“Here we go again,” Ninth Circuit Judge Milan Smith wrote at the beginning of a Friday dissent in a mining case in which he joined prospectors, regulators, environmentalists and a remote Indian tribe exasperated by fighting over the use of suction equipment to mine the dregs of California’s gold rush.
....“No legislature or regulatory agency would enact sweeping rules that create such economic chaos, shutter entire industries, and cause thousands of people to lose their jobs. That is because the legislative and executive branches are directly accountable to the people through elections, and its members know they would be removed swiftly from office were they to enact such rules,” he wrote.
“Unfortunately,” he added, “I believe the record is clear that our court has strayed with lamentable frequency from its constitutionally limited role.”
via blogs.wsj.com
