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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

#491

Post by jmyeet »

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?

> This seems like the judicial branch just voted to give itself substantially more power.

100% this but it's not new. This court claim to be "originalists" or "textualists" (even though "originalism" was invented in the 1980s) but has made a massive power grab that we will feel for decades. The "originalists" invented two new doctrines to justify this:

1. History and tradition. Basically the court decides if how something was in 1780 as a legal basis for interpreting the constitution and law. Remember at this time some peoplw were property, women couldn't vote and there was no interracial marriage. This is the "history and tradition" the court seeks to return to; and

2. The major questions doctrine ("MQD"). This has gives sweeping powers to the court to say that even when Congress defined clear language if the consequences are "large" (as the court determines it) then the court can step in and say that Congress wasn't clear enough so the court gets to essentially write legislation and overrule both the legislative and executive branches. MQD was used to justify blocking student loan relief despite Congress giving the president and the education secretary expllicit powers in this regard.

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

#492

Post by skhunted »

lolinder wrote: post #406
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…

To put it a bit differently: Congress has not been able to pass substantial laws in decades. The executive branch has filled in by interpreting these laws very loosely in order to adapt to the changing situation and—importantly—to adapt to changing presidencies. That last part is the single biggest problem with the administrative regime as it has stood hitherto: it means that almost everything that happens in the fed…

There has always been judicial review in cases where some affected party felt that administrators of an agency went beyond the mandate. This has been the norm for many decades now. The Supreme court legalized foreign money to use in election campaigns with Citizens United. It has gutted voting rights by allowing thousands of polling stations to be closed. You can easily guess where those polling closures mostly have occurred. A few days ago it effectively legalized bribing government officials. It has taken away rights of women, convicts, and now the ability of government agencies to carry out their mandates.

There are major power imbalances in the country and it is not sustainable. The path we are on leads to a breakup of the country or a rewriting of the Constitution. The status quo is not sustainable.

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

#493

Post by mullingitover »

AnimalMuppet wrote: post #110
spanktheuser wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 som…

> There was a 7-2 liberal majority during the 1970s.

Can you break this down? I'm looking at the Martin-Quinn graph[1] for the 70s and I'm seeing a pretty centrist, if not majority conservative, slant for that decade.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Martin%E2%80%93Quinn_score

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

#494

Post by justinclift »

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]

> playing world police

Don't you mean schoolyard bullies?

Because that's how much of the world, including your allies, view the US.

Then again, seeing the state of the US police force, maybe that's why US people think bullying and policing is the same thing?

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

#495

Post by jimbob45 »

dang wrote: post #303
doublerabbit wrote: post #107

[flagged]

Please don't post generated comments.

Is there a reason you haven't added that to the FAQ yet? I don't know how that guy could have known not to use generated comments unless there was a sticky I missed.

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

#496

Post by spiderice »

saboot wrote: post #469
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.

> Why would you think that these nine people are the best people to judge and weigh those policy judgements?

A really really good question. And completely compatible with this ruling.

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

#497

Post by diebeforei485 »

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'd rather the Supreme Court exercise judicial hubris once every 50 years than new administrations exercise administrative hubris every 4 years.

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

#498

Post by 23B1 »

andyjohnson0 wrote: post #405
treflop wrote: post #358

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From my understanding of political science classes, this is how the founders wrote it to be. Actually, it's supposed to be like this… Congress writes laws. Executive interprets those laws and decides ambiguities on its own. Some of those ambiguities are contested so courts decide the outcome. If that court’s outcome is contested, then Congress makes a new ruling explicitly stating what they want. Then it repeats. It’…

> It’s a cycle of checks and balances that is supposed to loop back into itself. Except that the US doesn't have a functioning legislative branch, so the corrective feedback action never happens. The justices who are making these rulings, and their clients, are very well aware of this.

> Except that the US doesn't have a functioning legislative branch, so the corrective feedback action never happens.

That's neither the judiciary's problem nor purview. Its yours (and mine) as voters.

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

#499

Post by refurb »

luddit3 wrote: post #351
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…

This is taking power away from regulator bodies like EPA that enforce the laws and giving it to the courts... taking the enforcement out of the hands of the experts.

The US is a constitutional republic, not a dictatorship of experts. Go to Singapore if you want that.

What I find funny is how the court is simply asking Congress to do their job - be clear in the intent of how laws should be executed. None of this "well, I'll leave it up to unelected bureaucrats to decide" and people think this is somehow a bad thing.

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