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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

#221

Devastating that expertise will no longer influence the application of law and policy. The biggest question is who will interpret the application of law? Will it be challenged in court once again until a clear statement is made? Meanwhile, what will be the effects of this “deregulation” until a clear statement is made

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

#222

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…

Predictable, certainly. Consistent, not so much. They seem to start with a decision and work their way backwards through the reasoning, cherrypicking from a versatile and whimsical set of "principles".

Originalism not cutting it, try textualism, conservatism, or maybe even a little liberalism if you want to spice things up! If none of those are really doing the trick, there's always the "tradition" sledgehammer that you can use for anything you want.

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

#223

It Congress wants to change the law, they can. It's up to congress, not the administration, to make law. For decades it seems Congress has largely abdicated its legislative responsibility in exchange for the political ease of letting the administrative state, and the courts, make the law. Just because something has "precedence" doesn't mean it's right. Banning gay marriage had precedence, but that didn't make it righ…

And yet, doesn't this give undue authority to the legal branch? like it just makes the legal branch the new administrative state. Reading through Chevron, it seems excessively logical to say that if a rule is vague, you defer to the people who made the rule to interpret it.

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

#224

So if courts aren't to defer to agencies on such matters, to where do they look? Congress? The executive? We can hate on regulatory agencies all day long, but they are least get stuff done. They show up to work and figure out how to move forwards. This decision seams a win for those political groups who, rather than actual fix anything, are bent on throwing sand into the gearbox.

"They get things done" has been one of the selling points for more than a few tyrannical regimes throughout history.

Because it's not the problem people have with any of those tyrannical regimes.

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

#225

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…

Isn’t this really an argument about delegating authority?

Chevron deference is about congress creating administrative agencies and delegating rule making to those agencies.

There isn’t some separation of powers issue here, the idea is that where congress does legislate and an agency makes a reasonable interpretation of a nuance implicit in the law, these rules carry the weight of the law.

For instance, congress mandates that the EPA enforce clean water standards, and the EPA sets parts per million for various dangerous substances. Would it make sense for congress to have to pass new laws each time a new chemical is introduced to our environment?

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

#226
post #132

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.

Yeah, grandparent is being infantilizing/patronizing

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

#227

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 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.

If Congress wants to delegate authority for micro-managing things to agencies, why shouldn't they be allowed to do so?

> Kagan cited as one example a hypothetical bill to regulate artificial intelligence. Congress, she said, “knows there are going to be gaps because Congress can hardly see a week in the future.” So it would want people “who actually know about AI and are accountable to the political process to make decisions” about artificial intelligence. Courts, she emphasized, “don’t even know what the questions are about AI,” much less the answers.

* https://www.scotusblog.com/2024/01/supreme-court-likely-to-d...

If Congress doesn't like where an Executive agency is headed they can further change the Act governing it to clarify things. The guardrails can be set that way, and with-in them agencies—generally subject matter experts—can write and refine regulations as they are needed.

The Executive agencies and departments are created by Congress. US regulatory agencies have authority because it was given to them by The People (through their elected representatives).

The Judiciary seems to be limiting the Legislative here. Is there anything in the US Constitution that says Congress cannot delegate?

* https://constitution.findlaw.com/article1/annotation03.html

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

#228
I am really not a fan of the current Supreme Court, but this looks to be a good ruling. Agencies get carried away by their power, and this power requires stronger checks by real courts, not by the fake agency courts that always rule in favor of the agency. I make no judgment on how this ruling will be used or abused.

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

#229
post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When Congress writes a law that establishes a new regulatory agency, they outline what that agency does and how they enforce the regulations. Inevitably as time goes on, new edge cases come up or someone realize that the law is ambiguous. Chevron deference established a precedent where the regulatory agencies were allowed to resolve these ambiguous cases or do things not specifically written into the law. This decisi…

So basically, Congress is going to have to pass more updates to previous laws to reflect what the regulatory agencies need or want. Basically, fix the bugs in the core legislation instead of patching it downstream.

This seems really inefficient though. Do we really want top-down authority of decision making like this? No one would think it was good if in a company where if the rules of how to do your job were vague (and in this case, we're talking about delegated responsibilities), you had to go to the board of directors to get them clarified.

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

#230

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…

I'm not a lawyer, but I worked in a lawyer-adjacent job while in the military once and ever since I've followed the law as a bit of a hobby. Even with a small bit of training and experience, I'm not exaggerating by much when I say that the average person has absolutely no idea how the law is interpreted or how legal procedure works. I really believe a large number of people view lawyers as the real-world equivalent o…

The article mentions Clarence Thomas has been courted (even bribed?) by the very people paying the lawyers trying to overturn Chevron. I think it's naive to believe the judges don't have policy preferences that are strongly reflected in their rulings... If that wasn't the case the GOP wouldn't have blocked nominations from Obama to get their preferred judges in.
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