Free Republic

A family fishing company, Loper Bright Enterprises, was being driven out of business, because they couldn't afford the $700 per day they were being charged by the National Marine Fisheries Service to monitor their company. The thing is, federal law doesn't authorize NMFS to charge businesses for this. They just decided to start doing it in 2013. Why did they think they could away with just charging people without any legal authorization? Because in 1984, in the Chevron decision, the Supreme Court decided that regulatory agencies were the "experts" in their field, and the courts should just defer to their...

Family-run fishing businesses face a fraught and competitive environment, even independent of burdensome regulations. But one such outrageous regulation is now before the Supreme Court, in a case with significance far beyond our nation’s fisheries. The National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS), part of the Department of Commerce, promulgated a rule that pertains to most herring boats, such as those portrayed in the Oscar-winning movie CODA. If a vessel is determined to need a federal monitor and has not already been assigned one under a federally funded program, it must pay for the monitor itself. The cost of doing that for...

And we beseech you, brethren, to know them which labour among you, and are over you in the Lord, and admonish you; And to esteem them very highly in love for their work’s sake. And be at peace among yourselves.( I Thessalonians 5:12-13)I am all for respect, especially for those who teach and preach the Word of God. I believe one of the challenges of our age is that we are experiencing an authority crisis. Respect and reverence seem to have gone out the window, in this age where everyone is their own authority, and their own expert on subjects...

For at least half a century, judicial restraint has been the clarion call of the conservative legal movement. After the Warren Court era, Roe v. Wade, and very nearly a “right” to welfare benefits, it was not surprising that conservatives would seek to rein in judicial self-aggrandizement. The principal conservative response was to promote judicial deference: Judges should resist the temptation to legislate from the bench and “defer” to the political branches. Unfortunately, time has shown that this response was too blunt. Particularly in constitutional cases, judicial deference has led to a steady expansion of government power. This, in turn,...