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Nationwide injunctions are a very recent legal innovation -- as in, extremely rare until the 2000s, and uncommon until the 2010s.

They were not how this situation was handled for nearly all of the existence of the United States.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nationwide_injunction

by rtkwe1 days ago|

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Seems like a perfectly valid one. If the government is violating the constitution or a persons rights why should there be suits all across the country to get that recognized? Especially when the question isn't on something with a lot of particularized tests that's sensitive to the exact case, eg 4th amendment law? Why should rights be so dependent on someone in my particular part of the country having sued?

by lmm1 days ago|

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> If the government is violating the constitution or a persons rights why should there be suits all across the country to get that recognized?

Because one judge in one county shouldn't be defining the laws for the whole country? Sure it's great when they issue a ruling you like, but what about when it's a ruling that you don't. If it's a knife-edge situation then letting several judges rule and having the supreme court sort it out is the right thing; if there's an obvious right answer then every court will rule the same way and it doesn't matter.

> Why should rights be so dependent on someone in my particular part of the country having sued?

Your rights are always dependent on your willingness to sue to defend them. It's nice if someone else does the legwork and sets the precedent, but you shouldn't depend on that.

by rtkwe1 days ago|

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It's rarely down to one judge in one county though, most are entered pending appeal and the appeals court can immediately put the injunction on hold or in cases like this the first injunction might come from a circuit court who's far from one judge, by the time it gets to a circuit it's gone through multiple judges and some cases are heard by a bank of judged instead of just one.

> Your rights are always dependent on your willingness to sue to defend them. It's nice if someone else does the legwork and sets the precedent, but you shouldn't depend on that.

I don't have a spare million sloshing around even if I could get granted standing for various things I would like to defend. It's not just a problem of willingness.

by lmm15 hours ago|

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> It's rarely down to one judge in one county though, most are entered pending appeal and the appeals court can immediately put the injunction on hold or in cases like this the first injunction might come from a circuit court who's far from one judge, by the time it gets to a circuit it's gone through multiple judges and some cases are heard by a bank of judged instead of just one.

When the circuit court rules the ruling is binding on that whole circuit, which is a pretty huge area and population (bigger than most countries). When one judge in one county rules the ruling is binding in that county, when the supreme court rules it's binding on the whole country. Isn't that kind of how it should work?

by hansvm1 days ago|

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On the other side, why should one crazed/corrupt judge in some state which has nothing to do with me be able to infringe on my freedoms and make my life worse? Worse, why is it possible to jurisdiction shop for the single bad actor and impose your will on the entire country?

You're not wrong, but (like most issues in a 350M-person country) it's complicated. The system is tailored to some expected level/type of corruption and bad actors. If you expect that the government is basically fine and that out of 50M people per region surely somebody will file suit if the issue is important then the current system makes a lot of sense. You get judges with more knowledge and awareness of your local issues, anything important still gets addressed, and you're resilient to some degree of random bad judges and bad actors. If those expectations are out of whack then you get worse outcomes.

In reality, the world is complicated enough that even boiling down the lists of judges and whatnot to that simple of a description is misleading at best. Neither solution is anywhere near optimal by itself. So...what next?

by rtkwe1 days ago|

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Yeah it's a definite mixed bag and maybe the solution is to require them to be approved by at least a multijudge panel at the circuit level before going in to place. In effect that basically already happened though, the normal pattern was for injunctions to be stayed for a few weeks pending the appeal and the appeal court would be able to extend that stay if they believed it was flawed or unjustified. The characterization of it being "one crazed judge" doesn't really hold up to the pattern of their actual use, and where judges didn't put in a stay the appeals court could as well.