Because Congress is already paralyzed on critical issues, the prospect of a future in which the administrative state is rendered toothless is also a future in which unelected, conservative Justices become the arbiters of what the government can and can’t do. It’s a right-wing fantasy, cherished and developed for decades, come to life. Remember our freedoms are given and taken away by the Supreme Court.
Deregulation, narrowing the government’s footprint, attacking the “welfare” state – these were the fashions of the day in the 80's. While anti-regulation ideas took seed in the administration, an outside forum cropped up where they could incubate: the Federalist Society, founded by law students disillusioned by what they perceived as an over-liberal slant in the preeminent law schools in 1982. It grew explosively into a national organization where those on the right could debate and develop legal theories. It also became a mill for churning out judicial nominees who reliably hewed to that conservative mindset. The full power of this double-barreled force took years to be realized, though it has everything to do with where we are now.
With the election of President Donald Trump in 2016, the vision dreamt up in Federalist Society conferences and Reagan administration cocktail parties was within reach. Steve Bannon, then still White House chief strategist and mastermind behind Trump’s rise, used his first public debut in 2017 to promise a yearslong crusade for the “deconstruction of the administrative state.”
Trump had promised during the campaign to fill any Supreme Court vacancy on his watch with a Federalist Society-approved candidate, and appointed three to the Court. It was a changing of the guard.
In Gundy v. United States in 2019, you can almost taste the conservative excitement. Justice Neil Gorsuch writes expansively on his view that the Court is entitled to second guess any congressional statute it thinks went too far.
Now the court has a conservative supermajority. Upcoming cases will give the Court more opportunity to cut President Joe Biden’s, or any other President agencies off at the knees. To leave this aspect of the constitutional structure alone undefended would serve only to accelerate the flight of power from the legislative to the executive branch, turning the latter into a vortex of authority that was constitutionally reserved for the people’s representatives in order to protect their liberties.
READ FULL ARTICLE; The Supreme Court Is Poised To Shift Executive Branch Power To Itself (msn.com)
