The Constitution Isn’t Working

On the last day of the Supreme Court’s most recent term, the Court released two cases that highlight a challenge to American democracy—a challenge that is the direct result of one of the Founders’ more consequential miscalculations. They granted Congress more power than any other branch of government, and they mistakenly thought Congress would possess a sense of institutional responsibility and authority. Instead it is largely a partisan body, drained of any sense of independent civic duty, and American democracy suffers as a result.

The two cases seem unrelated at first glance. One is , in which the Supreme Court the Environmental Protection Agency’s Obama-era clean-power rule. The Court relied on the so-called major-questions doctrine, a relatively new term for the legal idea that if Congress intends to delegate significant power to regulatory