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Full-Text Articles in Law
The Major Questions Doctrine: Right Diagnosis, Wrong Remedy, Thomas W. Merrill
The Major Questions Doctrine: Right Diagnosis, Wrong Remedy, Thomas W. Merrill
Faculty Scholarship
The Supreme Court’s “major questions” doctrine has been attacked as an attempt to revive the nondelegation doctrine. The better view is that this statutory interpretation responds to perceived failings of the Chevron doctrine, which has governed court-agency relations since 1984. This article criticizes the major question doctrine and proposes modifications to the Chevron doctrine that would partially correct its failings while preserving the traditional interpretive role of courts.
In Search Of Skidmore, Peter L. Strauss
In Search Of Skidmore, Peter L. Strauss
Faculty Scholarship
Ever since 1827, the U.S. Supreme Court has repeatedly observed that when a court is interpreting a statute that falls within the authority of an administrative agency, the court in reaching its own judgment about the statute's meaning should give substantial weight to the agency's view. Repeated again and again over the years in varying formulations, this proposition found its apotheosis in Skidmore v. Swift & Co., a unanimous opinion authored by Justice Jackson in 1944. His opinion took the proposition to be so obvious that no citation was required. Justice Jackson's typically incisive and memorable formulation stuck. It …
City Of Arlington V. Fcc: Questioning Agency Authority To Determine The Scope Of Its Own Authority, Jonathan H. Adler
City Of Arlington V. Fcc: Questioning Agency Authority To Determine The Scope Of Its Own Authority, Jonathan H. Adler
Faculty Publications
In City of Arlington v. FCC the Supreme Court will consider whether courts should defer to an agency’s determination of its own jurisdiction. Although the need for courts to defer to agency interpretations of ambiguous statutory provisions under Chevron v. NRDC is well-established, the Supreme Court has never decided whether so-called Chevron deference should apply to statutory provisions delineating the scope of agency jurisdiction. There are several reasons courts should not confer Chevron deference to agency interpretations of statutes that define or limit an agency’s jurisdiction. First, the conferral of Chevron deference is premised upon the existence of agency jurisdiction. …
The Rest Is Silence: Chevron Deference, Agency Jurisdiction And Statutory Silences, Jonathan H. Adler
The Rest Is Silence: Chevron Deference, Agency Jurisdiction And Statutory Silences, Jonathan H. Adler
Faculty Publications
Should agencies receive Chevron deference when interpreting the reach of their own jurisdiction? This article argues that, in general, they should not. We begin by identifying and detailing the various different types of jurisdictional questions that may arise in statutory interpretation. The article then surveys how the Supreme Court and lower federal courts have analyzed these different aspects of the jurisdiction problem, with a particular attention to statutory silences. The Court's Chevron jurisprudence strongly suggest that deference to agency determinations of their own jurisdiction should be disfavored, particularly where a statute is silent (and not merely ambiguous) about the existence …