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Comment by rayiner | Hacker News Reader

"It's a bad idea" is a very different thing than "it's unconstitutional." It shouldn't even need to be said, but this is a mistake that is pervasive on HN.[1] There are infinite shitty ideas that are nonetheless Constitutional.

The Court is empowered to throw out unconstitutional legislation. It is not empowered to throw out Constitutional legislation that happens to be a bad idea.

[1] On everything from campaign finance to drone strikes, nobody bothers drawing the very important distinction between "bad idea" and "unconstitutional."

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The mass media doesn't often doesn't even try distinguish between the two. For hot button issues that make it to the Supreme Court, there is always a lot of talk about "I think people should be allowed to X" not "the law says Y" or "The Constitution allows Z".

If we want to be in control of our own governance, we would be better served if elected Congressmen make the laws rather than nine old people who are accountable to no one (even if those nine old people are brilliant thinkers).

It is, however, empowered to figure out how to interpret ambiguous legislation. And when more than one interpretation is possible, I don't really think it is such a bad idea to choose the more sensible option. I don't believe they've "throw[n] out" any part of the law here. Rather, they have chosen the interpretation they found more reasonable and consistent with the Constitutional prerogative of promoting the progress of science and useful arts.

In this specific case I don't disagree, I think they made a good and reasonable call, interpreting an ambiguous statute consistently with its other copyright jurisprudence.

More generally, I'm quite wary of situations in which the Court second-guesses Congress. Every time the Court does so, it uses up some of the Court's political capital, which is ultimately the only thing the Court has to enforce its judgments. Even though I'm a liberal, I tend to be very skeptical of judicial activism because I think that political capital should be saved for when it is really necessary.

That much, I can agree with. The devil, of course, is always in the details.

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