[Gormo]

> Why do you think a crippled group of 500 generalists should write every single detail of regulatory code for every facet of American life?

They shouldn't. No single entity should ever be allowed to "to write every single detail of regulatory code for every facet of American life".

Thankfully, with this decision, we have restored a situation where law and policy are developed and refined through the interplay of disparate branches of government with ultimate accountability to the public itself, with edge cases handled by the specialists who actually have the relevant expertise in interpreting law.

> I don't mean to say that executive agencies shouldn't be held to the Constitution or the law. Who says they shouldn't?

Well, that's the implicit argument of the people who are saying they should continue to be allowed to act as the arbiters of their own authority, without judicial oversight.

> But they should be allowed to have a broad mandate.

Unelected appointees who are hired on the basis of their expertise in a technical field, without necessarily having any special competence at handling the normative aspect of their duties, should absolutely not have a broad mandate to decide what the limits of their own authority are.

[freejazz]

>They shouldn't. No single entity should ever be allowed to "to write every single detail of regulatory code for every facet of American life".

You shouldn't be having this conversation if you do not understand the basic civics of the US government and the role the legislative body plays, let alone your own damn argument.

[Gormo]

You're right, I shouldn't be having this conversation if I didn't have a basic understanding of the fundamental structure of the US government. Since I have a relatively advanced understanding of that topic, however, we shall continue.

So, the US Constitution distributes political authority among three distinct but co-equal branches of government. Legislative authority is assigned to Congress, executive power belongs to the president, and judicial power is the purview of the Supreme Court.

The Constitution makes no mention of administrative agencies -- these are entirely creatures of statue law subsequent and subordinate to the Constitution, and did not begin to exist significantly until more than a century after the Victorian Constitution went into effect.

There is no explicit authority for Congress to delegate legislative power to any other institution, and whether this is entirely legitimate remains a master of some debate.

The Constitution further explicitly assigns judicial power to the Supreme Court, and in no way obligates the court to delegate its inherent duty of statutory interpretation to executive branch agencies, least of all to defer to those agencies in establishing the boundaries of their own statutory power.

Finally, the Constitution enumerates the scope of the legislative power assigned to Congress, and explicitly reserves all non-enumerated powers to "the states or the people respectively". There is no basis whatsoever in our system of government for any single institution to unilaterally "regulate every facet of American life", least of all at the federal level.

[unethical_ban]

1. Congress creates an executive agency called "Protect The Environment Agency" and tasks them with creating and maintaining regulations around pollution - air, ground, water, etc.

2. The PTEA makes a regulation stating that, per their mandate, all people must personally declare plastics are bad for the planet or else they get taxed $100 a year. This is clearly a violation of the first amendment.

3. You are suggesting that under Chevron, no one would have any remedy for this unconstitutional behavior?

3a. That a person would not have agency to sue in federal court to say this regulation is unconstitutional?

3b. You suggest Congress has no power to explicitly prohibit the "PTEA" from imposing individual fines related to speech on the environment?

---

It seems from another comment, regarding 3b. you agree Congress can make laws adjusting the scope of agency power. That leaves 3a.

[Gormo]

> 3. You are suggesting that under Chevron, no one would have any remedy for this unconstitutional behavior?

Well, this example includes the agency acting in a way that Congress itself would not have the power to authorize in the first place, so this is a bad example. Statutory interpretation doesn't really matter here, because even if the statute did authorize the PTEA to implement this policy, it would still be unconstitutional, so Chevron wouldn't even come into it.

Why make up outlandish examples, though, when we have the examples of the actual cases to look at? Loper involved a federal law requiring operators of certain fishing boats to allow for inspections to ensure compliance with fishing regulations. The agency tasked with enforcing that law decided for themselves that the statute conferred them the authority to bill the fishing boat operators for their inspectors' expenses when going out to make the inspections.

Under Chevron, the court would not have be able to judge for itself whether or not the statute actually authorizes the agency to charge the fisherman for the travel expenses of inspectors, and would have to defer to the agency's own interpretation that it does.

> 3b. You suggest Congress has no power to explicitly prohibit the "PTEA" from imposing individual fines related to speech on the environment?

Of course they do, by passing a statute. Which is then up to the courts to interpret and hold the PTEA accountable to -- with the reversal of Chevron, interpreting that statute would thankfully no longer be up to the PTEA itself.

[unethical_ban]

I'm reading some admittedly biased essays reassuring me this is bad. Do you suggest a longer form essay (besides the opinion) that defends this decision?

(You don't have to, I won't blame you or be snide if you don't. Because it really seems like we disagree ideologically).

Loper seems like it could have been narrowly interpreted but threw the baby out with the bathwater. I don't want a judge deciding what levels of lead in the water system are "clean enough" or how deadly a substance must be before the FDA decides it isn't fit for human consumption. I really would rather the elected executive with subject matter experts interpret then enforce those laws within reason.

>Under Chevron, the court would not have be able to judge for itself whether or not the statute actually authorizes the agency to charge the fisherman for the travel expenses of inspectors, and would have to defer to the agency's own interpretation that it does.

So? Congress sees the regulations passed under their authority. Why shouldn't they be the ones to call an enforcement action out? Why couldn't the fishermen petition their Representative?

[Gormo]

> I'm reading some admittedly biased essays reassuring me this is bad. Do you suggest a longer form essay (besides the opinion) that defends this decision?

Perhaps you should skip over all of the biased intermediaries, and just read the ruling itself.

> Loper seems like it could have been narrowly interpreted but threw the baby out with the bathwater.

What baby? What's desirable about executive-branch officials being given free reign to interpret the statute law that defines their own authority with no oversight? What does anyone -- other than those officials themselves -- gain out of allowing that?

> I really would rather the elected executive with subject matter experts interpret then enforce those laws within reason.

Subject matter experts at what? These are all normative questions -- yes, factual circumstances frame the real-world context they apply to, and yes, technical expertise may be a relevant and important input, but actually making the decisions means making value judgements, weighing cost against benefits, making risk/reward tradeoffs, reconciling the conflicting interests of involved parties, making sure everyone's rights are protected, etc. How does technical expertise in the factual context give anyone any special expertise in making the normative decisions?

Subject-matter experts testify before Congress all the time. Research institutes publish white papers; think tanks draft model statutes and explain them to legislators; expert witnesses testify in every sort of court case imaginable. All of that is important and necessary, and is absolutely not going away. But the idea that having technical expertise in some empirical domain is sufficient qualification to assume absolute control over decision-making, and toss out our whole system of democratic legislation and common-law jurisprudence -- both of which have always relied on experts to provide input on applicable facts -- seems absolutely incomprehensible to me.

And that's all even assuming that the people who staff these agencies actually are genuine experts with wholly good-faith intentions. Sure, there are definitely people like that involved. But there are also lots of bare-minimum jobsworths, power-tripping petty officials, corrupt self-aggrandizers, and people who bullshited their way into "expert" credentials, all operating within an institutional system rife with perverse incentives and structural limitations. In other words, they're just like every other organization composed of human beings in our society. So why would we wish to insulate them from the system of accountability and oversight that we expect to hold sway everywhere else?

> So? Congress sees the regulations passed under their authority. Why shouldn't they be the ones to call an enforcement action out? Why couldn't the fishermen petition their Representative?

This whole conversation is totally downstream of any involvement by Congress -- they have already done their job by passing whatever statutes are currently in effect. The question here is whose job it is to interpret the statutes that Congress has already passed.

Congress is absolutely free to monitor the behavior of administrative agencies, and past new legislation to expand, contract, or clarify their authority. They indeed do so semi-regularly. But then those statutes will still need to be interpreted and applied to edge cases by people whose job it is to understand the statutes, i.e. the judiciary.

You seem to be trying to factor the need for interpretation of the law entirely out of the question, and I can't even begin to comprehend that.

[freejazz]

What an odd response that is completely besides the point of what I quoted. I didn't quote you on the delegation of powers. I quoted you as saying no body of government should be able to make all the laws. You have advanced knowledge as you say, maybe you can explain yourself, then?

[Gormo]

> I quoted you as saying no body of government should be able to make all the laws.

Which is correct. Congress's role is to legislate on matters within the scope of its enumerated powers, as subject to judicial review, and absolutely not to "make all the laws" that regulate "every facet of American life".

There are plenty of matters of law that are not delegated to Congress, and are reserved e.g. to states, and plenty of facets of American life that are outside the bounds of political intervention entirely, where people are responsible for making their own decisions in a pluralistic fashion.

[unethical_ban]

>Well, that's the implicit argument of the people who are saying they should continue to be allowed to act as the arbiters of their own authority, without judicial oversight.

No, that's no my implicit argument so you're wrong on the facts. And you keep saying they are the arbiters of their own authority.

Congress is.

[Gormo]

I'm afraid that it's you who are wrong on the facts: Congress does not exercise direct oversight over the behavior of these agencies.

Congress passes statutes that establish and grant authority to administrative agencies, and may from time to time pass new legislation that adjusts prevailing law, but they do not intervene to exercise oversight under the current statutes in effect.

That oversight -- evaluating the specific actions of those agencies and determining whether they are within the scope of current law -- has always been the role of other institutions.

Conventionally (and constitutionally), responsibility for for that oversight -- i.e. determining the meaning of the applicable statutes, and deciding whether specific behaviors and actions are within the law -- belongs entirely to the courts.

A few decades ago, the courts decided to abdicate this responsibility, and instead defer to those agencies' own interpretation of the statutes they operate under, indeed having the effect of making them "arbiters of their own authority". This is what Chevron doctrine refers to, and is what the new court decision has finally reversed.