re: #73 Pawn of the Oppressor

Exactly… Uhm, I’m pretty sure Appeals Courts “interpret” (i.e. consider) the intention of laws all the time. It’s part of what they do… That’s kinda their job… Gee, when courts rule in a way that conservatives don’t like, suddenly they all become legal scholars! Interesting, that.

Edit: I’d have to go dig out my textbooks to look up the exact terms, but there are differing schools of thought on this question of going by the “letter of the law” versus the “intention of the law”. It’s a spectrum of consideration and judges may fall towards one end or the other. But, I’m pretty sure mounting a letter-of-the-law challenge specifically to undermine and destroy the intention of the law is duplicitous and shitty (< that’s a legal term right there). I haven’t read the SCOTUS opinion yet but I do wonder if there was a bit of scolding in the tone…

From what I read, Roberts spent most of his time berating congress for writing such an “ambiguous” text in the first place—because it wasn’t a sufficiently “bipartisan” endeavor that wasn’t thrashed out by “both sides” until it was a thing of jewellike perfection, which it would have been if it weren’t for all the regrettable “partisanship”.

It wasn’t the fault of one particular side—nosiree Bob!