I prefer "political" and "apolitical". This was on full display yesterday.
In the arguing about IEEPA. there was a lot of arguing about the president's authority to "regulate". The law uses lots of verbs of things that he can employ - investigate, regulate, prohibit, etc. But it explicitly does NOT say tax or tariff.
A literalist, as we tend to think conservative justices are, should look at this and say "well, if Congress wanted one of the president's tools to be tariffs, they should have said so here". And indeed, several of the conservative justices did have issues on this point.
However, here comes the Wise Latina suddenly arguing the literalist point. Not because she believes in literalism - she hates it - but because it makes a political point.
Herein lies the biggest problem SCOTUS has right now. The "political" justices let their reading of the law be swayed by the political outcome of their decision. The "apolitical" justices let their reading be swayed by what the words actually say.
In the arguing about IEEPA. there was a lot of arguing about the president's authority to "regulate". The law uses lots of verbs of things that he can employ - investigate, regulate, prohibit, etc. But it explicitly does NOT say tax or tariff.
A literalist, as we tend to think conservative justices are, should look at this and say "well, if Congress wanted one of the president's tools to be tariffs, they should have said so here". And indeed, several of the conservative justices did have issues on this point.
However, here comes the Wise Latina suddenly arguing the literalist point. Not because she believes in literalism - she hates it - but because it makes a political point.
Herein lies the biggest problem SCOTUS has right now. The "political" justices let their reading of the law be swayed by the political outcome of their decision. The "apolitical" justices let their reading be swayed by what the words actually say.
