that explicitly delegate rule making to the agencies. What this does is prevent agencies from acting in ways that are easily interpreted as _not_ conforming with law. The Chevron test told judges that they have to defer to the agencies _even when_ they conclude that the agencies are misreading the laws, as long as the agencies aren't being manifestly unreasonable. This has led to agencies very savilly expanding their power without any new statutory authority simply because they have good lawyers who know how to craft it in a way that survives a Chevron test. The SC just said something I find completely reasonable: from now on, judges have to interpret the law as its written and decide cases based on whether or not the agency is complying with the law. They cannot abrogate their duties to be the experts on legal analysis simply out of a desire to defer to the agency's interpretation. I think it's correctly decided because Chevron is an illogical mess -- why is it that in one situation and one situation only, our legal system treated one of the parties in a suit as inherently having more authority to intepret the law than a court itself? It is not persuasive to me that we should say "well, because the courts can't be experts," as this is not an argument that works in any other situation where a court must make legal rulings in the face of experts -- such as bankruptcy proceedings, antitrust cases, etc.

Yes, exactly. Perfectly put.

This decision leaves it perfectly up to Congress to write a law stating "such and such an agency shall determine, maintain and enforce electrical standards". It just means the agency can't decide to do so on their own.

Currently, in the minds of much of the American electorate, it is good guys and bad guys.

You are correct that the US Constitution is poorly suited to governing a nation of ~1/3 billion people in the modern world. Unfortunately, the current political environment make fixing things impossible.

> You are correct that the US Constitution is poorly suited to governing a nation of ~1/3 billion people in the modern world.

Which is exactly why this is such a terrible decision.

What political environment makes fixing things possible? Countries scraping their constitutions tend to be poor ones just finishing revolutions which more often that not creates dictators (1799 France included). Except, very few exceptions

I was going to cite France as an exception, 'till you mentioned it.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/French_Republics

Admittedly, far more an exception than an ideal to emulate.

The other "typical case" is countries liberated from military occupation...

Few countries have such a weird fetish for a 1770s bit of legislation. In most countries with a written constitution, it was at least updated at some point in the 20th century. It is not a bad thing. The state of the art in all domains has progressed quite a bit in the last 2 centuries, including in philosophy, political science, and plain science in general.

The US is pretty much alone in that respect. So it’s easy to say that a lot of terrible regimes were enabled by constitutional change. Most of them were. But so were most of the regimes that are much more democratic than the US.

This mirrors the weird fetish that some American Christian’s seem to have with their bible. These things were written by humans. So, of course they are imperfect and can be discussed and improved upon.

France went through counter-revolution, counter-counter revolution, empire, revolution, restoration, revolution, re-restoration, revolution, empire, revolution, republic, WWII, and republic. The US never came anywhere close this kind of collective trauma, even at the worst times of the secession war. Most countries are not protected by two ocean, a small border in the south and a compliant neighbour in the north. Most countries don’t have the luxury of hanging on a thoroughly outdated bit of political philosophy.

The US health care is so expensive, is largely due to regulation like HIPPA that makes administrative cost astronomically high.

It is not a good idea to have those agencies roam freely imposing regulation that they might not able to foresee the economic consequences

Ahh, yes, the onerous responsibility of not sharing our medical information with parties irresponsibly is the cause of expensive healthcare in the United States. Clearly.

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