The Supreme Court did not destroy the regulatory state, it upheld due process.

In a series of decisions handed down last week, the U.S. Supreme Court’s conservative majority steadfastly defended Americans’ due process rights in the face of the administrative state.

Each of these decisions is significant. Last week, in two simultaneous cases, the Supreme Court overturned decades of precedent that required judges to defer to the expertise of government agencies. Chevron With this principle, the courts have levelled the playing field for legal challenges to regulatory rules.

In another case decided on Thursday, SEC vs. JahkessyThe Supreme Court said the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) must hear civil fraud cases in federal district courts instead of its own administrative law tribunals. This decision will protect the right to a jury trial and reduce the number of Americans who have to go through a costly and lengthy administrative law system before they can have their cases heard in a real court.

Finally, on Monday, the court The court ruled that companies can challenge federal regulations within six years of suffering any damage. This is the hand of the administrative state. Previously, these challenges were limited to six years after the regulation itself was approved. This arrangement effectively eliminated any hope of due process for those who were victims of long-standing rules.

These four cases and three decisions together amount to much more than the sum of their parts: In identical 6-3 decisions, the Supreme Court’s conservative majority sent a clear signal that federal judges should have the final say on matters involving the regulatory state, because that is the system required by the Constitution.

This is not a power grab by the federal courts, as some critics have argued, but a restoration of judges’ proper role as a check on the power of the executive branch.

“Most people understand that criminal defendants have the right to be tried in a court of law before an impartial adjudicator. It’s common sense that these due process rights should be available to them whether the defendant is a family-run fishing business challenging the power of authorities or a man accused of violating securities laws,” said Anastasia Borden, senior attorney at the Pacific Legal Foundation. reason After these rulings were announced.

Bowden said the Supreme Court’s decisions over the past week “simply extend the due process rights of defendants to a vast administrative state. This, as with any other situation, is something that advocates of a fair and just society should celebrate.”

But not everyone is celebrating. Monday’s Opposition Cornerpost v. Federal Reserve Board Verdict“The court’s decision in this case and [the case that overturned the Chevron doctrine] The bill he approved could deal a devastating blow to the functioning of the federal government.”

This may sound great to libertarians, but unfortunately it’s not necessarily true. As long as the federal government continues to trample on the rights of Americans through the administrative state, the expected tsunami of lawsuits will be a reality.

Jackson asserts that if the government violates due process so frequently, it should be allowed to continue because it will be too hard for the courts to remedy the situation — to ensure that justice is delivered to victims of abuses of federal power. But if that’s true, then why have courts and constitutional promises about due process in the first place?

The regulatory state will continue to exist, but it will have to defend itself before an actual judge and jury, rather than expecting them to simply go along with the idea that regulators must know best.

To get a more rational understanding of what the Supreme Court is doing here, Overturned the majority opinion ChevronIn it, Chief Justice John Roberts wrote that the doctrine requiring the judiciary to defer to the regulatory state creates a “perpetual fog of uncertainty” about what the law actually says, effectively allowing the administrative state to take over the federal courts.

“Perhaps most fundamentally,” Roberts writes,ChevronThe presumption is false because government agencies do not have special authority to resolve statutory ambiguities; courts do.”

Due process is important, and judges are the arbiters of due process within the legal system. This is not a controversial or radical idea.

Trying to tease out a broad narrative from a series of Supreme Court decisions can be a difficult task, with most cases decided on narrow legal grounds rather than the sweeping statements often peddled by the political media.

But this appears to be an exception to the rule: The Supreme Court’s conservative majority issued a clear opinion, affirming that individuals and businesses subject to federal regulation have the right to protect themselves without having to go through an unjust quasi-judicial process within the executive branch.

Going forward, judges and courts will have fewer opportunities to dismiss cases and will instead have to consider the legitimacy and constitutionality of the rules at issue, which will help restore the balance of power rather than upset it.