alt Hacker Newsunfortunately civil servants are not perfect and not elected. If they 'take bribes' I don't want a judge to accept their word. They should have to justify their ruling before the court. The judge should defer to them only after finding their decision was good in the first place.
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> They should have to justify their ruling before the court
How familiar are you with admin law? That is what already happened before this precedent was discarded.
> If they 'take bribes' I don't want a judge to accept their word. They should have to justify their ruling before the court.
If they're taking bribes they should be tried under corruption laws such as 18 U.S.C. § 201
Meanwhile our SC justices can accept all kinds of gifts from industry and make whatever ruling they want without any repercussions. They're in charge of determining their own conflicts of interests and their own ethics violations. Which surprise, they never seem to have any!
Its far easier to remove a regulator, even one of a supposedly independent agency (we'll see how that goes), for doing something obviously corrupt than a Supreme Court judge, as evidenced by the current court.
They don't overtly take bribes. It's a mixture of two things. The first is a corporate revolving door. Look at the head of a regulatory agency and he's often a corporate insider - regulatory capture. For instance many regulations that greatly expanded the reach and reduced requirements for GMOs passed under Michael R Taylor [1] as the head of the FDA.
He was a Vice President at Monsanto (and worked as part of their contracted legal team for 7 years prior) and some of his most well known publications involved arguing for an interpretation of a 1958 law, that forbid companies using carcinogens in products, to mean that they could only knowingly allow a 'small amount' of carcinogens. His Wiki page looks like it's been hit by a PR firm. Here [1] is an older version.
So you essentially have Monsanto, by proxy, in charge of the FDA. And this sort of stuff is much more the rule than the exception. Taylor was appointed by Obama. That's not to be partisan and suggest Obama was particularly bad here, but on the contrary I think many people have a positive view of him relative to more recent presidents, yet he continued on with these practices just like literally every other administration in modern history.
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The second thing is indirect payoffs. Massive companies like Monsanto have their tentacles in just about everything in any way remotely related to their domain. If you play ball with them, you're going to find doors and opportunities open for you everywhere. On the other hand if you turn against them they will similarly use all their resources to destroy you so much as possible.
A recent article on here discussed how key research published regarding the safety of Monsanto products was ghostwritten by Monsanto themselves and then handed off to some other 'scientists' to sign their name to it and publish. [2] Once that was indisputably revealed in court (only thanks to the really smart guys doing this literally talking about it, verbatim, in emails), it took some 8 years for the article to be retracted. People just don't want to go against Monsanto.
[1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Michael_R._Taylor...
[2] - https://retractionwatch.com/2025/12/04/glyphosate-safety-art...