Supreme Court Chevron Decision
dirtyburt
Florida
Tuesday, July 2, 2024 1:06 AM
This by all means has been one of the best kept secret decisions by the Supreme Court that I have ever heard of.
Basically, it stops the unelected bureaucrats from making law.
It will finally put Congress on record, if they reach too far in any direction. I still don’t understand why the vote wasn’t 9-0????
https://www.scotusblog.com/2024/06/supre…
Basically, it stops the unelected bureaucrats from making law.
It will finally put Congress on record, if they reach too far in any direction. I still don’t understand why the vote wasn’t 9-0????
https://www.scotusblog.com/2024/06/supre…
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17 comments
It basically takes power AWAY from the unelected bureaucrats making law. The ATF is a prime example of a group that make laws, then changes laws.
Example Bump stocks & Pistol Braces……..
With those odds, I'll prefer judges over bureaucrats. At least judges must explain themselves and can be overturned on appeal.
I disagree with @gammanu95's characterization of what "history shows." It could equally be concluded that "history shows" that conservative judges choose unreasonably restrictive interpretations without sensible regard for the real-world harms they are causing and in total disregard of human rights. A conservative might counter, "they don't have a right to it, if there's not a law against it!" but they would change their tune if they ever had to look at torture being performed on a human ... which is entirely legal and within all strict readings of all USA's laws. There are places for choosing morality over legality, or for interpreting the law more loosely. In fact, that's exactly the biggest advantage of choosing to divest the bureaucrats and invest the judges -- a judge can make a judgment call.
Bureaucrats also had to explain themselves and also could have been overturned on appeal. There are elaborate requirements for public input, explanations and rationales, and review. The idea that the bureaucrat "does whatever he wants" is uninformed at best. I don't necessarily side with the bureaucrats in this particular choice, they've been running amok. But claiming they're inherently less responsive or legal than judges is simply false. A judge is more free to pick a SIDE rather than a RULE, which leads to greater unpredictability for future decisions because nobody knows if the first decision has any bearing on future decisions. A bureaucrat was more free to over-regulate and add too many rules, which led to predictability, but of the worst sort -- predictably dysfunctional. Again, pick your poison.
With the standards of evidence presently allowing idiotic science in as probative even when it isn't, I think judges are a poor choice with the more scientific disciplines -- nuclear regulation, for example, or airplane traffic control -- but we're probably better off with judges not bureaucrats for some of the more humanistic social-sciences -- housing or education, f.e.. Also, in science-disciplines, Congress generally did a good job of delegating data-determined standards to the agencies, which would not be overturned by the end of Chevron. Millirads of radiation is still an exact number, so, in the nuclear regulatory commission's new interactions with judges, it will be straightforward for the judges to identify and understand specific scientific requirements. However, in the new Housing department's interactions with judges, I ain't got a CLUE what they WERE going on, and now they won't know what direction to try to go on for the future either!
I think there will be some upheaval. The entrenched systems aren't going to simply disappear. The bureaucracy is huge (as makes sense for the world's third most populous country) and performs a lot of necessary tasks -- mailing checks, testing tap-water, counting pennies. Throwing it all out wholesale would be throwing out baby and bathwater.
It basically takes power AWAY from the unelected bureaucrats making law. "
I think you're misunderstanding, by conflating bureaucrats with judges.
Under Chevron, deference to the agency was required, so therefore un-elected bureaucrats' decisions were usually upheld by courts. Now, Chevron has been overturned, so judges are no longer required to automatically defer to the agency's bureaucrats. In other words, judges are more in charge. You have equated "judges" with "bureaucrats" when in fact the entire point is to differentiate between the two.
Sorry if you understood that distinction, my bad then. Maybe you meant something else?
Instead this ruling merely empowers judges to assess whether an agency is acting within its legal authority, especially when the laws in question are vague. This is precisely the role of a legal expert.
Frankly this is way overdue IMO. Starting during the Obama Administration and doubling down during the Biden era, government agencies have been dramatically expanding their mandates in reliance upon novel interpretations of existing laws. In many cases these interpretations appear highly suspect, but the Chevron deference handcuffed lower court judges from challenging these positions. Not anymore.
Moving forward, if Congress wants to grant a regulatory agency with broad & sweeping powers to make decisions with significant economic and social policy impacts, it will need to do so with clarity. This is a very good thing as they can be held accountable for doing so. Unelected bureaucrats cannot.
I would argue that the difficulty in passing laws which have major economic and social ramifications is precisely the point of the system that was envisioned by the Founding Fathers. It's not supposed to be easy. It was always intended to involve consensus building, compromise and, ultimately, political accountability.
Lawmakers have, for many years now, been increasingly reliant upon the administrative state to adopt and enforce policies which they wish to see enacted, but for which they do not want to face political accountability. Not only has this led to significant over-reach and abuse, but it has created an unstable business environment in which large companies are experiencing regulatory whiplash from one administration to the next.
I expect that, in the coming years, we will see a wave of lawsuits challenging a variety of existing regulations. But when the dust settles, IMO we will all be better off and our economy will benefit from a more stable operating environment.
Recently saw a map that categorized the countries of the world on the "friendly for business" scale. I don't know how they did their metrics, things colored light blue to dark blue, you know the kind of map. USA figured very poor, very unfriendly. Many African nations were also unfriendly, probably for other reasons. Most friendly were the Scandinavian and Nordic countries, IIRC Netherlands Germany Denmark at the top of the list. Also Ireland.
I was surprised. I had assumed that regulation would be generally considered unfriendly for business, but perhaps good for the environment or good for the customer or good for the employee, etc.. So I had assumed that more developed countries, where there are generally more environmental and pro-employee regulations, less unfettered free market, would be less friendly. But that didn't turn out to be the case. Netherlands and Denmark are somehow able to have rather robust regimes that protect the environment, and offer a lot of mandated employee benefits like days off and no work beyond maximum hours and high minimum wages and no hire-and-fire at will situations, and yet those countries ended up as very friendly to business. Whereas the USA, which significantly lacks most of those pro-employee regulations and protections, nevertheless is still a difficult place for a business to succeed. I'm thinking the problem is, NOT that there's TOO MUCH regulation, but that there's THE WRONG KIND of regulation, implemented and policed poorly, in a manner that simply clogs up the works.
Let's hope the change with overturning Chevron might move in the right direction for the USA. I don't know much about what it would take for a nation to be "friendly for business" but I was dismayed to see that the positive examples EXIST but that we aren't FOLLOWING them. According to that map, we're in the camp with (f.e.) Saudi Arabia and Ethiopia. Those are place where you can't get educated workers, the rival company shoots your managers, you have to bribe the local officials, and your profits might get eaten up by sheikh or emir showing up after you've done all the work. That's a problem. I presume our business-unfriendly-ness is due to other factors but we'd really ought to work on being more friendly.
How many unicorns or tech billionaires have come out of the Netherlands or Scandinavia?
Where did Microsoft, Apple, NVIDIA, Google, and Tesla start?
Where is startup capital actually flowing, and where is the biggest product market?
Answers to these questions tell more than the "map" you are citing as the Word of God.