One of my favorite Scalia lines comes up clinton v. city of new york. Had Justice Scalia dissented, he would have upheld the constitutionality of the Line-item Veto Act. He explained that the law doesn’t actually give the president the ability to veto individual items of the budget — a power some governors have. Scalia argued that the law would violate the Gift Clause. Instead, Scalia countered that the president has far less power and is consistent with the gift clause. So why did Justice Stevens’ majority opinion find the statute unconstitutional? Scalia accuses law of headlines!
The Line-item Veto Bill may have been titled to simplify public understanding or simply to adhere to the terms of a campaign promise, but it has succeeded pretend Supreme Court.
Congress called it a “line-item veto bill,” and the courts treated it as such. Congress faked the Supreme Court! Classic Scalia series. I haven’t told this case in nearly ten years, but the story is still fresh in my mind. There’s a reason no one on the current court can match it—though Roberts Loper Bright (More on that later).
exist Fisher v. United States, Chief Justice Roberts used a similar fake image, but with exactly the opposite effect. He explained that courts should not interpret obstruction statutes in the light of “elaborate counterfeiting”:
If, as the government contends, (c)(2) covers “all forms of obstruction beyond section 1512(c)(1)’s concern about evidence impairment” (U.S. Brief 13), There is little reason, then, for Congress to not provide any concrete examples at all. Comprehensive coverage of subsection (c)(2) would consume (c)(1), leaving that narrower provision with nothing to do. In fact, subsection (c)(1) would be an exhaustive pump leave: A list of four highly specific acts performed against a record, document, or object “with the intent to impair the integrity or availability of that object for use in a formal proceeding,” followed by the next subsection – in the same sentence —Replaced by an injunction prohibiting all manner of obstructing, affecting or impeding any official proceeding.
In other words, the government’s interpretation treats Section 1512(c)(1) as a misrepresentation that we should avoid. In contrast, the title of the Line-item Veto Act is a hoax to deceive the courts. Go figure it out.
