If Congress Just Did Its Job, the Chevron Doctrine Wouldn’t Exist
Hasty, sloppy and ambiguous legislation has empowered the executive and judicial branches at the expense of lawmakers and the citizens they represent.
Sloppy laws make for nifty court cases.
Photographer: Tom Brenner/AFP via Getty Images
The Supreme Court is weighing the future of “Chevron deference” — a doctrine of the court’s own devising that has given government agencies expansive freedom to make public policy. If this strikes you as an arcane legal debate of no great moment, think again. It’s a matter of great political and economic significance. Thousands of regulations and a potential torrent of litigation turn on the outcome. Unfortunately, the discussion is being framed too narrowly.
Lawyers and officials (who are very often also lawyers, this being America) are preoccupied with whether judges or technical experts are better equipped to design regulations. A weighty question indeed. But it arises because legislators write laws that are so vague that courts, officials and contending litigants are left to work out what they mean. If the Supreme Court’s eventual ruling on Chevron does cause a regulatory train-wreck, which is entirely possible, put the blame where it belongs — with Congress.