High Stakes Poker

In the old days in Dodge City, they didn't play much harder than this:
The law declares that if the supreme court strikes down the administrative law, the entire state judiciary will lose its funding. Brownback and the legislature are essentially bullying the judiciary: Uphold our law or cease to exist.
Well, court-packing worked for Roosevelt. Even though he didn't get his packed court, he spooked the Justices into giving way on his preferred 'reforms,' such as letting the Executive's bureaucracy write the laws by having Congress delegate them the authority.

1 comment:

E Hines said...

Even though he didn't get his packed court....

FDR got his packed court. By the time of the 1942 Wickard that gutted the Commerce Clause, 8 of the 9 Justices were FDR appointees.

Couple things come to my pea-brain in the linked-to article. One is the overt threat. Were I on the Court, that would guarantee that I would rule against the Guv. Plenty of time to restore textualism after having won the matter.

The other is this from the article's author: ...if the justices mandate more school funding, the legislature will have to raise taxes.... This is typical Left nonsense. Of course, the legislature can do either of two things that don't involve raising taxes: ignore the Court's ruling, itself a violation of separation of powers (to the extent Kansas' Constitution actually mandates that, which I don't know), wondering aloud how many State Troopers the Court has (and echoing the spirit of a remark attributed to Andrew Jackson regarding an Indian move he'd made that the Federal Supreme Court disputed); or more straightforwardly cut spending elsewhere--the Court's budget, perhaps, or further cut welfare largesse--and reallocate to the schools.

Eric Hines