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Comment by vmception | Hacker News Reader

> In keeping with Founding conceptions of separation of powers, the Supreme Court has made clear that Congress cannot “delegate to the Courts, or to any other tribunals, powers which are strictly and exclusively legislative.”

I love this. I hope this trend catches on, I can't wait to gut these bloated agencies and force Congress to get back to work at the risk of a completely paralyzed society if they don't.

Any supreme court ruling, and court ruling, and any agency ruling or even from the White House, that acts as a Super Legislature instead of some other rationale, is going to get gutted, no matter how old or "settled" the case masquerades to be. Find a different rationale to reach the same desired goal, or rely on Congress, or the government cant be involved.

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> I love this. I hope this trend catches on, I can't wait to gut these bloated agencies and force Congress to get back to work at the risk of a completely paralyzed society if they don't.

You seem to be making the bold assumption that both parties are acting in good faith. A completely paralyzed society is actually a victory for one party.

I don't find conservative appellate judges to be doing anything extreme. I don't find this 5th circuit one to have done so, I don't find the Supreme Court to have done so.

The thinnest rationale I've seen was that Florida Federal district judge that gutted the CDC order one month before it was going to expire anyway, in that case she spent a comical amount of time defining the word "sanitation" after finding a couple dictionaries from 1944, when the act was passed, specifically because Congress neglected to define and codify what sanitation meant for the purpose of the CDC's authority. I'm like "okay. thats low key hilarious" and I would love to see how this pans out on appeal.

I just am not finding the court system to be doing out of character things. I can independently find some outcomes to be shocking or inconvenient, but surprised based on my analysis of how I expect them to act? No. Nothing surprising occurring.

>mandate was about to expire

This isn’t relevant since they’d extended it many times. The whole “it’s about to expire!” thing was by design.

Technically not. The one party in question would only arguably win with some heavy repeals being passed.

Agreed, a paralyzed society is one where corruption flourishes unchecked.

Of course, given what happened with the last presidency, that is probably the desired outcome for everyone rooting for paralysis.

I don't understand how this is supposed to work or why we would believe it would work. Why would we want politicians haggling over the nitty gritty details of how to regulate, for example, pollution? Applying cost-benefit analysis to make rules for countless pollutants and toxins? When they themselves apparently would rather delegate this to experts?

The courts and agencies still have the option of finding a different rationale to reach the same desired goal.

If they can't, then they have to rely on Congress, if they can't then national government cant be involved.

Simple order of operations.

Legally, it's a very flimsy basis on which to attack the current structure and operation of the country. It is simply untrue that Congress is not allowed to delegate its powers, and where to draw the line has always been a subjective judgment that different courts have drawn differently. https://constitution.findlaw.com/article1/annotation03.html

And frankly, I think the anti-administrative state people are on the payroll of polluters who want the regulators to be politicians who are more dependent on big business for funds.

Congress should be allowed to leave things to the experts if it wants to. After all, it is free to change the scope of regulatory agencies at any time.

You're in luck, my excerpt from today's court ruling is immediately followed by acknowledging more recent rulings.

> According to the Supreme Court’s more recent formulations of that longstanding rule, Congress may grant regulatory power to another entity only if it provides an “intelligible principle” by which the recipient of the power can exercise it.

But then the hits just keep on coming

> We first conclude that Congress has delegated to the SEC what would be legislative power absent a guiding intelligible principle.

>cue laugh track<

"Everything is securities fraud" actually kinda props up the assertion that an intelligible principle was not achieved in my book. Not gonna lie.

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