Breyer to Exit After High Court Tackles ‘Major Questions’ Law

Justice Stephen Breyer announced he’ll leave the U.S. Supreme Court as its conservative majority is poised to strengthen a judicial doctrine that he had an unwitting hand in developing and has criticized as an improper limit to agency regulations.

As a federal appellate court judge in 1986, Breyer wrote about the many factors that go into interpreting laws that give agencies their authority. The high court’s 2000 decision that rejected the U.S. Food and Drug Administration’s authority to regulate tobacco cited Breyer’s article to support the idea of doubting whether Congress meant to implicitly delegate power to agencies on major ...