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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

#561

Post by vundercind »

chasd00 wrote: post #436
vundercind wrote: post #335

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As explained in the dissent, they literally have to delegate the kind of authority in question here. It’s the hostile-genie problem: you can’t close all the loopholes in some iron-clad unambiguous way in finite space.

those loopholes and ambiguities should be left to the courts to decide with representation from both sides of the argument making their case and not some department head full of political bias and possibly an axe to grind favoring one side.

That’s still deferring, just to the courts instead. The demand was for Congress to not defer that responsibility, and they literally can’t do that.

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

#562

Post by datavirtue »

Xeoncross wrote: post #307
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?

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…

These judges need to face election like most judges, and we need more. I agree.

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

#563

Post by binarymax »

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…

This won’t change Congress, which is more partisan than ever. It just means what we have in code now is what we are stuck with for a really really long time.

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

#564

Post by deveac »

masklinn wrote: post #477
MR4D wrote: post #458

Congress can’t write good laws (good = clean, unambiguous) due to a variety of reasons, most of which are just political and not practical reasons. Here’s hoping this decision causes Congress to write laws with more clarity now that they cannot be as sloppy and get away with it. There may be much upheaval in the short term, but for that reason alone, I think it will have a positive impact on the country. One other re…

> Congress can’t write good laws (good = clean, unambiguous) due to a variety of reasons, most of which are just political and not practical reasons. A massive reason in this case is that congress are not matter experts, laws are already large and unwieldy, and agencies need flexibility in their work as, as ponderous as they are, they're still more nimble than congress and need that in order to react to changes in th…

>A massive reason in this case is that congress are not matter experts,

Perhaps they should not be crafting new laws concerning things that they do not understand. If this results in fewer new laws, that may be better. If this also results in their having to spend more time doing homework on new urgent laws of greater importance, that may also be a good thing.

A return to the Constitutional prescription that Congress writes the laws, the Executive administers them, and the Courts interpret them certainly does not seem inappropriate, and discarding this framework in the name of arbitrary desired outcomes like EPA rulings feels off. If it's a bandwidth issue, maybe we should up the number of judiciary and lower the number of extra-judicial agency bureaucrats.

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

#565

Post by camel_Snake »

patmcc wrote: post #538
andyjohnson0 wrote: post #405

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

It doesn't take a whole population to grind the process to a halt - just a legislator or two, and not passing legislation is just as important to some voters as passing legislation is to others.

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

#566

Post by malcolmgreaves »

refurb wrote: post #499
luddit3 wrote: post #351

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> "well, I'll leave it up to unelected bureaucrats to decide"

This is not *at all* related to what the Chevron defense is about.

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

#567

Post by kogus »

crazygringo wrote: post #553
kogus wrote: post #537

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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 opaq…

> Why can't Congress write complete regulatory statutes? Isn't that literally their job? Yes, it is. No, it's not. That's like saying it's the CEO's job to write every design document in a company. It not only doesn't make sense -- it's not even possible from a perspective of information throughput. It sounds like you're saying that Congress should approve drugs rather than the FDA. Absolutely not. Congress should wr…

I do not expect Congress to atomically approve or disapprove every regulatory action. That is a straw man. I expect them to write clear laws that state what agencies can do, what they cannot do, and how they should do it.

The case before the court is a good example of how the opaque and unaccountable nature of a federal agency allows them to serve their own self-interest at the expense of the citizens they are supposed to protect. Specifically, Congress specified in law that "authorizes the government to require trained, professional observers on regulated fishing vessels". But their law did not specify who would pay for these observers. So under Chevron, the agency got to decide. And, shocker! They decided they did not have to pay for it.

This ruling stops that specific abuse, and hopefully many others. The actions of federal agencies is not generally a thing to be desired.

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

#568

Post by logicchains »

crazygringo wrote: post #553
kogus wrote: post #537

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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 opaq…

> Why can't Congress write complete regulatory statutes? Isn't that literally their job? Yes, it is. No, it's not. That's like saying it's the CEO's job to write every design document in a company. It not only doesn't make sense -- it's not even possible from a perspective of information throughput. It sounds like you're saying that Congress should approve drugs rather than the FDA. Absolutely not. Congress should wr…

Congress isn't the CEO, the president is the CEO. Congress is the body responsible for writing the company's policy documents.

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

#569

Post by lolinder »

binarymax wrote: post #563
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…

This won’t change Congress, which is more partisan than ever. It just means what we have in code now is what we are stuck with for a really really long time.

That's why I included the "or": the other option is that the states will take up the slack (and they will take it up, we're already seeing that after Dobbs).

We're at the scale now where majority rule at the federal level will usually leave 170 million people unhappy. If we can't get anything done at the federal level that might be a sign that we've hit the maximum size+diversity threshold for a functioning democracy and it's time to resolve more of our issues at a smaller, more local level.

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

#570

Post by underlipton »

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…

>If this forces Congress to get their shit together and pass lasting laws

It won't. People will just suffer while federal workers sit around twiddling their thumbs, because they no longer have the power to figure out how to carry out their missions. And then this will be used to label their jobs as "waste" in order to justify shutting down their agencies. Tada, the real aim of vaporizing regulators and government services achieved.

If you found our perennial government shutdown circus entertaining, you're in for a treat.

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