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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

#591

Post by adastra22 »

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…

> I'll point out that the agency system has ~100 years of efficacy behind it.

The agency system you are advocating for has only a few decades of history. Chevron was a 1984 decision, and didn’t really rise to prominence until the Obama administration.

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

#592

Post by r2_pilot »

refurb wrote: post #520
AnimalMuppet wrote: post #284

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> And lets the President know that his nominees for the 12 new positions will need to understand who's the real boss. And who, in your view, is supposed to be the real boss? Congress? Or the President? The Supreme Court is supposed to be independent . Changing that needs a much higher threshold than "bell-cot doesn't like some recent Supreme Court decisions".

Indeed. Despite FDR being quite popular with his New Deal laws, his own party was prepared to toss his ass out for trying to stack the Supreme Court in order to keep parts of his New Deal alive. It would be political suicide for either side to do that.

> It would be political suicide for either side to do that.

Used to be, in my opinion. Now I'm not so sure if parties that pursue power uber alles would face any consequences.

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

#593

Post by dotnet00 »

Balgair wrote: post #317
HDThoreaun wrote: post #302

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Congress can still delegate chevron style. They just have to explicitly do so

There's already been a big issue with 'regulatory capture' and lobbying in government. Congress is only going to delegate when some other entity, likely a business, isn't already writing the law/regulation. A concrete example: Boeing is going to up their lobbying game hard . They can now not only help write the laws, but help choose who says they've broken them. There is no way that it will be good for passengers bef…

Good thing Boeing hasn't already been doing that /s

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

#594

Post by db48x »

hypothesis wrote: post #461
matthewdgreen wrote: post #314

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.

> 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?

No, because they neither make laws nor execute them.

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

#595

Post by thyrsus »

gnicholas wrote: post #433
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

Of course expertise will still influence the application of law and policy. The same people will still write the regulations, serve as expert witnesses in trials, and write amicus briefs. The thing that has changed is that the executive branch's preferred interpretation of laws passed by the legislative branch will no longer be granted deference by the judicial branch. They will be on a level playing field with other…

The executive is supposed to represent the public interest, opposed to the interests wealthy enough to bring a lawsuit. We seem to have given up on that.

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

#596

Post by stale2002 »

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…

> towards solidifying the executive branch

The ruling is literally the opposite.

The power is put in the hands of the courts and it is take away from the executive appointed agencies.

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

#597

Post by curiousllama »

maxwell wrote: post #321
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…

What side effects?

This basically flips the judicial review logic from "did the regulator act within the scope of the law?" to "are there other ways the regulator could have acted that would also be within the scope of the law? If so, the judge decides which set of actions the regulator must take"

I.e., anything Congress does not explicitly state in a law is now determined by federal judges. At the extreme, this is aggrandizing a very wide scope of power to low-level federal judges to essentially ignore congressional intent.

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

#598

Post by rayiner »

The media's coverage of this as a "conservative win" is extremely misleading. This case is simply about whether agencies or judges should interpret what federal regulatory statutes mean. Chevron itself was written by five conservatives (and one democrat--with three other justices not participating) and overruled a decision authored by then D.C. Circuit Judge Ruth Bader Ginsberg. She had sided with an environmental advocacy organization in finding that the EPA's interpretation of a Clean Air Act amendment was incorrect.

Chevron has always been a double-edged sword for both conservatives and progressives. In many cases, public interest advocacy organizations would much rather have judges deciding what laws mean than bureaucrats, because agencies tend to be staffed with industry people who are--while well meaning and operating in good faith--often veterans of industry and very sympathetic to it.

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

#599

Post by throwaway4220 »

deveac wrote: post #564
masklinn wrote: post #477

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

It all sounds great on paper, but real world ambiguity has to be dealt with on an expert level with some teeth.

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

#600

Post by ceejayoz »

adastra22 wrote: post #591
mywittyname wrote: post #526

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

> I'll point out that the agency system has ~100 years of efficacy behind it. The agency system you are advocating for has only a few decades of history. Chevron was a 1984 decision, and didn’t really rise to prominence until the Obama administration.

The 1984 decision was a case contesting the agency system's authority. The result of that case confirmed the status quo, which existed long before 1984.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chevron_U.S.A.,_Inc._v._Natura....

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Administrative_Procedure_Act

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