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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

#551

Post by mcguire »

brettcvz wrote: post #71

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?

This is the Supreme Court that claims, "In the summer of 2023, Justice Samuel Alito told the Wall Street Journal that Congress has no authority to regulate the Supreme Court, despite the ethical regulations Congress already imposes on the justices" (https://www.brennancenter.org/our-work/analysis-opinion/alit...) and that does not have any binding code of conduct.

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

#552

Post by tboyd47 »

rootusrootus wrote: post #199
gradus_ad wrote: post #83

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…

> How would you argue that this is an improvement?

Not all branches have the same risk of tyranny. The Executive branch consists of about 1 million unelected government employees, following a rigid command hierarchy who wield power over every aspect of society. The Judicial branch consists of about 900 federal judges who work on a limited backlog of cases. No one from the Supreme Court is going to come knocking on my door if I defy one of their edicts, but as for the Executive branch, you can count on it.

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

#553

Post by crazygringo »

kogus wrote: post #537
consumer451 wrote: post #43

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…

>Congress knows that it does not—in fact cannot—write perfectly complete regulatory statutes... Why not? Why can't Congress write complete regulatory statutes? Isn't that literally their job? Yes, it is. "Chevron defense" has been a way for Congress to shirk its duty for decades. If the law is ambiguous, courts must resolve the ambiguity. That is exactly what courts are for. To say that it would be better for an opaq…

> Why can't Congress write complete regulatory statutes? Isn't that literally their job? Yes, it is.

No, it's not. That's like saying it's the CEO's job to write every design document in a company.

It not only doesn't make sense -- it's not even possible from a perspective of information throughput.

It sounds like you're saying that Congress should approve drugs rather than the FDA. Absolutely not. Congress should write the regulations that govern how the FDA operates, and then the FDA should operate.

And let's remember -- if Congress doesn't like what a regulatory agency is doing, it can pass legislation to change that. If it doesn't, we can assume it approves. Therefore the courts have no business stepping in -- except obviously when there is genuine conflict between laws or with the constitution. But that's not what you're talking about.

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

#554

Post by mcguire »

bumby wrote: post #506
mike_hearn wrote: post #313

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 i…

This is the Supreme Court that has repeatedly made subject-matter related arguments (particularly historical arguments) while ignoring the input of subject-matter experts.

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

#555

Post by lolinder »

malcolmgreaves wrote: post #543
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…

You have an incorrect understanding here. What was occurring now was not "government by administrative rule" as you put it. It was government by rules passed by Congress. Congress explicitly defers on specifics of some laws to agencies because it is not qualified to provide specifics. Agencies, staffed with experts, are capable of making fine-grained decisions on how to implement laws that Congress passes. This SCOUT…

> This is the Republican play book: purposely make the government worse, distract with absurd claims, then come election time lie and say that the Democrats want to make the Republican's version of bad government even more expansive. Every four to eight years, the Democrats clean up the Republican's mess. Government gets better. Then Republicans lie again and the cycle repeats.

You may already understand this, but just to make it explicit: the Democrats are not the good guys in this process. They benefit just as much as Republicans from good government being perpetually on the brink. They win the presidency because we're terrified of what Republicans will do if they don't. The system is currently structured to reward both sides for brinkmanship and that's why it sucks.

We need a system that reduces the amount of change riding on any single election and neither party wants a change to such a system. If SCOTUS is as much an extension of the Republican party as people here assume then I think we'll find in 30 years that they badly shot themselves in the foot.

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

#556

Post by mywittyname »

gnicholas wrote: post #433
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

Of course expertise will still influence the application of law and policy. The same people will still write the regulations, serve as expert witnesses in trials, and write amicus briefs. The thing that has changed is that the executive branch's preferred interpretation of laws passed by the legislative branch will no longer be granted deference by the judicial branch. They will be on a level playing field with other…

This assumes the court can even hear cases in a reasonable amount of time.

An overloaded court system means that defendants are put at a disadvantage and can likely be strong-armed into an agreement that is unfavorable. At least with agencies, companies knew where they stood, after all, most companies probably have a few former agents on staff.

Now it's, better hope you don't lose an injunction and you get a judge capable of understanding the technical reasons why your company should be allowed to operate in that capacity.

I don't think this is the pro-business win that conservatives claim it is. It just changes the rule of the game in ways that I think favor the government. If an agency gets an injunction, then continues to press for continuance based on the fact that they don't have the resources right now, and a judge buys it, then the company end up in judicial purgatory.

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

#557

Post by vundercind »

another-dave wrote: post #507
vundercind wrote: post #335

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

No, their role is a lot larger than that and plenty of legal questions don’t hinge on this kind of thing. This is specifically about whether to tend to defer to agencies on the interpretation of definitions of terms and similar things related to their mandate, so long as they remain within the bounds of reason and plausibility.

A judge could go “nope, per Chevron this EPA interpretation of ‘pollutant’ looks reasonable in this context, that complaint is dismissed, but the rest of the suit may proceed”. Now they’re expected to let those arguments play out. But answering that particular kind of question definitely is not the whole point of the judiciary.

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

#558

Post by datavirtue »

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…

I Louisiana today, Bibles were mandated in every classroom and all teachers are mandated to "teach from the Bible."

I imagine there are some seriously distraught teachers in that state right now.

We are in dark times.

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

#559

Post by megaman821 »

saveferris wrote: post #426
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…

But, this decision didn't take those powers from Congress. It took those powers from federal agencies. Congress empowers the agencies, yes. But, Congress also deferred any technical decisioning to the agencies. Those agencies are filled with actual experts who are fully committed to their field. Now, the court just said that those experts aren't the right place to enforce anything but judges are.

These could easily by Donald Trump's experts soon. And if so, will you hold true to this line of reasoning?

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

#560

Post by malcolmgreaves »

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.

Except you can't actually vote out the Republicans in Congress that are committing stochastic terrorism, because of gerrymandering.
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