Posted on 03/02/2022 2:24:34 PM PST by where's_the_Outrage?
The Supreme Court heard a bizarre case Monday that dealt with the Environmental Protection Agency’s power to regulate greenhouse gas emissions from power plants. A coalition of red states and coal companies are gesturing towards a rule that is no longer on the books — Obama’s Clean Power Plan — as a way to bring before the conservative court questions of how the EPA can act on climate.
It’s a case where the justices handcuffing the EPA from its ability to keep some of the country’s biggest polluters from belching greenhouse gasses into the air is actually not the worst case scenario.
Some court watchers worry that a conservative majority could also use this forum to issue a blanket ruling on agency power, one that reverberates through the entire administrative state and invites challenges to all kinds of exercises of executive branch authority. Weakening environmental protections would be one impact — but such a decision could ripple into worker safety, public health, housing disputes, and every other corner of American life that agencies shape.....
“If the Supreme Court truly honored the rule of law and precedent, then they would acknowledge the power of the agencies that was granted to them by Congress in order to save our environment,” Warren told TPM. “But this is an extremist Supreme Court, so I’m very worried about the outcome.”
(Excerpt) Read more at msn.com ...
The point of this is to make congress vote on these restricting policies and reap the consequences of those votes instead of hiding behind this bureaucracy.
Show me kind reader, where in the US Constitution does it say...”and the Federal Government shall own all the land, water and air in America”???
“... good regulation.”
Ahhhh. I see The Problem, here.
Thanks for replying.
Fortunately, Justice Joseph Story had given us examples of the do's and don'ts (web spelling) of how to interpret the Commerce Clause, in a single paragraph nonetheless.
Story had explained that although many things are intimately related to commerce, the federal government is to interpret Commerce Clause narrowly (my wording). And if the states later decide that Congress need expanded Commerce Clause powers then the states can amend the Constitution.
"The question comes to this, whether a power, exclusively for the regulation of commerce, is a power for the regulation of manufactures? The statement of such a question would seem to involve its own answer. Can a power, granted for one purpose, be transferred to another? If it can, where is the limitation in the constitution? Are not commerce and as distinct, as commerce and agriculture? If they are, how can a power to regulate one arise from a power to regulate the other? It is true, that commerce and manufactures are, or may be, intimately connected with each other. A regulation of one may injuriously or beneficially affect the other. But that is not the point in controversy. It is, whether congress has a right to regulate that, which is not committed to it, under a power, which is committed to it, simply because there is, or may be an intimate connexion between the powers. If this were admitted, the enumeration of the powers of congress would be wholly unnecessary and nugatory. Agriculture, colonies, capital, machinery, the wages of labour, the profits of stock, the rents of land, the punctual performance of contracts, and the diffusion of knowledge would all be within the scope of the power; for all of them bear an intimate relation to commerce. The result would be, that the powers of congress would embrace the widest extent of legislative functions, to the utter demolition of all constitutional boundaries between the state and national governments [emphases added]." —Joseph Story, Commentaries on the Constitution 2:§§ 1073--91
"In every event, I would rather construe so narrowly as to oblige the nation to amend, and thus declare what powers they would agree to yield, than too broadly, and indeed, so broadly as to enable the executive and the Senate to do things which the Constitution forbids." —Thomas Jefferson: The Anas, 1793.
One of the reasons that the very corrupt, post-17th Amendment ratification Congress is now continually overstepping its constitutionally limited powers is this imo. To his disappointment of SCOTUS finding some of FDR's early New Deal programs unconstitutional, the shrinking, state sovereignty-respecting majority of Supreme Court justices emphasizing the already reasonably clear meaning of Congress's Commerce Clause powers in terms of the 10th Amendment (10A) as the following excerpt from United States versus Butler shows.
"From the accepted doctrine that the United States is a government of delegated powers, it follows that those not expressly granted, or reasonably to be implied from such as are conferred, are reserved to the states, or to the people. To forestall any suggestion to the contrary, the Tenth Amendment was adopted. The same proposition, otherwise stated, is that powers not granted are prohibited [emphasis added]." —United States v. Butler, 1936.
Unfortunately, FDR was reelected enough times that he was able to form a state sovereignty-ignoring majority of activist justices. FDR's activist majority justices ultimately wrongly politically “repealed” 10A in Wickard v. Filburn (Wickard) imo.
More specifically, using inappropriate words like “concept” and “implicit,” also a reference to state power manufacturing, here is what was left of 10A after FDR's state sovereignty-ignoring activist justices got finished with it in Wickard.
"In discussion and decision, the point of reference, instead of being what was "necessary and proper" to the exercise by Congress of its granted power, was often some concept [???] of sovereignty thought to be implicit [???] in the status of statehood. Certain activities such as "production," manufacturing, and "mining" were occasionally said to be within the province of state governments and beyond the power of Congress under the Commerce Clause [??? emphasis added]." —Wickard v. Filburn, 1942.
Regarding this excerpt, consider that regardless that Story had used power to regulate manufactures as an example of something having an intimate relationship with commerce, but was still out of the scope of Congress's Commerce Clause powers, FDR's justices seem to have wrongly indicated that manufactures is not a state power issue.
The bottom line is that this politically correct "insight" of FDR's justices into state sovereignty has arguably been used as a license to justify unconstitutional federal interference in the affairs of the sovereign states since SCOTUS wrongly decided Wickard in Congress's favor imo.
One remaining question about FDR's New Deal programs is this. Since FDR was said to be a popular president, then why didn't he lead Congress to first successfully petition the states to give Congress new constitutionally express powers to establish his otherwise unconstitutional New Deal programs? The new amendments could have been called FDR's New Deal Amendments.
Instead, it's almost as if FDR and Congress didn't understand that the Constitution was amendable.
Corrections, insights welcome.
This could be huge. Nobody elected the tens of thousands of nameless, faceless bureaucrats handing down their insane regulations from Mount DC.
Congress has kicked the Administrative State can down the road for well over 100 years. Time to kill it.
“.....handcuffing the EPA from its ability to keep some of the country’s biggest polluters from belching greenhouse gasses into the air.....”
_________________________________________________________
Yeah, no bias there, Kate, you ridiculous eco-freak moonbat.
Billions for the carbon hoax not one penny for real pollution.
This court has never shown any inclination in all the chances they have had so far. In fact, they think "splitting the baby" is the answer to every question that faces them, and when the baby can't be split they come down on the left every time.
Really they just want to be free of any constitutional limits upon their power.
Seeing how the U.S. Constitution never gives Congress any power over the “environment” the lack of power to enable little dictators is inconsequencal compared to the dictatorial power itself over everything.
A case could be made if such broad power exist Congress does not have enough hours in the year to manage all the little despots they created, and few presidents even know most of them even exist.
“In fact, they think “splitting the baby” is the answer to every question that faces them, and when the baby can’t be split they come down on the left every time.”
BINGO.
Are you talking about that gas that makes up an entire 4/100ths of 1% of our atmosphere, even with all the contributions of burning "fossil" fuels for generations? That CO2?
For those interested, here is a link to a transcript of the oral arguments:
https://www.supremecourt.gov/oral_arguments/argument_transcripts/2021/20-1530_p8k0.pdf
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