Re:I Got the Fed to Release Its 2011 "Treasury Default" Play...
by JumpCrisscross on Tuesday November 07, 2023 @06:21PM
(#38184516)
> almost no litigant other than Congress acting as a whole
The House as a whole would probably have standing.
Re:I Got the Fed to Release Its 2011 "Treasury Default" Play...
by function_seven on Tuesday November 07, 2023 @06:30PM
(#38184612)
Oh you just gave me an idea for another hypothetical. If the House was unable to elect a Speaker during the time the debt ceiling was breached, would they even be capable of bringing any action before the Court?
One stalemate averted by another!
Re:I Got the Fed to Release Its 2011 "Treasury Default" Play...
by dragonwriter on Tuesday November 07, 2023 @06:33PM
(#38184634)
It is only a rule of the House that limits business that can't be done pending election of a speaker (and before the recent crisis was resolved, one of the solutions proposed was changing the House rules to allow more with an Acting Speaker), so, not in any way that the House itself couldn’t bypass, even without electing a Speaker.
Re:I Got the Fed to Release Its 2011 "Treasury Default" Play...
by function_seven on Tuesday November 07, 2023 @06:03PM
(#38184326)
Haha. Well obviously that what I meant by my shorthand phrasing!
But like, for other people who aren't so smart, thanks for detailing the mechanisms I would use :)
See, that's why you aren't on the Court.
What the kind of people that actually get put on the Court would mostly due to allow the action without endorsing its legality would be:
(1) Be sticklers about standing and other threshold issues (ripeness, mootness, etc, but standing is the big and most useful one here); almost no litigant other than Congress acting as a whole will have the kind of particularized injury to allege that would give them standing to challenge paying the debt (an actual creditor might have standing the other way, but that's not the scenario we’re concerned with.)
(2) If you really can’t kick the case for standing or other threshold issues (well, first, amateur, but...) then invoke the “political question doctrine” to avoid it anyway.