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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

#361

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…

> 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... I really hope she meant to convey a different point here, because it reads as if congress doesn't care and wants unelected bureaucrats figuring out what laws mean because they t…

"Perfectly complete" is a pretty high bar. For example, consider a law directing the EPA to fine violators who dump "fatal substances". How complete is complete enough?

That leaves us with some options, such as these ones which I'm ordering from "most reasonable" to "most insane":

(1) In lawsuits, courts should generally assume that the lawmakers have given the EPA permission to create a formal list and judgement criteria for what counts.

(2) In lawsuits, courts should assume the list is totally empty unless a federal lawsuit has happened where both sides have called in "chemical experts" to testify and then a federal judge decides which chemicals are deadly and which are not.

(3) The law is totally meaningless until congress amends it with another bill that inserts a full list of every possible chemical composition and configuration required concentration-level, and anything not explicitly included on the list is exempt.

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

#362
post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That said, it's also valid for Congress to decide to abdicate its powers. We've had 40 years of Chevron deference, during which time Congress wrote laws expecting that this is how they'd be interpreted. If they didn't want this behavior, they could have passed laws about it. Or included some boilerplate language within new laws about how the agency has to defer to courts for interpretation of those regulations. (Gran…

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What?? Slavery was ended (outsidr of prison system) by a law change.

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

#363
post #352

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?

The only checks involved were in the mail, and almost certainly addressed to Clarence Thomas, who has taken more in bribes than the last 30 other justices combined , and that’s only the ones he’s been caught on.

And yet there are eight other Justices, and nothing he has to say matters unless he can get four others to agree with him.

If Thomas is known for anything on the Court, it's shouting into the void in concurrence or dissent.

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

#364

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unless the way elections are handled changes, such as doing anything that selects for expertise instead of partisan hackery, all this is going to do is accelerate the gridlock, corruption, and dysfunction. It just does not logically follow that putting more pressure on the legislative branch to be functional is going to work when its functionality or lack thereof is based largely on a very gerrymandered population be…

i am sympathetic to desire to change how elections are handled (universal suffrage is a stupid idea without universal risk/ skin in the game, we need a way to make voters universally and roughly equal uncomfortable eith poor fiscal managment so they feel the pian when they vote thwmselves more stuff without also voting in a payment method) but its not happening. i also think you are mistaking long term corruption and…

Maybe eliminate secret ballots to do an "if you vote for it/him, you pay for its/his costs" sort of system?

Or keep ballots secret and apportion taxes to districts or counties which vote for increased costs, and have it be sticky on move for 5-10 years. Also prevent new-comers from voting in local elections for a period of up to 5-10 years (while retaining the vote in the previous jurisdiction). All these things add costs to locust electorate and will slow down the californication of the south and midwest as californians continue to flee in droves. It's already causing political havoc in various locales.

Do not vote for garbage politics thus destroying your home, then move to a nice place with opposite politics just to vote your garbage again. You act like chauvinist locust when you do that, moving into new political ecosystems to destroy them into your 'ideal' vision.

If you move from blue to red state because your blue state went to hell, wait 5 or more years to register to vote. I only wish this was law so places like AZ can stay nice with lower crime, castle doctrine, and presumptive consealed carry.

Now to batton down my hatches, I sense a downvote typhoon in the air...

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

#365
post #99

I'm impressed that they can so easily dispose of 40 years of law making by Congress that assumed that agencies would interpret the statutes and make rules for regulating their area of authority. Now Congress is going to have to specify every possible consequence of laws in the statutes, otherwise a judge will decide. So agencies will not have any power to actually regulate. Awesome logic work, but terrible legal thin…

> Now Congress is going to have to specify every possible consequence of laws in the statutes, otherwise a judge will decide.

> So agencies will not have any power to actually regulate.

This honestly sounds perfect.

If this is the actual end result of this ruling, we’ll all be in a much much better place.

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

#366

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> "This seems like the judicial branch just voted to give itself substantially more power. Are there any checks against this?" Yes, absolutely. Congress can do their job and write the laws instead of delegating their authority to the Executive Branch.

It seems crazy that Congress does not have the authority to delegate implementation details to experts. I just don't see anything in the Constitution that forbids that.

Are there provisions in the Constitution for one Branch to delegate its powers to another?

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

#367
post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

True. And having Santa Claus make all the decisions would be even better. Unfortunately, neither Santa Claus nor an active and well-functioning legislature seem to be available.

Some would also argue that the judiciary is not particularly well-functioning, so why are we acting like that's the best option in the absence of alternatives?

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

#368

Good. Make Congress do its job. Erode the executive until we're not frothing at the mouth every 4 years worrying about who will be "in charge," and instead focusing on the actions of our congressional representatives.

So we froth at the mouth every two years instead? I get the argument but I'm not really sure this is going to help in the way you want it.

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

#369
post #299

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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... I really hope she meant to convey a different point here, because it reads as if congress doesn't care and wants unelected bureaucrats figuring out what laws mean because they t…

I would much rather unelected bureaucrat scientists decide how to implement the intent and application of laws than congress.

Regulations that automatically expire after some time period but require Congress to given an up/down vote would give the regulations greater legitimacy in a democratic system.

Congress doesn't need the expertise to write the regulations. The elected Congress could just vote to pass the regulations as laws. Congress just doesn't want to be on the hook for the regulations, which is part of the reason why they hand off law-making to the agencies in the first place.

Theoretically, this approach would give people a greater voice in the rules that govern them. Sadly, in practice, we can't seen to rollback the proliferation of criminal laws that embolden prosecutors and lead to an unfathomable number of people in jail that have not been convicted by juries.

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

#370

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Congress may be inefficient (by design, basically) but they have one advantage: they're elected . Everyone fantasizes about government by an unelected group of experts, until they wake up one day and find out those unelected experts don't share their values at all -- and there's nothing they can do about it.

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superficially this argument seems reasonable.. but my limited understanding of the history of the Supreme Court of the United States says that there have been substantially different eras, and substantially different rules in those eras, for this same Federal body. Needless to say, in a "two party" political system, the details of what each of those two parties represents has also changed dramatically.. i.e. what is called conservative has changed quite a lot, many times.. same with "liberal"
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