dueprocess
After the U.S. Supreme Court curtailed the powers of federal agencies in two cases last week, progressive critics predictably complained that the decisions favored "big business," "corporate interests," and "the wealthy and powerful." That gloss overlooked the reality that people with little wealth or power frequently are forced to contend with overweening bureaucrats who invent their own authority and play by their own rules. In the more consequential case, the Court repudiated the Chevron doctrine, which required that judges defer to a federal agency's "permissible" interpretation of an "amb...
Reason
With a set of rulings handed down over the past week, the conservative majority on the U.S. Supreme Court decisively stood up for the due process rights of Americans who come into conflict with the administrative state. On their own, each of those rulings is significant. In a pair of cases decided together last week, the Supreme Court overturned a decades-old precedent that required judges to defer to the supposed expertise of executive agencies. In scrapping the so-called Chevron doctrine, the Court leveled the playing field for legal challenges to regulatory rules. In a separate case decided...
Reason
In two cases that the Supreme Court decided today, herring fishermen in Rhode Island and New Jersey challenged regulatory fees they said were never authorized by Congress. They asked the Court to reconsider, or at least clarify, a doctrine based on its 1984 decision in Chevron v. Natural Resources Defense Council, which required that judges defer to a federal agency's "permissible" or "reasonable" interpretation of an "ambiguous" statute. Critics have long complained that Chevron deference allowed bureaucrats to usurp a judicial function and systematically disadvantaged "the little guy" in dis...
Reason
The Supreme Court today ruled that the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) may not impose civil penalties for fraud without filing suit in federal court. Because "the SEC's antifraud provisions replicate common law fraud," Chief Justice John Roberts writes for the majority in SEC v. Jarkesy, alleged violators are entitled to a jury trial under the Seventh Amendment. The decision rejects a perverse system in which the SEC, instead of seeking adjudication by an Article III court, can investigate, charge, prosecute, and penalize people for violating securities laws, with only limited judicia...
Reason
The Supreme Court on Friday ruled that the right to a trial by jury and to due process apply to people who face a steep sentencing enhancement under federal law, in a ruling that transfers some power from the hands of judges to the public and will affect many criminal defendants' future punishments. The procedural history of the case is a bit of a whirlwind. But at its center is Paul Erlinger, who was charged in 2017 with being a felon in possession of a firearm and sentenced to 15 years under the Armed Career Criminal Act (ACCA), which increases the punishment for that offense—felon in posses...
Reason
A federal law that Congress enacted in 1994 prohibits gun possession by people subject to domestic violence restraining orders. Since that seems like a no-brainer, many people were dismayed when the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit deemed that provision unconstitutional last year in United States v. Rahimi. But as anyone who reads the majority and concurring opinions in that case can see, there is a striking problem with 18 USC 922(g)(8): It disarms people even when there is little or no evidence that they pose a danger to others. In an 8–1 decision today, the Supreme Court avoided th...
Reason
How's it going in Javier Milei's Argentina? Milei, Argentina's self-described libertarian president, notched his first legislative victory last week. Argentina's Senate passed a major omnibus bill, also known as the "Bases Law", that's been debated since February. It would further deregulate the labor market, privatize national industries, cut taxes for foreign companies investing in Argentina, and hand emergency powers to Milei. Because Milei's party controls seven out of 72 Senate seats, the bill only passed with a lot of compromise and a tie-breaking vote by the vice president, and it could...
Reason
On a Friday morning in October 2018, two officers who worked for a Texas school district kidnapped a 14-year-old girl from her home based on spurious child abandonment concerns. Although Texas Child Protective Services (CPS) promptly determined there was no reason to suspect neglect or abuse, the cops pursued criminal charges against the girl's mother, leading to a trial in which a jury acquitted her after deliberating for five minutes. A civil rights lawsuit provoked by these outrageous abuses has been working its way through the federal courts for nearly four years. On Tuesday, a federal jud...
Reason
After the Supreme Court overturned the Trump administration's bump stock ban last week, critics complained that the justices had interpreted the Second Amendment in a way that rules out perfectly reasonable gun regulations. That was an odd complaint, because the case did not involve the Second Amendment. The Court's decision upheld an important principle that goes far beyond gun control: Federal bureaucrats do not have the authority to invent new crimes by rewriting the law. All Americans, regardless of how they feel about gun rights, have a stake in that principle, which is crucial to the rul...
Reason
The U.S. Supreme Court today ruled that the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) exceeded its statutory authority when it purported to ban bump stocks by classifying them as machine guns. Although the Court's decision in Garland v. Cargill does not involve the Second Amendment, it upholds the rule of law and the separation of powers by striking a blow against bureaucratic attempts to impose new gun controls without congressional approval. The bump stock ban is one of several such attempts, two more of which also faced judicial setbacks this week. "This decision helps [rein...
Reason
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