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Supreme Court overturns 40-year-old "Chevron deference" doctrine

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Re: Supreme Court overturns 40-year-old "Chevron deference" doctrine

#101

Post by TallTales »

iaw wrote: post #14
epicureanideal wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sometimes bad precedents need to be overturned when decades of evidence have accumulated that it was a mistake, and this is one 100% of people should be happy about. There have been other poorly decided precedents in the past that were later overturned, for example: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dred_Scott_v._Sandford

Can you explain why that would be the case?

From my perspective it's because the constitution outlines law making as a power given to the legislative branch. To give regulatory agencies the ability to effectively create law by reinterpretation is clearly bad. But to let the courts give broad deference to the executive branch agencies, when challenged on it, is a clear violation of the separation of powers. Beyond that, it is just wrong, in my opinion, for unelected bureaucrats with vested personal interests in these issues to get deference over the people they serve.

Edit: clarification and wording

Re: Supreme Court overturns 40-year-old "Chevron deference" doctrine

#102

Post by aklemm »

bell-cot wrote: post #93

Before proclaiming that this outcome is horrible - Please consider that the Good Guys (your opinion) might not win the election in November. And that you might not want the courts auto-deferring to all the plausible-ish interpretations of ambiguous laws which gov't agency officials appointed by the Bad Guys (your opinion) might suddenly add the Official Agency Interpretations next year.

From either side, relying on the judiciary over active, well-functioning legislature is bad.

Re: Supreme Court overturns 40-year-old "Chevron deference" doctrine

#103

Post by neaden »

brodouevencode wrote: post #34
neaden wrote: post #3

This court continues to make decisions that might be defensible if you were making them for the first time, but go against decades of precedent in which time many laws have been written on the assumption that things would work a certain way. For a group that claims to be holding to tradition they sure are willing to throw things into chaos.

So if something that is seen as a bad idea should be kept in place because "that's the way we've always done it"?

Most of the decisions that get to the Supreme Court could reasonably be decided either way. If they were simple, clear decisions they wouldn't make it to the highest court after all. I don't necessarily think the original Chevron decision was the "correct" choice, or the "incorrect" choice, but it was the choice that was made and for 40 years Congress wrote laws and funded agencies on the assumption that that is how things would continue to work. If it had been decided differently all those years ago, then 40 years of laws would have been written differently. It's like the standard plug in the US. Was that the objectively correct choice for what a plug should look like? No. Is there possibly a better configuration that some other country is using? Yes. Would it be worth it to make the change now and make everyone in the country change all of their plugs and electronic devices? No.

Re: Supreme Court overturns 40-year-old "Chevron deference" doctrine

#104

Post by lolinder »

There's a tendency among certain people on HN to act like the conservative justices have no rhyme or reason and are just a bull running mindlessly through the china shop breaking precedent at random or specifically to hurt specific groups of people.

I'm not a fan of every ruling that they've made, but this should have come as absolutely no surprise to anyone who's been paying any attention to the arguments that this court has made over and over and over again. Their legal and constitutional philosophy has been very consistent:

They believe that Congress makes the laws, the Executive branch enforces them, and the Judicial branch interprets them. They believe that the Executive branch and the Judicial branch have been compensating for Congressional failure for too long and they have been very clear that they're intent on undoing that and rolling the system back to how they believe it should be.

There's an argument to be made that this theory is incorrect and/or harmful, but they've been remarkably consistent in applying it. Anyone who's been listening to them saw this coming years ago.

Re: Supreme Court overturns 40-year-old "Chevron deference" doctrine

#105

Post by kemayo »

xbar wrote: post #77
consumer451 wrote: post #43

From Justice Kagan's dissent on page 82: > This Court has long understood Chevron deference to reflect what Congress would want, and so to be rooted in a presumption of legislative intent. Congress knows that it does not—in fact cannot—write perfectly complete regulatory statutes... > It knows that those statutes will inevitably contain ambiguities that some other actor will have to resolve, and gaps that some other…

I would prefer if this conservative court would review the constitution and conclude that it must revoke its own right of judicial review.

It would be the funniest "textualist" outcome, certainly.

Every time I hear some disparaging comment about "the penumbra of the constitution" from the conservative justices, I can't help but roll my eyes because of that.

Re: Supreme Court overturns 40-year-old "Chevron deference" doctrine

#108

Post by HelloMcFly »

blackeyeblitzar wrote: post #85
brettcvz wrote: post #71

This seems like the judicial branch just voted to give itself substantially more power. Are there any checks against this? Or can justices just keep granting themselves more powers and invalidating any restraints?

No, that isn’t the case. It is saying that regulatory agencies cannot exceed their authority and act like the judicial branch. In other words, it was the executive branch that had taken more power previously.

> In other words, it was the executive branch that had taken more power previously.

If I may disagree: it was the legislature that gave the executive branch power, and the judicial branch that essentially approved such an arrangement (unanimously) in the original Chevron ruling.

Re: Supreme Court overturns 40-year-old "Chevron deference" doctrine

#109

Post by netsharc »

aaronbrethorst wrote: post #18
shmerl wrote: post #7

Enabling corruption seems to be the primary agenda of this court these days.

That seems unfair. They’re equally committed to denying women bodily autonomy.

Amazing how the US approaches Taliban Afghanistan step-by-tiny-step (and sometimes with giant leaps, e.g. by electing Trump). It's incredible (i.e. "too extraordinary and improbable to admit of belief") that about half the country^W voters think that lot is the best to lead their country...

As to what corruption will bring: https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2015/01/19/corruption-rev...

There's also no denying that the alternative party also has its own corruptions, which turn off voters..

Re: Supreme Court overturns 40-year-old "Chevron deference" doctrine

#110

Post by AnimalMuppet »

spanktheuser wrote: post #38
neaden wrote: post #3

This court continues to make decisions that might be defensible if you were making them for the first time, but go against decades of precedent in which time many laws have been written on the assumption that things would work a certain way. For a group that claims to be holding to tradition they sure are willing to throw things into chaos.

Long term, I wonder if this destroys the Supreme Court. I see no reason why a future liberal majority would feel bound by any conservative precedent in the future. Replace respect for precedent with whatever position wins a majority and the incentive to pack the court seems irresistible.

There was a 7-2 liberal majority during the 1970s. They didn't feel bound by precedent either. That's how we got, for example, Roe v. Wade. (No, there was no precedent for "a penumbra" of privacy giving a right to abortion in any previous court decisions. And whether you like the decision is orthogonal to whether the court was making stuff up completely outside the realm of precedent.)

Conservatives aren't doing something that liberals have not done. Liberals will probably do it again when they have the chance. And so will conservatives.

You don't have to like it, either because it goes against what you want or because you don't think decisions should be made like that. But don't think that this hasn't happened before.

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