ccording to our Constitution, Congress makes the law, the president enforces the law, and judges interpret the law. But in the United States today, administrative agencies run the law. Legal scholar Susan Dudley has done the calculations: she points out that the Code of Federal Regulations, largely drafted by these agencies, consumes more than 185,000 pages. The regulations are more than four times as long as the U.S. legal code upon which they are based. Taken together, these regulations reflect the extensive reach of what critics call the “administrative state.”
We have all heard of the Food and Drug Administration, Homeland Security, and the Securities and Exchange Commission. But there are more than four hundred other federal agencies running nearly every aspect of modern life from A to Z—or at least A to W. The AbilityOne Commission helps people with disabilities find federal jobs, while the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars conducts nonpartisan research to inform policymakers. In between, we have the Civil Rights Division of the Department of Justice, the Environmental Protection Agency, and the Social Security Administration.
Do these federal agencies have too much power? The conservative legal movement, spearheaded by the Federalist Society, has long believed that they do. Now, with a firm six-three majority on the Supreme Court, conservatives are in a position to act on that belief. At the end of the 2023–2024 term, the Court issued four opinions that significantly impeded the power of federal agencies: Loper Bright Enterprises v. Raimondo, SEC v. Jarkesy, Corner Post, Inc. v. Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System, and Ohio v. EPA.
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