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Way back in the 1980s, the BBC and PBS broadcasted a documentary TV series with this title, devoted to explaining how critical scientific discoveries and advances in technology fundamentally changed the way we understand the world.

A change to the universe of the American workplace happened today at the Supreme Court of the United States. The Court issued a long-anticipated decision certain to have cascading effects on many long-standing legal rules we are accustomed to.

In particular, the Court overruled a forty-year old case called Chevron U.S.A. Inc. v. National Resources Defense Council, Inc. That 1984 case was the source of the legal doctrine known as “Chevron deference” – which is (or more accurately now, was) what prompted courts to defer to interpretations of federal law made by federal agencies charged with the administration and enforcement of federal statutes.

Federal agencies like the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC), the Department of Labor (DOL) and the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA). Much of the work of these federal agencies and others involves determinations made by agency officials, presumably with special expertise in the area of the agency’s mission.