Supreme Court Schedules Oral Argument in Challenge to Bureaucrats’ Power

The Supreme Court has scheduled several high-profile cases for oral argument in January 2024, including an important challenge to the power of the so-called administrative state. Conservative and Republican critics have long derided the administrative state as an unelected fourth branch of government that allows bureaucrats to make regulations that exceed the wishes of Congress. The court’s ultimate ruling could alter the current balance of power among Congress, executive agencies, and the nation’s judiciary by curbing the legal underpinnings of the modern administrative state, which critics deride as an illegitimate fourth branch of government. The authority of federal agencies has been increasingly questioned in recent years as the conservative majority on the Supreme Court has grown....