How does this ruling fix that issue when the court admits it’s impossible to avoid ambiguous laws? Now it’s just unelected justices deciding instead of unelected agency bureaucrats. I think there’s an argument that could be worse, given the lifetime appointments of the court; at least the people have the chance to course correct the executive branch every four years.
I think we can all agree that the best solution is unambiguous laws, but that’s an impossibility by the courts own admission. Chevron already had a mechanism to prevent agency overreach by giving the court discretion to determine the reasonableness of an agency interpretation. This now just puts the onus on the court to do it all, and they admit they don’t have domain expertise. I fail to see how that is a better solution.
The great thing about an adversarial court system is when the challenge before the court is that a private party is challenging the agency’s interpretation of the law, they have to make their own case about it and convince a Judge that they’re right and the text of the law is available for all to read. Given that agencies are charged with enforcing the law, they should know the laws they are enforcing and their own authorizing statues better than anyone, and if that’s the case, they are still arguing from a position of strength. What’s changed here is that a Court is not obliged to defer to the agency’s interpretation in most cases.
I don’t want the domain experts to have an easy time of it. The law is not their convenience, it is for the peace and prosperity of the Republic, and given that Agency interpretations can change on a dime (up until recently) with almost minimal justification from a new administration, I don’t want to defer to staff who are charged with interpreting laws in a way more favorably for their new bosses, even if it goes against how they did business under their old ones to have an easier time making their case in court. The law should be more concrete than some mere electoral promises and wishful policy-thinking.
I think we can all agree that the best solution is unambiguous laws, but that’s an impossibility by the courts own admission. Chevron already had a mechanism to prevent agency overreach by giving the court discretion to determine the reasonableness of an agency interpretation. This now just puts the onus on the court to do it all, and they admit they don’t have domain expertise. I fail to see how that is a better solution.