There is widespread panic in the wake of the Supreme Court’s ruling in Loper Bright Enterprises v. Raimondo, overturning the controversial Chevron doctrine, for fear that it marks an end to administrative power. Administrative agencies and their expertise are here to stay. But a post-Chevron world is much needed — to adhere to the Constitution, to restore a properly functioning tripartite system, and to finally put pressure on Congress to do its job.
The Chevron doctrine required courts to defer to an administrative agency’s interpretation of its enabling statute — the law that defines the contours of an agency’s regulatory power — if it was “reasonable.” That is, an agency interpretation did not need to be the likely meaning of the statute, or what the courts thought the statute meant. This is antithetical to Article III of the Constitution, which vests judges with the duty to say what the law is and reach their own independent, legal judgment instead of relying on political actors’ self-interested conception of the law. As best said by Chief Justice John Roberts, Chevron “require[d] a court to ignore, not follow, ‘the reading the court would have reached’ had it exercised its independent judgment.”
The court’s decision on June 28 does not mark an end to the use of agency expertise in the judicial process. Courts will rely on the technical expertise agencies provide in court just as they rely on the information provided by any run-of-the-mill litigant — but agency deference will no longer completely usurp the judicial function.
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