Supreme Court overturns 40-year-old "Chevron deference" doctrine • Hacker News Board

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

#461

Post by hypothesis » Fri, Jun 28, 2024, 6:27 PM UTC

matthewdgreen wrote: post #314

Xeoncross wrote: post #307

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you ignore the labels here, it's a small group of lawyers giving themselves more power because the large group of politicians can't get their act together and pass well-reasoned and descriptive laws. So the large body isn't functioning well and the small body doesn't trust it anymore. So if we make the small body (the supreme court) large like the large body (congress) will that actually fix the issue? Isn't the i…

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.

> 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.

Does SCOTUS fit into this hypothetical?

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

#462

Post by dec0dedab0de » Fri, Jun 28, 2024, 6:27 PM UTC

brookst wrote: post #320

Xeoncross wrote: post #307

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you ignore the labels here, it's a small group of lawyers giving themselves more power because the large group of politicians can't get their act together and pass well-reasoned and descriptive laws. So the large body isn't functioning well and the small body doesn't trust it anymore. So if we make the small body (the supreme court) large like the large body (congress) will that actually fix the issue? Isn't the i…

> because the large group of politicians can't get their act together and pass well-reasoned and descriptive laws How do you figure? This ruling says that Congress must be domain experts in every area, and agencies must merely implement the specific policies that Congress dictates. Is that even possible? For anyone? Sure, Congress is dysfunctional but so what? This new regime is unworkable, and it doesn't matter if i…

Congress could hire their own experts instead of having them work for the president.

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

#463

Post by harmmonica » Fri, Jun 28, 2024, 6:27 PM UTC

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?

Others have said this using different words, but I'm going to chime in anyway. I don't think the courts will have more power. SCOTUS is saying that congress needs to actually make clearer (better?) use of its power by being more explicit when legislating (i.e. when writing laws) instead of relying on the executive branch agencies (for those unfamiliar with the US political structure, agencies like the FDA, EPA, etc. are executive branch agencies that, ultimately, report to whomever is the current US president) to interpret and in many cases read into the laws that congress has passed.

The more practical reality of this ruling is, I think, this: there is no world where this is a win for anyone who believes in a bigger US federal government. This is a huge win for those people who believe the power of the federal government should be limited. It's likely the biggest challenge to the size of the federal government in my lifetime and I've been alive for a good bit. The dysfunctional congress that the US currently has makes it a certainty that in the short term countless regulations will be unenforceable and therefore this will be a picnic for anyone who is anti-regulation (note Trump in the debate last night where he talked about scrapping regulation. In comparison to this decision, Trump's regulation-slashing will look like he shot a rifle in comparison to the shotgun SCOTUS just fired).

Last comment: this SCOTUS has made it clear that the federal government will be massively restrained. There are two avenues by which they've made this clear: first, they have ruled very aggressively in favor of state's rights (especially when it comes to social issues like abortion), and, second, with this Chevron ruling, federal agencies will not be able to make decisions unless there is explicit intent in the laws that congress passes.

I'm having an extremely difficult time wrapping my head around just how epic of a change this SCOTUS has brought to the way the US population is governed, at both the state and federal level. Hard to really comprehend the gravity of the coming change, which will take decades and decades to fully understand.

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

#464

Post by adriand » Fri, Jun 28, 2024, 6:28 PM UTC

bobthepanda wrote: post #334

brookst wrote: post #327

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

It does, the problem is the law as written doesn’t explicitly say that and this court is all about textualism when convenient.

Exactly, only when convenient. A glaring example of this is when they decided that section 3 of the Fourteenth Amendment did not disqualify Trump from the ballot. The plain language is not complicated:

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No person shall be a Senator or Representative in Congress, or elector of President and Vice President, or hold any office, civil or military, under the United States, or under any State, who, having previously taken an oath, as a member of Congress, or as an officer of the United States, or as a member of any State legislature, or as an executive or judicial officer of any State, to support the Constitution of the United States, shall have engaged in insurrection or rebellion against the same, or given aid or comfort to the enemies thereof. But Congress may, by a vote of two-thirds of each House, remove such disability.

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Note that this amendment provides a legislative remedy: Congress can remove the disability by a two-thirds vote. Textualism, but only when it serves their purposes.

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

#465

Post by unethical_ban » Fri, Jun 28, 2024, 6:28 PM UTC

dilippkumar wrote: post #365

rswail wrote: 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.

We disagree. I prefer an effective administration of government.

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

#466

Post by psynister » Fri, Jun 28, 2024, 6:28 PM UTC

callroomlamp wrote: post #118

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

That's pretty generous to claim that expertise is what was influencing application of law and policy before this. Agency oversight got us Ajit Pai deciding to kill net neutrality.

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

#467

Post by knowaveragejoe » Fri, Jun 28, 2024, 6:28 PM UTC

beaeglebeachedd wrote: post #447

itsdavesanders wrote: post #425

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And imagine how our allies feel. If you can’t count on the U.S. for more than about 3 years at a time, then you quickly move away from them and insure you aren’t so tied to them that a foreign election suddenly makes you vulnerable. Which then makes everyone weaker as a whole and easier to pick off. Which is why U.S. foreign adversaries have been actively sowing chaos for a decade.

[flagged]

That is exactly what the US' adversaries would like you to believe is the case. By all means, carry water for the despots of the world as you turn inwards.

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

#468

Post by phillipcarter » Fri, Jun 28, 2024, 6:28 PM UTC

beaeglebeachedd wrote: post #447

itsdavesanders wrote: post #425

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And imagine how our allies feel. If you can’t count on the U.S. for more than about 3 years at a time, then you quickly move away from them and insure you aren’t so tied to them that a foreign election suddenly makes you vulnerable. Which then makes everyone weaker as a whole and easier to pick off. Which is why U.S. foreign adversaries have been actively sowing chaos for a decade.

[flagged]

This is a very uncharitable view of how foreign policy works. It is absolutely in our best interest to not only maintain strong diplomatic ties with peoples and countries who share our values, but also cooperate in defense efforts and ensuring safety and security from military actions that would undo things we benefit from in the long term.

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

#469

Post by saboot » Fri, Jun 28, 2024, 6:29 PM UTC

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.

It's not even years of precedent, they contradicted themselves on this decision today in their separate ruling on allowing public sleeping bans. Roberts said "Why would you think that these nine people are the best people to judge and weigh those policy judgements?". SCOTUS follows tradition when it suits their lobbied interests, and disregards tradition if it contradicts them.

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

#470

Post by lolinder » Fri, Jun 28, 2024, 6:31 PM UTC

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…

I'm probably going to get downvoted to hell for mentioning downvotes, but it's funny to me that when this comment was on the submission for the actual supreme court ruling it ended up pinned to the top with 20+ upvotes, but since the merge with the Axios article it's been steadily ticking down, having lost 18 points in less than an hour.

I don't know if it's brigading or if it says something about the difference between readers of Axios articles and readers of full supreme court rulings.