[jmyeet]

This is incorrect. Chevron deference wasn't giving the executive branch sole power to interpret ambiguous statutes as you claim (despite your scary example). The so-called Chevron deference doctrine was simply that the Supreme Court ruled (~40 years ago in the Reagan administration) that if an agency is responsible for administering a statute that's ambiguous, that agency's interpretation should be deferred to.

But the real problem comes in because 40 years of laws were written both both parties with Chevron deference in mind. Not only did Congress not take action to overrule Chevron, consistently for 40 years, they intentionally wrote ambiguous statutes to give agency's the power to interpret those statutes, mostly because enumerating every possible circumstance was impossible.

Take managing fish stocks. What fish stocks? When should fishing seasons be? What's the inspection mechanism? How are licenses and quotas issues? How are they enforced? How should all this be reported to the public, Congress and the president? What about fish stocks that border international waters? How should they be managed?

Chevron acknowledged what was already happening: it was impossible to write legislation that way. Congress didn't have the bandwidth to initially write it, let alone maintain it as circumstances change.

The Supreme Court (rightly) recognized that without Chevron deference it would be impossible to an agency manage anything because any ambiguities or any simply unofreseen gaps would be used to neuter the agency in the courts. It made it impossible to have such agencies and that's the whole point of overturning Chevron. The very wealthy don't want Fedearl agencies. The whole thing is a libertarian wet dream and over the coming years we'll see the consequences as the same people poison the water supply and the food supply, overfish alal fishing stocks, crash the economy through unregulated financial markets and so on.

[abduhl]

>> The so-called Chevron deference doctrine was simply that the Supreme Court ruled (~40 years ago in the Reagan administration) that if an agency is responsible for administering a statute that's ambiguous, that agency's interpretation should be deferred to.

This is a misstatement of what the law was. Under Chevron, the agency’s interpretation MUST be deferred to, not should. This is an affront to the separation of powers.

Agencies are not neutered. Nor are they prevented from interpreting ambiguous statutes post-Chevron. They are prevented from being the final say on interpretation. This is good, just, and in line with America’s constitutional regime.