[bumby]

Maybe I’m misunderstanding, but what you’re describing sounds like what I thought the case was before this ruling. The courts were deciding on the reasonableness of the agency interpretation. Now it sounds like the court is interpreting directly. To do the latter effectively, I still maintain you need a solid expert understanding of the domain.

It sounds like we disagree on who is better equipped to make the kinds of interpretations necessary for effective policy. Like I said in another post, I don’t think we can pretend law can be abstracted and cleaved from the systems it regulates. The court admits they don’t have expertise in those systems. That makes me feel they are ill-equipped for the types of interpretations.

[mike_hearn]

What you had understood and what he's describing is the situation pre-1984 and now post this judgement.

I think a lot of the reason this thread has blown up is that the Chevron doctrine was really very strange and not at all how you'd expect the US legal system to have been working. It doesn't line up with any standard teaching of civics, for instance. The Supreme Court clearly felt the same way and has now instructed courts to go back to doing what everyone thought they were doing already.

[bumby]

I don’t know that I agree. It’s exactly the understanding I was given from an engineering law course, for example. Prior to this ruling, the regulatory agencies were given latitude to interpret ambiguous law as long as they were determined reasonable by the court. It’s also what I think most people understand, given the way people rail against agencies rather than statutes.

To be clear, I think there is a distinction between declaring if a law is constitutional and resolving ambiguities for non-constitutional, domain specific issues. I think the court is eminently qualified in one area, but much less so (by their own admission) in the other. I think those are two different aspects that often get conflated.

[Gormo]

Yes, you are misunderstanding. Chevron obligated the courts to defer to agencies' own internal interpretation of statute law whenever any ambiguity arose as to what the law said. Reversing Chevron has restored that function to the judiciary, where it belongs.

[bumby]

I’m not misunderstanding then. Chevron still deferred interpreting ambiguity to the agency, but the courts could still check that based on a reasonableness standard. Now the court gets both aspects. Our difference is that I think that is a less good outcome because I believe domain expertise is necessary to effectively clear up ambiguity and the court admits they do not have that kind of domain expertise.

I think the court should reserve power for constitutionality (their domain expertise) and leave resolving the ambiguity outside that to the regulatory experts of those respective domains.

[Gormo]

> I’m not misunderstanding then. Chevron still deferred interpreting ambiguity to the agency, but the courts could still check that based on a reasonableness standard.

No, you are definitely misunderstanding. Chevron delegated a core duty of the judiciary to executive branch officials with no expertise in that field. The "reasonableness" standard you was a limited and constrained version of reasonableness standards devised and applied by courts in normal statutory interpretation, and deprived the courts of the power to fully exercise their duty.

> Now the court gets both aspects.

No, there is only one aspect here.

> Our difference is that I think that is a less good outcome because I believe domain expertise is necessary to effectively clear up ambiguity and the court admits they do not have that kind of domain expertise.

The domain expertise of the regulators in the field of regulation is irrelevant here, because the cases that go before the court are not about what measures are likely to be effective in fulfilling the agency's mandate, it's about what measures are legally permissible.

> I think the court should reserve power for constitutionality (their domain expertise) and leave resolving the ambiguity outside that to the regulatory experts of those respective domains.

The only domain at question here is the domain of interpreting the law, and the relevant experts in that are the judiciary themselves. You are conflating together completely distinct matters.

[bumby]

If you’re claiming the courts have more non-law domain expertise than agencies, you’ll need some evidence of that for this point to land.

If you look to Chevron for a concrete example, the issue was about the ambiguity of the scope of a “source” of emissions. That is not a law question because the law already deemed that sources can be regulated. It’s really a question of non-law domain expertise in terms of the definition of an emission source.

[Gormo]

> If you’re claiming the courts have more non-law domain expertise than agencies, you’ll need some evidence of that for this point to land.

No, I'm not claiming that. I'm not sure what that has to do with this discussion at all, though, because non-law domain experience has nothing to do with domain experience in interpreting laws.

> If you look to Chevron for a concrete example, the issue was about the ambiguity of the scope of a “source” of emissions. That is not a law question because the law already deemed that sources can be regulated.

Huh? If the law says "sources can be regulated", then the question of what the statute means by "source" is 100% a legal question of statutory interpretation!

> It’s really a question of non-law domain expertise in terms of the definition of an emission source.

No, it absolutely is not! Congress -- not the domain experts in the regulatory agency -- used specific language to establish and circumscribe the scope of the questions that agency's authority would extend to. It is 100% the role of the courts to analyse the statutory text written by Congress and determine whether the agency is or is not operating within the authority that Congress established.

[bumby]

>I'm not sure what that has to do with this discussion at all, though

I would argue that is the central claim. Something can be law and ambiguous. The role of the court previously was to ensure the first part: that the law is Constitutional. Outside of Maybury I don't think anyone is disputing that. The difference is that this now says the arbiter of ambiguity is now the court.

Not everything related to interpretation should be up to the court. The court's primary role is in determining constitutionality; that is a much more narrow scope than what you're presuming. In many (most) court rulings, they are very deliberate in keeping the scope as narrow as possible. This ruling is one of the exceptions, not the rule. But you don't have to take it from me. Justice Kagan states:

"Some interpretive issues arising in the regulatory context involve scientific or technical subject matter. Agencies have expertise in those areas; courts do not. Some demand a detailed understanding of complex and interdependent regulatory programs. Agencies know those programs inside-out; again, courts do not...In one fell swoop, the majority today gives itself exclusive power over every open issue—no matter how expertise-driven or policy-laden—involving the meaning of regulatory law. As if it did not have enough on its plate, the majority turns itself into the country’s administrative czar."

>Congress -- not the domain experts in the regulatory agency -- used specific language to establish and circumscribe the scope of the questions that agency's authority would extend to.

I don't think this is correct. The court has acknowledged that Congress cannot make perfectly unambigious laws. The question is about who gets to clear up those ambiguities. Again, the role of the court is best suited to what they have expertise in: determining constitutionality. Defining what an "emission source" (or any other domain expertise question) is outside that scope.

I would argue that becoming an "administrative czar" oversteps the bounds of a judiciary responsible for determining constitutionality to one that blurs the lines with the executive branch. In Kagan's words, it becomes an act of "judicial hubris."