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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

#141

Post by kyrra »

rootusrootus wrote: post #116
lolinder wrote: post #104

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…

It would be somewhat amusing if Congress took the bait and wrote some legislation telling the Court to get back in its lane. Maybe the majority of justices would actually be okay with that.

SCOTUS is governed by the constitution. All congress has control over is the purse (money paid to the justices), number of justices, and appointment of justices. SCOTUS rules are set out in Article III. If congress wants to change the rules of SCOTUS, they will need to amend the constitution.

Note that congress does have power over all lower federal courts, as they were created by congress. SCOTUS is special here though.

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

#142

Post by rootusrootus »

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.

That seems likely. We already see it in the executive, with sweeping policy changes every time the office changes parties. Seems to be what we want, however, collectively.

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

#143

Post by w4 »

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.

Exactly this. Unchecked administrative power in the Executive has left very dangerous tools laying about for would be autocrats: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unitary_executive_theory

This will certainly make life harder for the regulatory agencies, and I don’t want to minimize the difficulty that represents, but this decision reinstates an important check on the Executive’s power at a very critical juncture in our nation’s history.

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

#144

Post by lolinder »

Spivak wrote: post #132
lolinder wrote: post #115

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…

Yes but people who have been listening have also been dreading this coming for years. The fact that they're consistently knocking over shelves doesn't make it better. We've known that Roe was on the chopping block, but it doesn't make it good law even if it's consistent with the conservative justices' goals.

Like I said, there are legitimate arguments to be made against this change, but a lot of people are quick to assume that the Court is out to get them.

The cases that people would approve of if they heard about them get ignored by social media, instead focusing exclusively on the cases that undo some rights that had been established by judicial or executive precedent. So we end up in a place where a lot of commenters are under the false impression that the Court just hates ___ people, rather than seeing the whole picture of the court systematically rolling back judicial activist rulings and executive rule makings.

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

#145

Post by tzs »

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.

No it isn't.

What Chevron said was that when the legislative branch gives an agency power to do X and there is some disagreement between the agency and someone else over precisely what X means and the agency's interpretation is reasonable the courts should use the agency's interpretation.

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

#146

Post by cogman10 »

no_wizard wrote: post #97
throw0101c wrote: post #45

Some folks were predicting this: > It has been nearly 40 years since the Supreme Court indicated in Chevron v. Natural Resources Defense Council that courts should defer to an agency’s reasonable interpretation of an ambiguous statute. After more than three-and-a-half hours of oral argument on Wednesday, it seemed unlikely that the rule outlined in that case, known as the Chevron doctrine, will survive in its current…

They are definitely defying precedent more than any Supreme Court in recent history. The other thing this ignores is judicial bias. One positive of the Chevron ruling is that a well scoped agency with a clear agenda and expertise was able to oversee their domain of expertise and enforce rules under the Chevron Doctrine, which means in a well functioning agency (e.g. generally the SEC, FTC) didn’t have to rely on leng…

> They are definitely defying precedent more than any Supreme Court in recent history.

Than any court period. No supreme Court has been this bold in overturning precedent. Before this court, the last time that happened was brown v board of education.

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

#147

Post by arcticbull »

lolinder wrote: post #123
mikeyouse wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nobody doubted this is where it would end up - but it's a terrible place at complete odds with judicial restraint and precedent. The courts are going to be the de facto regulatory body in the US going forward, a responsibility they granted themselves out of thin air.

> a terrible place at complete odds with judicial restraint On the contrary, they see themselves as them undoing many decades' worth of lack of judicial restraint. It's a change only because judicial activism has been the norm.

They can see themselves however they want, that doesn’t make it any less at odds with precedent.

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

#148

Post by rayiner »

mikeyouse wrote: post #121
lolinder wrote: post #104

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…

Nobody doubted this is where it would end up - but it's a terrible place at complete odds with judicial restraint and precedent. The courts are going to be the de facto regulatory body in the US going forward, a responsibility they granted themselves out of thin air.

I don’t understand this viewpoint. Remember, Chevron is only about who gets to make a final determination of what a Congressional statute means. How could it possibly be anybody else’s job other than the courts’ to make that decision?

A far more accurate framing is that Chevron abdicated the courts’ duty to be the interpreter of statutes, which is one of the most fundamental aspects of being a court.

This does not limit Congress’s ability to delegate discretion to agencies. It just has to do so explicitly.

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

#150

Post by TylerE »

lolinder wrote: post #104

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…

They've been very consistent. They ram through whatever the Heritage Foundation (boy, if there was ever a truly evil org with a misleading name) tells them to. That's how they got selected. Heritage literally gave Trump a list of acceptable names, all members.
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