Supreme Court Decisions

[jordan179]

I am glad that the Supreme Court sustained the legality of same-sex marriage across the country.  It is my profound belief, based on the logic that marriage is a mutual choice between any two people who decide to unite their lives in love, that marriage should not be only allowed between persons of opposite sexes.  Marriage is not purely for the

Comments

[hastka]

I completely agree on the marriage topic... as much as I'm not immediately impacted by it myself, as you said it feels like a movement away from legislation by morality, which I think is about 50 years overdue at this point.

Though I am a bit (pleasantly?) surprised that you're accepting of it, given the democracy/voters'-rights concerns floating around the decision. My stance is, of course, sometimes voters get it wrong. :P

This causes me to question whether "America" from a populous standpoint is moving away from religious/"moral" attitudes very quickly. After all, it took a lot of bigotry (in the loose sense) for the topic to even make it to the Supreme Court, and only the narrowest possible margin got it "right." But at least there's hope.

As to the other... I don't know. The decision about reading legislation in context, perhaps idealistically, doesn't bother me too much. I feel it's time we got away from word-mincing and into understanding the spirit of a document. Can that be DONE without word-mincing? I'm not sure.

As to the legislation the decision was related to, this latest melodrama really struck me as an eleventh-hour act of desperation... a sort of Hail-Mary play in the Obamacare game. I don't like Obamacare as-implemented, I don't use it, I've suffered because of it, but I think the die was cast a few years ago and it's going to take a serious confrontational effort, not weasely grazing shots, to make it go away... probably requiring that a better system to take its place, in so-doing.

Then again, social security, welfare programs, income tax... all of these are government programs which were imperfectly implemented, and discussion over possible reform continues to this day. I guess lobbyists just need job security.

[jordan179]

Oh, the way it was done was possibly bad in Constitutional concerns. But that's nothing compared to what the Supreme Court did regarding Obamacare, which essentially strips the Congress of much of its power to pass legislation. When they write The Fall of the American Republic, centuries from now, that's going to be one of the key bad decisions.

[ford_prefect42]

Here are the problems with what you wrote here regarding the Obamacare decision:

1) In the specific context of the intent of the legislation, the "state exchanges" language was intended to force the states to *set up* exchanges in order to reap the benefits of the subsidies. It was *intended* that no federal exchange was to be set up. Claiming otherwise is simply dishonest, so this ruling specifically *over-ruled* the intent of the legislature.

2) All of the practice of law is "word-mincing". Without "word-mincing", any law can mean anything. That road leads to the purest of all possible hells. It's the very definition of "the rule of men" rather than "the rule of law".

Make no mistake, this was a terrible decision that will have truly horrific repercussions.

[jordan179]

2) All of the practice of law is "word-mincing". Without "word-mincing", any law can mean anything. That road leads to the purest of all possible hells. It's the very definition of "the rule of men" rather than "the rule of law"

Indeed -- it's very much not a good thing that the Supreme Court did this, because in practice, when the law is that uncertain, it enhances the power of the Executive. (They may think it's the Courts, but the survivors won't think so after some power explcitly only intended against foreign enemies gets used to scrag the dissidents in some important future Court decision that might go against an Emeperor).

[hastka]

Given my self-qualification of "Can that be DONE without word-mincing? I'm not sure." - I don't think you are necessarily citing a "problem with what I wrote," so much as answering part of it, at least as far as item #2. As to part #1, I freely admit that I have not been following the argument in gory detail, since frankly I've resigned myself to the fact that the "Obamacare fight" was lost a while ago.

Of course, even WITH word-mincing, any law can mean "a darn lot of things," which is why lawyers exist. This fact further FORCES an undue amount of specificity into the document so that it can't be challenged in foreseen ways, while being impossible to have the completeness necessary to defend against challenges in unforeseen ways, so it's really lose-lose.

In short, I'd prefer seeing "the rule of trust and not being a douchebag" rather than "the rule of whoever can afford the best/most lawyers," but I get what you're saying.

[jordan179]

The problem is that we can never fully trust governmental institutions. Even if the men who first created them were wise angels, they would one day be operated by their successors, who might be far less wise and angelic.

[hastka]

Yeah, no argument on that. :P

[sianmink]

Terrible decision? Debatable.

It was terribly written law. Congress now has the opportunity to go back and amend the fucked-up language.

The problem is that of course they won't.

[ford_prefect42]

Well, yes, it's a terrible law in every respect. However, in this case, the thing is that the correction to the wording that would have made this court case irrelevant is something that would be deeply unpopular. So liberals (lacking any semblance of integrity) have instead decided to pervert the entire judicial review system in order to salvage a law that would fail any reasonable test.

This week has really driven a serious stake through the heart of any remaining sympathies I still had for the democrats. Really, there's no excuse for this.