Free Republic

When Justice John Paul Stephens issued his 1984 opinion in Chevron U.S.A. v. National Resources Defense Council, he started what legal scholar Gary Lawson later called “nothing less than a bloodless constitutional revolution.” At long last, on Wednesday, the Supreme Court will hear two cases that may signal the beginning of the end to that revolution. Article I of the Constitution explicitly directs that “All legislative Power herein granted shall be vested in a Congress of the United States,” not regulatory agencies. Yet Justice Stephens’ opinion found that “agenc[ies] may . . . properly rely upon the incumbent administration’s views...

A New Bedford fishing company, one of the largest open-sea operations in the U.S., has abruptly closed its doors, claiming it can no longer operate profitably in the face of excessive fishery management regulation. The Northern Pelagic Group, which targets herring and mackerel, has shuttered its well-known plant on Fish Island, laid off all but one of its 120 employees and tied up its two boats, the Northern Explorer and the Dona Martita. "One of the boats is going back to the West Coast, and I don't know what's going to happen to the other one," said Eoin Rochford, NORPEL's...