The plaintiffs’ arguments in Moore v. United States have little basis in law — unless you think that a list of long-ago-discarded laissez-faire decisions from the early 20th century remain good law. And a decision favoring these plaintiffs could blow a huge hole in the federal budget. While no Warren-style wealth tax is on the books, the Moore plaintiffs do challenge an existing tax that is expected to raise $340 billion over the course of a decade.
But Republicans also hold six seats on the nation’s highest Court, so there is some risk that a majority of the justices will accept the plaintiffs’ dubious legal arguments. And if they do so, they could do considerable damage to the government’s ability to fund itself.
That’s why they’ve been stacking the courts with conservative activists for so long, so they could get a majority that would go along with these paper-thin justifications for completely changing our society from the top down.
Well said.
The stated goal of “originalism” is to read the Constitution without interpretation.
Which would be bad enough, since it was written by a bunch of slavers without any input from women whatsoever.
But in reality it is impossible to read something (especially law) without interpretation; they simply start with the desired conclusion and look for any historical justification no matter how implausible.
But in reality it is impossible to read something (especially law) without interpretation
Some people might see that as a challenge, so I’d state it even more bluntly: reading is interpretation. Reading without interpretation is not just impossible; it’s an oxymoron.
I would hope every single high school graduate could remember the simple pictograph of how communication works:
- Person A has an idea -
- Person A encodes the idea and transmits it -
- Person B receives the transmission and decodes it -
- Person B has the idea-
- Reverse the process for feedback and confirmation of idea -
That encoding bit is pretty important…
