After the fullest consideration this Court recently held in two cases that jurisdictional disputes between railroad unions subject to the Railway Labor Act are not within judicial competence.
The Boundaries of "Good Behavior" and Judicial Competence: Exploring Responsibilities and Authority Limitations of Cognitive Specialists in the Regulation of Incapacitated Judges.
I think these findings are abundantly supported by the evidence, and hence that it is not within our judicial competence to set them asideeven though, sitting as trial judges, we might have made some other finding.
The plaintiffs, on the other hand, contend that an equitable remedy against the largest emitters of carbon dioxide in the United States is in order and not beyond judicial competence.
That line-drawing problem presents judicial competence questions that are very similar to the ones that have provoked the Court to forbear from robust boundary policing in areas such as the nondelegation and the Chenery doctrines.
This seems to suggest that the "substantial effects" analysis is not a factual enquiry for Congress in the first instance with subsequent judicial review looking only to the rationality of the Congressional conclusion, but one of a rather different sort, dependent upon a uniquely judicial competence.
In many of those cases, he wrote, it is foreign policy matters that earn this designation, either because diplomatic wisdom lies beyond judicial competence, or because in foreign affairs it can be important for the nation to speak with one voice and act in unity.
The process of making the determination of rationality is, by its nature, highly empirical, and in matters not within specialized judicial competence or completely commonplace, significant weight should be accorded the capacity of Congress to amass the stuff of actual experience and cull conclusions from it.
If federal authority, in this instance this Court, orders the field of judicial competence in this area for the federal courts, and the state courts are left free to formulate their own rules, the purposes behind the doctrine could be as effectively undermined as if there had been no federal pronouncement on the subject.
The reason given is not because Mr. Chang demonstrated a lack of judicial competence or independence.
While equality and quality can be related, they raise very different issues of legal standards and judicial competence.
