[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.

[klyrs]

The Federalist Society and its adherents see an ineffective Congress, and a general inability to enforce regulations, as a goal.

[rustcleaner]

My voting pattern is to ensure minimum cohesion between parties in the State. When all parties agree, watch out they're a-comin'!

[rayiner]

No, we believe we should follow what the Constitution says even if it’s convenient. There’s virtually nothing that unites Federalist Society members (many of whom are Biden voters) apart from an engineers’ commitment to technical accuracy over practical effects.

[cthalupa]

Constitutional scholars since the founding of the nation have taken no issue with Congress delegating authority to federal agencies, and the initial Chevron decision followed along those lines.

Why is it only now, with the hyper-politicization of the SC, with interested parties spending significant money providing luxury and lavish accommodations to at least one member of the SC, that this previously accepted interpretation of the constitution is suddenly in question?

[rayiner]

Chevron is about who interprets statutory law, agencies or courts. That question has been controversial for 100 years, ever since we have had administrative agencies. For example, the Supreme Court decided in 1944 that courts should give some respect to agency interpretations, but the court had the final say: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Skidmore_v._Swift_%26_Co. Chevron didn’t create the deference concept until 40 years after that.

Chevron was always contentious, and applied by courts in a rather haphazard way. But overturning it wasn’t “political.” It was originally decided by five republicans and a Democrat (with three justices not participating) and was overturned by six republicans. What happened was an ideological shift in the Republican Party to separation of powers that’s been going on since the 1980s.

Law nerds have been talking about this for decades. The only thing "politicized" is how the media is using public ignorance of how the legal system works to attack the Supreme Court for an extremely academic legal issue.

[Matticus_Rex]

Erm... I think there will be problems as a result of this, but your comment is wildly bad on a number of levels.

#1 - Chevron deference as a rule comes out of Chevron, and the idea that Chevron just encoded something that was already always done is ahistorical. Both before Chevron and going forward, courts will still often defer to agency interpretation when that makes sense. They just won't be compelled to look at it so uncritically.

#2 - The idea that Chevron has been uncontroversial until now is totally detached from reality, and is a dead giveaway that you really don't know much about this.

[diffxx]

How would you feel about someone who says "we believe we should follow what the bible says even if it’s (in)convenient"?

[tastyfreeze]

That is a false equivalency. The Constitution is an explicit definition of what the federal government is and what they are allowed to do. The Bible is a collection of a bunch of ancient stories.

[1123581321]

Your quote reminded me of people with strong character: admitting to a mistake when it might cost them their job, urging a friend to return a stolen item, asking fellow church members to get to know a paralyzed man.

Putting aside personal convenience is fundamental to loving God and neighbor at times.

[rayiner]

I think the Catholic church for example should do that. The constitution is like America’s Bible.

[sokoloff]

In the context of a Church controversy where members of the church agree that the Bible is their foundational doctrine? I’d feel exactly the same.

[s1artibartfast]

Seems fine. Not everything in life is convenient. In fact, many of the most important things are hard.

[Auracle]

I mean, I’ve never been able to wrap my head around people who are Christian (or whatever) and pick and choose which of the religions “rules” to follow.

I realize to not do so in general makes society a pretty awful place, but most religions say you’ll go to hell if you don’t.

It’s the Supreme Court’s job to explicitly follow the constitution. In your example I want them to be religious fundamentalists. If that turns out to be an issue we have a body that can change our society’s “bible.”

[quantified]

Jesus never revoked Leviticus. So that'll be a hard sell for most.

[emseetech]

| an engineers’ commitment to technical accuracy over practical effects

This reads like the design of nightmares.

[EricDeb]

Textualism when convenient you mean.

[gamblor956]

"Federalist Society" and "commitment to technical accuracy" are diametrically opposed concepts. You are right about them not caring about the practical effects of their actions.

[TylerE]

The federalist society is far right, and any attempt to suggest otherwise is laughable.

[rayiner]

In your view, "far right" is believing that:

1) Courts should interpret statutes, not executive branch agencies

2) The separation of powers that the founders went to a lot of trouble to implement in the constitution must be respected

3) Judges can't gin up new "rights" from "emanations from penumbras" in the Constitution.

These are not "far right" positions--they are obviously correct. They're the version of government you learned in 8th grade. If they weren't inconvenient for your preferred policy preferences, you would think that too.

[Matticus_Rex]

The idea that FedSoc is even particularly coherent in its members views is blowing my mind. I dislike plenty of recent actions by the org, but FedSoc has always been a very broad organization -- not even a "coalition" on much of anything. When I was in law school you could find people representing 2/3 of the entire political compass in its speaker directory. Maybe that's shifted a bit since Trump, but without digging I can even think of a handful of FedSoc-aligned people opposed to overturning Chevron.

[beefok]

> There’s virtually nothing that unites Federalist Society members (many of whom are Biden voters) apart from an engineers’ commitment to technical accuracy over practical effects.

In what fantasy universe do Federalist Society members vote for Biden? They have been backing conservative and libertarians for generations. Their members are part of the Supreme Court and clearly do not want a democracy anymore. They are the antithesis of liberal political positions. I call utter bullshit.

How do their views even remotely line up with Biden voters?

[rayiner]

There’s tons of Biden voters in federalist society because it’s not like Trump is much of a rule follower. And Biden himself for most of his career was a conservative Democrat.

But I’m flummoxed by something. What does “democracy” mean to liberals? You’re the ones who want courts to decide issues that most other advanced democracies leave to voters, right? You believe in unelected bureaucrats and experts governing the country instead of elected officials. You seem to be using “democracy” in a very odd way to refer to rule by educated elites.

[gnicholas]

> many of whom are Biden voters

I doubt there are many left after last night.

EDIT: I anticipated some downvoting, but honestly how many FedSoc members are planning to vote for Trump? I can't think of any (and I'm a lawyer, so know more than a few).

[tstrimple]

Yeah, you’d have to be pretty ignorant to think that the president who had admitted the most federalist society members to the Supreme Court won’t be getting any votes from members of the organization that he so empowered. Like beyond the pale levels of ignorance.

[gnicholas]

Whoops, in my edit I obv meant "Biden" not "Trump".

[bombcar]

The whole point of the judgement is that the status quo continues.

Congress passes laws, the agencies implement them, if you disagree you go to court. All it's saying is that you don't have to go to the Supremes to get your disagreement to win.

Imagine a patent system where the judge could never throw out a patent, because the experts at the agency (patent office) had granted it, so it must be valid.

[cthalupa]

This effectively neuters the ability for federal agencies to create regulations within the specific areas that Congress has tasked them with regulating. This is a significant blow to both legislative and executive branches, and further entrenches the power in the judiciary.

In both reality and your supposed system, someone could always go to appointed officials and get their patent enforced - just look at how the Eastern District of Texas operated for decades. In reality, we see far more frequent turnover and shifting of opinion in federal agencies than we do in the judiciary. Just look at how often Net Neutrality has flopped back and forth at the FCC. (Constant reversal of regulatory decisions is also an issue, but it goes to show that the idea that a patent system that exists outside of judiciary control wouldn't have plenty of opportunity to make your case to sympathetic ears is silly)

[pclmulqdq]

This does not neuter federal agencies. They can still make rules, and they still have deference on fact questions. The only difference is that on questions of law, they no longer have deference.

[dantheman]

The agencies can draft any ruels they'd like and put them before congress. Perhaps we can have less rules...

[EricDeb]

philosophically I see what you're saying, but will congress be good at passing small laws to amend the ever changing regulatory landscape? I'm going to guess no. So practically this could be a nightmare

[jellicle]

Except that instead of deciding a specific patent, now all you need is one judge to throw out "patents". Or "environmental law".

[Gormo]

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

The concept of administrative law did not even exist at the founding of the country -- executive-branch agencies making rules directly applicable to the public wasn't really a thing until about the turn of the 20th century.

[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.

[ImJamal]

Congress can still delegate certain powers even after this.

[vkou]

And every time they will, the courts will find that the delegation is not specific enough.

Never mind that congress appoints the heads of the agencies, writes the laws directing them, and on an annual basis, renews funding for them.

[surfaceofthesun]

Adding on to this:

In addition to funding renewals, congress can make specific tweaks at any time to correct anything they dislike with regard to the executive branch. The ruling pretends like this avenue hasn’t existed and been used the entire time.

[ImJamal]

Maybe, but since this ruling just happened today I think we will have to wait and see what happens.

[vkou]

> I think we will have to wait and see what happens.

What will happen is that anytime someone doesn't like a regulation, they'll now have many, many jurisdictions in which to shop for a judge that will rule in their favor.

[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.

[xboxnolifes]

Congress isn't being granted more power here. They're being granted more (their original) responsibility.

[eightysixfour]

Or... they are losing their power to delegate details to other parties when they choose to do so.

[xboxnolifes]

They can still delegate. They just need to be more specific in what powers they are delegating and to whom. The people they delegate to cannot give themselves more power than they were originally given.

[Gormo]

> I doubt that granting Congress more power will inspire them to be less political,

I'm not sure I can wrap my head around the expectation that a political institution should be 'less political' -- can you explain what you are getting at here?

> more governed by facts.

Fact substantiate 'is', but politics is about 'ought', and particularly, reconciling the contradictory 'ought's that prevail in varying quarters of society. Expecting politics to be 'governed by facts' requires taking a single set of values and interests for granted, which effectively means codifying one faction's ambitions into law at the expense of everyone else.

[TeeMassive]

> doubt that granting Congress more power will inspire them to be less political

Now imagine what unelected government officials who play the revolving doors game with the industry they're supposed to regulate can do.

[rayiner]

If that party can win elections by doing that, that’s what should happen. “Expertise” carries zero weight in a democracy other than its ability to persuade voters.

[notaustinpowers]

> Expertise carries zero weight in a democracy other than it's ability to persuade voters.

Would you rather the "holistic healer" who says only drinking green juice for a week to "detox" your kidneys make laws? Or the person who actually went to med school for 12 years.

[dctoedt]

> If that party can win elections by doing that, that’s what should happen. “Expertise” carries zero weight in a democracy other than its ability to persuade voters.

That's a pretty idealized view: The vast majority of voters just want competent governance, with guard rails to make sure the governors don't go too far, because they (the voters) have lives to live and other things on their minds.

As to persuading voters, we should remember the joke about Islamist parties' agitation for "democracy": One man, one vote — once.

[rayiner]

No, it’s fundamental to what democracy means and is.

If we wanted “competent governance” we would just have China or Singapore run our country.

[dctoedt]

It's a spectrum, not a binary choice.

[radley]

Or... just hear me out... we could hire experts in various fields, give them general principles to follow, let them work out the details, give them the authority to enforce it, and maintain the right to step in if they overreach.

But yeah, "opinions are greater than facts" is technically a very democratic way to do things.

[radley]

But historically, it ends up causing a great deal of harm.

[thedragonline]

As an aside, I've always wondered how society will drive the response to climate change into a ditch - it'll be at the hands of lawyers (because, you know, they are policy experts).

[TylerE]

You’re looking at it. One of the main goals of this push is utterly defanging agencies like the EPA

[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.

[tiahura]

That’s why the police should determine innocence and guilt, they’re the experts.

[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.

[rustcleaner]

Algorithmic law? It's what we've been [weakly] doing for millennia.

[vkou]

The only people who believe law is, has been, or will ever be algorithmic are SWEs to whom everything looks like a hammer.

[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.

[gnicholas]

Aren't all of the branches of government supposed to represent the public interest? What makes the executive uniquely qualified to do so? I would think that there are few people who would say that the past two administrations have both represented the public interest. People tend to think that their favored administration was serving the public interest, and the disfavored one was tearing down the progress of his predecessor.

[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.

[deveac]

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

If it's a bandwidth issue, reducing the number of extra-judicial bureaucrats and upping the number of judiciary is pretty straightforward. Seems like a pretty simple rebalancing issue.

>Now it's, better hope you don't lose an injunction and you get a judge capable of understanding the technical reasons

Why would experts (like those that were informing executive agencies on their payroll) not be called here?

[CuriouslyC]

Because the judiciary has been so performant as of late.

[anigbrowl]

The judiciary depends on Congress for its funding, and is perennially underfunded. Arguably this suits the legislative branch because a clogged judicial pipeline encourages people to pursue legislative relief.

[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."

[salawat]

Judges are Article III, and the need for them laid out explicitly in the text of the Constitution itself.

Chevron deference, and the corpus of administrative law unsubject to judicial review it spawned, most decidedly is not.

That makes judges a bit more of a fixture in the grand scheme of things than all these "agencies" running their own pseudo-courts so that Congress critters can spend their tenure voting one another pay raises, and insider trading among themselves.

>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."

Actually, it manifestly is on the judiciary to say that. If Congress started adding clauses to legislation to the tune of "this law is not subject to judicial review", the judiciary is fully within it's rights as outlined by the Constitution to strike down the law, as the Legislature, by definition, cannot produce a thing with force of law contradicting a limitation placed on it by the Constitution short of another Constitutional Amendment + the requisite ratifications. An unconstitutional law, is no law at all. The issue of constitutionality is purely the realm of the judiciary. No one else. You can change what the Judiciary looks like; but you can't structurally usurp it's powers under the Constitution.

There is a reason Jefferson and Madison were really nervous about how the judiciary ended up playing out in practice though.

[dctoedt]

> If Congress started adding clauses to legislation to the tune of "this law is not subject to judicial review", the judiciary is fully within it's [sic] rights as outlined by the Constitution to strike down the law

I'm not suggesting that Congress go that far. But don't forget the Exceptions and Regulations Clause in Article III: "In all the other Cases before mentioned [i.e., establishing various grounds of federal-court jurisdiction], the supreme Court shall have appellate Jurisdiction, both as to Law and Fact, with such Exceptions, and under such Regulations as the Congress shall make."

That sounds pretty plenary to me. And Congress has sometimes exercised that power, e.g.:

* Severely limiting and even foreclosing judicial review of certain types of decision by immigration authorities: 8 U.S.C. § 1252(g)

* Ditto for decisions about Social Security: 42 U.S.C. § 405(h)

My vague recollection from law school is that SCOTUS has said that this is OK as long as Congress provides sufficient due process via other means.

> The issue of constitutionality is purely the realm of the judiciary. No one else.

It's astonishing how such an exalted view of the judge's role has taken root and spread like kudzu from its origins in John Marshall's brazenly-bootstrapped argument in Marbury v. Madison (and the All-Writs Act).

[lovethevoid]

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

[Gormo]

I'm not quite following here -- how does stopping executive-branch employees from stepping far outside of their technical expertise into the world of statutory interpretation and constitutional law stop them from continuing to conduct their duties prescribed by law, as explained by the judiciary?

[pclmulqdq]

They absolutely can apply the law to specific factual scenarios. They just can't necessarily apply new legal theories to new factual scenarios without getting challenged. The words "apply the law" generally do not mean "invent new legal theories."

[jordanb]

Technically they still can do that but they can now be overridden by any judge for any reason. This is an obscene power-grab by our most corrupt and least accountable branch of government.

[locopati]

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

[rayiner]

Show me where either of those things are in the constitution. Section number and clause please.

[freejazz]

Show me a greater fundamental misunderstanding of the constitution, which is not an enumerated list of rights, but an enumerated list limiting what the gov't can do. Why is that I only see you post the most specious legal arguments, rayiner? Why is it consistently the case that you misrepresent the basic principles of the US government in the service of facially decrepit arguments?

[rayiner]

> Show me a greater fundamental misunderstanding of the constitution, which is not an enumerated list of rights, but an enumerated list limiting what the gov't can do.

You're confusing the federal government with the state governments. State governments are not limited to enumerated powers and can do anything they want.

To overturn a duly-enacted state law, you need to assert a federal constitutional right. You're correct that the constitution "is not an enumerated list of rights." But that means it's also not a source of rights! The rights must come from somewhere else.

That's why the "emanations from penumbras" reasoning is invalid. It treats the Constitution as a source of new rights that can't be found somewhere else.

> Why is that I only see you post the most specious legal arguments, rayiner?

I think most people on here get their legal analysis from political science majors on MSNBC and WaPo.

[relaxing]

Amendments 1 and 9.

[rayiner]

Where in the First Amendment does it say separation of church and state?

The Ninth Amendment is a savings clause. It says that the Constitution isn't meant to be an exhaustive list of rights. I.e., a right that can be identified somewhere else still exists, even if it's not mentioned in the constitution.

But by the same token, the constitution isn't a source of rights. You can't point to it for some right that isn't already pre-existing.

[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

[massysett]

You're citing an Executive-branch regulation, not a law from Congress.

[ceejayoz]

My bad.

The regulation stems from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magnuson%E2%80%93Stevens_Fishe..., which says things like:

> United States observers required under subsection (h) be permitted to be stationed aboard any such vessel and that all of the costs incurred incident to such sta- tioning, including the costs of data editing and entry and observer monitoring, be paid for, in accordance with such subsection, by the owner or operator of the vessel

[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.

[refurb]

But judges would never have a say as long as Congress fully fleshed out the law?

[tzs]

How?

When dealing with a country of over 300 million people and a near $30 trillion economy Congress cannot possibly specify things so completely that there won't be things that need interpretation.

[refurb]

How did it work before the Chevron defense? The USA didn't implode before 1984.

Congress would need to outline the limits of the executive function in the law. It would need to detail what the goals are (and are not).

To me this seems like a vast improvement rather than just passing a bill "regulate pollution" and then whatever the EPA decides is now law impervious to court challenges.

[tzs]

> How did it work before the Chevron defense?

Congress passed laws that required interpretation to actually implement. If someone disagreed with the agency interpretation they went to court. The court would then figure out an interpretation.

All Chevron deference did is tell the court that if the agency interpretation was reasonable the court should go with that.

With or without Chevron, "unelected bureaucrats" end up interpreting the law.

[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.

[mp05]

I think one could make an argument that the US system of governance was designed to encourage "politicking" by populist types in the House. Love him or hate him, LBJ was excellent at this sort of thing and an ideal representative. But I've read a lot of Caro and it seems he feels the US Senate has jumped the shark in this regard. The narrative laments the glory days of high-minded debate and the occasional cane beatings, but it's hard to say if that's Caro's actual view.

But it's fair to argue the Senate wasn't built for politicking, yet that's what it's devolved into. I'm a political layman, but perhaps popular vote of senators is a terrible idea as it discourages people unwilling to play hardball to get involved... these engineers, doctors, scientists, etc. It takes a special kind of thick skin to be in national office and those type of people don't seem to gravitate to science-based fields, but rather law and professional politics.

[taylodl]

I agree on both counts. The House was, by definition, the populist component of the government. That was the only representation that We The People got. The state legislature was supposed to elect the state senators, and the state legislature was to nominate an even smaller group of electorates to choose the president.

But the fact the state legislature elected the state senators reflects your point that the senate was intended to be more "serious."

[mp05]

It's a beautiful system, and it's interesting to think about how things would be different if the 17th Amendment never came about. But this ruling could bring the role of Congress in governance to the forefront again.

[taylodl]

Well, this Congress isn't up to doing its job. All they know how to do is act like Middle Schoolers and run their mouths in front of TV cameras. They have no idea, or experience, with governance.

[larkost]

I don't think it is the inexperience level in congress that is the driving factor. Ted Cruz has been in the Senate since 2013, and he is absolutely one of the problematic members. Former President Trump is similarly anti-compromise and similarly a bomb-thrower rather than a politicker.

The main problem as I see it is that to many people have entered their own little political bubbles (a problem on both the major parties), and that on one side it has become common to lie outrageously (election denial, "Biden Crime Family", etc...) and to baselessly vilify their opponents in unfair and repugnant ways ("groomers", "killing babies after birth", etc...).

There is a real historical parallel to this: the U.S. Civil War. In the run-up to the election of Abraham Lincoln the Southern Democrats absolutely vilified him, saying things like he was going to free the black slaves (not his plans at all at that point) and make slaves of poor white folks. Many of these species were made on the floors of the House and Senate to be picked up in the newspapers in their home districts.

When Lincoln won (largely because the Southern Democrats split their vote), this rhetoric had taken on a life of its own and the populace was so enraged that it would have taken real leadership in the south to prevent war. And so we went to war with ourselves.

And about what really? Certainly slavery was the over-arching issue, but what specifically about it? Lincoln won on a platform of status-quo. There was to be no effort at freeing slaves (there were 4 slave-owning states in the Union, and slavery happened in a number of new territories like California during the war), and the only anti-slavery thing Lincoln committed to was to no expand slavery into the new territories: something that had already been agreed to.

The U.S. Civil War started because a failed political strategy to lie to their own voters got away from the Southern Democrats.

I am truly scared that we are approaching that today. There is no-one with any integrity left in Republican leadership. Their voters have been lied to so much and so long that the idea that the leaders of the Democratic Party both are tying to "groom" children and to literally suck their blood in some ritual to live longer are nearly main-stream within Republican circles. And Republican leadership is alright with that, so long as they think it will get them elected.

[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.

[Nasrudith]

The main problem with that approach is it makes rigging the 'elections' trivial when probabilistically every result is equally as plausible as another.

[anigbrowl]

The idea of selecting legislators in a similar manner to jury service is how democracy originally used to be done, and it has a lot going for it in my view.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sortition

[mp05]

I'd suggest shrinking the pool somewhat, perhaps by selecting from people involved in state-level politics already? This idea that any random person is fit to be a representative is bonkers to me.

The House should be filled with the Common Man, if you will, but I'm certain the authors were envisioning a parvenu bootstrapper like Ben Franklin or a Paul Revere.

But the Senate should change too--repeal the 17th amendment and bring the election of US Senators back to the state legislative bodies. It's a key element that made us a Republic and I'm failing to see how we can even refer to ourselves as such since 1913. I find it grating when people say "our democracy" because it is true now, but shouldn't be.