“Shinyland”, like “JC” is shorthand. It grew from the narratives of “American exceptionalism” and “The shining city on a hill”, with generous servings of sarcasm.
Ah - so a derogatory reference to the US?
Albaby
Ah - so a derogatory reference to the US?
Ask Steve about the JC Class! LOL
The Captain
This basically says the federal legislature can’t delegate to any other authority.
They are basically telling the legislature to do their job. No handing off to some 3rd party so come re-election time they can have plausible deniability.
Back to the basics of our government: legislative branch to create the laws, executive branch to enforce the laws, and judicial branch to rule on the laws.
JLC
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No handing off to some 3rd party so come re-election time they can have plausible deniability.
Just to be pedantic, authorities have been delegated to bureaucracies for as long as the republic has existed.
The Constitution establishes the government to, for example, provide for the common defense. Outside of declaring war and, maybe, setting rules of engagement, the administration of the war is left up to DoD, previously the War Department. Congress doesn’t micromanage a war, deciding which island to invade, what time, and which troops to use.
The Constitution requires the establishment of a post office, but the daily administration of the postal service is left up to the department.
Congress is authorized to levy taxes, but the administration of the tax system is delegated to Treasury.
We really can’t expect a used car salesman from Yuma, who got himself elected to Congress, to be conversant in the science behind what the EPA does.
Steve
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As an aside, many pollutants (like arsenic, for example) are “naturally occurring.” That doesn’t mean they’re not pollutants.
Arsenic is not a naturally occurring component of air. CO2 is. That has been the crux of the debate for years.
fwiw, the evening news agrees with my assessment. This isn’t about the one reg. This is about the CAA and EPA authority over GHGs.
Steve
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Where in the Constitution is the SCOTUS granted judicial review?
I am sure that the 6 Originalists wouldn’t want to use powers that the “founding fathers” didn’t intend.
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"We really can’t expect a used car salesman from Yuma, who got himself elected to Congress, to be conversant in the science behind what the EPA does.
Steve"
This is why congressional hearings are held - why experts are brought in to testify -
why legislation is reviewed by sub-committees.
Howie52
Representatives are not expected to have expertise across the board - they are expected to
ask intelligent questions and recognize when answers do not address the questions.
This is how the public learns pluses and minuses of legislation - when the media provides
unbiased coverage of hearings.
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Arsenic is not a naturally occurring component of air. CO2 is. That has been the crux of the debate for years.
fwiw, the evening news agrees with my assessment. This isn’t about the one reg. This is about the CAA and EPA authority over GHGs.
I’m quite certain the evening news is wrong. The Supreme Court has previously ruled that CO2 is an air pollutant, and that Congress intended that such pollutants be regulated by EPA.
The current Supreme Court ruled how far EPA can go to enforce the previous mandate.
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Where in the Constitution is the SCOTUS granted judicial review?
I suspect you already know the answer to that, it doesn’t.
Marbury v. Madison, 5 U.S. (1 Cranch) 137 (1803), was a landmark U.S. Supreme Court case that established the principle of judicial review in the United States,
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marbury_v._Madison
Steve
You paid attention in your history and government class in high school.
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This is why congressional hearings are held - why experts are brought in to testify -
why legislation is reviewed by sub-committees.
Committee hearings are useful, I suppose, but far from foolproof. A recent question was raised about the truthfulness of answers provided by certain parties to a certain committee. Review of the transcripts shows the certain parties did not lie, they evaded the question. Committee members, lawyers all, supposedly schooled in the use of language, let them get away with their evasions.
Steve
The Supreme Court has previously ruled
The court has ruled on a lot of things, then ruled differently.
The current Supreme Court ruled how far EPA can go to enforce the previous mandate.
iirc, from reading reports several hours ago, that the court justified their ruling with concern for how much the “JCs” were burdened by compliance costs. So where does the line lay between an acceptable burden on JCs, and an unacceptable burden? $15B? $15M? $7.95?
Steve
Chief Justice Roberts was very clear in his opinion about one thing of import, “generational shift” is not legal. Meaning these decisions must be more grounded in what congress wants.
Or in other words what the people want. Be careful out there to think this is any sort of win for the fossil fuel guys. You will end up with very misguided investments. The public will roll right over you.
The court did not decide any of this based on CO2 levels. That is a non issue.
The court is leaving it to all of us if we want it as an issue. We do.
You paid attention in your history and government class in high school.
Yup. American history was always my favorite subject. I would take elective history classes in college for fun.
Besides, as a wise lawyer once said: never ask a question of a witness unless you already know what the answer is. (hilarious scene in “Anatomy Of A Murder” where prosecutor George C Scott is accusing the young girl in the stand of being a jealous lover of the vic. She kept insisting no, that was impossible. Scott shouted “why?”. She said “because he was my father”. The look on Scott’s face is fantastic: oops, didn’t see that one coming)
Steve
I need to say something about legalities, American society and our economy.
With FDR and his socialism to 2016 we have had expedient law making for economic purposes.
Particularly what FDR left in a quasi frozen institutional state led to the greatest devaluing of the USD in our history. Also the insolvency of corporate America by 1981 as pension liabilities were unpayable in larger part.
Since then our laws have been superficial in order to get expedient results. We are all sickened by the tertiary effects, ie poor educational standards, lack of retirement funding, poverty, homelessness, pollution in our own backyards, etc…these things cost more to fester than to fix. But our laws at passed for expedient economic reasons wont work.
The court is doing a very basic thing in all of these decisions going in and saying this was not resolved prior on a solid footing. You may want woman’s rights, I do, but Roe was never properly decided. Really the people and congress need to decide all of these things.
This is a legal reset that can lead to the greatest economic achievements this country has ever seen.
These decisions are not being decided on religious grounds or some form of denials. The ball is in the public’s court to have better laws passed. I realize there are overlays of “wants” or agendas on the courts. I am not saying all of the decisions are pure if you will. The ball is still in our hands to decide how we go forward. As it should be.
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"This is why congressional hearings are held - why experts are brought in to testify -
why legislation is reviewed by sub-committees.
Committee hearings are useful, I suppose, but far from foolproof. A recent question was raised about the truthfulness of answers provided by certain parties to a certain committee. Review of the transcripts shows the certain parties did not lie, they evaded the question. Committee members, lawyers all, supposedly schooled in the use of language, let them get away with their evasions.
Steve "
Legislation is never foolproof - and rarely something that does not change with time
and information. However, discussions in the public eye and then voted on by representatives
elected to perform this function is the basis of our republic. Having decisions made by
unelected officials - no matter what their expertise or background - is not how the U.S.
Constitution was written. I suspect the E.U. system is more “rule by expertise”.
Howie52
There is risk in all approaches to legislation. Information is not always complete or understood.
Humans do make mistakes.
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I suspect the E.U. system is more “rule by expertise”.
It is not that.
There is a large chunk of American society that is self interested. It is costing all of us including them. I am not talking wealthy Americans, but a middle class that stripped itself economically. That is the definition of supply side economics.
Just to be pedantic, authorities have been delegated to bureaucracies for as long as the republic has existed.
That is largely incorrect. It was less than 100 years ago that this really started to change.
https://law.justia.com/constitution/us/article-1/04-delegati…
The modern doctrine may be traced to the 1928 case, J. W. Hampton, Jr. & Co. v. United States, in which the Court, speaking through Chief Justice Taft, upheld Congress’s delegation to the President of the authority to set tariff rates that would equalize production costs in the United States and competing countries.
https://www.theregreview.org/2015/12/02/schlabs-problem-with…
Because Congress supposedly has incentives to guard its power, the Supreme Court has not strictly enforced the “nondelegation doctrine” since the 1930s. The doctrine holds that Congress cannot delegate its “exclusively legislative” powers to another branch of government.
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Just to be pedantic, authorities have been delegated to bureaucracies for as long as the republic has existed.
To clarify - this case did not hold that Congress could not delegate regulatory authority to EPA. This was not a non-delegation case.
Nor did this case hold that EPA could not regulate CO2 as a pollutant.
The case held that Congress had not delegated to EPA the power to create a ‘cap and trade’ or similar program intended to shift the composition of fuel sources in the electrical power sector as a particular means of reducing pollution. The Court did not reach the issue of whether Congress could delegate that power to EPA, or whether EPA was correct in concluding that CO2 is among the class of substances that constitutes “pollution” that they can regulate. So EPA could (theoretically) continue to regulate CO2 in any other way it wants to - just not this way.
Practically, though, this case has significant impacts on federal administrative regulation (and therefore on the industries that are so regulated). First, concretely, this basically kills the Clean Power Plan and any similar types of regulatory schemes absent further authorizing legislation - which has an immediate near-term impact on the utility sector. Second, this signals that this Court (and therefore the Circuit Courts of Appeal, soon) is going to start taking a harder look at the connection between agencies’ regulations and the statutes they claim authorize those regulations - next up will be the Clean Water Act and how far the authority to regulate the “waters of the United States” goes to wetlands. Third, there was barely any mention of Chevron in the majority opinion, signaling that the Court isn’t likely to give the agency’s opinion of how far its powers go much weight in any of these cases.
Albaby
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Practically, though, this case has significant impacts on federal administrative regulation (and therefore on the industries that are so regulated).
This case is interesting for both its judicial reasoning and the potential Macro-economic effects.
While he did not introduce the “Major Questions Doctrine” here, it is relatively new.
"The major questions doctrine, as the principle is now formally known, holds that in “extraordinary” cases involving matters of great ‘economic and political significance,’ federal agencies must be able to point to specific Congressional authorization for their actions…
“In the past, as Roberts wrote in Thursday’s decision, the court has relied on the reasoning of the doctrine to block the Food and Drug Administration from regulating cigarettes; the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention from barring evictions during the pandemic; and the Occupational Safety and Health Administration from imposing Covid vaccine rules on large businesses.”
https://www.reuters.com/legal/government/us-supreme-court-ju….
If expanded further, what are the ramifications? What power do any regulatory agencies have? Many pieces of legislation are written broadly and/or generally. The SEC is trying to get climate disclosures into their public releases. Is that dead? How about cap-and-trade? Is that dead at the federal level? What about other regulatory agencies such as the FTC and FCC? Interesting stuff…
At the macro level, though, this case does not appear to have too much effect on greenhouse emissions. The specific regulations it proscribes were never implemented and the Market has already gone further than the regulations’ timetables by pushing money into wind, water, natural gas, and especially solar over the past decade! The Market sees coal as a losing proposition, at least in the US and Europe (although the Putin War has had a regression effect in Europe, likely short-term). Despite the West Virginia case, this will not reverse. Ironically, it is China and India that have upped their coal usage, while the western market forces have reversed it.
Pete
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