There are a couple of legal principles that are to be considered by the United States Congress as guidelines when they make legislation for making a government agency and composing the extent that the agency is allowed to function.  

You can view in you mind a government agency being created much like any business.  The business is created by congress but the conduct of that business has been told what is is intended to work toward and hopefully achieve positive outcomes for the people of the country, some positive result.  This business type purpose does have limits as to what it can function and how it can function by congress.      Government agencies do not sell products but instead offer services to the whole nation of civilians in separate, specific areas, as specified by congress.  A list of government agencies is very large, a quite complex.  The agencies offer mainly service of instruction, regulation, police, enforcement, research and more.

The supreme court appears to think that one of their areas of concern is to perform oversight, to regulate agencies and see if they overstep their mission specified by congress.  You would think that Congress should police it’s own government agencies.

The supreme court has a number of problems facing achieving a positive reputation.

A problem at the root of the current supreme court operation is how the supreme court judges were placed into their positions.  We need judges that understand and work toward resolving the concerns of all the American public not working for a special interest person or group. 

The appointment of some current supreme court justices appears to be flawed which may be at the root of it’s problems.  Some of the problems:

1. None of the judges were voted in by the American public thus lacking an appointment value.
2. Four of the eight justices currently serving on the Supreme Court were nominated by presidents who lost the popular vote in their first term.  These justices are thus lacking some credibility in their appointments.  This is just one example of a flawed political practice.  The American voting public must have binding responsibility for all appointments when they are made through an intermediary politician.

3. There has been a couple of outside special interest groups that have tried to manipulate the decisions that the court renders.  One individual who has been quite successful in making supreme court recommendations is Leonard Leo who has worked hard to push forward justices to his liking. 

   “Leo leads the conservative legal organization the Federalist Society, through which he has spent the majority of his adult life getting conservatives appointed to the most powerful courts in this country, including the Supreme Court.”

4.  There is a couple of legal issues where the Supreme Court thinks it has jurisdiction over any government agencies.  It seems that the supreme court is concerned that an agency does not go beyond the specified limits set by congress.  This is now a convenient excuse for the court to expand its power.  

Where does the court come up with the approach to dig deeply into agencies operations to see if they go beyond what Congress specifies them to achieve?

Major questions doctrine

Congress must have clearly authorized agencies to regulate issues the Court considers to be of vast significance.

Non Délégation Doctrine

The non–delegation doctrine is a principle in administrative law that Congress cannot delegate its legislative powers to other entities.

This then becomes a convenient excuse for the Supreme Court to regulate a government agency’s policies if it can cite that that agency has gone beyond what Congress has told it to accomplish.  It seems the current ambition of the court is to deconstruct the administrative state which is really stupid at the operation level.  An example of this is  that the administrative states like the EPA has a very large research body of workers that help devise good climate change response regulations.  The courts can not expect to have this capability and thus must allow agencies to devise their own regulations.

This then can become a contentious situation when any agency regulates any business that is extremely wealthy and powerful. Citizens who possess special interest power with political groups, politicians and Supreme Court judges might apply their control over how the court intercedes.  It appears to many that this is the current situation where the fossil fuel industry is fighting to maintain its market.  

There is also a special interest group, Federalist Society that believes in interpreting the constitution as written, not improving upon it in any way.

“… the province and duty of the judiciary to say what the law is, not what it should be.”

 Originalism is one of the pillars of The Federalist Society, meaning that members believe the Constitution must be interpreted as the founding fathers intended at the time it was written—and that they don’t intend or see fit to use the document to protect the rights of women, people of color, LGBT people and other individuals from communities who were not represented from the room where it was written, and in some cases were even seen as the legal property of its framers.

A nearly total separate issue is when the Supreme Court made a decision that has imperiled our system of Democracy.

On Jan. 21, 2010, in the case Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission (FEC), the Court ruled to strike down a prohibition on corporate independent expenditures, which has since enabled corporations and other outside groups to engage in unlimited amounts of campaign spending.  This is probably the most important element for allowing the plutocracy group to rule the United States instead of having a true form of Democracy.

Summary:

The implication here is that the majority of the Supreme Court justices seem to be supporting businesses that are attacking our climate and women’s rights because they claim some government agencies have gone beyond what the Supreme Court sees what Congress has told them to do.

How convenient for some industries and ultra conservatives to see the Supreme Court working for them and against climate change and women’s rights with some thin excuse.

Thus, some justices appear to have become corrupt by catering to a few powerful groups and seemingly stupid toward realizing their duty to what is correct for women, people of color, LGBT people and our future survival for all humans.

The current group of justices support the rule of the plutocrats over the rule of the citizens, an act of near criminality.

Recommended added information from Background Briefing podcast:

Posted July 3, 2022
Podcast added July 4, 2022
Updated July 7, 2022, October 29, 2022