>Well, the judge has to base the decision on a whole bunch of laws. It's not like judges get to decide this on their own.

This is a weird opinion to hold when you take the fact that two judges can come to two completely separate conclusions on a single issue, while drawing from the same laws.

Judging is the act of applying law (general) to a particular case (specific). Since laws can't anticipate every future situation at their time of writing, no matter what there will _always_ be some disconnect between these two -- i.e. vagueness/generality in law, leading to edge cases.

Which is why two judges can come to two completely separate conclusions on a single issue, while drawing from the same laws, based on their own personal methods of interpretation and biases.

Judges in the lower circuits are also held accountable to higher circuit judges if they don't interpret the law while taking past case judgement into consideration.

A lower district judge can't overrule a higher judge's opinions.

Except when they do. Activist judges & judicial legislation [0] are not a new thing.

[0] https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/judicial%20legisl...

'Activist judge' is indeed a term in the English language, but what does it have to do with this case? There are 'drunk airplane pilots', but does that make the pilot of the plane I'm going to board a suspect?

I think of it in an engineery sense - if the edge case is possible, it will happen.

Maybe that works for software engineering, where it's a good idea to pause a release in case someone uses scripts to send a shitload of bad requests to our API and crashes a server because of our bug or whatever, but I understand that that doesn't work 1:1 with the real world, where it doesn't make sense to not have the aviation industry until we perfect self-flying planes.

> if the edge case is possible, it will happen

By that argument, you will:

* beat your wife

* murder an enemy

* shoot up a school full of children

* commit arson

* jump bail

* evade arrest

* die in a hail of bullets

So, assuming all those eventualities, why shouldn't we just put you to death now?

To spare you the rhetorical exercise, the answer is because we don't punish you for the things you might do, but only punish you for a) the things that you have done, b) that we can prove, c) beyond a reasonable doubt, d) in a court of law, e) before a jury of your peers.

No, not at all. This is closer to what the parent was saying

By that argument, someone will:

* beat his wife - true

* murder an enemy - true

* shoot up a school full of children - true

* commit arson - true

* jump bail - true

* evade arrest - true

* die in a hail of bullets - true

You see, all these things do happen. The parent is not arguing that because something is possible any one individual will do it. You're arguing a very different thing.

I think we're getting a little sidetracked here. What the grandparent wanted to say was just that the corset of laws that binds a judge might not be as tight as you think; hence e.g. activist judges.

I think my point stands, which is that not every possibility is an eventuality, and we shouldn't assume that to be true without a willingness to accept a very bad panoply of preventative measures masquerading as corrective measures.

That said, whether or not an activist judge allows a presumptively lawful merger to occur is hardly a hill worth dying on. We have remedies for activist judges through an appeal process. Where an appeals process is not available after the merger, we have remedy for anti-competitive companies through regulatory influence, regulatory agency, rule of law, and a court system to back that up.

You may enjoy: "The Myth of the Rule of Law".

http://faculty.msb.edu/hasnasj/GTWebSite/MythWeb.htm

In a perfect world, what you said would be how things are actually decided.

Apparently you've never heard of this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Judicial_immunity