f Justice Brett Kavanaugh is to justify the efforts of the Trump White House, Senate Republicans, and supporters nationwide to confirm him, he should begin by taming the administrative state. This is familiar territory for him. Before his confirmation, Kavanaugh had no clear views on privacy, race, or sexuality, the great constitutional holy of holies of the Left. Instead, his real threat to modern liberalism came from his hostility to the progressive vision of technocratic government run by insulated bureaucrats and protected by deferential judges.
While the administrative state has always been with us in some form, it has metastasized into a progressive perpetual-motion machine. It calls on Congress to delegate broad swathes of its legislative power to federal agencies, it insulates the bureaucrats who exercise that regulatory power from the president's political control, and it demands that courts defer to officials' policy choices and even readings of the law.
Read Full Article »