[bumby]

It reads like it creates a deliberate impasse. The opinion states that ambiguities in law no longer implicitly give agencies discretion. That means Congress has to write unambiguous laws. But my original post acknowledges they cannot. Based on this ruling, it seems like anything other than a perfect, airtight law means it's effectively non-enforceable. So where does that leave us? It seems like the SC has laid the table for constant rules-lawyering by corporations to get whatever they want. In other words, they've let the perfect be the enemy of the good.

[mike_hearn]

> That means Congress has to write unambiguous laws

I don't understand where this belief is coming from. The judgement explicitly states that writing unambiguous laws isn't possible. There will still be ambiguous laws, and those ambiguities will still be resolved. The only matter being decided on is who gets to resolve ambiguities - is it the agencies or is it the courts.

Let's put this another way. Did Congress have to write unambiguous laws or have them be unenforceable before 1984? Clearly not. The Constitution itself is ambiguous on many points. Do other countries, which lack any equivalent of Chevron deference, have to write unambiguous laws or have them be unenforceable? Again, clearly not.

[bumby]

>The only matter being decided on is who gets to resolve ambiguities - is it the agencies or is it the courts.

I think we are agreeing here. I think the distinction is that I'm claiming the courts would need (yet don't have) the expertise to clear up ambiguities in such domains. Where do I get this claim? From the justices themselves.[1] There is evidence they are overly confident in their understanding when "doing their own research" on a domain outside their expertise.[2]

So given that context, it's probably a bad idea to have justices decide on ambiguities. But if that power resides in them now, it means the only way to have effective laws is to avoid ambiguities in the first place. That's why I stated that is now on Congress. However, the court is also acknowledging that isn't possible. That's why I originally said it reads like they created a deliberate stalemate. From the court we have the following:

1) Congress cannot be expected to create unambiguous laws.

2) It is the court's job to resolve ambiguities.

3) The court lacks domain expertise.

I'm claiming those set up a natural conflict because expertise is necessary to effectively resolve ambiguity.

The most generous interpretation is that the justices don't need to know the details of the domain expertise, but rather just need to know how it interfaces with people and the law.[3] I'm pretty skeptical of that leading to good outcomes in complex, nuanced situations. I don't think we can pretend law is abstractly disconnected from the complex systems it regulates. As society progresses, most things get more complex so I expect the problem to get worse, not better.

[1] https://www.businessinsider.com/supreme-court-google-tech-so...

[2] https://www.propublica.org/article/supreme-court-errors-are-...

[3] https://www.vox.com/2014/4/23/5644154/the-supreme-courts-tec...

[mike_hearn]

Remember that law is first and foremost meant to be read by ordinary people, as they are the ones expected to know it and follow it. Ignorance of the law is not an excuse, etc. If a law is so difficult that even a judge armed with a courtroom full of expert witnesses can't figure out what it means it should not exist, because how could any actual citizen be expected to understand or obey it? People who write such laws don't get to whinge when other people try to clean up their mess.

There's certainly no evidence of an attempt to create a deliberate stalemate here, as "laws that judges cannot interpret even with help" isn't something the Supreme Court is going to consider a legitimate problem to begin with so why would they consider it? But it's fascinating the degree to which some people on this thread are sure this is all a cunning secret plan by the justices to advance a political ideology. Projection, much?

> There is evidence they are overly confident in their understanding when "doing their own research" on a domain outside their expertise.[2]

Great. So are regulators, politicians and especially journalists. The idea that agencies never rely on bogus claims or statistics is a deeply romantic view.

Really, I don't have any sympathy for the US regulatory agencies on this issue. Too many of them have a history of abusing Chevron deference. If the deference standard had any advantage at all it'd be that you could get binding rulings from regulators ahead of time, without needing to actually end up in court first. But regulators always refuse to do that, because they aren't obliged to and it would reduce their options. Instead what they do is make vague rules, tell citizens (e.g. entrepreneurs) who ask for clarification to get lost, wait years for some of those people to make successful businesses and then decide that what they were doing had been illegal all along under some strange interpretation of the relevant rule. It's a form of retroactive lawmaking, which is forbidden by basically any constitution because the whole point of law is that people are meant to be able to follow it.

This sort of abusive behavior is so common it's clearly deliberate. Instead of helping society, the agencies end up working against it in order to maximize their own power.

Having the people who interpret laws be fully separated from those who write the laws aligns incentives properly: there's no longer any benefit to passing maximally vague or contradictory rules in the hope of being able to do whatever you want later. Laws that are as specific and clear as possible is exactly what a society needs to succeed, because when the rules are clear people are free to innovate and do business without fear.

[bumby]

>So are regulators, politicians and especially journalists

Yes. The important distinction that I drew was that the power is now vested in a very small group of nine people. IMO that measures it much easier for biases to continue unabated. At least in large numbers, there are more likely to be more rational viewpoints to counter our innate biases.

[telotortium]

> At least in large numbers, there are more likely to be more rational viewpoints to counter our innate biases.

Maybe, but there is absolutely no mechanism to ensure that rational viewpoints will prevail in a group of large numbers, and quite a large danger of social pressure causing less rational viewpoints to prevail instead.

[bumby]

The court previously provided those guardrails. With Chevron deference, the agencies could clear up ambiguities, but the court could reel them back if they were found to be unreasonable. Now, there is no check-and-balance; the entire power resides in the court. In the words of Justice Kagan, that is "judicial hubris."

If the court makes an unreasonable interpretation, the only mechanism to rectify it is for Congress to be explicit. This has multiple problems: first, getting anything through Congress is becoming increasingly difficult. Secondly, the Court already admitted that laws will always have ambiguities because Congress doesn't always have the expertise to be that explicit. From that standpoint, the Court has claimed a power while acknowledging there is very little in terms of a check on that power.