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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

#831

Post by kergonath »

catlikesshrimp wrote: post #529
bell-cot wrote: post #244

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Currently, in the minds of much of the American electorate, it is good guys and bad guys. You are correct that the US Constitution is poorly suited to governing a nation of ~1/3 billion people in the modern world. Unfortunately, the current political environment make fixing things impossible.

What political environment makes fixing things possible? Countries scraping their constitutions tend to be poor ones just finishing revolutions which more often that not creates dictators (1799 France included). Except, very few exceptions

Few countries have such a weird fetish for a 1770s bit of legislation. In most countries with a written constitution, it was at least updated at some point in the 20th century. It is not a bad thing. The state of the art in all domains has progressed quite a bit in the last 2 centuries, including in philosophy, political science, and plain science in general.

The US is pretty much alone in that respect. So it’s easy to say that a lot of terrible regimes were enabled by constitutional change. Most of them were. But so were most of the regimes that are much more democratic than the US.

This mirrors the weird fetish that some American Christian’s seem to have with their bible. These things were written by humans. So, of course they are imperfect and can be discussed and improved upon.

France went through counter-revolution, counter-counter revolution, empire, revolution, restoration, revolution, re-restoration, revolution, empire, revolution, republic, WWII, and republic. The US never came anywhere close this kind of collective trauma, even at the worst times of the secession war. Most countries are not protected by two ocean, a small border in the south and a compliant neighbour in the north. Most countries don’t have the luxury of hanging on a thoroughly outdated bit of political philosophy.

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

#832

Post by freejazz »

Gormo wrote: post #749
jameshart wrote: post #703

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Combined with yesterday’s ruling on administrative courts, this amounts to a massive increase in the role of the federal judiciary in the execution of government action. By 2040 the normal procedure every April will be, rather than filing a tax return, filing a suit in federal court disputing the right of the IRS to determine whether your income is actually ‘income’. Eighty federalist society AI lawbots will automati…

> Combined with yesterday’s ruling on administrative courts, this amounts to a massive increase in the role of the federal judiciary in the execution of government action. Sounds great. How we got to the point where executive-branch agencies were making rules with the force of law, binding upon the public with no judicial oversight, is a mystery to me, but it's good to see that the courts are taking their responsibil…

> binding upon the public with no judicial oversight

What on earth are you talking about?

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

#833

Post by cryptonector »

cdaringe wrote: post #245

So if I work for the ohhh I dunno department of energy, and im working on rules for, uh, i dunno, radiation exposure. Does this mean that DOE cant what—set legally safe exposure levels? The court has to?

I recommend you read the actual decision.

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

#835

Post by jmyeet »

VincentEvans wrote: post #664

Congress can actually legislate the right of agencies to interpret the gaps in the laws back into effect - by passing a law that explicitly gives agencies this power. Just like congress can legislate abortion laws rather than leaving it to judicial precedence. Fundamentally there’s nothing wrong with the position of supreme court to push the responsibility of lawmaking back on congress.

This is naive.

I guarantee you that if Congress passed a law codifying Chevron, this same Court would overrule it on the grounds of some other doctrine they just completely made up in their minds, most likely the major questions doctrine ("MQD"). These self-described "originalists" (side note: "originalism" was invented in the 1980s) just completely made up MQD to justify overruling clear language by Congress if the issue was subjectively large enough. It was used to overrule clear authority given to forgive student debt, for example.

I don't think you understand just how much of a power grab this Court has engaged in, which is funny because its supporters who are the same people who complain about "activist" liberal justices. MQD has essentially usurped the power of the other 2 branches of government whenever they see fit.

Example: in the case yesterday when SCOTUS didn't understand what corruption was they said Congress had had the opportunity to clarify since 1986 and they chose not to so deference should be given to that inaction.

Well, Chevron was decided in 1984 and no administration took action in the last 40 years. Where's that same deference?

The Democrats can be faulted for not codifying Roe v. Wade but I guarantee you that, even if they had, it wouldn't matter. Thsi Court would've found some justification to overrule that. Deference to the states, that sort of thing.

There is no fundamental princples in play here. It's entirely results-oriented.

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

#836

Post by autoexec »

Dalewyn wrote: post #805
oceanplexian wrote: post #793

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Congress can't actually legislate anything while it's held hostage by obstructionists That’s a feature, not a bug.

This. When the electorate is sufficiently divided or otherwise in the process of debate that there is no consensus, it is proper that the legislative bodies representing the electorate also likewise have no consensus with which to pass new legislation. Also, this feature also works the other way: If Congress were to pass, say, abortion guarantees or Chevron Deference into law, then good luck trying to get them repeal…

> . See also Obamacare, which hasn't been repealed after it was passed despite hell being raised.

Let's see how long that lasts now. Overturning Chevron was a step to that very end. It puts the Department of Health & Human Services on the chopping block.

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

#837

Post by cryptonector »

EricDeb wrote: post #455
persnicker wrote: post #134

This is a fantastic outcome. If you give an agency the power to interpret the law that congress has prescribed to the agency, the agency will almost always chose an interpretation that is in their self-interest - often leading to a corrupt (really, just an outright wrong) interpretation of the law. It's surprising that Chevron was ever even case law. Thank goodness we have a set of justices that are actually looking…

I strongly disagree. As someone above said it's the equivalent of requiring a meeting for every commit when building software. How good do you think congress will be at passing small laws when changes need to be made in federal agencies regulations?

No, Raimondo means only that regulations that would be quite a stretch under the current statutory delegation of power won't stand.

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

#838

Post by cryptonector »

sandworm101 wrote: post #87

So if courts aren't to defer to agencies on such matters, to where do they look? Congress? The executive? We can hate on regulatory agencies all day long, but they are least get stuff done. They show up to work and figure out how to move forwards. This decision seams a win for those political groups who, rather than actual fix anything, are bent on throwing sand into the gearbox.

So many comment without reading the decision. Raimondo means only that the courts won't defer on matters of interpretation of law. If the agencies stick to the text and spirit of the statutes then their regulations will hold up. If they stretch the law, then they won't.

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

#839

Post by anigbrowl »

BurningFrog wrote: post #747

The best argument for this is the "separation of powers" one. In the system of Thursday, regulatory agencies can be "both judge, jury and executioner", ordering people to do whatever they want, since that's how they choose to interpret their mandate. Power like this can and will be abused, even if it's true that the agency has the best expertise in the area. It also makes it very dangerous for those who are abused to…

Power like this can and will be abused

Compare and contrast judicial shopping, eg patent disputes filed in the Eastern District of Texas.

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

#840

Post by kergonath »

babyshake wrote: post #830
cryptonector wrote: post #700

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The court decided this on statutory grounds because that's what this court likes to do: base decisions on the narrowest grounds possible. But it mentioned Marbury quite prominently and it's pretty clear that the court will not sustain a law that codifies Chevron.

Isn't the only reason the Supreme Court would not sustain a law is because it is unconstitutional? And otherwise their only role is to interpret laws? At least that's the way it is supposed to be AFAIK.

But that’s not really how it works, is it? The court is more interested in pushing an agenda than playing its role in balancing the other branches of government. It’s obvious in the way they defer to precedent when it suits them and throw it aside when it does not.
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