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In 2024, the U.S. Supreme Court introduced a sea change to federal administrative law when it formally ended the Chevron deference doctrine in Loper Bright v. Raimondo. In its place, Loper Bright calls on judges to review agency interpretations of their statutory authority using de novo review. Two years later, we are still grappling with the full implications of this decision — not just for administrative law, but for our entire system of governance.

The U.S. Supreme Court heard oral arguments on October 5 in Suncor Energy v. County Commissioners of Boulder County. At issue is whether the city and county of Boulder, Colorado, can move forward with their state court case against defendants Exxon Mobil Corporation and Suncor Energy for allegedly deceiving the public about their products’ role in climate change. Some three dozen local governments and states throughout the United States have filed similar lawsuits in state court against fossil fuel companies over their alleged deception and false advertising. Although none of these cases have yet gone to trial, the Supreme Court decided to review Boulder’s case at the request of the oil company petitioners.

This past summer, the United States endured a string of climate change-linked heat waves, contributing to an estimated 70 deaths and wrecking food production at farms and ranches across the country. Wildfires, many amplified by climate-driven changes in weather patterns, have already burned 8.4 million acres of land — an area larger than the state of Maryland — destroying homes and other property and subjecting tens of millions of Americans to hazardous air pollution. With disasters like these, it is easy to see how various studies have pinned the average household cost of climate change at well over $1,000 per year. If the oil and gas industry has its way at the U.S. Supreme Court, those households — rather than Big Oil itself — will continue footing that bill.

On the morning of December 30, 2021, the Marshall Fire ignited in Boulder County, Colorado. Driven by hurricane-force winds and fueled by vegetation desiccated by years of drought, it burned more than six thousand acres and destroyed over one thousand homes in a matter of hours — the most destructive wildfire in Colorado history. Boulder County’s lawsuit against Suncor Energy and Exxon Mobil Corporation, filed in state court in 2018, seeks to recover those costs from the companies whose products allegedly caused them. The suit rests not merely on the claim that fossil fuel combustion drives climate change, but on the more specific and more serious allegation that the defendant companies spent decades concealing the relationship between their products and climate harm while actively marketing those products to a public kept deliberately uninformed of the consequences.

The U.S. Supreme Court recently cleared the way for President Donald Trump to keep building his garish ballroom, complete with gilded columns, gold chandeliers, and a “drone-proof” roof. The decision might look like a one-off fight over historic preservation, but some legal scholars fear the blast zone is much wider. The real question is more fundamental: who gets to ask a federal court to stop an allegedly unlawful project?

On August 5, the Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit decided Committee for a Better Arvin v. EPA, which is both a significant air pollution case and an interesting case study in how the U.S. Supreme Court has changed judicial review of agency actions. The case was brought by a group in Arvin, California, a small city near Bakersfield.

With its June 29 decision in Trump v. Slaughter, the U.S. Supreme Court’s conservative supermajority takes another step toward building an imperial presidency on the ashes of the U.S. Constitution’s vision of a democratic republic. This clash over removal authority of independent agency heads was always meant as just the opening volley in this broader war. The end of the independent civil service, and even of administrative law itself, no longer seem improbable. The only real stopping point appears to be what the business community will tolerate, as today’s related decision in Trump v. Cook demonstrates.

Artificial intelligence (AI) is now used widely in the federal government. According to the U.S. Government Accountability Office, use cases of AI in the federal government doubled — and for generative AI, increased nine-fold — from 2023 to 2024. With this growing use of AI, the risk of systematic errors with potentially harmful consequences may increase.

For the pro-democracy crowd, the arrival of June each year brings a palpable sense of dread. We are keenly aware that it marks the end of the U.S. Supreme Court’s annual term, when the most controversial decisions are handed down. And each year, we are left to anticipate how exactly our oligarchs in black robes […]