The blockbuster Supreme Court cases on abortion, guns, religion, and climate change have now capped the Court’s session. One of the themes that ran throughout some of the cases was the Court’s attempt to strengthen legislative bodies or at least prompt that effect. Of course, the Supreme Court is not always known for its consistency of principle, as in the gun case in which it expanded the nascent right to have a gun for personal defense by rejecting the New York legislature's strict concealed carry law.
However, the Court’s general point is well taken, especially at the federal level with a potentially impactful ruling, West Virginia v. EPA, which rejected sweeping powers for Environmental Protection Agency to regulate gasses causing climate change. All citizens, regardless of their views of climate change, should be leery of the behemoth administrative state at EPA and across the massive girth of the federal government. For decades, Congress has been shirking its legislative duties by writing vague or general laws, thus foisting the public’s ire about excessive and burdensome regulations on unelected bureaucrats at executive or independent agencies, who fill in the broad congressional legal outlines by writing the detailed rules. Whether the U.S. government adopts strict measures to control greenhouse gas emissions or not, the Court is correct that the founders of the country expected Congress to make the laws, not executive branch agencies with the sole mission of executing Congress’s will. In this case, the Court is nudging Congress to actually do its job and take responsibility for legislating on climate change--and likely on other major issues that are now being effectively decided by executive bureaucracies.
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