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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

#471

Post by rayiner »

lolinder wrote: post #444
immibis wrote: post #423

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It won't force Congress to do shit. The same flip flop will still happen, but instead of 4-year executive terms, it will be driven by lifetime court appointments. The court is going to remain Republican for the foreseeable future, unlike the presidency.

> It won't force Congress to do shit. In which case the states will step in. We're already seeing this happen post- Dobbs , with blue states falling over themselves to create safe havens. If Congress can't get anything done and the courts won't let the executive branch do anything then that trend will continue with workers' rights and everything else. Maybe our problem is that the country has just gotten too big to r…

That would be great!

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

#472

Post by dangoor »

itsdavesanders wrote: post #425
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…

And imagine how our allies feel. If you can’t count on the U.S. for more than about 3 years at a time, then you quickly move away from them and insure you aren’t so tied to them that a foreign election suddenly makes you vulnerable. Which then makes everyone weaker as a whole and easier to pick off. Which is why U.S. foreign adversaries have been actively sowing chaos for a decade.

I don't think our allies felt quite so flung about until Trump came along. Sure, administrations might engage a little differently from one another, but fundamentally they could count on the US for a very long time. Presidents did not, before Trump, throw NATO under the bus, for example.

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

#473

Post by Auracle »

throwup238 wrote: post #381
bell-cot wrote: post #93

Before proclaiming that this outcome is horrible - Please consider that the Good Guys (your opinion) might not win the election in November. And that you might not want the courts auto-deferring to all the plausible-ish interpretations of ambiguous laws which gov't agency officials appointed by the Bad Guys (your opinion) might suddenly add the Official Agency Interpretations next year.

The Chevron deference case is one of the most cited court cases in the US and this decision threatens to throw Federal regulations into chaos as a bunch of Districts redecide decades of precedent. Since the appeals courts can reach contradictory decisions and keep them in play until the Supreme Court makes a conclusive decision, any company at the national level will have to figure out how to square that circle. Rega…

Sometimes you need to refactor the code, even when it’s going to be a huge mess to do so.

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

#474

Post by unethical_ban »

Molitor5901 wrote: post #57

It Congress wants to change the law, they can. It's up to congress, not the administration, to make law. For decades it seems Congress has largely abdicated its legislative responsibility in exchange for the political ease of letting the administrative state, and the courts, make the law. Just because something has "precedence" doesn't mean it's right. Banning gay marriage had precedence, but that didn't make it righ…

The reality is that our political system cannot do what you ask of it. It is reasonable to allow executive agencies delegated authority from Congress to regulate the details of things with implied oversight of Congress

This is accelerationist or naive to think this is a good decision.

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

#475

Post by digging »

matthewdgreen wrote: post #314
Xeoncross wrote: post #307

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

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.

This implies the common false dichotomy though that public officials can only be either: elected in toxic, wasteful campaign cycles every 4 years; or completely independent of public oversight. Those aren't the only two mechanisms that exist to develop an administrative apparatus. They are actually two points on a spectrum, and in fact closer to being at either end of the spectrum.

One, quick example: You can have appointed experts who can be recalled by public input but never have to campaign for election. I'm writing this in short minutes with zero research so be assured there are countless possible systems that exist in the infinite space between the two binary options implied by your dilemma.

In other words, being elected to office is not the advantage of congress. The advantage we seek is public accountability. Public elections are a pretty fucking poor proxy for accountability though because we end up with single-issue voters acting out of rage and electing people who are specifically inept at their job.

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

#476

Post by dimitrios1 »

itsdavesanders wrote: post #425
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…

And imagine how our allies feel. If you can’t count on the U.S. for more than about 3 years at a time, then you quickly move away from them and insure you aren’t so tied to them that a foreign election suddenly makes you vulnerable. Which then makes everyone weaker as a whole and easier to pick off. Which is why U.S. foreign adversaries have been actively sowing chaos for a decade.

I am not buying this argument.

America for better or worse (mostly worse) has a two party system that in practice functions as mostly a uniparty prioritizing defense spending, entitlements, and the economy, with some lip service paid to red meat/blue meat issues to ensure power is maintained. This means you can reliably predict what American policy will be in any given moment for any given president.

Besides, EU member states have had much more iteration on their governments, policies, regulations, and parties. It's not uncommon for a European country to have 7 different parties. And unlike the US, EU's don't hold their constitutions in a such unchanging high regard. Ours is purposefully difficult to change. France, for example, on the other hand, has changed its constitution twenty-five times since circa 1958.

edit: I took out He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named because it seems even here on the board of Very Smart People ™ we can't help ourselves when we see that name and ignore the rest of the point someone tries to make.

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

#477

Post by masklinn »

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 the area they regulate.

> One other reason I think this decision is good - if we are innocent until proven guilty, then ambiguities should go in favor of the individual not the State.

I'm sure the individual will greatly benefit when the EPA's regulation of the next great carcinogen is struck down on grounds that congress has not explicitly restricted it.

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

#478

Post by thuuuomas »

torstenvl wrote: post #172
pininja wrote: post #54

I was curious about cases where this played a role. Looks like the namesake case was about EPA Clean Air Act enforcement in the 80s (the outcome being regulation), and then an FCC ruling to classify internet providers as “information services” rather than “telecommunication services” and avoid stricter regulation (the outcome being deregulation). Overall, it seems the Chevron deference was a cornerstone of administra…

Until today, most national policy was set by "experts," i.e., people whose careers, professional reputation, and emotional bonds are bound up in the industry. That is to say, the rich and connected in any given area of life. The SEC is staffed with "experts" in exchanging securities, i.e., successful traders, who are then expected to govern traders. The inexorable result of this status quo is corruption and oligarchy…

Corporate governance is also decided by “experts”, rife with corruption & oligarchy.

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

#479

Post by jessriedel »

kemayo wrote: post #92
Molitor5901 wrote: post #57

It Congress wants to change the law, they can. It's up to congress, not the administration, to make law. For decades it seems Congress has largely abdicated its legislative responsibility in exchange for the political ease of letting the administrative state, and the courts, make the law. Just because something has "precedence" doesn't mean it's right. Banning gay marriage had precedence, but that didn't make it righ…

That said, it's also valid for Congress to decide to abdicate its powers. We've had 40 years of Chevron deference, during which time Congress wrote laws expecting that this is how they'd be interpreted. If they didn't want this behavior, they could have passed laws about it. Or included some boilerplate language within new laws about how the agency has to defer to courts for interpretation of those regulations. (Gran…

> it's also valid for Congress to decide to abdicate its powers.

It's not. There's long standing precedent, since well before Chevron, that Congress does not have unlimited ability to delegate its powers. E.g., in A.L.A. Schechter Poultry Corp. v. United States, 295 U.S. 495 (1935) the Supreme Court said "Congress is not permitted to abdicate or to transfer to others the essential legislative functions with which it is thus vested." See also J.W. Hampton v. United States, 276 U.S. 394 (1928).

And this makes sense, because Congress is not a coherent unified agent. It's a messy institutions for distilling the wishes of the people.

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

#480

Post by VoodooJuJu »

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

>Devastating that expertise will no longer influence the application of law and policy

Not true.

Congress is free to continue to delegate to experts when it comes to writing laws and policy. What they are no longer free to do is write vague laws and policy and expect the judicial branch to inject their own favor when interpreting that vagueness. The judicial branch will once again do what it should have been doing all along: simply interpret the law.

Basically, Congress actually has to do its job and write better laws. And again, they are free to consult experts when writing these laws.

The judicial branch is actually once again functioning the way it was intended. It is restoring balance to the "checks and balances".

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