...That is a different thing in kind than contradicting the Constitution. That is the check and balance to the Supreme Court, that they can't do anything flatly contradictory to the constitution...The courts have the power to overturn actions of the executive branch that were illegal.
That's
not the check on the Supreme Court, my dude. The check on the Supreme Court is it has neither the power of the sword nor the purse. There is no Supreme Court Army, and it can't allocate or control the spending of federal funding.
The closest thing to is the Supreme Court Police, which is a security force independent of the executive (for the purposes of maintaining separation of powers) but has in exchange a jurisdiction limited exclusively to security over the Supreme Court Building and individual Justices. It's the same deal as the US Capitol Police being nominally part of the legislative branch.
This is why I keep saying the Supreme Court has no capacity to enforce its own rulings.
Chevron deference weakened the courts' ability to do so. It did not allow the departments to challenge the presidency, rather it allowed them largely free to ignore most challenges from outside the executive branch.
Oh, for chrissakes.
Reagan stacked the EPA with fossil fuel toadies, and Neil Gorsuch's mom figured out a loophole in the Clean Air Act that allowed coal companies to do basically whatever they wanted. The NRDC sued over this, and the Court basically said "whatever, dude" and shat upon the country a ruling contradictory to its own ratio. John Paul Stevens even wrote in his opinion the EPA acted against clear legislative intent, its bubble interpretation was outside delegated Congressional authority, and lower courts had found correctly...but then proceeded to dispose the case
in favor of the EPA.
That's what you're ignoring in this. What was before the Court in
Chevron wasn't really about the EPA's bubble interpretation, Congressional intent behind the CAA, or vested public interest in air quality and pollution. It was about
executive appointments. Because Reagan's corrupt-ass, criminal, for-profit administration stacked the EPA with fossil fuel toadies who proceeded to interpret the regulations they were charged with enforcing, in the worst-faith way possible so as to provide maximum benefit to private industries they
really represented.
That's something about which the judiciary can do nothing. Not within the boundaries of a given individual case, or any case for that matter, because executive appointments aren't under judicial oversight. That's why Republicans
loved this ruling...until Obama came around and weaponized
Chevron deference against the people it was intended to serve (fossil fuels and finance). Or rather, made an impotent attempt at weaponizing it against fossil fuels and finance, to simply appear as if he'd done something.
Procedurally, all
Chevron did was treat executive agencies as presumptive subject matter experts, which shifted burden of proof to the challenger. Strictly speaking, the Administrative Procedure Act itself is the root cause of the problem, as it delegates enumerated Congressional authority to the judiciary.
The court still has the same amount of power to invalidate unconstitutional orders...
They have the power to write strongly-worded letters loaded with fancy language. The president and Congress have the power to
ignore those letters, but they generally don't to maintain the honor system.
"John Marshall has made his decision, now let him enforce it."
- Andrew Jackson, in response to that time the Supreme Court ruled in favor of the Cherokee tribe
