Reliance on nondelegation can restore Congress as the chief lawmaking body, new PLF report articulates

Washington, DC; November 6, 2025: A new report from Pacific Legal Foundation reveals how Congress could be restored as the chief legislative body, as the Framers of the Constitution intended. Congress has provided sufficient detail regarding statutory interpretation for more than half of its delegations, according to data from 2014 and 2018. When possible, Congress takes the easier route, transferring its legislative responsibilities to the executive branch and federal agencies.

Reeve Bull, director of Virginia’s Office of Regulatory Management, analyzes how Congress has improperly delegated its authority to executive agencies in his newest report, The Once and Future Legislature: Restoring Congress’s Policymaking Role. The Supreme Court has contributed to this problem by declining to strike down laws that delegate core lawmaking power to agencies, allowing Congress to neglect its responsibility as the chief legislative body.

“The Framers [of the Constitution] saw the legislature as the most powerful branch of government. They never imagined that Congress would delegate so much of its authority,” Bull writes. This is why “the Framers diffused legislative power by creating a bicameral Congress and giving the president a role in signing laws. They would have shuddered at the notion of effectively concentrating the legislative and executive powers in a single branch, even if Congress blessed the arrangement.”

Rather than delegating rulemaking and statutory interpretation to agencies, Congress should provide clear standards for statutory interpretation and application. While Congress may not possess expert knowledge on all subjects, it can provide enough detail for agencies to write constitutionally appropriate regulations — and Congress has proven that it can establish procedural regulations and methodological guardrails.

“Citizens have essentially no say in the process: Unelected bureaucrats make virtually all the important decisions, and the decision-making is so complex that almost no one can understand it,” Bull adds.

The Supreme Court could solve this pervasive problem by requiring Congress to pass laws with more detail and less open-ended discretion for unelected bureaucrats. Doing so would put policy debates back where they belong: in the halls of Congress with the people’s elected representatives.