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Culture War Roundup for the week of February 27, 2023

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It is not clear to me why the "intent" of the people who enacted the laws is of any relevance, or even how such an "intent" could be discerned, or how you would even prove the whole set of lawmakers were of one uniform "intent" in passing the law. What if some of the lawmakers who voted for the HEROES act did intend it be used in situations like this? As the late great Antonin Scalia wrote:

Well, they owe [fidelity to the text], first of all, because we are governed by what the legislators enacted, not by the purposes they had in mind. When what they enacted diverges from what the intended, it is the former that controls.

But secondly, even if you think that our laws mean not what the legislature enacted but what the legislators intended, there is no way to tell what they intended except the text. Nothing but the text has received the approval of the majority of the legislature and of the President, assuming that he signed it rather than vetoed it and had it passed over his veto. Nothing but the text reflects the legislature's full purpose.

...

We are governed by the laws that the Members of Congress enact, not their unenacted intentions. And if they said "up" when they meant "down" and you could prove by the testimony of 100 bishops that that's what they meant, I would still say, too bad. Again, we are governed by laws, and what the law says is what the laws mean.

As to the Major Questions Doctrine, it seems about as blatant a judicial power grab as any in the Supreme Court's history.

As to the Major Questions Doctrine, it seems about as blatant a judicial power grab as any in the Supreme Court's history.

I understand it adds ambiguity, but a half-trillion-dollar bailout to the white-collar class under the veneer of a 9/11 bill isn't the best place to make the stand that it's a dumb concept.

As to the Major Questions Doctrine, it seems about as blatant a judicial power grab as any in the Supreme Court's history.

As the late great Antonin Scalia wrote:

“Congress, we have held, does not alter the fundamental details of a regulatory scheme in vague terms or ancillary provisions — it does not, one might say, hide elephants in mouseholes.”

Scalia's commitment to the idea that the text means what it pretty obviously just means, and not some twisted thing to allow all sorts of absurd results, was a large part of the 'judicial power grab' that is the Major Questions Doctrine.

EDIT: Basically right on cue.