The Hiroshima Court, Part I: Usurping the Authority of the Elected Branches

In the last several Terms, the Supreme Court has issued a series of remarkable decisions that collectively have created the greatest shift in the constitutional legal landscape in nearly a century. It is unlikely that our legal world will ever be the same after the Court is done refashioning constitutional law. In that sense, we are seeing what this Article will argue is the “Hiroshima Court” in action, for just as dropping the atomic bomb on Hiroshima changed the world forever by beginning the nuclear age, the Court’s decisions will permanently change our understanding of constitutional meaning and the rights the Constitution protects. This Article— intended to be the first in a series—examines the Court’s decisions creating vast, unprecedented limits on the administrative state, including creating the major questions doctrine, foreshadowing the revival of the nondelegation doctrine, and overruling the decision in Chevron v. NRDC that courts defer to reasonable interpretations by administrative agencies of ambiguous statutory provisions. This assault on the administrative state is critical to understanding the new world the Court is creating before our very eyes.