Document ID: ./input/supremecourt_opinions/opinions/21pdf/20-1530_n758.pdf
Page Number: 88.0

32 

WEST VIRGINIA v. EPA 

KAGAN, J., dissenting 

“must be fixed according to common sense and the in-
herent  necessities  of  the  governmental  co-ordination.
Since Congress is no less endowed with common sense 
than we are, and better equipped to inform itself of the 
necessities of government; and since the factors bear-
ing upon those necessities are both multifarious and (in 
the  nonpartisan  sense)  highly  political  . . .  it  is  small 
wonder  that  we  have  almost  never  felt  qualified  to
second-guess  Congress  regarding  the  permissible  de-
gree of policy judgment that can be left to those execut-
ing or applying the law.”  Id., at 416 (internal quotation
marks omitted). 

In short, when it comes to delegations, there are good rea-
sons for Congress (within extremely broad limits) to get to
call  the  shots.  Congress  knows  about  how  government
works  in  ways  courts  don’t.  More  specifically,  Congress 
knows  what  mix  of  legislative  and  administrative  action 
conduces to good policy.  Courts should be modest. 

Today,  the  Court  is  not.    Section  111,  most  naturally
read, authorizes EPA to develop the Clean Power Plan—in 
other words, to decide that generation shifting is the “best 
system  of  emission  reduction”  for  power  plants  churning 
out carbon dioxide.  Evaluating systems of emission reduc-
tion is what EPA does.  And nothing in the rest of the Clean 
Air  Act,  or  any  other  statute,  suggests  that  Congress  did 
not mean for the delegation it wrote to go as far as the text 
says.  In rewriting that text, the Court substitutes its own
ideas about delegations for Congress’s.  And that means the 
Court substitutes its own ideas about policymaking for Con-
gress’s.  The Court will not allow the Clean Air Act to work 
as Congress instructed.  The Court, rather than Congress,
will decide how much regulation is too much. 

The  subject  matter  of  the  regulation  here  makes  the 
Court’s intervention all the more troubling.  Whatever else 
this Court may know about, it does not have a clue about