When the Executive violates the Constitution, the Supreme Court can order the Executive to fulfill its Constitutional obligations. So in the debt ceiling crisis why not let the Supreme Court resolve it? If failure to raise the debt ceiling really would violate the Constitution and no other, more limited, remedies are available, the Supreme Court could invoke its inherent Article III fiscal powers to solve the problem. Of course, some technical and procedural hurdles would need to be overcome for a debt ceiling case to reach the Supreme Court. But none of these should prevent such a case from making it to the Court. At a minimum, the Social Security Trust Fund, one of the largest holders of federal debt, could sue for payment if the government threatened to default on that debt. Ordering payment on a debt is something the courts are particularly good at and, if failing to do so would result in the Fund permanently losing a portion of the value of the assets it needs to pay mandatory Social Security benefits, this would seem to establish the type of “irreparable harm” that typically justifies courts stepping in and doing so immediately. This power of federal courts to raise and spend money is not unique in the history of the United States, nor is it limited to school desegregation. For example, courts have the inherent power to impose and collect fines from people held in contempt. But nothing in Article III of the Constitution, which vests the judicial power of the United States in the Supreme Court and the other federal courts created by Congress, says anything about a contempt power or a power to impose and collect fines. Yet it is well-accepted that such a power must exist or else the courts would not be able to fully exercise the judicial power. The Supreme Court engages with Constitutional issues arising from the coordinate federal branches all the time. When Congress enacts a law that violates the Constitution, the Supreme Court can strike down the law as unconstitutional.
Posted on: Tue, 15 Oct 2013 04:14:56 +0000
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