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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

#921

Post by arunabha »

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.

>> Now, if you have a population that doesn't want to elect lawmakers who will actually pass laws

The population as a whole _does_ want lawmakers who will pass laws, however that collides with the structural misrepresentation built into the US electoral system.

The fundamental problem with this statement is that it assumes both sides of the coin are the same. However, it's far easier to block legislation in the current system than it is to get it passed. Combine that with the hyper partisanship of recent years and you have a recipe for legislative paralysis.

Now, if we didn't have the filibuster or senators were assigned based on population, it would be a different matter. Suffice it to say that we already have a pretty big check on govt power via these mechanisms, so the conservative talking point of preventing 'overreach' by government rings hollow.

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

#922

Post by anon373839 »

freejazz wrote: post #824
anon373839 wrote: post #816

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I suppose Congress could use its power under Article III’s Exceptions Clause to strip the federal courts (including the Supreme Court) of jurisdiction to hear cases challenging an agency’s adherence to its enabling statute. Courts would still always be able to hear constitutional challenges, of course.

And wouldn't this court still take this kind of challenge on constitutional grounds? That congress has no power to give legislative authority to an executive agency?

You're completely right; my thought experiment was half-baked. A challenge to an agency's use of delegated power is necessarily a constitutional challenge. So, unless Marbury were overturned, this wouldn't fly.

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

#923

Post by skissane »

cryptonector wrote: post #700
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.

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.

> 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.

I'm not convinced you are right. If you look at the conservatives on the current SCOTUS, they aren't monolithic. Thomas and Alito are hard conservatives (with Thomas the hardest), [0] and I'd expect they'd likely do as you suggest and strike down any statutory attempt to reintroduce Chevron as unconstitutional.

But I'm not sure Roberts would be willing to go along with that. As the most moderate of the conservative justices, he was comfortable striking down Chevron on statutory interpretation grounds, repeating that on constitutional grounds might be going too far for him. And he only has to convince one other conservative to go along with him, and with the support of the liberals he'd have a majority. Kavanaugh is only modestly more conservative than Roberts, so he'd be the most likely candidate. I think, if Roberts was to overturn on constitutional grounds a statutory attempt to reinstate Chevron, he'd prefer to do it in the narrowest way he could – striking down that particular attempt, but leaving open the possibility that Congress could have another go at it.

The other thing you have to keep in mind, is ultimately the justices are individuals with their own idiosyncrasies, and they don't always vote the way you'd predict if ideological leanings were the only factor driving their decisions. A good example of that was the Fischer v United States case [1] from the other day, in which SCOTUS sided with January 6 defendants: Jackson joined the conservatives in that, whereas Barrett joined the liberals in dissenting.

I suppose Jackson siding with the conservatives was not entirely surprising; as the most moderate of the liberal justices, she is the most likely to join the conservatives in any case. Barrett's dissent was somewhat more surprising, given she's not the most moderate conservative, with Roberts and Kavanaugh siding with the liberals more often than she does.

[0] https://www.axios.com/2019/06/01/supreme-court-justices-ideo...

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fischer_v._United_States

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

#924

Post by suzzer99 »

mike_hearn wrote: post #522
bumby wrote: post #506

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This feels like one of those topics that may sound ok in theory, but breaks down in practice. The implication is that the judges must be well-versed enough in any domain brought before them to interpret the laws effectively. This seems like a tall order for nine people. We have already seen this trouble in expecting strict interpretations regarding tech. To be fair, Congress has the same problem. I believe that was i…

The Supreme Court doesn't resolve cases directly, they resolve questions of law for lower courts to take into account. They are meant to be experts in law, so there's no problem there. The lower courts can't be experts in everything, but bear in mind two things: 1. Courts have expert witnesses and a whole system around how they are called, challenged and questioned. Judges are trained to learn what they need to know…

I just to work for one of the leading expert witnesses in the country. Expert witnesses are just advocates, hired by a client, who know how to throw fancy words around in a soothing, confident manner that makes the listener feel smart.

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

#925

Post by creer »

lacy_tinpot wrote: post #918
tw04 wrote: post #890

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Fundamentally there’s nothing wrong with the position of supreme court to push the responsibility of lawmaking back on congress. It would literally be impossible for congress to make a law covering every single nuance agencies are tasked with. This Supreme Court knows it. This is nothing more than deregulation on a scale not seen in modern American history. When you can’t find clean drinking water in 30 years, this…

> It would literally be impossible for congress to make a law covering every single nuance agencies are tasked with. What does that even mean? Supposedly these agencies already know what they're tasked with, no? If not... well I mean that's straight up irresponsible. The other part of this I don't get is that people have been complaining about the "Revolving Door" problem in these agencies for a long time now. They'r…

> Supposedly these agencies already know what they're tasked with, no?

I don't even see why such a law would have to name any agency. It could be a generic, "yes Supreme Court we do intend to let the executive fill in the blank in the law through regulations - that's why we call them regulations".

Even if that failed (perhaps on constitutional grounds), they could periodically accept agency regulation revisions and pass them into law.

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

#927

Post by philwelch »

tw04 wrote: post #890
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.

>Fundamentally there’s nothing wrong with the position of supreme court to push the responsibility of lawmaking back on congress. It would literally be impossible for congress to make a law covering every single nuance agencies are tasked with. This Supreme Court knows it. This is nothing more than deregulation on a scale not seen in modern American history. When you can’t find clean drinking water in 30 years, this…

[flagged]

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

#929

Post by cryptonector »

NotYourLawyer wrote: post #875
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.

That seems unlikely to me. Why do you think so? There hasn’t been a successful nondelegatiom challenge in like a hundred years.

I gave my reason in the comment you're replying to.

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

#930

Post by remarkEon »

consumer451 wrote: post #217
remarkEon wrote: post #207

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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... I really hope she meant to convey a different point here, because it reads as if congress doesn't care and wants unelected bureaucrats figuring out what laws mean because they t…

While members of federal agencies are not elected, their heads are appointed by elected officials. I never understood the whole "un-elected officials" argument. How many people should we have on the ballot? 10s of thousands?

That isn't the point. My government is supposed to have it's rules made by one body, congress. It's very strange to me that there's a large contingent of people - even some who pretend to be lawyers - who think that it's fine that some random guy that gets hired through a political appointment by the executive is the one actually making the rules.
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