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Comment by light_hue_1

Everything about the comment above is totally incorrect when it comes to the law in the US. Just to give you a taste of how wrong this is: the case isn't even about an executive order by a governor! It's about the rulemaking of the Secretary of the Department of Health Services. Not only is the parent wrong, the opinion actually goes out of it's way in the first paragraph to say this! "This case is not about Governor Tony Evers' Emergency Order or the powers of the Governor."

> In the U.S. executive orders simply don't and can't have the force of law without the support of statutory law, not relative to civilians[0]. If you want a law, it needs to be passed as a statute by the appropriate legislature and must become law via all the usual mechanisms.

This isn't true for many reasons including: the federal government controls a lot of what happens in the country indirectly and executive orders can decide what the law means (even if that meaning goes against what the law intended). Executive orders can for example suspend immigration. That absolutely affects civilians in an extremely practical way. More fundamentally, this kind of statement totally ignores how the legal system in the US works practically. Yes, there are laws, but laws are vague and must be interpreted. The federal government makes rules that interpret laws. These rules are what the law "is" practically. There is wide disagreement about what rules a particular law allows or doesn't allow. Executive orders can and do change these rules.

> That has nothing to do with corruption or taxes, and everything to do with long-established, well-thought-out, constitutional law. Yes, we're talking about constitutional law based on past skepticism of government

This is completely and utterly false! You shouldn't say these things without reading the opinion. Neither side made this argument at all and the court narrowly ruled that the rulemaking process had not been followed correctly.

> Also, the U.S. Constitution's requirement that State governments be (small-r) republican

There is no such requirement. This was also not about federal constitutional law, it was about the constitution of Wisconsin.

> extends the constraints on the President's EO power to the States' Governors.

Absolutely not. Each state has its own constitution, the federal constitution says no such thing at all. Also this case was not about an executive order!

> the Court might well rule that the clause does mean that Governors cannot impose emergency rules without statutory support

Again, please read the opinion before you say such things. The main argument was that some details of the law had not been followed.

> This was a decision by a court, not a question of whether the people support their governments

Only in the narrowest sense. It was a decision by a party, not a court. Republicans put their judges in power and the Republican judges made a decision. In that sense the US is absolutely unlike any other democracy in the world.

parent light_hue_1 6 years ago

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