[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).