Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s Green New Deal arrived last week to an uneven reception. Six contenders for the Democratic presidential nomination endorsed it. Some commentators on the left gushed over it. More on the right and even center-left condemned it. Almost all of them, however, are misunderstanding it.

WASHINGTON — Soon, in a federal court that few Americans know exists, there will come a ruling on a constitutional principle that today barely exists but that could, if the judicial branch will resuscitate it, begin to rectify the imbalance between the legislative and executive branches. It is the “nondelegation doctrine,” which expresses John Locke’s justly famous but largely ignored admonition that institutions like the U.S. Congress, vested with the power “to make laws, and not to make legislators … have no power to transfer their authority of making laws, and place it in other hands.” The doctrine’s revival might result from the Peanut Butter Criterion.

As stories go, the face-off between Jeff Bezos and David Pecker (paging Charles Dickens) has all the elements of a 21st-century battle royale between good and evil, represented by the richest man in the world, who happens to own The Washington Post, and the pied piper of sleaze, respectively.