We have a rule-of-law system in the US, at least that’s the ideal. The court shouldn’t be changing the laws to make policing easier. That’s what the legislative branch is for.
I hear that a fair bit: "that's what the legislature is for". Has the Congress ever responded by actually passing a law?
Passing a law is a very high bar, especially with the filibuster, and a President can still veto it. It's supposed to be for checks and balances, but I see a lot of checks and very few balances.
I know that it's not the court's responsibility to fix the rest of the system. But it feels disingenuous to say that the legislature could fix it when they know perfectly well that they won't.
It is when all it does is fund what they've already decided on. Appropriations bills just fund priorities established by existing law. All it does is keep the executive branch doing its job.
Which seems like the bare minimum and even that much is often too much to ask.
Thats not how budgets are set, so they are actually contentious. And they don’t fall under “laws passed”, only modifications are.
But regardless, of the 78 laws passed only 5 were around appropriations.
Of the remaining 75 they included infrastructure, veterans affairs, trade, hunting, Native American rights, research, workers rights, disaster relief, export laws, internal relations, and crime.
So clearly plenty of laws do get passed by Congress despite your claim of a “high bar”.
What it really sounds like is laws you want aren’t passed but that somehow supports the idea Congress is broken.
> Has the Congress ever responded by actually passing a law?
Yes. Despite appearances to the contrary (and the exceptionally lethargic behavior of the current (118th) congress), Congress does actually pass laws (and revisions to existing laws), often in response to deficiencies identified by courts and law enforcement in what is currently on the books. If you're interested in following this, the library of congress website [1] has half-way decent filtering.
> I know that it's not the court's responsibility to fix the rest of the system. But it feels disingenuous to say that the legislature could fix it when they know perfectly well that they won't.
Forget responsibility, it's not even within the court's purview - in order for a ruling to stand (much less set precedent), it must be based on the law as it exists (including past precedent); ignoring that might feel good to watch, and would certainly make life interesting for participants in one specific case... But in no way compensates for an inability to legislate on the part of actual, elected, legislators.
If you're frustrated, vote for congressfolk who get things done vs. blather on, don't wish for a magic judge.
> I hear that a fair bit: "that's what the legislature is for". Has the Congress ever responded by actually passing a law?
I’m not 100% clear on what the question is, in the sense that I want to give you a good-faith reading but, of course, the answer is obviously no. I doubt congress has even read any of our posts, haha.
I think the general expectation is that when chatting about politics the best hope we could have is that we could cause the other person (or some other person reading along) to vote differently, and maybe we’ll all get some better representatives if this conversation repeats enough times. It is a pretty indirect strategy, I don’t think it will have any big obvious wins.
> Passing a law is a very high bar, especially with the filibuster, and a President can still veto it. It's supposed to be for checks and balances, but I see a lot of checks and very few balances.
I agree that our system has a lot of checks and might be too logjam-prone. (Although, over the last 8 years we’ve probably both appreciated this feature at some point or another, maybe at different times). But that’s the system we have, we should fix it in an above the board fashion, not hope for judges to circumvent it.
> I know that it's not the court's responsibility to fix the rest of the system. But it feels disingenuous to say that the legislature could fix it when they know perfectly well that they won't.
Well, to be entirely transparent, there’s a dual purpose to this. So maybe it is a bit disingenuous. I mean the ingenuous element is there: it is always good to keep in mind how our system works, and I do think people should target their irritation at the correct party.
But also, not many of our (democratically elected) representatives are willing to argue for increasing surveillance. So the reminder that it is their job is a slightly circuitous way of indicating that it is maybe not a popular idea. If it were, somebody would run on it.
