The Supreme Court heard arguments Wednesday in two related cases challenging a 40-year-old precedent that requires courts to defer to the judgment of federal agencies in administrative law cases. At the end of three-and-a-half hours of arguments, a majority seemed disposed to overturn Chevron vs. Natural Resources Defense Council, and consign the so-called “Chevron deference” principle to the compost heap of terrible Supreme Court precedents.
Ever since the creation of the administrative state during the administration of our first socialist president, Franklin D. Roosevelt, federal agencies have assumed the authority to interpret federal statutes pretty much as they please. This became legal precedent in 1984 with the Chevron vs. Natural Resources Defense Council decision. The decision reads, in part:
When a challenge to an agency construction of a statutory provision, fairly…
