The stakes in the Supreme Court's vaccine cases are even bigger than they seem

[turbinetree]

The Court doesn’t just threaten the public health, it threatens democracy itself.

By Ian Millhiser Jan 5, 2022, 6:30am EST

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Governments make choices that shape millions of lives. Workers and businesses are taxed to provide health care to the elderly and to the least fortunate. Men and women are incarcerated or even killed for crimes defined by the state. Wars are fought. Refugees are given a place of safety or turned away at the border.

If you believe in democracy, such power is justified only because it flows from the will of the people. “Governments,” the United States declared in its formational document, “are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed.” The premise of any democratic republic is that there are some decisions that must be made collectively, and that these decisions are legitimate because they are made by elected officials.

On Friday, the Supreme Court will hear two sets of cases that test the justices’ commitment to the idea that the right to govern flows from the will of the people, and both involve challenges to President Joe Biden’s efforts to encourage vaccination against Covid-19.

https://www.vox.com/22865247/supreme-court-vaccination-covid-omicron-osha-missouri-biden-nfib

-snip-

The thrust of decisions like Chevron and Mistretta is that, when judges are unsure how to resolve a difficult legal question, they should err on the side of the elected branches. Good governance requires expertise, and it requires government officials to make difficult moral decisions. So we should want these decisions to be made by experts who are accountable to an elected official.

Doctrines like nondelegation and major questions, by contrast, turn this reasoning on its head. They presume that an elected Congress cannot be trusted to delegate important powers to expert agencies, and that an unelected judiciary must step in to prevent those agencies from making important decisions.

This is not democracy. It is a decision to replace the judgment of men and women elected to make life-and-death decisions with the views of a few unelected lawyers.

[ShazamIam]

1. The Federalist Society and their billionaire backers, want to use the Constitutionally created

U.S. Supreme Court to nullify, the U.S. Constitution.

[turbinetree]

2. That is basically what they have been trying to do since the Koch's began funding them...

and the head Federalist Society member is one John Roberts and all the other lackeys sitting on the right wing bench...

[ShazamIam]

3. Just noticed your sig line. Yes, and while we can and I remain hopefull we will, the corporate,

and banking leaders have been our bosses since 1969.(Nixon's first year) and the capturing of the government by those who seek to rule, not govern.

[turbinetree]

4. John Trudell was a remarkable man.....