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Page Number: 43.0

6 

WEST VIRGINIA v. EPA 

GORSUCH, J., concurring 

liberty would not be difficult and rare, but easy and profuse.
See The Federalist No. 47, at 303 (J. Madison); id., No. 62, 
at 378 (J. Madison).  Stability would be lost, with vast num-
bers of laws changing with every new presidential admin-
istration.  Rather than embody a wide social consensus and 
input from minority voices, laws would more often bear the 
support only of the party currently in power.  Powerful spe-
cial interests, which are sometimes “uniquely” able to influ-
ence the agendas of administrative agencies, would flourish
while others would be left to ever-shifting winds.  T. Merrill, 
Capture Theory and the Courts: 1967–1983, 72 Chi.-Kent 
L. Rev. 1039, 1043 (1997).  Finally, little would remain to 
stop agencies from moving into areas where state authority 
has  traditionally  predominated.  See,  e.g.,  Solid  Waste 
Agency of Northern Cook Cty. v. Army Corps of Engineers, 
531 U. S. 159, 173–174 (2001) (SWANC).  That would be a 
particularly ironic outcome, given that so many States have
robust  nondelegation  doctrines  designed  to  ensure  demo-
cratic  accountability  in  their  state  lawmaking  processes.
See R. May, The Nondelegation Doctrine is Alive and Well
in the States, The Reg. Rev. (Oct. 15, 2020). 

B 
Much as constitutional rules about retroactive legislation 
and  sovereign  immunity  have  their  corollary  clear-state-
ment rules, Article I’s Vesting Clause has its own:  the ma-
jor  questions  doctrine.  See  Gundy,  588  U. S.,  at  ___–___ 
(GORSUCH, J., dissenting) (slip op., at 20–21).  Some version 
of this clear-statement rule can be traced to at least 1897, 
when this Court confronted a case involving the Interstate 
Commerce  Commission,  the  federal  government’s  “first
modern  regulatory  agency.”    S.  Dudley,  Milestones  in  the
Evolution of the Administrative State 3 (Nov. 2020).  The 
ICC argued that Congress had endowed it with the power
to set carriage prices for railroads.  See ICC v. Cincinnati, 
N. O. & T. P. R. Co., 167 U. S. 479, 499 (1897).  The Court