Rare winter quarter case of a major constitutional ruling coming down while I'm teaching con law
One the one hand, the no justice is willing to put their name on the lawless majority opinion, Bush v. Gore style; OTOH the dissenters issue a rare jointly signed opinion
This is simply the meat of the case. The OHSA did exactly what Congress empowered it to do in very clear and explicit terms. That should be the end of this case.
If you're going to issue an opinion that will result in 6500 people dying and 250,000 people going to the hospital, your legal case had better be overwhelming. The Republican majority's is in fact the opposite of that.
It should of course go without saying that the opinion does not meet the standards that apply to granting stays, standards the Court's Republicans have been simply ignoring for years
"OSHA’s rule perfectly fits the language of the applicable statutory provision"
The majority's reasoning for why the plain, explicit language of the statute should not apply is barely different than the reasoning used by the "how can we stop COVID when we can't see it" guy in Wisconsin
The Republican majority's ruling is not consistent with the explicit text, structure, or purpose of the statute. It is simply overriding the will of Congress and the duly elected president because it doesn't like the policy chosen. That's it.
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"Today, we are not wise." The Roberts Court has done many disgraceful things and will do many, many more, but this will rank toward the top. Just pure lawless Guided Age Redux bullshit. Ignoring the plain text of the relevant statute to impose a horrible policy choice.
The same premise as Gorsuch's idiotic question about why the OHSA didn't require the polio vaccine! To state this argument is to refute it, and yet it's pretty much the entire basis for the Republican majority's conclusion
This, from Gorsuch's concurrence, is remarkably cynical bullshit. The "major questions" and "nondelegation" doctrines do not protect the authority of the people's elected representatives, they arrogate power to the judiciary, with today's case being a perfect case in point.
And given that the Court has to ignore the text, purpose and structure of the statue to reach today's ruling, why would anyone think a second bite at the apple would go any better?
Dems celebrate the pending retirement of Pat Leahy by applying the Republican-established blue slip policy over their hilarious whining lawyersgunsmoneyblog.com/2022/01/let-us…
In the spirit of bipartisan comity, let me say that Chuck Grassley can eat 20 buckets of shit
Remember when Chuck Grassley was head of the Judiciary Committee, and was famous for his commitment to bipartsianship and the impartial application of existing rules
Holmes is an interesting character the Theranos story is also about what willfully gullible rubes so many of our nation's overcompensated and underachieving elites are
And of those who aren't rubes, too many (cf. David Boies) are amoral nihilists who will squash anybody so their great-grandchildren can get an extra zero on their inheritance
Crucial to Holmes's ability to attract capital and thirsty old men was her intuitive understanding that having the superficial characteristics upper-class people associate with talent and success is more important than actually having any talent nytimes.com/2022/01/03/tec…
My favorite Neil Gorsuch, Amateur Epidemiologist (TM) moment was actually his attempted gotcha question about why OHSA was not using a statute enacted in 1970 to make the polio vaccine mandatory
Sad that someone as smart as Prelogar has to spend her time answering idiotic questions from some of the worst Dunning-Kruger cases in history
What's funny about this is that Gorsuch's defenders don't seem to realize that if Gorsuch was in fact mis-transcribed that makes his question much, much dumber