Document Type
Article
Publication Date
11-2024
Abstract
In the concluding days of its recently completed Term, in the midst of headline-grabbing decisions about presidential immunity, gun rights, and abortion, the Supreme Court rendered a momentous decision overruling the Chevron doctrine. The decision in Loper Bright Enterprises v. Raimondo was not a surprise. After treating the Chevron doctrine as a settled principle of administrative law for more than three decades, the Court stopped applying it in 2016. Several Justices authored individual opinions urging that it was unconstitutional, violated the Administrative Procedure Act (APA), was prone to manipulation by judges, created systematic bias in favor of the government, and created “a license authorizing an agency to change positions as much as it likes” thus fostering “unwarranted instability in the law.” In 2022, the Court announced an exception to Chevron, to the effect that major questions of economic and political significance cannot be resolved by agencies absent “clear congressional authorization.” The signals were abundant that the Chevron doctrine had lost the support of the conservative members of the Court, who now make up a strong six-member majority.
Disciplines
Administrative Law | Law
Recommended Citation
Thomas W. Merrill,
The Demise of Deference — And the Rise of Delegation to Interpret?,
138
Harv. L. Rev.
227
(2024).
Available at:
https://scholarship.law.columbia.edu/faculty_scholarship/4575