The Supreme Courts job is to determine if something was legal, they were granted the authority by the people. If we want to change that, congress (the people's representation) can amend the constitution.
Congress can also clarify by granted the authority (as the justices explained). At any point in the last 7 years (while this court case has been ongoing), congress could have enacted the laws, they discussed them. The regulations didn't pass. The supreme court pointed that out.
Why would congress put forth these rules if they had already granted the EPA the authorization? -- because the EPA never had such authority.
> The Supreme Courts job is to determine if something was legal, they were granted the authority by the people
No, they invented that authority for themselves in Marbury v. Madison[1]. Judicial review, the idea that SCOTUS can decide whether the actions of the executive or legislative branch are legal, is contained nowhere in the constitution.
How do you read Article 3 Section 1 of the Constitution?
My reading is that it gives authority to federal courts to determine if a law has or has not been violated. What would the other intent be of creating a judicial branch? (Not said with snark, just curious).
"You give (a) Authority to a system of federal courts to judge whether or not a law has been violated..."[1]
[1] Findlay, B.A. and Findlay, E.B., 1919. Your Rugged Constitution: How Americas House of Freedom is Planned and Built. -.
That's certainly how SCOTUS interpreted it, and a 200 year tradition of interpreting it that has made it so that most people will now interpret it that way, but "The judicial Power of the United States, shall be vested in one supreme Court" hardly makes it clear that they get to decide the powers of the other two branches.
Devils advocate, if not the Supreme Court, then whom?
Congress makes a law. The Executive branch executes the law. The Supreme Court interprets whether that law was broken during its execution.
If you take out that third leg, is the assumption that Congress must revoke the law to provide a check/balance? What if the intent was good, but the execution was bad?
Sounds like a good system until the Federalist Society and a generation of Christian judicial activism showed up and gave us a handful of partisan judges.
I've asked elsewhere, but is there valid evidence (like statistical evidence within a reasonable level of uncertainty) that the courts are not apolitical? I wouldn't be surprised if that's the case, it's just that I've never seen it presented as anything other than anecdotal.
If so, what's the solution? Term-limits on judges? But then doesn't that ensure they will be even more politicized?
The 9th amendment is made to ensure the federal govt doesn't have sway over unspecified rights; is your thought that the States would enumerate those rights separately?
In any event, I suspect you're right. It seems like the the balance of power may be more biased than the founders intended.
My thought on the 9th would be that it would not limit our rights in any way and by that same thought not allow an all powerful state or federal government from encroaching on any right we may have not enumerated.
The balance of power has definitely changed since the countries founding. If you read about the Virginia and Kentucky Resolutions of 1798, you don't see states doing this anymore.
Well, the constitution grants the judiciary branch the final say on all cases of legality. So I don't think it's very controversial that they also have the final say on the legality of the legislative and executive branch's doings.
Also of course, this is exactly the separation of powers, which is completely fundamental in all western societies.
Obviously it's not controversial now because that's how things have been done for more than 200 years, but the Constitution is far from explicit that they have that power.
> The Supreme Courts job is to determine if something was legal, they were granted the authority by the people
:laughcryemoji
> Congress can also clarify by granted the authority (as the justices explained). At any point in the last 7 years (while this court case has been ongoing), congress could have enacted the laws, they discussed them.
There's no need to explicitly grant authority for authority already granted. If Congress wanted to change the scope of the EPA's authority, Congress could just as well have passed a law stripping the EPA of that authority. It didn't.
> Congress intended to grant the EPA broad authority to regulate pollution
CO2 is not pollution. People and animals breathe it out. Plants breathe it in. Any such thing is obviously not pollution. The EPA calling it "pollution" does not make it pollution, any more than calling a dog's tail a leg makes it a leg.
If Congress wants to grant the EPA authority to regulate things that are obviously not pollution, in order to promote some other policy objective, it needs to say so explicitly. Which is exactly what the Court's opinion says.
None of the parties or judges dispute that CO2 is a pollutant.
Even if you personally dispute it, Congress explicitly granted the EPA the authority to determine what's an air pollutant and what's not:
> For the purpose of establishing national primary and secondary ambient air quality standards, the Administrator shall within 30 days after December 31, 1970, publish, and shall from time to time thereafter revise, a list which includes each air pollutant—emissions of which, in his judgment, cause or contribute to air pollution which may reasonably be anticipated to endanger public health or welfare;
You should feel free to decide that a leg is actually a liver; that just makes you silly. As far as the matter at hand goes, though, it's the EPA that has the authority to make that designation (at least until the SCOTUS decides that only it has that authority).
> it's the EPA that has the authority to make that designation (at least until the SCOTUS decides that only it has that authority).
And the SCOTUS has the authority to rule on whether the EPA's rulemaking is within its statutory authority or not. Which is what it did today. So why are you objecting? Both governmental entities are exercising their authority. The fact that one such exercise, the EPA's, is one you like, and the other such exercise, the Court's is one you don't like, is irrelevant, according to your own logic, just as it's irrelevant, according to your own logic, that the EPA's rule under review here defies logic, common sense, and the plain meaning of words.
Bit of a sleight of hand there: you were arguing first that this court case was about whether CO2 was a pollutant or not, and I simply pointed out that there was nobody arguing it wasn't and all agreed that the EPA had the authority to designate it as such, as opposed to your "pollution is whatever pdonis feels in his gut is pollution" standard.
So, sure, I'm criticizing the Court's decision, because it's an incoherent and ideologically motivated decision. Doing so helps remove the mystique of the SCOTUS justices as some kind of apolitical actors in the sytem.
No, you are the one who shifted your ground, not me. You started out arguing that calling a tail a leg doesn't make it one--but you only applied that argument (incorrectly, in my opinion, but that's beside the present point) to the SCOTUS decision you didn't like, not to the EPA rulemaking you liked. Then, when I called you on it, you retreated to the argument that the EPA is just exercising its authority--which applies just as much to SCOTUS. So make up your mind: are you going to base your position on actual logic, common sense, and the plain meaning of words, or on government entities exercising their authority no matter what?
> I'm criticizing the Court's decision, because it's an incoherent and ideologically motivated decision.
I disagree that it is, since it's just pointing out that Congress didn't intend to delegate to the EPA the sweeping authority to restructure the entire energy sector of the economy, even if we accept that CO2 is a "pollutant" for the sake of argument. The statute does not give the EPA authority to regulate pollutants however it wants. It only gives it the authority to do so in certain ways.
That said, however, I'm criticising the EPA's rulemaking on the same grounds that you are criticizing the SCOTUS decision: that it's incoherent and ideologically motivated. Any such criticism presupposes that just because a government entity has the formal authority to do something, doesn't make it right. So it is no answer to my criticism to say that the EPA was just exercising its authority.
> 'It's not pollution if it comes out of animals' doesn't make much sense.
That's not the argument I was making. The argument I was making is that the presence of CO2 in the atmosphere is part of a natural process that all living organisms, including us humans, engage in. The presence of your piss in my drink is not.
Animals exhale many volatile organic compounds when they exhale, including methanol and acetone. Does that mean those compounds are by definition not pollution?
Are those compounds present because they come from the animal's metabolism, or just because they happened to be there in the environment and the animal inhaled or ingested them?
My understanding is that ketones produced by this process normally get excreted in the urine, not by being exhaled.
That said, since these are products of the animal's metabolism, I would not consider them pollution if they're just being exhaled into the surrounding air outdoors. If you bring your animal into my climate controlled clean room and have it exhale the compounds there, that would be different--but I doubt the EPA would be the first line of defense in regulating behavior of that sort.
Four. A tail is a tail, regardless of what you call it.
Congress intended to grant the EPA broad authority to regulate pollution, but the SCOTUS said that that's invalid.