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Comment by grogers | Hacker News Reader

IANAL but isn't any ruling by even a lower court precedent? Like if I sue the government for thing A and a lower court rules in my favor, doesn't that make the next plaintiff's case for sueing the government for thing A much easier? All it seems to do is make everything much less efficient.

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It's only binding in that district.

So here's how the loophole works. There are 12 courts of appeals. You (ICE) does a bad thing. (renditions a US citizen to an El Salvador concentration camp without due process) You get sued, appeal it to that court of appeals. Let's say it's the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals, let's say you lose. You take the L and move on. You never do the bad thing in the 9th circuit again: that decision is binding. Then you do it again in a different circuit. Let's say you do the bad thing in Texas, where the 9th circuit decision was not binding. Let's say you win this time. Now the 5th circuit is your playground.

From now on, every time you arrest someone in the 9th circuit, you put them on an express flight to anywhere in the 5th district within an hour or so of arresting them, before they can get a lawyer to talk to a judge. The precedent that matters is the 5th circuit precedent, where the detainee is right now, not the 9th district (or anywhere else) where they were detained.

Because the Supreme Court has now ruled that this is a lower court problem, they've effectively blocked anyone from ever getting justice ever again.

No, the way this works is, now you have a circuit split (the 9th says one thing, the 5th says the opposite). So when the person who lost in the 5th circuit appeals, the Supreme Court takes it, and whatever they decide is binding on both the 5th and 9th circuits (and everyone else).

> the Supreme Court takes it

This is not guaranteed.

They don't have to take up a circuit split. They could just… leave it. Several are unresolved as we speak; https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Circuit_split#Examples_of_exis...

Which leaves the Fifth Circuit a permanent loophole.

Lazy functional programming, human style.

There is no loophole. Defendants in the 5th circuit can appeal to the Supreme Court.

That is one of the main roles of the Supreme Court: resolving circuit splits.

In this scenario the precedent has already been set in the 5th, why would the Supreme Court hear it again?

The 9th has nothing to do with an immigration hearing in the 5th, the individual’s personal history is irrelevant here.

Matter of Rahman, 20 I&N Dec. 480 (BIA 1992) seems to cover this. (IANAL)

The parties involved can always petition the Supreme Court. They're free to take up any case even if there isn't a split between lower courts.

They're also free not to take up the case, and leave the circuit split unresolved. If you want to leave the loophole open, that's a win.

Because it conflicts with the holding in another circuit, called a "circuit split," which is one of the most common causes of the Supreme Court choosing to hear a case. The Supreme Court doesn't want forum shopping.

> In this scenario the precedent has already been set in the 5th, why would the Supreme Court hear it again?

A circuit split on an issue is one of the factors that traditionally weighs in favor of the Supreme Court hearing it, in the interests of uniformity of the law.

If the Supreme Court likes the 5th Circuit rule, they take the case it make it the rule, period.

> It's only binding in that district.

No, district court decisions are not binding precedent, not even in the district.

> IANAL but isn't any ruling by even a lower court precedent?

"Precedent" can include both binding authority and persuasive authority. Any ruling (and lots of things which aren't rulings, like scholarly treatises), can be persuasive precedent, but trial court decisions are not binding precedent, even in the district of the court that issued them.

Only appellate court decisions are binding precedent, and only (basically) on courts subordinate to court making the decision.

Universal injunctions are superfluous. If the law says the government cannot do X, then who is a judge to command that the government not do X? That’s the legislature’s job. Judges have no authority to create rules saying people shall and shall not do certain things. That’s called passing a law. Similarly, when a party violates an injunction, who is the Judge to enforce his command? If it within a case or controversy between litigants, then that is one thing. When the judge they’re going to proactively punish someone any time the law as against anyone… that’s a purely executive function.

In terms of efficiency, it’s more efficient. Those in favor of universal injunctions are saying there should be hundreds of judges all racing to rule over the government, and to have their opinions control in the abstract as to cases that aren’t even before them.

If the government forces the same issue over and over there are plenty of remedies at hand: 1983 civil penalties against officers, sanctions against attorneys for frivolous arguments, and ultimately the court can hand the legislature everything it needs to impeach and remove a president by ruling that he / she is intentionally failing to enforce the law.

So the purpose of the judiciary branch is to interpret the laws. If a judge rules that the government is violating the law, you want the government to continue to be allowed to violate the law until the legislature convenes a hearing and rules and then what? The judiciary branch was able to rule on punishment for violating the rules, fines and jail time and what not. You would push all that to the legislature as well? Or would the legislature run a hearing and then ask the judiciary branch to pick the punishment and then have the legislature apply it?

I just don't understand how you expect this to work unless the point is to make the judiciary branch entirely pointless (for government level check and balances).

This is the same Supreme Court that granted the president immunity from any and all criminal charges as long they were made under the umbrella of the presidency. None of this is normal, and these are radical interpretations of the law explicitly designed to grant the president king like powers and reform the government into an authoritarian regime.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sovereign_immunity_in_the_Unit... Sovereign Immunity is an idea that has a long precedence. The Supreme Court was arguing that bad behaviour by the President is resolved through impeachment, and once they are out of office they are subject to criminal charges.

Almost any idea has long precedence, but the confluence of recent rulings, taken in its aggregate, provides a pretty well defined toolkit for a major departure from the normative state into the prerogative state. No amount of intellectual Zamboni reasoning can change the fact that it’s obvious to any rational observer that the U.S. is speed running an authoritarian takeover. Naturally some will support these changes and others will oppose them, but it’s as objectively verifiable as climate change; albeit, with the same chorus of denialism.

> If the law says the government cannot do X, then who is a judge to command that the government not do X? That’s the legislature’s job.

What are they supposed to do in your theoretical setup? Pass the law again? Add “we really mean it this time” to the end?

> In terms of efficiency, it’s more efficient.

Truly, fascism and autocracy are more efficient than checks and balances; not everything must be made “efficient”.

Do we chastise an oak or redwood for taking its time?

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