Quote:
Originally Posted by Webleymkv
Not being able to pass a law doesn't necessarily mean that the legislators don't want it, only that they'd get too much backlash from their constituents by supporting it straightforwardly. Unfortunately, they've figured out a way around this as they've written laws vaguely and left their interpretation up to unelected bureaucrats in alphabet soup agencies like the ATF. This way, the alphabet soup can do their dirty work for them and issue "rulings" which carry force of law, but when the constituents take exception to the new "rules" the legislators can claim that they didn't vote for them and pontificate about "runaway" alphabet soup agencies while not actually doing anything about them.
What we're seeing in cases like this one, Cargill v. Garland, and West Virginia v. EPA is that the courts, including SCOTUS, are beginning to say that, in spite of Congress essentially ceding some of their power to the executive branch to avoid having to have "difficult" votes, the alphabet soup agencies do not have unlimited power to change law as they see fit despite the best efforts of spineless legislators.
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Have seen state statutes and codes specifically written/altered to be vague for this very reason, although not as frequently as other legitimate reasons. Often, it is simply impractical to write a statute that covers all possibility's or options. Jokingly this is what used to be referred to as "taking a file cabinet along fishing". Often the vagueness is specific to enforcement mechanisms. An example is a person taking a deer to feed his family compared to someone taking a trailer full and dumping them in the trash. They need to be treated differently, without the enforcement agency electing not to do their job.
While there is concern over legislatures wanting to protect themselves from voters, there is also serious concern over going too much "by the book"