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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

#501

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Yes, sometimes you just need to refactor the code in prod by surprise via force pushing and telling everybody else to start fixing their failing integration tests.

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

#502

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a legal dilettante I have some questions: What does this decision mean for court caseload going forward? If it will increase, how much? Is there budget for that?

It doesn't mean anything for court caseload. There seem to be a lot of posts in this thread that are misinterpreting what the judgement means. Here's what I understood from reading it: • This case does not affect Congress' ability to delegate defined lawmaking powers to the executive. Congress can continue to delegate whatever they want. • It will therefore not have any impact on the speed with which the US governmen…

It takes away power from the legislative and executive branches because it now requires an onerous level of specificity to regulate something. This decision will have lasting negative consequences.

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

#503

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

The courts are incapable of refactoring by design. They can only decide the cases litigated before them, they can't take a holistic view of the legislation and put forward coherent reforms.

In my career I have never seen messy refactorings go well. They are carefully planned and executed piece of by piece instead of throwing everything out of the window.

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

#504

From Justice Kagan's dissent on page 82: > 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... > It knows that those statutes will inevitably contain ambiguities that some other actor will have to resolve, and gaps that some other…

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…

> Congress has not been able to pass substantial laws in decades

For those in the sway of the Federalist Society, that's a feature, not a bug.

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

#505

Why did the Supreme Court invent Chevron deference 40 years ago? To serve corporations. It's not called "Chevron" because it's about inverted V's, after all. The EPA wanted to interpret the law in a way that Chevron liked and the Natural Resources Defense Council did not like, so the Supreme Court said "no, no, the EPA gets to decide, we are but poor unqualified judges." Why did the Supreme Court take it away? Becaus…

This is pretty much direct irrefutable evidence that the SCOTUS has been corrupted. The extreme ideological tilt is disturbing enough, but it's clear that these judges answer to the highest bidder, not the American people or the intent of the Founding Fathers.

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

#506

This seems like the judicial branch just voted to give itself substantially more power. Are there any checks against this? Or can justices just keep granting themselves more powers and invalidating any restraints?

It's worth reading the judgement itself. The court has indeed voted to give the courts more power, but not on the basis of nothing. It did so because it views it as taking back powers that were incorrectly/lazily given up without basis in what Congress wanted. From the judgement: Congress in 1946 enacted the APA [Administrative Procedures Act] “as a check upon administrators whose zeal might otherwise have carried th…

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 in large part the impetus for giving the agencies discretion. They have a better chance of having the depth of expertise to craft effective regulations.

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

#507

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> "This seems like the judicial branch just voted to give itself substantially more power. Are there any checks against this?" Yes, absolutely. Congress can do their job and write the laws instead of delegating their authority to the Executive Branch.

As explained in the dissent, they literally have to delegate the kind of authority in question here. It’s the hostile-genie problem: you can’t close all the loopholes in some iron-clad unambiguous way in finite space.

Isn't the whole point of the judiciary to interpret these ambiguities though?

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

#508
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…

>> Now Congress is going to have to specify every possible consequence of laws in the statutes, otherwise a judge will decide.

It has already been that way for a while. From the decision:

"Because Chevron’s justifying presumption is, as Members of the Court have often recognized, a fiction, the Court has spent the better part of four decades imposing one limitation on Chevron after another. Confronted with the byzantine set of preconditions and exceptions that has resulted, some courts have simply bypassed Chevron or failed to heed its various steps and nuances. The Court, for its part, has not deferred to an agency interpretation under Chevron since 2016."

...

"Given the Court’s constant tinkering with and eventual turn away from Chevron, it is hard to see how anyone could reasonably expect a court to rely on Chevron in any particular case or expect it to produce readily foreseeable outcomes."

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

#509

This seems like the judicial branch just voted to give itself substantially more power. Are there any checks against this? Or can justices just keep granting themselves more powers and invalidating any restraints?

It's worth reading the judgement itself. The court has indeed voted to give the courts more power, but not on the basis of nothing. It did so because it views it as taking back powers that were incorrectly/lazily given up without basis in what Congress wanted. From the judgement: Congress in 1946 enacted the APA [Administrative Procedures Act] “as a check upon administrators whose zeal might otherwise have carried th…

"If you accept the majority opinion at face value, then the majority opinion sure does make a lot of sense!"
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