executive orders can decide what the law means
>>Also, the U.S. Constitution's requirement that State governments be (small-r) republican
There is no such requirement
"The United States shall guarantee to every State in this Union a Republican Form of Government, ..."
> "The United States shall guarantee to every State in this Union a Republican Form of Government, ..."
Perhaps it’s my imperfect understanding of English here, but to me this reads more like a guarantee to the states that the federal government itself will take the form of a republican government, not that the states themselves must be republics.
It’s like a shopkeeper saying “My store shall guarantee to every shopper prices that are no higher than that of a competitor’s.” The guarantee is on the shopkeeper’s part; no obligation is required of the shoppers themselves.
| The United States shall guarantee to every State in this Union a Republican Form of Government, and shall protect each of them against Invasion; ...
That makes it pretty clear that this is about the States.
The Republican Guarantee is a commitment of the Federal Government to the States about the States. It means that the Federal Government will tolerate no State monarchies.
> The Republican Guarantee is a commitment of the Federal Government to the States about the States.
I'm not quite sure where the "about the states" part came from. To me, Article IV just reads like a set of promises the federal government must make to the states.
What?! How do you see that? The ", and" below is a conjunction, it's joining one commitment and another into a list of commitments made to the States:
| The United States shall guarantee to every State in this Union a Republican Form of Government, and shall protect each of them against Invasion; ...
That clearly does not predicate one commitment upon the other. It's just a list of commitments.
The key word in my comment is "additional", which was intended to indicate that I was replying to "and shall protect each of them against Invasion".
I have to admit it's also partially my fault since I didn't notice at the time that you are not the same person who made the original comment I replied to, so I left out some context.
Otherwise I agree that it is just a list of commitments.
I doubt many in Wisconsin are interested in the constitutional subtleties, just as they're not interested in how the "spontaneous" activism and protests have been coordinated by astroturfing.
The bottom line is that this will be marketed as a blow for individual freedom against oppressive government interference, and that marketing frame will be an expedient and manipulative PR position which will result in many avoidable deaths.
Worse, it will also do very little to keep the economy running, because the real economic problems are going to happen upstream, and states have virtually no influence over what happens there. (Which on its own should be enough to expose the lie that "individual freedom" as a magic fetish against economic catastrophe is even a possibility in this situation.)
> 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.
The President most definitely cannot promulgate Executive Orders that have the force of law without supporting statutory law from Congress. There is no argument about this in U.S. constitutional jurisprudence.
Presidential power is highest in military and foreign policy, and at its lowest in domestic policy. Immigration falls into foreign policy. Also, there's two plus centuries of statutes that delegate some Congressional powers to the Executive, such as tariff powers.
> > 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.
This was addressed by other commenters.
> > 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.
That is an outrageous take. The justices in question are elected, not nominated. (IIRC there's a nomination-then-election system in Wisconsin.)
The U.S. is a republic, which means it has stringent procedural rules. Some aspects of American governance are very democratic, some are less, and some are practically not -- that's how it was setup in 1787-1789, and all of that has remained essentially unchanged since then. None of this is new.
> 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.