[brookst]

> because the large group of politicians can't get their act together and pass well-reasoned and descriptive laws

How do you figure? This ruling says that Congress must be domain experts in every area, and agencies must merely implement the specific policies that Congress dictates.

Is that even possible? For anyone? Sure, Congress is dysfunctional but so what? This new regime is unworkable, and it doesn't matter if it's dysfunctional politicians or "top lawyers".

[mike_hearn]

People on this thread are talking as if this decision stops Congress delegating powers to the executive, or the executive drafting laws for Congress to pass. It clearly does neither.

It's actually constitutionally entirely reasonable to demand that lawmakers are the people who make law, because there's no specific reason to assume that the volume of laws should naturally drown the people responsible for them. But even if you do assume that, nothing in this judgement would restrict the volume of laws passed in any way. It's just not about that at all.

[andyjohnson0]

The "volume of laws" required to regulate a complex modern society is far greater than that required for the US 200+ years ago. Thats why successful nations use rule-making agencies to regulate commerce, environmental protection, workplace safety, etc. Expecting the legislature to do it all is just not going to scale - which I suspect is the objective. The people behind these decisions want an overloaded, ineffectual legal system because that creates the best conditions for unrestricted accumulation of wealth and power.

[somenameforme]

I think you're missing the ideological motivation. It's all about ensuring a healthier system of checks and balances. When courts are forced to defer to unelected bureaucrats, they serve basically no purpose - yet our entire legal system is supposed to be predicated on checks and balances at all levels. By returning the ability of courts to hear and legally judge the merits of law, at their discretion, you help maintain an overall healthier system of checks and balances.

It all comes down to centralization vs decentralization. In a completely decentralized system you will never have an amazing outcome, because there will always be plenty of people doing stupid things - this includes judges. Yet you will also never have a horrible system, for basically the same reason - there will always be plenty of people doing 'smart' things. By contrast, centralized systems can yield a complete utopia under the oversight of socially motivated, intelligent, and highly capable leadership. Yet they can also yield the most unimaginably horrific dystopias under self centered, foolish, and incapable leadership.

So which does one prefer? In the end I suspect this is one of those issues where we all think other people think the same, but they most certainly do not. I personally could not imagine anything other than a system decentralized, to its greatest extremes, in every way imaginable. Because if I look at the political types of modern times "socially motivated, intelligent, and highly capable" are not generally the first words that come to mind.

[mike_hearn]

> The "volume of laws" required to regulate a complex modern society is far greater than that required for the US 200+ years ago.

I'm not going to get into debating this directly, but please be aware that arguments about the complexity of society are ideological in nature. It's not a simple factual matter on which there's widespread agreement. Many conservatives don't even agree with the premise that society has such a thing as complexity, or if it did that there's a higher level today than in the past.

[beaeglebeachedd]

Excellent. Deregulate then. That's the desired effect of this anyway.

[brookst]

The desired effect is to break the federal government so states that want to e.g. pollute the environment and leave the poor uneducated can do so without interference.

[zaphar]

Congress people are supposed to hire and listen to domain experts in the field they legislate on.

[dec0dedab0de]

Congress could hire their own experts instead of having them work for the president.

[brookst]

But that means they would never be done with any law. Rather than creating the EPA in the 70’s and funding and authorizing it to do its thing, every session of congress would have to consider every topic that comes before the EPA every year.

It’s unworkable. And that is the goal.

[dec0dedab0de]

but that’s better than an unelected group answering to the president coming up with rules on their own.