Professor Abner S. Greene unpacks the recent Supreme Court case, Loper Bright Enterprises, Inc. v. Raimando, which has re-ignited the debate over the permissible scope of delegated power from Congress to regulatory agencies. The case hinges on interpreting statutes and precedents set by the nearly 40-year-old case, Chevron v. NRDC.
The case, Loper Bright Enterprises, Inc. v. Raimando, threatens to upend the regulatory state as we know it.
The underlying question is whether a nearly 40-year-old Supreme Court precedent, Chevron v. NRDC, should be overruled. Written by Justice John Paul Stevens, the unanimous Chevron opinion reconfirmed what had already been the case: When a statutory term is vague or ambiguous, fleshing out the statute is best understood as a matter of policy, best made by a political administrative agency and not by an apolitical court.
…Thus, the real objection to Chevron is not that agencies are improperly displacing the courts’ judicial role to say what the law is. The real objection is what lies behind Chevron: significant delegations of power from Congress to administrative agencies, which then make policy choices when statutory terms are unclear.
Read “The real fight over the Supreme Court’s Chevron case” in The Hill.