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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

#871

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I liked this section of Justice Gorsuch's concurrence: > How bad is the problem? Take just one example. Brand X concerned a law regulating broadband internet services. There, the Court upheld an agency rule adopted by the administration of President George W. Bush because it was premised on a “reasonable” interpretation of the statute. Later, President Barack Obama’s administration rescinded the rule and replaced it…

If his complaint is the back-and-forth, this is certainly a look-in-the-mirror moment for Gorsuch and the present court, who've sure made their own notable contributions to whipsaw governance dynamics lately. If his complaint is that there's an executive discretion in executing the law or the expectation should be that congressional force only goes as far as its ability to write micromanagement into statute then it's…

This is so incredibly ignorant, which is fine. We're on a startup forum after all--not a conlaw round table. We aren't supposed to be experts. But to think you have some superior intellectual standing on this issue compared to any of the SCOTUS justices to too much Dunning-Kruger for me to just let slide.

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

#872

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agreed. If Congress or Executive agencies don't want the judiciary interpreting the laws in various ways they should write laws with no room for interpretation. The couts giving/forcing (back) power to the legislature where laws are supposed to be written, deliberated, and passed is a very good thing.

Exactly how do you write a law that has no room for interpretation? What does that process look like exactly, and how do you achieve it at scale in a changing and dynamic world where the meanings of words change over time? I think what you’re saying is the equivalent of “just write software without bugs and everything will be fine” Yeah sure… but easier said than done.

> Exactly how do you write a law that has no room for interpretation?

Funny question in light of Fischer vs. US. The majority found that the text of a law didn't mean what they believed it should, so they threw out the text and went with their feelings. How can one write a law with no room for interpretation, to be understood by a court who can't be trusted to retain the letter of the law?

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

#873
I bet a lot of commenters here don't understand the extent to which this ruling will apply.

The ruling affects cases where statutes do not explicitly grant interpretive authority to the enforcing agency. When a statute clearly delegates interpretive authority to the enforcing agency, the agency's interpretations will definitely prevail in the courts.

So this ruling is not as terrible as most comments think. If anything, it's very rational. If a law explicitly applies to X, you don't want the executive branch applying it to Y and Z. That's how you create a rogue executive branch (even though you may be well intentioned).

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

#874

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.

> Just like congress can legislate abortion laws That might violate the 10th Amendment since it wasn't explicitly delegated to the federal government.

A wild 14th Amendment appears (they hate that one, too).

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

#875

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.

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.

That seems unlikely to me. Why do you think so?

There hasn’t been a successful nondelegatiom challenge in like a hundred years.

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

#876

The basic trend in America has been to defer power to an administrative state beholden to the Executive. This accumulation of power has the basic effect of enabling tyranny. To prevent tyranny it is necessary to check this concerning accumulation of Executive power.

Does this decision do that, or does it just move the accumulation of power to a different branch? From bureaucrats who can be fired to unelected judges with lifetime tenure. How would you argue that this is an improvement? The response may be that Congress makes far more specific legislation, along with all the weird pitfalls that will come from that, and outsources the actual text to corporate lobbyists. That seems…

Judges are generally less politicized than bureaucrats.

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

#877
Average number of pages in the Federal Register is around 70k each year since the mid 1970s.

I found his and other interesting facts about USA govt rule making in

Counting Regulations: An Overview of Rulemaking, Types of Federal Regulations, and Pages in the Federal Register Sep 2019

https://sgp.fas.org/crs/misc/R43056.pdf

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

#878

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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. Congress can't actually legislate anything while it's held hostage by obstructionists and there's effectively zero chance that a bunch of republicans who want to dismantle the already inadequate regulations that keep entire communities from being pois…

> Congress can't actually legislate anything Did you miss the hundreds of billions of dollars of legislating the Congress did this year?

seems they are legislating less and less by the Congress.

The list of acts of the 115th United States Congress includes all Acts of Congress and ratified treaties by the 115th United States Congress, which began on January 3, 2017, and ended on January 3, 2019. The 115th Congress enacted 442 statutes and ratified 6 treaties.

The 116th United States Congress, which began on January 3, 2019, and ended on January 3, 2021, enacted 344 public laws and zero private laws

The 117th United States Congress, which began on January 3, 2021, and ended on January 3, 2023, enacted 362 public laws and 3 private laws.

The 118th United States Congress, which began on January 3, 2023, and will end on January 3, 2025, has enacted 65 public laws and zero private laws

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_acts_of_the_115th_Unit...

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_acts_of_the_116th_Unit...

[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_acts_of_the_117th_Unit...

[4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_acts_of_the_118th_Unit...

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

#879
post #871

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If his complaint is the back-and-forth, this is certainly a look-in-the-mirror moment for Gorsuch and the present court, who've sure made their own notable contributions to whipsaw governance dynamics lately. If his complaint is that there's an executive discretion in executing the law or the expectation should be that congressional force only goes as far as its ability to write micromanagement into statute then it's…

This is so incredibly ignorant, which is fine. We're on a startup forum after all--not a conlaw round table. We aren't supposed to be experts. But to think you have some superior intellectual standing on this issue compared to any of the SCOTUS justices to too much Dunning-Kruger for me to just let slide.

The most recent two have no business being on the bench in the first place, so maybe not so much.

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

#880

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.

The solution to both problems is law, and the rule thereof.
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