Free Republic

Two recent U.S. Supreme Court decisions are victories for anyone dealing with government administrative agencies, say lawyers interested in the cases. One constitutional scholar warns that the decisions are only the first steps in the fight to maintain our form of democracy. “Administrative power is the greatest threat to our constitutional rights,” Phillip Hamburger, a Columbia University School of Law law professor and CEO of the New Civil Liberties Alliance (NCLA), told The Epoch Times. Mr. Hamburger is the author of “Is Administrative Law Unlawful?” a treatise on the dangers of administrative law. Lawyers interviewed by The Epoch Times believe...

Too many on the Left believe that Article 3 of the Constitution, the judicial powers afforded by the Constitution, should be ignored when Congress enacts legislation that is unconstitutional. Next June, the Supreme Court will rule in the case of Sackett v. Environmental Protection Agency. It will decide whether Congress has the authority to determine if owners of a plot of land can use that private property to build a home without first gaining permission from the EPA. In plain language, is private property still protected by the Constitution, or can the federal government at its whim seize that property...

The Clean Water Act prohibits certain discharges to “navigable waters” without a federal permit. The Act defines “navigable waters” as “waters of the United States” which the Corps and EPA originally took to mean traditional navigable waters that could be used in interstate commerce. This is important because the Clean Water Act is based on the commerce power. By definition, regulation of waters under the Act must be necessary to and in furtherance of interstate commerce. But it didn’t take long before the agencies started pushing the envelope on federal jurisdiction claiming regulatory authority over wetlands and other nonnavigable waters...

It seems incredible, but a single missing word could turn a water law into a government land grab so horrendous even a U.S. Supreme Court justice warned it would “put the property rights of every American entirely at the mercy of Environmental Protection Agency employees.” The missing word is “navigable.” The Obama administration is proposing a rule titled “Definition of ‘Waters of the United States’ Under the Clean Water Act,” which would strike “navigable” from American water law and redefine any piece of land that is wet at least part of the year, no matter how remote or isolated it...

Regulations: The Clean Water Act is being rewritten to give a government bureaucracy the power to regulate every body of water from the Mississippi River to a rain-flooded field. The first casualty may be American coal. With all the concern for the harm that cap-and-trade and regulating carbon dioxide as a pollutant might do to the American economy and free markets, the Environmental Protection Agency is doing quite enough damage with an existing law on the books — the Clean Water Act. Congress plans to revise it to make it an even more powerful bludgeon against industry, energy producers and...

Despite strong opposition from agricultural groups and private property rights advocates, a bill that would expand the federal reach of the Clean Water Act, and that could have sweeping effects on everyday farming activities, passed out of a key U.S. Senate committee last week. The Senate Environment and Public Works Committee voted 12-7 to advance S. 787, also known as the Clean Water Restoration Act, which now faces consideration by the full Senate. If adopted, the legislation would give the Environmental Protection Agency and the Army Corps of Engineers authority over nearly every wet area in the nation, including farm...

You can count on your constitutional due process rights if you are a thief, a rapist, or a murderer. But if you're accused of committing a crime against the environment, you may as well tear up the Constitution and bury it in a landfill—or better yet, send it for recycling. That, at least, is the message of the legal tactics that the government has employed in its two-decade-long crusade against John Rapanos, a Michigan developer. Rapanos' crime? He shifted sand from one part of his property to another without a wetland permit, a felony under the Clean Water Act. Rapanos'...