Скачать или смотреть Should the Court Embrace the Major Questions Doctrine? - Georgetown Law Daniel Webster Debate Series

In West Virginia v. EPA (2022), the Supreme Court laid out its current vision of the so-called Major Questions Doctrine. In essence, the Court determined that where an agency asserts relatively newfound authority to engage in some action of great economic and political significance, the agency must be able to point to “clear congressional authorization” to support that action. In West Virginia, the Court reviewed an EPA rule issued under the Obama Administration—although later repealed by the Trump Administration—ordering power plants to reduce their production of electricity or else subsidize electricity generated by renewable sources. The EPA projected this would significantly reduce coal’s national electricity-generation and relied upon the Clean Air Act to promulgate the rule, which authorized the agency to set the best system of emissions reduction for power plants. The Court found that the EPA lacked statutory authority to promulgate this rule.

Defenders of the Major Questions Doctrine argue that it preserves principles of the separation of power by preventing executive agencies from improperly usurping the policymaking authority of Congress. In his West Virginia concurrence, Justice Gorsuch wrote, “The major questions doctrine seeks to protect against ‘unintentional, oblique, or otherwise unlikely’ intrusions on” the interests of “self-government, equality, fair notice, federalism, and the separation of powers.” Opponents of the doctrine contend that it is a form of judicial self-aggrandizement which lacks any legitimate legal basis and impermissibly weakens administrative governance. Indeed, Justice Kagan, in her West Virginia, remarked, “The current Court is textualist only when being so suits it.” She further criticized the doctrine as amounting to a “magically appear[ing] . . . get-out-of-text-free card[].”

With the Major Questions Doctrine taking its place at the cutting edge of administrative law and being the subject of intense scholarly debate, we are proud to present our final Daniel Webster Debate for the Fall 2024 semester. We welcome an esteemed and incredibly accomplished panel ready to consider this important question: Should the Court Embrace the Major Questions Doctrine?