alt Hacker NewsDecisions like this illustrate what a hollow farce the modern federal courts’ approach is to Constitutional governance.
To be clear, courts are not supposed to change policy or make new policy, they are just supposed to interpret the law as written.
So supposedly this ruling is “not a change in the law” but rather a discovery that actually the law has always been this way but oops, someone read it wrong 158 years ago and literally everyone has read it wrong for the ensuing 158 years.
Until now, when an unusually wise and discerning small group of people finally read things the right way.
I strongly support the substance of this decision, the ban was stupid overreach. But I also recognize that decades of agreeing with the substance of similarly silly “discoveries” has created a situation where federal judges have essentially infinite leeway to inject their own opinions into the law under cover of “wow, I finally discovered the correct interpretation” (no matter how tortured).
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With my respect for you as a person, I think your idea here is demonstrating both ignorance and cynicism to the way the law works.
This type of interpretation of law is by design.
When lawmakers write a law, it’s specifically the judicial branch’s job to interpret it, which is exactly what is happening here.
It’s also exactly how you describe by design: legislators can pass laws that say whatever they want. They can pass a law that says that all left-handed people are subject to a 50% income tax even though such a thing would clearly violate the constitution. Legislatures can make illegal laws just by having the votes to do so. The role of the judicial branch is to interpret the constitutionality of laws that are made.
Critically, a lawsuit has to challenge a law’s legality and constitutionality in order for it to be interpreted as unconstitutional. There also has to be a harmed party that shows they have standing to make that lawsuit.
It’s entirely possible that nobody brought this specific argument to a judge in the last 158 years. It’s also entirely possible that what is acceptable by reasonable people in society has changed over time, which can alter the interpretation of laws. That is normal, expected, and by design.
I think comments like yours unnecessarily demonize “activist judges” when this is the designed function of their role.
The decision 158 years ago that an activity could be banned through taxation was obviously in error.
I don't think it does demonstrate that at all, it would demonstrate that if there was a prior court challenge were it was found to be constitutional. but there was not, this was the first court challenge, hundreds of millions of people, maybe over a billion over the last 150 years never thought to take it to federal court
one person finally did, and this decision matches what a lower court found in 2024, this is a pattern of consensus actually. the government (executive and legislative branch) is losing, while the judicial branch has complete consensus
this would actually be the worst example of anxiety about a fictionally different modern federal court, and seems more so to be an example of not knowing how they work at all
one suggestion that I've seen in other democracies is that a law passed by the legislature can be sent for constitutional review immediately by the President, instead of simple sign or veto. In the US system, all laws can be passed and it takes someone challenging it, and of the people that challenge the law they have to find a way to have "standing" - as in, prove how they were affected by the law - which is a huge risk if the law has a penalty you have to risk being affected by. That's how we have a massive nearly infinite set of laws that have never been challenged.
The power of the judiciary to "interpret" the constitution was a huge chink in the armor of the Constitutional order. A handful of unelected judges can effectively amend the constitution via simple majority, but can only be "overruled" by the people if there is extremely broad opposition (as a constitutional amendment requires 2/3 of both houses)--which is, of course, a total inversion of the democratic-republican principles which brought our country into being. The practical effect is that, while the people have some limited democratic control over the government, control of the state has been wrested away from them by the Judiciary. This was fine so long as the Judiciary saw themselves as honest arbiters of the constitutional order, but the moment the Judiciary began to see themselves as architects rather than mere arbiters, the constitutional order was at an end.