[callroomlamp]

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

[agensaequivocum]

The constitution mandates that the courts interpret the law. Thomas and Gorsuch are right in their concurrences, allowing the executive branch to both enforce and interpret law is abhorrent to our constitution's proscribed separation of powers.

[cthalupa]

Except Chevron was just codification of the status quo that had existed since the founding of the country.

Congress cannot be expected to craft every bit of law and regulation down to the finest detail, and the gridlock that has been congress over the past several decades should make it clear that it's practically impossible. The regulatory power of federal agencies has never been broad and without oversight from other branches - they operate on the authority given to them by Congress.

The executive branch has not just been creating agencies wholesale and giving them sweeping regulatory powers, congress has passed laws creating them and delegating authority to them.

As others have mentioned, you can look at the joke that is the patent system and the absurd games played around the law there to get an idea of what we're in for with this decision. I don't understand how anyone can think that's the place we want to get to for everything else.

[throw0101c]

> The constitution mandates that the courts interpret the law.

The idea of Congress delegating certain powers dates back to 1825:

* https://constitution.findlaw.com/article1/annotation03.html

Further precedents from the 1920s and 1930s (and more recent) are listed in the above link. It's not a new idea that some ambiguities are left to the Executive to figure out.

[stronglikedan]

It's not about the application of law. It's about the ambiguity of law. If anything, they'll need to rely on more expertise now, so they can craft laws that aren't open to interpretation. This is a fantastic decision on the part of the court.

[radley]

> It's about the ambiguity of law. If anything, they'll need to rely on more expertise now, so they can craft laws that aren't open to interpretation.

I doubt that granting Congress more power will inspire them to be less political, more responsible, and more governed by facts. Particularly when the party that made this decision has veered completely in the opposite direction.

If anything, it will be used to prioritize "faith" over fact, like what we've seen in Oklahoma and Mississippi.

[ABCLAW]

>If anything, they'll need to rely on more expertise now, so they can craft laws that aren't open to interpretation.

Every law is open to interpretation. If tech can barely secure the doors on machines that execute instructions near-flawlessly, you think we can construct flawless frameworks out of inherently ambiguous linguistic building blocks run and understood by deeply human executors? This just plain doesn't work when the rubber meets the road.

Someone's going to make a choice, and SCOTUS just decided unilaterally that it's going to be a body that hasn't been able to decide anything productively for a decade.

This isn't about creating better structures for the analysis of rules; it's about gutting the regulatory capacity of agencies.

[lovethevoid]

This doesn’t prevent writing laws open to interpretation at all.

[impalallama]

Ambiguity is built in the very nature of language. Good luck writing anything doesn't have some ambiguity built in...

[p_j_w]

>so they can craft laws that aren't open to interpretation.

In what world is this even humanly possible? Is this something conservatives actually believe can happen? If so, then they're irrational almost beyond repair.

[gnicholas]

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 parties when it comes to putting forth proposed interpretations of laws.

[thyrsus]

The executive is supposed to represent the public interest, opposed to the interests wealthy enough to bring a lawsuit. We seem to have given up on that.

[mywittyname]

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.

[rayiner]

Untrue. The way it will work now is that judges will focus on their expertise—interpreting what the laws mean. And agency experts will focus on their expertise—applying that law to specific factual scenarios.

[dctoedt]

> judges will focus on their expertise—interpreting what the laws mean. And agency experts will focus on their expertise—applying that law to specific factual scenarios.

It's not always that simple: Sometimes, trying to interpret "the law" in the abstract, without deep knowledge of the factual context, is like being a bull in a china shop.

The conservative justices' various obsessions with textualism, originalism, and whatever other flavor of the month comes up, are often unrealistic. Ditching Chevron deference, in the teeth of decades of precedent and congressional approval, is one of those situations.

Granted, your 3d Cir. clerking experience, seeing that aspect of how the sausage is made, does give your view a certain weight. But too many judges need to start remembering that they're hired help, bureaucrats, and when Congress says "we want the agencies we create to figure out what to do, subject to political checks," it's manifestly not on federal judges to say "oh no, you can only do that in a way that lets us judges have the dominant seat at the table."

[lovethevoid]

Actually without C Deference, agency experts can no longer apply that law to specific factual scenarios.

[locopati]

do you mean the way judges support taking away bodily autonomy or pushing Christian ideas over a separation of church and state?

[EricDeb]

Well soon agency experts will focus on displaying their loyalty to Trump as their main job focus. But yes in theory what you're saying is true

[twoodfin]

What does “expertise” have to do with whether Congress authorized fishermen to be charged for government-mandated inspectors?

[ceejayoz]

Congress was pretty explicit about that; they wrote it in the legislation.

https://www.law.cornell.edu/cfr/text/50/679.55

[curiousllama]

The court made their decision at a very high level of abstraction, rather than limiting it to fishermen.

[Gormo]

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

You've got it exactly backwards. The relevant expertise in interpreting law and policy resides with the judiciary. Allowing administrative officials with no background in constitutional law or statutory interpretation to decide for themselves what the law they operate under means has lead to devastating power imbalances and opened the door to wide-ranging corruption and overstepping of authority.

[refurb]

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

How on earth do you come to that conclusion? Nothing stop Congress from leveraging experts in drafting laws.

This simply requires that interpretation of law be done in a clear transparent way (courts), rather than by a nameless, faceless, unelected bureacrat.

How can anyone say "no, I'd rather have some bureaucrat do it"?

[esoterica]

Judges are also unelected bureaucrats, and they are less subject to democratic oversight since they have lifetime appointments vs agency heads who are appointed by the executive branch and can be effectively "voted out" if voters choose a different president who replaces them.

[VoodooJuJu]

>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".

[trealira]

> 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.

No, with Chevron deference, they expected the executive branch agencies to interpret unspecified parts of certain laws, because they were the ones supposed to implement them, e.g., the definition of "source of air pollution" in the Clean Air Act of 1963. The judicial branch actually is "injecting its own behavior" in that this means they will interpret more laws than they otherwise would have.

[psynister]

That's pretty generous to claim that expertise is what was influencing application of law and policy before this. Agency oversight got us Ajit Pai deciding to kill net neutrality.

[notSupplied]

After which none of the doomsday scenarios people shrieked about had occurred. ISPs aren’t selling bundles that exclude certain websites, nor do cable providers privilege their streaming video traffic over Netflix.

[kyrra]

But whose expertise. The problem is that with every change in the administration, The rules change because there are new experts that interpret the rules in a different way. Chevron deference led to instability of understanding what the law was.

[mp05]

Perhaps this will cause us to start electing experts instead of lifelong politicians? The number of doctors, engineers, and scientists in Congress is pathetic.

[lovethevoid]

That’ll happen about the same time the Supreme Court stops being used as a political party battleground. So… never.

[taylodl]

Devil's advocate: isn't a lifelong politician an expert in politics? Isn't it the case that with so many noobs in Congress nothing is getting done because they simply don't know how to politic to get things done? All they know how to do is run to the nearest TV camera and start slandering everybody they don't like. Then they wonder why they can't broker deals to get what they want.

Besides, very few doctors, engineers, and scientists want to have anything to do with politics. They generally abhor the practice of politics and generally don't see it as a skill they need to develop. Without that skill, they'll be just as ineffective as the Congress we have today.

[ldf80g804]

I keep telling people. Make stochastic democracy happen, where every 4 years randomly selected individuals populate the house to have a simple yay/nay vote on senate generated items ( senate can stay as is ). I used to joke about it, but I no longer think I am.