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Comment by brookst | Hacker News Reader

It seems crazy that Congress does not have the authority to delegate implementation details to experts. I just don't see anything in the Constitution that forbids that.

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It does, the problem is the law as written doesn’t explicitly say that and this court is all about textualism when convenient.

Exactly, only when convenient. A glaring example of this is when they decided that section 3 of the Fourteenth Amendment did not disqualify Trump from the ballot. The plain language is not complicated:

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No person shall be a Senator or Representative in Congress, or elector of President and Vice President, or hold any office, civil or military, under the United States, or under any State, who, having previously taken an oath, as a member of Congress, or as an officer of the United States, or as a member of any State legislature, or as an executive or judicial officer of any State, to support the Constitution of the United States, shall have engaged in insurrection or rebellion against the same, or given aid or comfort to the enemies thereof. But Congress may, by a vote of two-thirds of each House, remove such disability.

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Note that this amendment provides a legislative remedy: Congress can remove the disability by a two-thirds vote. Textualism, but only when it serves their purposes.

The case you’re referring to, Trump v. Anderson, was decided unanimously.

But that’s the point! The liberal justices could rule by taking into account any number of contingent factors established by decades of precedent. But the strict constitutionalists - the conservatives - should have ruled according to the text of the constitution, which is what they constantly claim they are doing. Except it seems to be just when that happens to coincide with their ideological priors.

"should have ruled according to the text of the constitution"

The actual ruling was NOT an "textualist" interpretation at all.

Here's a summary with the linked ruling in case you're interested:

https://www.scotusblog.com/2024/03/supreme-court-rules-state...

> The actual ruling was NOT an "textualist" interpretation at all.

That’s precisely my point. They are textualists when it’s convenient. When the textualist outcome would be unsatisfactory from an ideological perspective, then they aren’t textualists any more.

That's one possibility.

Another is that they're "originalists" in their interpretation. How do their decisions hold up if you apply that perspective?

Are there provisions in the Constitution for one Branch to delegate its powers to another?

There’s no rule against it, and it’s what Congress has done, so it’s what’s happening.

Sure there is: Article I, Section 1

All legislative Powers herein granted shall be vested in a Congress of the United States, which shall consist of a Senate and House of Representatives.

Anything short of "all" contradicts that.

Now you need to find somewhere that says "Oh, btw.. we didn't mean 'All' but really 'some' because Congress might give some legislative powers to other branches."

That doesn't seen like a reasonable interpretation. The power is vested in Congress, so they can use it. Delegating authority to an agent is not exactly novel and it definitely doesn't somehow mean that Congress no longer has that power.

So if I give you complete authority to design and implement a new exommerce system, it means you must do it single-handedly with no delegation to anyone?

This “anything not expressly allowed must be forbidden” is the exact opposite of how US law works.

> This “anything not expressly allowed must be forbidden” is the exact opposite of how US law works.

With regards to the Constitution, the 10th Amendment would disagree.

Do you understand the implication of the answer to that question being "No, and it cannot delegate those powers"?

Congress would have to vote on giving approval for each new drug, not the FDA's bureaucrats.

Congress would have to vote on each individual edge case for welfare programs (SNAP, Social Security, Medicaid, etc), not their respective agencies.

Congress would have to vote on which individual people get Pell grants, how much, and how much their parents are expected to contribute to their university schooling, not the Department of Education.

Congress would have to vote to approve contracts for every federal agency.

The federal government would not function without some degree of delegation.

Legislative powers, not all powers.

You don't change the law every time a new drug gets approved, you grant it certification (the framework of which is based in existing legislation). You'd only need Congress to get involved if you wanted to change the approval process itself

The constitution arguably wasn't designed for a government that did much of what it's doing. Shouldn't be hard to pass an amendment to legalize it if it's that necessary right? We needed an amendment just to federally ban booze for God's sake.

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