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

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

#531

Post by refurb » Fri, Jun 28, 2024, 6:49 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

> Devastating that expertise will no longer influence the application of law and policy.

How on earth do you come to that conclusion? Nothing stop Congress from leveraging experts in drafting laws.

This simply requires that interpretation of law be done in a clear transparent way (courts), rather than by a nameless, faceless, unelected bureacrat.

How can anyone say "no, I'd rather have some bureaucrat do it"?

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

#532

Post by Mountain_Skies » Fri, Jun 28, 2024, 6:49 PM UTC

unethical_ban wrote: post #465

dilippkumar wrote: post #365

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

What's your definition of effective and how are you evaluating if the administrative government is meeting your definition?

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

#533

Post by barrkel » Fri, Jun 28, 2024, 6:50 PM UTC

dangoor wrote: post #472

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.

I don't think our allies felt quite so flung about until Trump came along. Sure, administrations might engage a little differently from one another, but fundamentally they could count on the US for a very long time. Presidents did not, before Trump, throw NATO under the bus, for example.

Allies were so put out by Bush II that they gave Obama the Nobel peace prize before he did anything.

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

#534

Post by skrbjc » Fri, Jun 28, 2024, 6:50 PM UTC

stvswn wrote: post #488

kergonath wrote: post #163

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That is not a question of good guys and bad guys. It’s just that a system where the legislative branch micro-manages things like electrical safety in new homes to what you’re allowed to put in baby formula is completely unworkable. If “the bad guys” get into power, then the agency is still checked by the courts that are perfectly able to stop blatant overreach. OTOH, congress physically cannot keep abreast of the sta…

It is incorrect, but widespread among left-leaning pundits, that this ruling will force Congress to micromanage everything that would normally be left to the agencies. Agencies can still make rules. If Congress would like to be out of the details business, they can even write statutes that explicitly delegate rule making to the agencies. What this does is prevent agencies from acting in ways that are easily interpret…

Yes, exactly. Perfectly put.

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

#535

Post by karmasimida » Fri, Jun 28, 2024, 6:51 PM UTC

kergonath wrote: post #163

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.

That is not a question of good guys and bad guys. It’s just that a system where the legislative branch micro-manages things like electrical safety in new homes to what you’re allowed to put in baby formula is completely unworkable. If “the bad guys” get into power, then the agency is still checked by the courts that are perfectly able to stop blatant overreach. OTOH, congress physically cannot keep abreast of the sta…

The US health care is so expensive, is largely due to regulation like HIPPA that makes administrative cost astronomically high.

It is not a good idea to have those agencies roam freely imposing regulation that they might not able to foresee the economic consequences

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

#536

Post by larkost » Fri, Jun 28, 2024, 6:53 PM UTC

taylodl wrote: post #233

mp05 wrote: post #167

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Perhaps this will cause us to start electing experts instead of lifelong politicians? The number of doctors, engineers, and scientists in Congress is pathetic.

Devil's advocate: isn't a lifelong politician an expert in politics? Isn't it the case that with so many noobs in Congress nothing is getting done because they simply don't know how to politic to get things done? All they know how to do is run to the nearest TV camera and start slandering everybody they don't like. Then they wonder why they can't broker deals to get what they want. Besides, very few doctors, engineer…

I don't think it is the inexperience level in congress that is the driving factor. Ted Cruz has been in the Senate since 2013, and he is absolutely one of the problematic members. Former President Trump is similarly anti-compromise and similarly a bomb-thrower rather than a politicker.

The main problem as I see it is that to many people have entered their own little political bubbles (a problem on both the major parties), and that on one side it has become common to lie outrageously (election denial, "Biden Crime Family", etc...) and to baselessly vilify their opponents in unfair and repugnant ways ("groomers", "killing babies after birth", etc...).

There is a real historical parallel to this: the U.S. Civil War. In the run-up to the election of Abraham Lincoln the Southern Democrats absolutely vilified him, saying things like he was going to free the black slaves (not his plans at all at that point) and make slaves of poor white folks. Many of these species were made on the floors of the House and Senate to be picked up in the newspapers in their home districts.

When Lincoln won (largely because the Southern Democrats split their vote), this rhetoric had taken on a life of its own and the populace was so enraged that it would have taken real leadership in the south to prevent war. And so we went to war with ourselves.

And about what really? Certainly slavery was the over-arching issue, but what specifically about it? Lincoln won on a platform of status-quo. There was to be no effort at freeing slaves (there were 4 slave-owning states in the Union, and slavery happened in a number of new territories like California during the war), and the only anti-slavery thing Lincoln committed to was to no expand slavery into the new territories: something that had already been agreed to.

The U.S. Civil War started because a failed political strategy to lie to their own voters got away from the Southern Democrats.

I am truly scared that we are approaching that today. There is no-one with any integrity left in Republican leadership. Their voters have been lied to so much and so long that the idea that the leaders of the Democratic Party both are tying to "groom" children and to literally suck their blood in some ritual to live longer are nearly main-stream within Republican circles. And Republican leadership is alright with that, so long as they think it will get them elected.

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

#537

Post by kogus » Fri, Jun 28, 2024, 6:53 PM UTC

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…

>Congress knows that it does not—in fact cannot—write perfectly complete regulatory statutes...

Why not? Why can't Congress write complete regulatory statutes? Isn't that literally their job? Yes, it is. "Chevron defense" has been a way for Congress to shirk its duty for decades. If the law is ambiguous, courts must resolve the ambiguity. That is exactly what courts are for. To say that it would be better for an opaque, appeal-proof bureaucracy to have the final say was a ludicrous step on the path to our ever-growing executive tumor.

The tone of your quotes from Kagan give the impression that federal agencies are "responsible" and able to use "discretion". But agencies are political animals, subject to the whims of the current president, who can potentially change every four years. Courts are much slower to change, and much less vulnerable to the political whims of the current administration.

So many people are polarized and focused on winning presidential elections so they have their hands on the levers, that they never question whether the levers should be there in the first place. Perhaps politics would not be so polarized if the President did not have so much power, and the stakes were not so high.

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

#538

Post by patmcc » Fri, Jun 28, 2024, 6:53 PM UTC

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.

Then the voters should kick the bastards out. That's the biggest check on the legislative branch, it has pretty fast turnover.

Now, if you have a population that doesn't want to elect lawmakers who will actually pass laws...well, that sucks, but it's kind of working as designed.

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

#539

Post by [deleted] » Fri, Jun 28, 2024, 6:53 PM UTC

mywittyname wrote: post #526

lolinder wrote: post #406

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> The existing system of administrative rules absolutely sucks for stability. This new system is even worse. At some point, the Judiciary will make a poor ruling. Perhaps this ruling is impossible to hold to, but maybe the executive branch decides to usurp the court of its own volition. Then what? The checks and balances system of our government only works when everyone plays nice. But if push comes to shove, then th…

[deleted]

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

#540

Post by mywittyname » Fri, Jun 28, 2024, 6:54 PM UTC

Auracle wrote: post #473

throwup238 wrote: post #381

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Chevron deference case is one of the most cited court cases in the US and this decision threatens to throw Federal regulations into chaos as a bunch of Districts redecide decades of precedent. Since the appeals courts can reach contradictory decisions and keep them in play until the Supreme Court makes a conclusive decision, any company at the national level will have to figure out how to square that circle. Rega…

Sometimes you need to refactor the code, even when it’s going to be a huge mess to do so.

This is more like deleting the backups then shutting off the A/C in the server room.

It's not going to be feasible to run the country this way. So something has to give, either the agencies tell SCOTUS to fuck off, agencies stop operating, or they file suit for every little thing and clog up the already overworked justice system (which I guess means that we end up with behind closed doors mediation).

Since the President is the boss of agency heads, I guess it's up to the President to decide their favored course of action.