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This is on point. I'm Meghna Chakrabardi. Congress writes the laws. The

judiciary interprets the laws. The executive branch carries them out. That's a lesson I know you remember from Schoolhouse Rock.

Well, at least I do and maybe I'm just dating myself by saying that.

But all in all, it's pretty straightforward, right?

The problem is, the laws themselves are not that straightforward.

Governing the country requires writing legislation around complex topics such as

environmental regulation, financial regulation.

And in that case, sometimes for financial products that don't even exist yet,

there's also technology.

Again, sometimes for tech that's already evolved several generations before the ink on a president's

signature has dried.

So that raises a critical question.

As laws are enacted in the real world, ambiguous parts of those laws often have to be interpreted for practical implementation.

Maybe something like, what exactly are the thresholds to define a chemical as toxic?

Well, for 40 years, federal judges deferred to the expertise of federal agencies to work out those ambiguities.

That is until last month, when the United States Supreme Court in a 6-3 ruling overturned that

landmark saying it's actually quote

the responsibility of the court to decide whether the law means what an agency

says end quote or as Justice Neil Gorsuch put it in his concurrence,

the court is going back to those Schoolhouse Rocks

...